Stepmothers and the Big Bad Wolf eARC

by Edited by Madeline Smoot

  “Or else what,” Wolf mumbled, leaping atop the crypt.

  “You hear me?” Maggie called again. “No one walks away from me, loser.”

  Maggie rounded the crypt to find Wolf perched on the arch.

  “You look like a fool,” Chelsea giggled, barely able to catch her breath.

  Wolf measured the width of the crypt with his stride, while trapped below, Chuck moaned, “Okay. You win. Just let us out.”

  “He lies,” whispered the wind.

  “Best to leave them,” croaked the oak. “They’ll make fine mulch.”

  Wolf bit back a chuckle, while Maggie paced below.

  Fists hit the door, but Maggie heard no voices from within. Chelsea strained to hear, while Francie backed away, and the wind blew wild.

  A single branch snapped, dropping against the door, while above Wolf crouched. A leap had him at Maggie’s feet.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Maggie shrieked, shoving Wolf. “You think you’re so bad. You’re nothing. Do you hear me? You’re nothing.”

  “I thought you wanted to see Chuck,” Wolf smirked. “Thought you wanted to see who he’s with, who that other person is.”

  “Fool,” Maggie hissed, pushing against the door. No movement, just squeals from within and a dull scratch against wood.

  ‘Have it your way,” Wolf shrugged. “I have things to do.”

  “Huff and puff,” Chelsea laughed, pushing past Maggie, adding her weight to the door.

  A final push had the door open.

  “’Bout time,” Chuck snarled, running past Chelsea, Ron and Willie right behind.

  “Don’t go,” Wolf snarled. “We’re not through here. I thought you said you were brave.”

  “Idiot,” Chuck snapped, fist set to connect with Wolf’s jaw, ’til a wind gust caught the oak’s branch and set it careening between Wolf and Chuck. Wild winds slapped branches against Chuck’s face, ripped at his arm. Ron and Willie faired no better, with brittle leaves cutting into their faces.

  “Wind,” yelled Wolf. “Watch out. Another branch.”

  Crackling branches sent boys and girls into the crypt. A single gust blew shut the door.

  Wind and oak promised a safe home. All they asked was a sacrifice or two, and Wolf readily complied.

  “Done,” whispered the wind.

  “Never believed you could do it,” croaked the oak.

  “But I did,” smiled Wolf. “I’m the big bad wolf. Don’t expect anything less. And if you do, then why don’t you huff and puff and blow the crypt down. I’ve got more than three little pigs. I’ve got six squealing kids, and with any luck, tomorrow I’ll have more.”

  “Many more,” whispered the wind.

  “A dozen will nurture my roots,” croaked the oak.

  “I’ll let them out sooner or later,” Wolf said. “After they learn their lesson.”

  “Later,” whispered the wind.

  “Much later,” croaked the oak.

  “Six fewer bullies, and six more tomorrow will stop the terror.” Wolf sighed, drawing his nails across the door.

  “So you think,” whispered the wind.

  “Perhaps he’s right,” croaked the oak. “He’s done more than expected.”

  “I’m big. I’m bad,” howled Wolf, arms wide. “I’m the big bad wolf!”

  Though Judy Rubin lives in Downey, California, she has traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to research and to gain insight for her manuscripts. With a Master of Arts in literature, as well as standard secondary, community college, and library service credentials, she has worked as a language arts teacher, a storyteller, and a library media teacher from middle school to college levels, as well as provided district level teacher training in storytelling workshops and creative writing techniques.

  I was rattled awake from a dream of sunshine and wildflowers by the vibrations of a large truck driving past my window. The glass shook and my bed shimmied across the floor. I sat up and pulled back the blackout curtains. The bleak landscape of Antarctica jarred my sleep clouded mind. We don’t have trucks, only a couple of small snowmobiles in the dome with us.

  The sky was light, but it never gets completely dark here during the summer. I let go of the curtain and fumbled for my clock. 3:45 AM.

