Big and Bad (Working Title)
By (NEW PEN NAME) AKA Virgil Knightley
This is a secret project. These chapters are NOT in order. I wrote them as introductions to the female characters in the story and the MC's history with them. This story will not be as smutty as Star Thrust or Coven King. It is intended to be the launch of my more serious pen name. It features a monster MC that gains the ability to turn into a human, a fantasy setting with deep lore based on dark fairy tales, and characters with deep histories and storied pasts. Read the following and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Teaser 1: Scarlet in the Red Hood
Once upon a time, in a village at the edge of the Darkwood, there lived a girl named Scarlet Strauss.
She was thirteen years old, with dark brown hair cut in a short bob and skin so fair that her freckles stood out like a map of the stars. Her eyes were the blue of winter ice, and she wore a red hooded cloak over a simple peasant top with leather leggings wherever she went. Her grandmother had made the cloak for her on her tenth birthday, and she never went anywhere without it.
The villagers called her Little Red Riding Hood.
Every month, Scarlet made the journey into the Darkwood to visit her grandmother. The old woman lived alone in a cottage beneath the Sanctuary Tree, the great oak at the heart of this corner of the forest. She was too frail now to make the trip out to the village, though in her youth she had been one of the finest huntresses in all the land. It was she who had taught Scarlet to shoot, to track, and to move through the forest like a ghost. Now Scarlet repaid those lessons by bringing her supplies: food, medicine, news from the village, and the simple comfort of knowing that someone still cared.
The Darkwood was dangerous, of course. Everyone knew that. Ancient creatures lurked beneath its canopy, things with too many teeth and too few scruples. Talking animals roamed its paths, some friendly, most not. Witches built their cottages in its darkest corners, and monsters older than memory made their lairs in its depths.
But Scarlet was not afraid. She had her bow, her arrows, and the skills her grandmother had given her. She had walked this path dozens of times before, and she would walk it dozens of times again.
Or so she thought.
"Turn back, little girl," a voice said. She turned her head to face the sound and saw a little fox. "Turn back and don't look over your shoulder."
Scarlet Strauss stopped walking and adjusted the basket on her arm. She was used to talking animals by now. The Darkwood was lousy with them. Just last week, a badger had tried to sell her a magic acorn that supposedly granted wishes, and the week before that, a crow had followed her for an hour reciting poetry about death. The Darkwood attracted strange creatures the way a corpse attracted flies.
"And why should I do that?" she asked.
The fox's ears flattened against its skull. "The Big Bad Wolf walks these woods today. I caught his scent not an hour past, and I have been running ever since. You should do the same."
Scarlet felt her stomach give out.
The Big Bad Wolf. Everyone knew that name. He was a creature of legend, a monster from the old stories, the kind of thing parents threatened their children with when they misbehaved. Be good or the Big Bad Wolf will eat you up. Those who were foolish regarded it as “just a story” but Scarlet knew better than to think something like that. In this world of magical beasts, the Big Bad Wolf had to be real.
"These aren't his woods," Scarlet protested, as though the fox was to blame. "He's supposed to live in the deep Darkwood, near the Thornback Mountains."
"Wolves roam where they please, and it seems he’s chosen this as his new home." The fox was already backing away, its bushy tail tucked between its legs. "I've warned you, little girl. What you do with that warning is your own affair. Fare thee well."
It vanished into the underbrush before she could ask anything more.
Scarlet stood alone on the path and felt her heart beating a little faster than she would have liked. Her icy blue eyes scanned the trees for any sign of movement.
Her bow was already in her hand. She didn't remember drawing it.
She kept walking soon enough, and the Darkwood pressed in around her, ancient oaks and twisted pines forming a canopy so thick that even at midday the forest floor was shrouded in darkness. She could hear birds calling in the distance, the rustle of small things slithering and skittering through the undergrowth, and the creak of branches in a wind she couldn't feel. Normal sounds, if a little spooky.
But the fox had been afraid. Really, truly afraid.
Scarlet took a deep breath and started walking again. She couldn't turn back. Her grandmother was waiting.
***
She found the wolf about a mile down the path. Well, a wolf, if not the wolf.
At first she thought it was dead. It was lying on its side in a small clearing, its gray fur matted with dirt and leaves. One of its front paws appeared to be caught in the iron jaws of a bear trap. The trap was old and rusted, probably set by some hunter years ago and long forgotten. It probably belonged to Mister Gruber, the old widowed woodcutter in her grandmother’s corner of the woods. The wolf was small, barely larger than a dog. It didn’t look particularly big or bad.
