by Heide Goody
“What’s in it for me?” said the wolf.
Ella was momentarily stumped. “You could do it to make up for trying to kill me?” she suggested.
“That’s between me and my conscience,” countered the wolf.
Ella dug in her trouser pocket. There were two of the biscuits she kept for Buster lodged in the bottom.
“Dog biscuits?”
“Do I look like Scooby-Doo?”
Five dwarfs came running out of the house.
“What’s the bastard problem?” demanded Psycho.
“She’s going to run away with the wolf!” squeaked Shitfaced, leaping down from the roof.
“That’s not part of the plan!” said OCD. “She has to come with us.”
“I’m going nowhere with you,” spat Ella.
“You see,” said Inappropriate, “this is the kind of thing that happens when you let women out of the kitchen.”
Psycho unhitched his tiny axe from his belt.
“Enough bloody talk. Kill the beast. Grab the lass. No more dicking about.”
Ella backed away. The wolf’s nose nudged her armpit.
“Get on my back,” he said.
“Really?”
“Would you rather I fought them? I can take the little axeman but that leaves the drunkard and the one planning a gas attack.”
Windy was indeed approaching, pumping threateningly as he came. Shitfaced was coming up alongside him, swinging his fists like a windmill.
Ella grabbed the wolf’s shaggy neck and swung herself up onto his back.
“So quick to get a hairy beast between her thighs,” noted Inappropriate.
The wolf turned tail and ran, Ella clinging in fear to his back. None of the dwarfs got within ten feet of them. Psycho gave a roar of fury. Ella heard rather than saw his axe spin close past them and embed itself in a tree trunk. She ducked the spray of flying bark and buried her face in the wolf’s musty fur.
Their initial flight from the dwarfs lasted no more than five minutes but Ella was sure they had raced further than she could have covered in an hour by herself. It ended when the wolf burst into a mossy clearing, slowed and, without warning, pitched Ella onto the ground.
Ella grunted, rolled to her feet and stretched her aching legs.
“I’ve ridden ponies that were thinner than you,” she told the wolf. “Shorter too.”
“Dog biscuits,” demanded the wolf.
Ella blinked, dug them out and tossed them into his mouth. The wolf swallowed them without a single chew.
“Well, it was nice knowing you,” he turned to go off into the woods.
“What?” said Ella. “You were going to take me to my Granny’s house.”
“No, I wasn’t,” said the wolf. “We both needed to get out of there. I took you with me. You paid me in dog biscuits that tasted like dust.”
“You can’t leave me!”
“I could eat you,” said the wolf, levelly.
He turned to go again.
“The happy ending…” Ella called.
“What about it?”
“When I get my happy ending, what happens to the Big Bad Wolf?”
“These days? If it’s the Red Cap version, it’s traditional for a woodcutter to slice me up. The one with the pigs and the houses, I would expect to be boiled alive. The one with the seven little goats, I have my guts filled with rocks and then I drown in a well.”
“I’m sensing a theme,” said Ella.
“It used to be better in the old days,” said the wolf. “I’d just gobble down the girls or old women and that’d be that. Huh. In the proper old days, I’d swallow the sun and usher in an age of darkness but none of us are as young as we used to be.”
Ella perched on a rotting tree stump.
“So, it seems to me that a ‘happy ending’ doesn’t do you any favours?”
“Well, sure, but you can’t fight it.”
“Not being a coward, are you?” said Ella.
“No…”
“Afraid to take a walk on the wild side, Mr Wolf?”
The wolf treated her to one of his lopsided grins. “You can’t win.”
“I’m quite persistent,” she treated him to smile of her own.
The wolf held her gaze for a long second.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“I will take you to see the madwoman at Rushy Glen and you’ll see where fighting a happy ending gets you.”
“Oh, it’s a bet, is it?”
“Exactly.”
They walked side by side, following the sun for much of the morning. The woods were as dense as before. Paths that barely saw sunlight wove between tall trees. They passed no people, no buildings and didn’t even see an electricity pylon.
“Wolves do get a bad rap in stories, don’t they?” Ella, reflected.
“Oh, yeah,” said the wolf. “It’s always about eating children or livestock and causing terror. People never stop to think about the positive community work we do. The charity work. The performing arts.”
She looked at him askance.
“I mean, you might be a ravenous carnivore,” she said, “but you’re always to the go-to bad guy in stories. You don’t see the same thing happening with bears or big cats.”
“You don’t get many of them in these parts though.”
“And you do wolves?” said Ella. “They must have been extinct in the United Kingdom for what? Three hundred, four hundred years?”
“I am here, you know.”
“I had noticed.”
They forded a small river and climbed a steep earthy embankment.
“This is all a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” said Ella.
“Well, it’s a forest,” said the wolf. “They tend not to get the cleaners in very often.”
“I wasn’t talking about the woods,” said Ella. “Although that’s another thing. I know the woods around Little Wangford. They’re like half a mile across at the most. We must have covered at least eight miles so far.”
“Well, we’re in the Deep Dark Forest now,” said the wolf.
“And where’s that?”