  I switched on my light and tried to wake up. I had fallen asleep with my blanket covered in schoolbooks again. The books began to tilt and slide, thumping to the floor. Scrambling out of bed, I lurched toward the door, almost ending up in the closet. An alarm shrieked to life in the hallway.

  Not a truck, an earthquake. What were you supposed to do in an earthquake? Go outside? Get under the desk? The alarm bounced around inside my skull. I grabbed the doorframe and leaned out into the dim hallway looking toward the room where my father and stepmother slept.

  Their doorway was open, and my father pulled himself through it. His gray hair was a wild halo glowing in the light from behind him.

  “Lea? Stay there,” he called over the alarm’s blare. “The doorway is the safest place.”

  A violent tremor pitched me forward into the hallway. I fell onto my knees on the cool tile. It took me a moment to realize that the sound I was hearing was my own screams. Chunks of the ceiling started to rain down. I curled up on the floor. The air tasted of dust and plaster. I tried not to choke on it and keep breathing. My heart was racing and I wanted to run to my dad, but larger pieces of ceiling were falling now.

  I covered my head with my arms. Concrete and light fixtures crashed all around me. Dust showered down, turning my dark skin gray. The blare of the alarm washed over me.

  Finally the world stopped shaking. The alarm wailed forlornly for a few more moments, and then it fell quiet too.

  I peeked out from beneath my hair. I could see part of the dim hallway through an opening in the debris near my face. It was criss-crossed with beams and massive blocks of what had been the ceiling and the roof beyond. The low angled sun of early morning lit the slowly settling dust.

  That’s when I heard Arla-Mia calling me. A machine my father had designed and implanted in her neck let her speak human words. It made her voice rough, like that of an old lady after a life of smoking. I had learned a few of her native words, but I couldn’t remember a single one right now.

  “Help me!” I called back, before coughing. I finally managed to add, “Dad?”

  “He cannot respond. He no longer breathes,” my stepmother stated in her calm, gravelly voice.

  I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t.

  “I’m trapped.” My voice was shrill. I was trapped, and my father was dead. I began coughing again. I hadn’t been crushed, but I couldn’t straighten up in the space left by the rubble. My knees ached, bent so sharply and pushed against the cold hard floor with only the thin fabric of my nightgown in between.

  “Be still child,” replied Arla-Mia. Dad had explained that she was able to express more emotions in her native voice than we could with ours, but the mechanical nature of the voice box didn’t transmit them well. Sometimes it was hard to remember I wasn’t talking to a robot.

  Her voice was closer now. I could hear the rubble being shifted—metal bending and concrete crashing to the side.

  “I’m here.” I said more quietly, taking a careful breath.

  I began to shiver. Fresh air blew through the hallway from the roof. So cold. It must be air from outside the dome. Whatever pinned my torso down was shifted out of the way.

  Three of her mottled blue-green tentacles lifted me clear of the floor and then I was in Arla-Mia’s arms, being held close. When we moved into the dome, she had taken to hiding her tentacles under her clothing. It was easy to forget how strong she was. I clung to her, pushing my face into the slick skin of her neck and inhaling her familiar lemon tang.

  Arla-Mia made soft reassuring humming sounds, in her natural voice. I peered around her shoulder as we moved back down the hall toward where I had last seen Dad, but I didn’t want to see my father crushed under s
labs of concrete.

  I had a moment of horror as I realized where she was taking me. I hadn’t even thought of my baby half-sister, likely sleeping when the tremors began. Arla-Mia neatly navigated us through the crumbled remains of the hallway back toward her daughter’s room. I strained to hear the baby crying.

  After Isabel was born, I had tried to explain to Arla-Mia the difference between Mother and Stepmother. She understood that my birth-mother was no longer alive. She understood that she raised me now. She had always listened patiently, made time for me. She had been a stepmother to me, but I had thought maybe I was simply someone she was kind to. But she had saved me even before checking on her own baby. I watched her face, holding tight as we crossed the threshold into Isabel’s debris-choked room.

  Arla-Mia set me down on the floor just inside. I tried to stand, but my legs were wobbly from shock and wouldn’t hold my weight. I slid back to the floor and set to rubbing some strength back into my calves.