It’s a pup, Scarlet realized. Just a baby.
It lifted its head as she approached, and she saw that its eyes were a startling shade of gold. "Please," it whimpered. "Please help me. It hurts so much."
Scarlet hesitated. Talking wolves were rare, but not unheard of. Most of them were harmless, more interested in talking about philosophy than in eating little girls. But after what the fox had said, she couldn’t help but feel a little cautious.
"Are you alone?" she asked. "Where's your pack?"
"I lost my pack." The pup's voice was thin and reedy, the voice of a child in pain. "I got separated from my mother weeks ago. I think she left me. I’m a runt. I've been wandering these woods ever since, trying to find her. Please, it hurts. I can't feel my paw anymore."
Scarlet looked at the trap. The iron teeth had bitten deep into the pup's leg, and there was blood on the leaves beneath it. If she left it here, it would most certainly die. Slowly and painfully, too, either from blood loss or from whatever opportunistic predator stumbled across it first.
She sighed and knelt down beside it.
"Hold still," she said. "This is going to hurt."
The trap was old but still strong. She had to use both hands to pry the jaws apart, and even then it took all her strength. The pup yelped when the teeth pulled free from its flesh, a high sharp sound that made Scarlet wince.
"There," she said. "You're free."
The pup licked its wounded paw, then looked up at her with grateful golden eyes. "Thank you, kind girl. Thank you so much. What's your name?"
"Scarlet. Most people call me Little Red Riding Hood because of this." She tugged at her cloak, the red wool bright as fresh blood against the gray-green of the forest. "My grandmother made it for me."
"It's lovely." The pup limped in a small circle, testing its injured leg. "Where are you going, Scarlet? These woods are dangerous for little girls walking alone."
She did not like being lectured on danger by a wolf runt previously caught in a bear trap. "I know they're dangerous. A fox just warned me that the Big Bad Wolf is somewhere nearby." She stood and brushed dirt from her knees. "You should be careful too. If he's really out here, a little thing like you would make an easy meal."
The pup's ears perked up. "The Big Bad Wolf? Really?"
"That's what the fox said."
"How scary." The pup sat back on its haunches. "You didn't answer my question, though. Where are you going?"
Scarlet saw no reason to lie. "My grandmother's cottage. She lives beneath the Sanctuary Tree, at the heart of this part of the forest. She's too old to make the journey out of the Darkwood anymore, so I bring her supplies once a month. Just to make sure she's still..."
"Alive?" the pup offered unhelpfully.
"I was going to say comfortable."
"Of course you were." The pup's tongue lolled out in a canine grin. "Your grandmother sounds like a remarkable woman, living alone in the deep woods at her age. She must be very brave."
"She was a huntress when she was younger. One of the best. She taught me everything I know." Scarlet patted the bow slung across her shoulder. "How to track, how to shoot, how to move through the forest without making a sound. She could still shoot the wings off a butterfly at a hundred paces if her eyes hadn't gotten so bad."
"And you? Are you a good shot?"
Scarlet preened a little bit, unable to help herself from being a little smug. "Good enough."
The pup tilted its head. "Show me, Little Red Riding Hood."
Scarlet blinked. "What?"
"Show me your skills. Prove to me that you're as good as you claim. I can appreciate a good huntress." The pup's golden eyes glittered with interest. "Surely a markswoman of your caliber won't refuse a simple request from a poor injured wolf pup."
It was a strange request, but Scarlet wasn’t one to backdown from a friendly challenge. The Darkwood was full of creatures who loved games and tests of skill. If humoring this pup meant she could continue on her way without further delay, then so be it.
She nocked an arrow and scanned the trees. There. A fat gray squirrel, maybe thirty yards away, nibbled on something in the crook of a branch. She didn't aim, not consciously. Her grandmother had taught her to shoot by instinct, to let her body do the work while her mind stayed quiet and empty.
The arrow flew.
The squirrel dropped. Thud.
"Bravo," the pup said softly, clapping with its forepaws. "Bravo, little girl. But that was an easy shot. A stationary target at close range. Any village child could make that shot. Show me something interesting."
Scarlet retrieved her arrow and raised an eyebrow at the pup. "You want more?"
"I want to see what you're really capable of."
Fine. If the little beast wanted a show, she'd give him one.
She sat down on a fallen log and pulled off her boots. The pup watched with obvious curiosity as she stretched her toes, then rolled backward until she was balancing on her hands with her bare feet pointed at the sky.