“Here,” said the wolf as though it were obvious. “So, what is a bit of a mess?”
Ella ticked her worries off on her fingers.
“Six dwarfs turn up at my home. There’s some less than polite talk about an evil stepmother and ugly stepsisters. And a ball. I’ve been to a gingerbread cottage and met a cut-price Hansel and Gretel. And you, you came preloaded with dialogue straight out of Red Riding Hood.”
“Right,” said the wolf, understanding.
“Which story am I supposed to be acting out here?”
“Well, sister, if I may hark back to my earlier analogy, despite it not being as visceral and as pleasing as the dead rabbit metaphor. You’re asking drops of water which river they’re from. There’s this narrative pressure building up. It wants to come through. It needs to come through. It’s the right thing. When you played along, back in the cottage, you felt it working through you.”
“I did.”
“Every time you try to block it, it switches paths. It tries to find another way. The actual format doesn’t matter, sweetheart. The outcome is going to be the same. The stepmother dies. You’re reconciled with your father and reunited with your mother. You marry your Prince Charming or your handsome jack and live happily ever after.”
Ella nodded thoughtfully. “My mum’s dead.”
“Right,” said the wolf and walked on.
Something small and wet hit the ground ahead with a soft splat. A second something caught her shoulder a glancing blow, leaving an unpleasant black and white stain.
Grimacing, Ella looked up. A pair of bluebirds swooped and spiralled overhead. One of them let go of the small roll it was carrying. Ella found it in the leaf mulch ahead. It was a scrap of paper torn from a pad on which was scrawled the one word:
Bich
She automatically looked for something to throw and
immediately gave up.
“How long to Rushy Glen?” she called to the wolf.
“Not long,” he replied.
“How long to Rushy Glen?” Ella asked, as the sun disappeared below the horizon and the world was lit only by the dying ember glow of red clouds to the west.
“Not long,” said the wolf. “You keep asking.”
“Probably because your definition of ‘not long’ is very different to mine.”
“It’s not long,” said the wolf.
Ella sighed and tried to wiggle her toes inside her shoes but they felt as if they had welded together into a slab of swollen soreness. “Compared to how long is it until the heat death of the universe, maybe.”
“You moan too much,” said the wolf. “I didn’t sign up for moaning.”
“We’ve been walking all day,” said Ella reasonably. “I’m tired, I’m hungry and it’s getting cold.”
“I found you those berries,” countered the wolf.
“Five berries.”
“I’ve had two crap dog biscuits today. You don’t hear me complaining.”
“Yeah, but you had an old lady for breakfast.”
“Had.”
“Are we going to get there tonight?” said Ella.
The wolf looked at the sky.
“Probably not.”
“Right, so…?”
“So, we’ll camp for the night in that cave.”
“What cave?”
Ella looked and there was a cave where she hadn’t noticed one before, a large and roughly circular tunnel into a low sandstone cliff.
They stopped at the mouth of the cave. It was at least ten feet high and deep enough that its end was lost in darkness.
“Are there bears in this forest?” she asked, hoping, naturally, that the answer would be no.
“Maybe.”
“Dragons?”
“Are you scared, princess?” mocked the wolf.
“Just a perfectly healthy fear of death.”
The wolf sighed and then addressed the cave.
“Hello! Any bears or dragons in there?”
His voice echoed back to them. He looked at Ella. “See?”
And then a deep, rumbling, Dolby-Stereo-sound-at-the-multiplex voice replied, “No.”
“Ah,” said the wolf and then asked, “Who is in there?”
“Me,” came the considered reply.
“Good,” said the wolf. “And are you dangerous?”
There was a thoughtful silence, then: “Yes.”
“Let’s go,” said Ella.
“Wait,” said the wolf and then called into the cave again. “Will you harm us?”
The silence was longer this time.
“You are welcome to spend the night in my cave,” said the voice. “I will not harm you or allow harm to come to you whilst you are in my cave. On this I swear.”
The wolf grinned. “Seems fair enough.”
Ella put a hand on his shaggy shoulder. “What? You’re going to take his word for it?”
“He swore.”
“I know people who swear all the time. Doesn’t mean I trust them.”
“Then trust me,” said the wolf and padded into the cave.
Ella looked back at the encroaching night. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said, and followed him in.
The cave was warm but there was no fire, no light. In less than a dozen footsteps, Ella was in complete darkness. She stumbled and put her hands out and felt something hairy and warm. She recoiled a moment and then recognised the wolf.
“Everything okay?” she whispered.
“Oh, yeah,” whispered the wolf in an unconvincing voice.
“You stopped.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking at our host.”
Ella blinked rapidly and stared into the darkness but could see nothing but black.
“Sit,” said the massively resonant voice of their host. If the sea could speak or if bees could buzz in a multi-part harmony that sounded like speech then it would sound like that. The voice came from in front and above them. “Sleep,” it said.
“Our host…” said Ella.
“Yes?” said the wolf.
“Is he… jolly and friendly looking?”
The wolf paused. “Would you sleep better if I said yes?”
“Probably.”
“Then he’s very jolly and real friendly looking, yes.”