  My father and Arla-Mia had worked together for more than a year, two linguists untangling communication between two species. When he told me he had fallen in love with an alien, I hadn’t known what to think. When they announced their intention to attempt to have a child, there was a full-on media frenzy. All sorts of paranoid experts poured out of the woodwork claiming great risks to the human race if it was permitted.

  Our home here under the dome was the compromise. I think Arla-Mia preferred the privacy and the climate control it permitted. For me, it meant finishing high school via remote classes and being isolated from my friends.

  When Isabel was born she was a miracle. Her skin and vocal chords were human, but she had additional tentacles around her torso like her mother. She had her mother’s sensitivity to cold, and her skin tone was closest to the green shades of the skin on my stepmother’s scalp. Arla-Mia had no hair, but Isabel’s hair was like mine—dark and tightly coiled.

  Arla-Mia’s tentacles whirled as she shifted furniture and slabs of ceiling out of her path. She kept her eyes on the center of the room where last night a delicate crib had stood. A noise turned us both toward the closet beside me. A muffled whimper.

  I struggled to my feet and looked inside. The closet was so dark. “Isabel?”

  The ground began to shake again. I looked back towards Arla-Mia. I was looking right at her when the rest of the ceiling fell on her.

  I stood in the closet’s door frame, numb, tears sliding down my face, staring at the spot where until a moment ago my stepmother had stood. The aftershock faded quickly. Isabel’s renewed cry from behind me broke my paralysis. I wasn’t alone. Someone needed me.

  I stepped all the way into the dark of the closet, reaching my hands above me and called her name again. When I felt the first tentative touch of one of her tentacles, I was surprised by their warmth against my fingertips.

  She was strong and agile for being so little—a week shy of her first birthday. She swung down from the top shelf of the closet, wrapping one tentacle after the other around my arms—walking down my body. As she drew even with my face, she gently traced the salty paths of my tears and nuzzled into my shoulder. I held her tiny warm body close. “Were you scared?”

  “La-La” She whispered into my neck. She hadn’t mastered my name yet.

  “Yes. It’s me.” I turned around and stared out at the devastation in the room beyond. We stood in the dark of the closet. My feet were freezing. I was wearing a nightgown. Isabel was in nothing but a diaper.

  A high pitched keening called to us from the room, from underneath a pile of plaster and boards. Isabel wriggled in my arms.

  “No, Isabel. I will take you. Stay with me.” She quieted as I picked my way back to the center of the room. I tried not to wince with each bare step on the uneven floor. “Arla-Mia, we are coming.”

  The keening shifted to an even hum, and we found her, her face peering out from between two beams. I knelt low so Isabel could reach out to her mother. I had never seen my stepmother cry. I wasn’t sure she could. But my years of living with her had taught me to read her face, and I could see sorrow written across her features.

  She said something I didn’t understand to Isabel. Isabel replied in a sing-song sad voice.

  Arla-Mia managed to place one tentacle over my heart.

  “Stepmother now,” she whispered as an alien hovercraft came into view above us. “Promise.”

  “I promise.” I looked up at the large craft that was lowering rescuers before turning back to her. “Maybe they can save you?”

  She closed her eyes and left me with her child.

  Jeanne Kramer-Smyth is an archivist by day and a writer, glass artist and fan of board games by night.

  There was graffiti on the gray cinderblock wall again, splashed in a rusty-brown that looked like dried blood. The Wolf Is Coming.

  Sarah was careful not to turn her head to look at it. She kept her eyes lowered on her bucket as she joined the line for water.

  Both of the Deputies were there, today. Cyrus was chewing his mustache, his stubby fingers fidgeting on his gun, and Luke shuffled his feet and glared out at the crowd. The whispering in the line dried up to silence at the front, and no one made eye contact.

  She focused on breathing slowly and evenly as the plodding line brought her closer. Five people in front of her, four, three …

  When her turn came she ducked her head still further and lifted her bucket to the spigot. A hand tightened on her arm and she froze.