"What are you doing?" the pup asked.
"You wanted a demonstration. Hand me the bow with your jaws, little wolf."
He obeyed quickly, and she gripped her bow with her toes, nocked an arrow the same way, and scanned the canopy above. Soon she spotted a bluebird, flitting between branches, moving fast and erratic. She tracked its flight for a moment, feeling the rhythm of its movements, and then she released.
The arrow caught the bird mid-flutter. It tumbled down through the leaves and landed at the pup's feet.
Scarlet flipped back to her feet and retrieved her boots. "Hard enough for you?"
The pup stared at the dead bird for a long moment. When it looked up at her again, there was something different in its eyes. Something old and vast and terribly, terribly amused.
"Bravo," it said again, and this time its voice was two octaves deeper. Richer. "Bravo indeed, little girl. But I have one more target for you."
The pup began to grow.
Scarlet scrambled backward, her bow already in her hands, an arrow already nocked. The wolf's body expanded like a nightmare unfolding, bones cracking and reshaping, fur rippling across muscles that swelled and thickened with every passing second. The golden eyes stayed fixed on her the entire time, growing larger and larger until they were the size of her father’s fists, until she couldn't look at anything else.
When the transformation was complete, the wolf was the size of a cottage. Maybe bigger. Easily bigger. His head alone dwarfed her entire body, and his paws could have crushed a horse without effort. His fur had darkened to a stark and unkind black, and his teeth gleamed like daggers.
He smiled down at her, and that smile was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.
"As I was saying, I have one more target for you, Little Red Riding Hood," the Big Bad Wolf said in a voice of pure evil. "Me. And you'd better do your best, little huntress, because if you fail to slay me here and now, I will go to your grandmother's cottage and I will consume her. Then I will wait for you to arrive, and I will consume you too."
Scarlet's hands were shaking. She couldn't stop them. But she drew her bow anyway, because what else could she do? What else was there?
She fired.
The arrow struck the wolf square in the chest, burying itself up to the fletching in his thick fur. He didn't even flinch. She fired again, and again, and again, loosing shaft after shaft as fast as she could nock them. She hit him in the chest, the shoulder, the leg, the face. One arrow caught him directly in his left eye, and for a moment she dared to hope.
The wolf shook himself like a dog shedding water.
The arrows snapped and fell away. Every single one of them, including the one in his eye, which popped out as though it had been pushed from inside. The eye beneath was whole and undamaged, gleaming gold in the darkness.
"Nice try, little girl," the wolf said. "But arrows cannot harm me. Swords cannot harm me. Fire cannot harm me. No weapon formed by mortal hands can slay me, for I am the Big Bad Wolf, the last of the Great Wolves, and this is now my domain."
Scarlet was out of arrows and ideas. She dropped her bow and drew the knife from her belt, holding it in front of her with both hands. It was a pitiful gesture, she knew. She might as well have been brandishing her stockings.
The wolf laughed, a deep rumbling sound that she felt in her bones.
"I like you, little huntress. You have spirit. So I'll give you a sporting chance." He lowered his massive head until his nose was almost touching her face. His breath was hot and smelled like fresh blood. "I will take the long way to your grandmother's cottage. The path through the Thornwood and around the Whispering Marsh. You will take the short way, the path you know so well. If you arrive before me, I will spare her life and yours. If you don't..."
He didn't need to finish the sentence.
"Why?" Scarlet managed to ask. "Why give me a chance at all?"
The wolf's smile widened. "Because it's more fun this way."
He turned and vanished into the trees, moving with impossible silence for something so large. Within seconds, there was no sign he had ever been there at all.
Scarlet ran. As a matter of fact, she had never run so fast in her life.
The short path to her grandmother's cottage was familiar territory, so that was the good news. She had walked it dozens of times over the years, knew every twist and turn, every root and rock. But she had never taken it at a full sprint, nor pushed her body to its absolute limit. Now she was forced to run until her lungs burned and her legs screamed and her vision blurred at the edges.
Well, she ran anyway.
Branches whipped at her face and arms. Roots tried to trip her. Once she stumbled and fell, skinning her palms on the rough ground, but she was back on her feet mere seconds later. She couldn't stop. She couldn't slow down. Every second she wasted was a second the wolf gained on her, and the wolf was so much faster than she was, so much stronger, so much bigger.
