by Heide Goody
“Like a rat,” said the wolf.
The ogre peered at them over the top of his spectacles.
“Do you think I am so stupid that I would fall for that trick and let you gobble me up?”
“Maybe,” said the wolf hopefully.
“We’ll just stay in here,” said Ella defiantly.
“And starve?” said the ogre.
“Better than being eaten.”
The ogre rumbled in his throat and stared into his pot. “A compromise then.”
“Not eating us?” suggested the wolf.
“A challenge,” said the ogre. “I will ask three riddles and, if you can tell me the answers to all three then —”
“No,” said Ella.
“No?”
“I’m useless at riddles. Can’t stand any of that Dungeon and Dragons bullshit. I want a challenge that we actually stand a chance of winning.”
“Such as? A test of strength? A running race?”
“Name that smell?” suggested the wolf.
“Karaoke,” said Ella.
“What’s a karaoke?” said the ogre.
“A singing contest,” said the wolf.
“And what are the rules?” The ogre gave the pot a stir.
“We each sing a song and the best one wins. You win, you can eat us. We win, you let us go.”
“And we can eat you,” said the wolf.
“Do we want to?” said Ella.
“I’m hungry.”
“What song do we sing?” asked the ogre.
“We each pick one for the other person.”
“But it must be a song we know.”
“Agreed. And if you stop halfway through the song then it’s an automatic failure.”
“And that person’s life is forfeit. But it is forbidden to distract one another.”
“Fair enough,” said Ella. “And distraction includes?”
“Pulling faces, throwing insults, making noises, talking, touching, tickling, biting, spitting, poking, grabbing, punching or kicking,” said the ogre.
“So, we can’t touch the other person while they’re singing?”
“No,” said the ogre, “but no running off while you’re singing either. You must stay and complete your song.”
“Whatever,” said Ella.
“I agree,” said the ogre, brushed the last of the grasses from his hands and turned to face them. “You will sing first.”
“Very well,” said Ella. “Name your tune.”
“Go No More A-Rushing,” said the ogre.
“Sorry. Not heard of that one,” said Ella.
“Very well. Then Old Maid in the Garret.”
“Sorry.”
“Rosetta and Her Gay Ploughboy?”
“Definitely not.”
“Bohemian Rhapsody?”
“No. Wait! Yes. What?”
“You know it?” said the ogre.
“And you know it?” said Ella. “‘Is this the real life? Is this just Battersea?’ That one?”
“It’s a classic,” said the wolf.
“Then sing it,” said the ogre.
Ella hesitated. She had no backing track. She closed her eyes, pictured the music video for the Queen song and began. The trick, she knew, was not to start too high otherwise she’d be squawking by the time she got to ‘Look up to the skies and see.’
When she got to ‘Mama, oo-oo-oo,’ the wolf joined in as a backing singer with a restrained ‘Any way the winds blows.’ And then, when she reached the ‘little silhouetto of a man’, the wolf came in with some hearty ‘Scaramouche’s. Finding confidence in their solid teamwork, they bounced ‘Galileo’s back and forth and tried to outdo each other in declaring exactly for whom Beelzebub had put a devil aside.
As they wound down to the emotional climax, Ella could see the wolf truly getting into it and imagined that, if not for the lack of arms and functioning digits, he’d be playing air guitar. Small mercies, she thought.
She let the last note die gently and looked at the wolf.
“Nailed it,” he said bluntly.
“A passable effort,” said the ogre.
“Harsh,” said Ella. “Your turn.”
The ogre cleared his throat and hummed an arpeggio. “Name your song,” he said.
Ella grinned. “One Million Green Bottles.”
The ogre was unimpressed. “That’s not a song.”
“It is.”
“But it’s not a famous song.”
“Isn’t it?” said Ella. “Do you know how the song One Million Green Bottles would begin?”
“Well, yes,” the ogre conceded.
“And how it ends?”
“Yes.”
“And what would go in the middle?”