  “Look at me, girl.”

  She raised her eyes carefully to Cyrus’s chin, covered in the scruffy blond beard that never seemed to fill in.

  The hand tightened enough to hurt. “Look at me!”

  She forced her eyes up and saw herself reflected in his mirrored glasses, a thin dark girl in patchwork clothes, cowering. She hated herself in that moment almost more than she hated him, but she kept her expression blank and open.

  “You know who the Wolf is, girl?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’d tell me if you knew?”

  “Yes, sir.” She let her weak eye stray in just a little, and he dropped her arm, motioning her on. She lowered her eyes to the bucket, filled it mechanically, and turned back with it on the broken path towards home.

  Who was the Wolf? Why was he, she, it coming? And if she knew, would she tell—would she tell anyone?

  Home had been larger once. They’d had a twelve by twelve foot room in the old Mall soon after the War, a fabric store. After Dad had died she hadn’t been able to defend it, and had left with what she could carry. Now she had a cobbled hut of mismatched pieces of plywood, brick, and corrugated metal. Sometimes she had a roommate, sometimes not. Now was a not time.

  She drank before she portioned the rest of the water out; a jar in case tomorrow’s water didn’t come, then the smaller jar for the rest of today. She poured a drizzle of water over the potato plants just outside, then the remainder into the pot that served either for cooking or washing fabric. Which she did with it today depended on what she could get in trade.

  The winds were rising when she headed over to Jim’s. He had dug up most of the broken asphalt around his area over the years and built a low wall that marked a semi-official market space. Today there were a handful of strangers with the usual farmers and crafters, and Sarah tightened her hold on her goods.

  Jim called out to her as she approached. “Anything new, Miss Sarah?” He smiled, splitting his wide, dark face and showing the handful of gold teeth amongst the white.

  Sarah fought and failed to suppress a smile. “A shirt, today,” she offered. “If you know anyone who might be buying.”

  “I might. You interested in a roommate for a few days? Fellow here who would rather not be out in the rain we’re likely to get in a few hours.” Jim nodded towards a teenage boy her age or a little older who was standing by the low wall. His clothes were scuffed and torn but relatively clean; he was slender—who wasn’t?—and his features were sharp with a triangular fa
ce and a square chin that emphasized the pallor of his skin. His eyes were blue, and he smiled much like Jim did.

  Sarah frowned. That Jim thought he was safe was no guarantee, but rent would be welcome. She walked straight to the stranger, holding eye contact. “How long are you planning on staying?”

  “A few days, probably. I’ll pay by the day.”

  Sarah nodded. “What are you offering?”

  He smiled again as he held out a freshly skinned rabbit in his left hand. “Half of this, for today. I can hunt more, or I can do labor for the rest.”

  Sarah tried to think when she’d last had meat. “I’m renting space only. You try to touch me, I’ll kill you.”

  His eyes smiled, but his expression turned serious. “Fair enough. I’m Max.” He held out his right hand.

  “Sarah.” She clasped his hand, warm in the cool of the afternoon. “I’ll show you the place as soon as I finish my sales here.”

  The shirt sold for a pound of dried beans, a cured rabbit skin, and the ragged green garment it was replacing. Sarah traded the skin for several yard strands of thread, a needle, and a fragment of yellow cloth about a foot square. She nodded to Max as she left, and he followed without a word.

  Max took off his shoes on entering the hut and settled cross legged on one of the yoga mats she used as both flooring and mattress. She busied herself lighting the fire under the pot of water and then turned back to him.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Before, or since?” His smile was easy, and he settled back slightly. “I grew up outside Boston, before. I was in the Saint V’s settlement after the war.”

  Ten miles away. Sarah frowned, vaguely remembering when cars and buses had made that a short distance. “Why did you leave?”

  “The Wolf came.”

  The words seemed to echo, and Sarah flinched, glancing around instinctively for witnesses. “What happened?” she whispered.

  Max smiled as though they were discussing a sunny day, or the rabbit about to be cooked. “Change.”