The cottage appeared through the trees like she was coming out of a bad dream. Its thatched roof and log walls were the most welcome sight she had ever seen. Above it, the Sanctuary Tree spread its massive branches across half the sky, ancient and eternal, the heart of this corner of the forest.
Scarlet sobbed with relief and ran faster.
She hit the door at full speed, slamming it open with her shoulder, stumbling into the dark interior of the cottage. "Grandma! Grandma, we have to go, we have to—"
"Scarlet? Is that you, dear?" The voice came from the bedroom, thin and reedy.
Scarlet nearly collapsed with relief. She had made it. She had actually made it.
"Yes, Grandma, it's me." She moved toward the bedroom, her eyes still adjusting to the darkness. "I'm sorry I'm early, but something happened in the woods, something terrible, and we need to leave right now. Can you walk? If you can't walk, I can carry you, I'm stronger than I look, I—"
"Don't light the candle, dear."
Scarlet froze with her hand halfway to the tinderbox on the mantle.
"What?"
"I said don't light the candle." Her grandmother's voice sounded strange. Maybe a little deeper than she remembered. And almost... amused. "I'm feeling rather ill today, and the light hurts my eyes. Just come and sit with me in the dark before you leave, won't you?"
Scarlet's hand dropped slowly to her side. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
She walked to the bedroom door, her eyes finally adjusted to the dark. She could see the shape of her grandmother in the bed, a dark lump beneath the quilted covers, but something about the shape was off. Too large. Too... lumpy.
"Grandma?"
"Yes, dear?"
Two enormous golden eyes opened in the darkness, glowing like twin suns.
Scarlet's blood turned to ice.
"What..." She swallowed hard. Her voice came out as barely a whisper. "What big eyes you have, Grandma."
"All the better to see your beauty, my darling girl."
She could see more of him now. She could make out the long shape of his muzzle poking out from beneath the blankets, the points of his ears pressed flat against the pillow, and the curve of his body, barely contained by the wooden frame of the bed.
She nocked an arrow. She wasn't sure when she had retrieved her bow, but it was in her hands now, ready to fire. Not that it would help.
"What a big wolfy snout you have, Grandma," she deadpanned, eyes narrowing with purpose.
"All the better to smell you with, my sweet child."
She drew back the string. Her hands weren't shaking anymore. There was a strange calm settling over her. It was, she realized, the calm of someone who had accepted that they were about to die.
"What sharp, white teeth you have."
The wolf erupted from the bed.
The blankets flew everywhere, the wooden frame shattered into kindling, and then there was nothing in Scarlet's world except teeth, fur, and the hot, fetid breath of the monster as his jaws closed around her.
She didn't even have time to scream before the darkness swallowed her whole.
***
The inside of the wolf's stomach was exactly as horrible as one might imagine.
It was pitch black, so dark that Scarlet couldn't see her own hand in front of her face. The walls were slick and warm and pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm, and the smell was beyond description, a choking miasma of blood and bile and half-digested meat. She gagged and retched, adding her own vomit to the nightmare around her.
She was going to die here. She was going to suffocate in the belly of a monster, and no one would ever know what happened to her.
Then her groping hands found something in the dark.
A body. Small and frail, wearing a rough linen nightgown.
"Grandma?" Scarlet's voice came out as a croak. "Grandma, is that you?"
No response. The body was still and cold.
Scarlet screamed.
She screamed until her throat was raw, screamed until she couldn't breathe, screamed even though she knew no sound was escaping the wolf's enormous body. Her grandmother was dead. She was dead, she was dead, and Scarlet was going to die too, and the wolf was going to win, he was going to digest them both and no one would ever—
The wolf was lying down.
She felt the motion through the walls of his stomach, the way his body settled and his breathing slowed. He was... resting? Sleeping? How could he possibly be sleeping at a time like this?
Unless he didn't see her as a threat at all. Unless she was so insignificant to him that he could swallow her whole and then take a nap as though nothing had happened.
The air was getting thin. Scarlet's lungs burned as she struggled to breathe, her chest heaving, her vision swimming even though there was nothing to see. She was going to suffocate. She was going to die in the belly of a beast, and her last thoughts would be of her grandmother's cold, still body pressed against her own.
Then light stabbed into the darkness.
A hand reached in and grabbed her by the wrist, hauling her up and out of the wolf's stomach. She gasped and choked, sucking in great lungfuls of clean air, blinking against the sudden brightness.
"Easy, girl. Easy. You're safe now."