“But it would take forever to sing.”
“Not my problem.”
The ogre sneered at her.
“But I will still sing it better than your pedestrian effort.”
“That’s fighting talk,” said Ella.
“You’d better stop stalling and start singing,” advised the wolf.
The ogre gave them one final glare, took the deepest breath and sang.
“One million green bottles, hanging on a wall…”
His diction and intonation were perfect. He made the nursery rhyme tune actually sound good.
“And if one green bottle should accidentally fall, there’d be nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine green bottles hanging on the wall.”
Ella tapped the wolf on the shoulder and jerked her head to indicate they should go. As they moved away the ogre, still singing, turned angrily towards them.
“You must stay and complete your song,” Ella reminded him, “or you lose.”
The ogre, still singing, gestured furiously at their departure.
“The rules never said the listener had to stay where they were,” Ella argued.
“Stay and sing or move and lose,” said the wolf. “And then your life will be forfeit.”
The ogre sang a vindictive and threat-laden verse but nonetheless kept on singing.
“He will finish it, you know,” said the wolf as they re-entered the forest.
“I think we’ve bought ourselves enough time,” said Ella.
“Maybe.”
Ella looked at the path ahead and put a hand to her rumbling stomach. “How long is it to Rushy Glen?”
“Not long,” said the wolf.
“You’ve said that before,” said Ella.
‘Not long’ turned out to be all of the morning and most of the afternoon. More than a dozen times, Ella told herself, “If Rushy Glen isn’t over that rise” or “through those trees” or “across that stream” she would abandon the wolf and strike out by herself, hopefully in the direction of the nearest pub or coffee shop. She was partway through thinking what she would do if Rushy Glen wasn’t on the other side of these brambles when she burst through and saw that Rushy Glen was indeed there, squatting in the middle of a thickly overgrown wildflower meadow.
“Told you,” said the wolf. “Didn’t take us long at all.”
She would have punched the wolf but she was too travel-soiled, ragged, hungry, nettle-stung, fly-bitten and just too damned exhausted to raise the energy.
Ella knew her fair share of country cottages. She’d renovated a few, stayed in others and scoffed at the architectural folly of several more. Rushy Glen occupied safe middle territory. It wasn’t the impractical stone barn in the wood fantasy of a wealthy big city commuter. It wasn’t a functional, weatherproof box like Ayleen Jubert’s cottage (and it certainly wasn’t the confectionery nightmare Ayleen Jubert’s cottage had turned into). Rushy Glen was simply a modest inter-war brick and mortar house that happened to be in the middle of nowhere. An unpainted picket fence that was being slowly consumed by the meadow ran around the borders of the property. Within, Ella could see the runner bean frames of a vegetable plot, an evil looking goat tethered to a stake, a covered well and a structure that c
ould easily have been a hen house or a garage, considering it appeared to contain both a dusty old car and a small flock of chickens.
“Do you think she’d mind if I ate the goat?” said the wolf, licking his lips.
“I think she might,” said Ella.
She was reading a sign posted fifteen feet from the gate. It read: Go away. We don’t want any.
“What about, say, one leg?”
“You’re not taking one of the goat’s legs.”
“Of course,” said the wolf, “I’ll just get chicken-to-go.”
There was another sign further on: Trespassers will be shot and I don’t know first aid.
“I don’t think Granny Rose likes visitors,” said Ella.
“It’s like I said. Fighting your happily ever after will make you mad.”
Ella waved his nonsense away. “I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see me.”
There was a third and final sign on the gate itself. It simply read: You were warned.
Ella put her hand on the gate.
“If she shoots you and buries you in the wood, I will dig you up,” said the wolf.
“Why?”
“I am that hungry,” said the wolf.
Ella gave him a withering look, opened the gate and immediately fell into a covered wolf pit on the other side. The impact with wet earth knocked breath and sense out of her and it took a good few seconds to colourfully express her surprise and distress. The ground beneath her was several inches deep in a soup of rainwater, mud and roots. She rolled over and looked up at the wolf looking down from eight feet above her.
