Page 29 of How To Survive This Fairytale

Something in your spirit snaps.

“So I’ve found you at last,” you say.The wolf’s head jerks toward you, teeth bared.You remember what it was like to be small and alone, to face those bared teeth with no hope in the world.You remember it, and you bare your own teeth, wild and feral.“I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

* * *

The wolf, too full from its gluttony, could not fight you.

Kneeling beside its limp corpse, you slit it open down its front.Throat to anus.Then you cut open the rind of the stomach—and a girl’s hand reaches out of the wolf’s body to catch your wrist.Discarding the knife, you take hold of her andpull, and she slides out, covered in globs of viscera and blood, her hair waxy against her face.

“It was so dark in there,” says the girl.A child still, though just on the cusp of becoming a woman.She wipes fluid from her forehead with a shaking hand.Her whole body trembles.She looks up at you, tears in her eyes, a sob twisting her face.

“Granny—he ate her first!My grandmother, she’s still?—”

“We’ll find her,” you say.You reach inside the wolf, searching almost in vain, but then you discover the frail wrist, the crepey skin.“Help me get her out,” you say, and the girl grabs hold where you tell her, and together, you pull her grandmother back into the world.

The girl sobs.“Granny?”

“What happened?”The old woman’s voice is thin, her breath a wet rattle.“Where were we?”

“Help her sit up,” you tell the girl.“She was in there longer.See if she can cough up that fluid, all right?”

The girl throws her arms around her grandmother and does as you say.Standing, you go in search of blankets and linens and don’t return until your arms are overburdened with both.

“Let’s keep you both in front of the hearth,” you say.“Dry off and keep you warm.”

Granny becomes more lucid as time goes on.Only the girl, Red, was injured—a deep bite on her calf, where the wolf caught her when she tried to run away.As you bandage it, you tell her how clever she was to try to run, how brave she was to endure the darkness and terror of the wolf’s belly.

“I’m not clever or brave,” says Red.“I was so stupid.I talked to the wolf, I told him where I was going?—”

“No,” you say at once.

“It was all my fault,” she insists.“None of this would have happened if?—”

“If you hadn’t talked to the wolf?”You shake your head.“Wolves are everywhere.And sometimes you don’t know that a wolf is a wolf until it’s too late.That’s not your fault.That’s the nature of wolves.”

Red sniffles, looking at you with bright, glistening eyes.

“You may meet a hundred more wolves in your life,” you say.“You may be tricked again.You just have to do what you can to survive it, all right?Even if all youdois survive, like today.You did good, kid.”

Red’s lower lip wobbles.Then she nods.

Maybe she doesn’t quite believe you.You’re not sure you believe you, either.

But maybe,maybe, you’ve done some good.

“Thanks,” she says.

Nine

Granny thanks you,too, profusely—more profusely than you deserve.

“Youmuststay for dinner,” she says, “stay overnight, please, you’re welcome here.”

She doesn’t accept any of your protestations.She doesn’t care that you’re not afraid of the woods at night, doesn’t care that you can fend for yourself, doesn’t care that you’re looking for the Swan Prince.

“He’ll be there tomorrow,” says Granny.“You can’t bother him this late at night.Besides, you’ve got to do something with that wolf.I don’t want to look at it anymore.”

Roundly defeated in your attempts to leave, you sit down at her table.Dinner doesn’t taste like anything, and if you want it to stay that way, you’re going to have to find an apothecary to refill your bottle sooner rather than later.Afterward, you take the wolf’s body outside to skin it.The pelt will fetch a good price, though you’re not sure you’ll sell it.It took all these years to beat you, but I beat you.