The voice belonged to an old man with a long gray beard and arms like tree trunks. The woodcutter, Mister Gruber. His wife and children had gone missing some years back—that’s all she knew about him. She had been scared of him, but now? Now he was her savior.
The woodcutter had cut a long slit in the wolf's belly, and even now the wound was trying to close, the edges of the cut pulling together like lips seeking a kiss.
"How—" Scarlet coughed, spat bile. "How is he—why isn't he—"
"Eversleep mushrooms." The woodcutter pulled a leather pouch from his belt and showed her a handful of small blue fungi. "He took a nap, and then I snuck in and used my entire supply to keep him under while we do this. Risky business, but it worked." He frowned. "For now, at least. He'll wake soon. A creature this powerful won't stay down long."
Scarlet looked at the wolf as tears burned a path down her cheeks. He was lying on his side in the middle of the ruined bedroom, his massive body sprawled across the debris, his golden eyes closed in sleep. Even unconscious, he was terrifying. Even helpless, he radiated a sense of power and menace that made her skin crawl.
"We need to kill him," she said. "While he's asleep. We need to—"
"No." The woodcutter shook his head firmly. "To kill a magical beast of this magnitude... you don't understand, girl. There are rules. Laws older than any kingdom. If a common person like you or me were to slay the Big Bad Wolf, the curse that would fall upon us..." He shuddered. "I've heard tell of what happens to those who break such laws. Death would be a mercy."
"Then what do we do?"
The woodcutter was already moving, gathering stones from the ruined fireplace and the garden outside. "We buy ourselves time to escape."
They worked together in frantic silence, filling the wolf's belly with stones until there was no room for more. The wound sealed itself as soon as they withdrew their hands, trapping the rocks inside. Then they dragged his body through the cottage and out the back door, down the slope toward the stream that ran behind the property.
He was impossibly heavy, even in this smaller form. It took everything they had to move him even a few feet at a time. But fear gave them strength, and eventually they reached the water's edge.
"On three," the woodcutter said. "One. Two. Three."
They rolled the wolf into the stream.
He sank immediately, and his body vanished beneath the dark water. Bubbles rose as air escaped his body. Within seconds, there was no sign of him at all.
Scarlet stared at the place where he had disappeared. Her hands were shaking again, and she couldn't make them stop.
"Is he...?"
"Dead?" The woodcutter shook his head. "No. The Big Bad Wolf cannot be killed by drowning, any more than he can be killed by my axe. But the stones will keep him down for a while. Long enough for us to get far, far away from here. Though if he gets it in his mind to follow us, there won’t be much hope for our continued survival."
He turned to her, and his eyes were filled with a terrible sympathy.
"I'm sorry about your grandmother, girl. I was too late to save her. But I wasn't too late to save you, and that's something."
Scarlet looked back at the ruined cottage. Somewhere inside, her grandmother's body was still lying in the wolf's stomach acid, being slowly dissolved into nothing.
She had failed. She had run as fast as she could, and it hadn't been fast enough.
The wolf had won.
"Come on," the woodcutter said gently. "We need to go. He won't stay down forever, and when he wakes up, he's going to be angry."
Scarlet let him lead her away from the stream, away from the cottage, away from the Sanctuary Tree and the body of her grandmother and the monster sleeping beneath the water.
She didn't look back.
But she made a promise to herself, there in the gray light of the Darkwood, with tears streaming down her face. One day, she would meet the Big Bad Wolf again.
Teaser 2: Goldilocks, the Wolf’s Ward
Once upon a time, fire rained from the sky. It would take little Goldilocks many, many years to understand why.
She was just a skinny, blonde, curly-haired six year-old the first time it happened, and she had been dreaming about her grandpa’s dog when the thunder woke her. It wasn’t regular thunder, the kind that rumbled and rolled across the hills like a grumpy old man clearing his throat. This thunder cracked like the world was splitting in two, so loud that she felt buzzing in her jaw, and when she opened her eyes, her bedroom window was filled with a hot orange glow.
She sat up in bed, clutching her stuffed rabbit to her chest. "Mama?"
There was no immediate answer. The orange light flickered outside, and now she could hear screaming. Not a little but lots of screaming, coming from everywhere at once, and the thunder kept crashing and crashing, and something was wrong, something was very, very wrong.
She climbed out of bed in her white cotton nightgown and padded to the window on bare feet. What she saw made no sense at all to her little head. The village was on fire. Every building, every home, every shop and stable and barn—all of them were burning. Flames reached up toward the sky like desperate hands trying to pull the stars down. Lightning was striking the ground over and over again, bolt after bolt after bolt, and wherever it touched, new fires bloomed.