“Don’t you say a sodding word,” she growled through gritted teeth.
“Not saying a thing,” said the wolf.
Ella sat up and clutched her aching ribs. The wolf watched.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Help me out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know! Fetch a ladder or something.”
“Fetch a…? Once again, princess, I will point out my lack of opposable thumbs.”
“Just do it!”
The wolf disappeared. Ella stood slowly and painfully. Her foot caught under something stiff in the mud. As she freed it, a bleached white leg bone with a tiny pixie boot on the end momentarily surfaced and then sank again.
“Wolf!” she yelled.
A shadow passed over her and she wisely sidestepped as a long plank slid down into the hole and came to a rest at a steep angle. The wolf peered over the side. Ella considered the slope of the wet plank.
“This isn’t a ladder,” she said.
“I got splinters in my mouth for you, sister.”
There was a sudden explosive bang, a yelp from the wolf and he vanished from sight.
“Wolf!”
Ella grabbed the plank and attempted to climb it, hands gripped tightly, feet shuffling inch by inch up the slick surface. Halfway up, she realised that someone was standing over her with a double-barrel shotgun pointed directly at Ella’s head.
“Can tha not read t’ signs?” said the old woman fiercely.
The old woman wore a much-mended cardigan, a grubby laminate apron and a hairstyle that could be most charitably described as natural. Ella didn’t recognise her, not fully, but there were traces here and there — the angle of the nose, the set of the brow, the shape of her scowl — that begged to be remembered. It had to be twenty years or more since Ella had actually seen her.
“What are you anyroad?” demanded Granny Rose. “Too big for a pixie. Too mucky for a dryad.”
Ella could see right down the barrel of the gun. She could also feel her grip beginning to give on the plank. She didn’t want to think what would happen if she slipped and startled her grandma.
“Granny Rose, it’s me. Ella.”
Rose gave her a powerful squint.
“Ella?”
“Your granddaughter.”
“I know who Ella is,” said Rose as though her mental faculties were being called into question. She lowered the shotgun. “What’s tha doing in a flaming hole in t’ground?”
“Trying to get out.”
Rose was unimpressed. She put the gun aside, took hold of Ella’s wrist and with surprising strength for a seventy-something hoisted Ella out and onto solid ground.
“Tha’ll have to help me cover it up again,” Rose told her, brushing leaf mould off Ella’s shoulders.
“Do you need a pit trap in front of your house?” Ella asked.
“For unwanted visitors, aye. Especially, them as can’t read.” Rose brushed a smudge of muck from Ella’s cheek and then, her crusty manner cracking, hugged her tightly. “It is thee.”
Ella, feeling tears prick her eyes, returned the embrace. The woman smelled of cigarette ash and disinfectant, the smells from her childhood she had almost forgotten.
“I’ve missed you, Granny,” she said.
Rose broke the embrace gently.
“I’m getting thee all creased up.”
Ella laughed and regarded her ruined clothes.
“These are beyond creased, Granny.”
“And whose fault is that, going gallivanting hither and yon? It’s been near on thirty years. I thought t’world had forgotten me. How’d tha find me?”
“The wolf showed me.” Ella suddenly looked round. “Where is he? Did you shoot him?”
“Who? Zeke?” said Rose. “No. I just scared him off. He should know better than to come sniffing round up here.”
“You know that wolf?”
“Aye. Of old. He’s all right really, long as he stays the right side of my fence. Not having him coming in t’house, trying to gobble up pigs or dress like a bleeding jessie in my best nightgown. Come on, love, let’s have you inside and out of them rags. Look like they’re held together with nowt but muck and wishful thinking.”
Ella followed Rose to the back door of the cottage. She remembered — remembered remembering — that Granny Rose was of that generation that didn’t use the front doors of their houses except for weddings, funerals and visiting royalty.