“Sleep, little ones,” said their host.
“Where?” said Ella.
“Here,” said the wolf. “Close to me.”
The wolf lay down and Ella sat beside him. In time, she leaned on him, resting against his thick musty hide. Soon enough her breathing fell into rhythm with the rise and fall of his great chest and, she eventually realised, the faint but pervasive sub-bass rumble of their host’s breathing.
As sleep came to her, something wet brushed the tip of her nose. It was the wolf’s tongue. His breath smelled of toffee.
Ella dreamed of Granny Rose.
Ella dreamed a memory that she was unaware she still had.
Ella (how old she was, she couldn’t tell, but it couldn’t have been more than seven) was helping her Granny with the housework, polishing the brass and pewter ornaments in the glass-fronted sideboard in the living room. Ella loved the mellow sheen that she could achieve with lots of rubbing, and smiled at her reflection in some of the larger pieces. She set aside the tankard Granddad Doug (who had died ten days before Ella’s birth) had been given for captaining the darts team and pulled out an item she hadn’t come across before. It resembled a covered gravy jug with a large ear-shaped handle. It was particularly dirty.
Ella grabbed the handle, dabbed her cloth in the Brasso and began to rub the side, when she was abruptly enveloped in a cloud of smoke and not the smoke of Granny’s cigarettes which permeated the place.
Her coughs were loud and Granny was there in a flash (Ella certainly remembered a flash, which was odd). Granny Rose smacked the object from her hand as though Ella had done a very, very stupid thing and then dragged her out into the garden. Ella stood on the lawn, sniffling to herself, wondering what she had done wrong, what rule she had broken. Meanwhile, Granny Rose hoovered inside the front room, clattering around as though she was doing battle.
Ella put her ear to the dining room window and listened in.
“No, I don’t want nowt,” her Granny growled. “We’re all perfectly happy as we are, thank thee very much.”
There was much more hoovering and banging about and even some grunts and groans like the men on the Saturday lunchtime wrestling and some final, bizarre words from Granny: “I don’t care how cramped it is in there, you bugger. Get in!”
They had jam sponge and custard for tea and nothing further was said of the matter.
Chapter Five
She was woken by the wolf moving beneath her, his chest jerking as though with hiccups. She groaned as she opened her eyes.
“Quiet,” the wolf whispered softly in her ear.
There was daylight at the cave entrance. Down here in the depths of the cave, Ella could make out the shape of the sandstone cavern they had slept in. Off to the side was a large dry pile of sack-like rags that might have been their host’s bed. Beside that there was a neat stack of dry, white kindling. There was no actual sign of their host.
“We’re going to leave very, very quietly,” whispered the wolf.
Ella nodded and licked her dry teeth, not awake enough to question him. She stood on stiff legs. Her foot touched a loose round stone and it rolled away from her. It wasn’t a stone; not with those eye sockets. She looked at the stack of white kindling. It wasn’t kindling; not with those wrist joints and ankles.
She glared at the wolf.
“You said to trust you!” she hissed at him.
“I was wrong!” the wolf hissed back.
“You said he looked jolly and friendly!”
“I lied!”
Ella looked daggers at the wolf and tapped her feet. The wolf wrinkled his nose. “He’s an ogre.”
“An ogre,” said Ella.
“An ogre.”
“You can come out now,” called their host pleasantly from outside.
Ella sighed with a curious blend of terror and irritation and, with the wolf, walked towards the cave entrance.
It was a beautifully sunny morning, yellow sunlight cutting through the treetops and burning away the last of the mist that clung to the grass. This was of no consolation at all to Ella but it was nonetheless true. On the patch of earth in front of the cave, a fire had been lit and a giant iron pot placed on top of it. The ogre was throwing grasses and wild radishes into the bubbling pot.
“Good morning.” The ogre adjusted his enormous spectacles to see them better.
The ogre looked… well, the ogre looked like an ill-advised cross-breeding experiment between a professional wrestler and a baked potato. He stood fifteen feet high, his eyes as large as watermelons, his fingers as thick as tree branches, his frog-like mouth big enough to swallow a sofa.
“Do come out,” urged the ogre.
Ella made to step forward but the wolf held her back with a nudge of his head.
“That’s a fine smelling breakfast you’re cooking,” said the wolf.
“Thank you.”
“A vegetarian breakfast perhaps.”
“No,” said the ogre and smiled.
“You said you wouldn’t harm us,” said Ella.
“While we were in the cave,” said the wolf dourly.
Ella shuffled back, more firmly into the mouth of the cave.
“We could run for it,” she whispered to the wolf.
The ogre’s laugh was like distant explosions. Suddenly, the ogre wasn’t there anymore, replaced by a powerful and sinewy lion. And then the lion was gone, to be replaced by a huge, hulking white-furred bear. And then the bear was transformed back into the gnarly ogre.
“You could,” said the ogre.
“I have heard that you can transform yourself into any animal,” said the wolf.
“T’is true. T’is true,” said the ogre.
“Obviously, big animals are easy but I bet you can’t squeeze yourself down into something really, really small.”
“Like a rat?” said the ogre.