Rose spun on the doorstep, fiddling with something on her sleeve.
“First things first,” she said and stabbed Ella in the arm with a safety pin.
“Ow!” said Ella loudly.
Rose ignored her cry and inspected her eyes closely, like an amateur optician.
“That hurt,” said Ella.
“Did it burn with t’fires of hell?” asked Rose.
“No. It stung. I’m bleeding.”
Rose looked at the bead of blood that had formed on Ella’s arm and dabbed it suspiciously.
“And what does tha make of this?” said Rose, taking out a small gold cross she wore on a chain.
“It’s pretty?” said Ella with a shrug.
“And this?” Rose dipped into her pocket and then blew a pinch of salt into Ella’s face.
“I... really don’t know,” said Ella.
“Hmmm,” said the old woman thoughtfully. “Well tha’s not a changeling, pixie or one of the land of fairy.”
“No, I’m not,” agreed Ella, still a bit miffed.
“Is tha carrying any gifts made to thee by fairy folk?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Be sure. Has tha had any fairy-bread or fairy-wine?”
“Definitely not.”
“Are these tha clothes?”
“Um. Yes.”
“And did tha pack tha pockets thesen?”
Ella inspected her pockets. She was still wearing the ‘practical but fun’ outfit OCD had forced upon her two days ago, plus the red ambulance blanket turned cloak she had taken from the train. She dug out the contents of her pockets.
“What’s them?” said Rose.
“Nothing,” said Ella and threw the M&Ms on the ground.
“And that?”
“A seating plan.”
“And that?”
“It’s my phone.”
“Phone? Wonders will never cease.”
She pok
ed in a miserly fashion at Ella’s loose change.
“Right. Indoors. No use standing on ceremony.”
The kitchen at Rushy Glen was large, functional and probably hadn’t been changed (although it had been meticulously kept) since the middle of the last century.
“What was all that pocket business about?” said Ella.
“Can’t be too careful,” said Rose, flipping open the lid of a huge twin-tub washing machine. “I’ve been in hiding since eighty-nine.”
“Hiding? From who?”
Rose poured a handful of washing powder into the tub.
“From Carabosse, of course.”
“Carabosse?”
“Aye. Carabosse. Now strip off them rags and straight into the tub with them.” She suddenly looked at Ella. “Tha doesn’t know who Carabosse is?”
“No.”
Rose put the box of powder down. “I thought…” She sighed heavily, the lines on her sun-worn face deepening. “I thought that, with tha being here, with Zeke an’ all, that tha knew.”
“Knew what?”
Rose was silent for a second then said, “I reckon I’ve got some of tha mum’s clothes that might fit thee.”
Ella spent a good half hour in the bathroom, scouring, scrubbing and rinsing until she came out with pink skin and hair like dry straw. Across the hall was the guest bedroom, containing a single bed, a corner table holding an old cathode ray tube TV, and a wall of sturdy shelving. Rose had laid out some clothing suggestions from the piles, boxes and stacks on the bedroom shelving. Ella picked a mustard crew-neck, embroidered jeans and, for lack of other options, a pair of pink jelly shoes. It was curiously touching to know that these had been her mum’s clothes, although that feeling was dampened by the discovery that her mum had been a somewhat slimmer fit.
Ella went downstairs. The twin-tub rattled noisily, pumping steam into the air. Rose had set out the table with a pot of tea, bread and butter and cheese.
“I didn’t know if tha had had tha lunch.”
“No,” said Ella. “Not lunch.” Or anything at all for the last two days, she thought.
“Help thasen.”
With as much decorum as she could muster (which wasn’t much), Ella sat down and stuffed her face. Granny Rose poured pitch black tea, took out a thin packet of Park Drive cigarettes and lit up.
“See tha mum’s clothes don’t quite fit thee,” said Rose.
Ella, whose mouth was chocked full with a mush of bread, cheese and hot tea was unable to reply. She gurgled and swallowed hard.