People were running through the streets, too. They were all so scared—just like her. She could see them now: her neighbors, her little friends, her neighbor’s chickens, everyone she had ever known, running and screaming and falling as the lightning found them. She saw Old Bobby Miller get struck dead center and crumple like a scarecrow pulled down from his post. She saw the baker's wife dragging her children toward the edge of town, only for a bolt to hit the ground in front of them and send them all flying.
"Mama!" Goldilocks screamed. "Papa!"
She ran out of her bedroom and down the stairs, still clutching her rabbit, her bare feet slapping against the wooden floors. The front door was hanging open, swinging in a hot wind that smelled like smoke and something much stinkier, a little like rotten eggs. She ran through it and into the chaos of the village square.
Fire was everywhere. People were lying still on the ground. People she recognized, people she liked or even loved, lying still and broken while the flames consumed everything around them.
"Mama! Papa! Where are you?"
She found them in front of the well.
They were holding hands. That was the first thing she noticed. Even in death, they were holding hands, with fingers intertwined and their faces turned toward each other. She always wanted that kind of love. Every little girl did. But now the world she knew was gone, and such wants were irrelevant.
The best she could tell, the lightning had struck them both at once, leaving their clothes singed and their skin blackened, but… at least they were still holding hands.
Goldilocks stood there for a long time, staring at her parents' bodies, not really understanding. This couldn't be real life. It had to be a nightmare, and any moment now she would wake up and Mama would be there to hold her and tell her everything was okay.
But she didn't wake up.
And everything was very not okay.
Someone’s hot, sweaty hand suddenly grabbed her arm. She screamed and tried to pull away, but the grip was too strong.
"Run, girl!" It was the blacksmith, his face streaked with soot and blood, his eyes wild with terror. "Stop standing there and run into the woods! It's your only chance!"
He said that, but he didn’t run with her. He shoved her toward the tree line and then he was gone, sprinting in the other direction, disappearing into the smoke, maybe to look for other people to help. More people she knew ran right past her, not even bothering to console her. They were too busy saving themselves.
Goldilocks took the lesson.
She ran toward the Darkwood, the enchanted forest that bordered their village. It was a place her parents had always warned her never to go without a grown up. Bad things live in those woods, her father used to say. Monsters and witches and worse. Promise me you'll never go in there alone, sweetheart. Promise me.
She had promised.
But she didn’t think there was anything worse in there than what was going on out here.
The trees swallowed her whole, and the sounds of the burning village faded behind her, replaced by the rustling of leaves and the creaking of ancient branches. She ran until she couldn't run anymore, until her legs gave out and she collapsed in a heap of sprawled limbs and her dirty nightgown. Her stuffed rabbit was still clutched tightly against her chest.
She lay there in the dark, surrounded by trees she didn't recognize, and she cried.
***
Goldilocks wandered the Darkwood for two days by herself.
She had no food. She had no water except what she could lick from leaves after the morning dew. She had no shoes, no coat, nothing but her thin cotton nightgown and her stuffed rabbit and a grief so vast she could barely breathe around it. Her feet were sore and bloody. Her hands were bloody too from falling over so much and catching herself on thorns or stony paths.
She called for help until her voice gave out. She stumbled through the undergrowth until her feet were crimson. She slept in hollow logs and beneath fallen trees, shivering through the cold nights, using plucked leaves for her blanket. She couldn’t get a single night’s sleep, as she startled awake at every little sound.
The Darkwood was full of sounds. Growls and howls and chittering laughter. Things moving in the shadows, always just out of sight. Once she saw a pair of glowing eyes watching her from the darkness, and she ran until her lungs burned, certain that whatever owned those eyes was about to eat her.
It didn't. Nothing did. The monsters of the Darkwood seemed content to watch and wait, as if they knew she was already dying. Maybe they were simply patient enough to let the forest do their dirty work for them.
By the third day, she could barely walk at all. Her vision swam with every step, and her thoughts came slow and thick. She was only six years old, but she knew enough now to know she was going to die out here. No one would ever find her body because it would be gobbled up by things waiting in the dark. Maybe her parents would be waiting for her in heaven, but she wasn’t ready to go. She didn’t know why, but it felt so unnatural to give up, even now.
That was when she smelled the porridge.
At first she thought she was imagining it. Her stomach had been growling for so long that she had started to hallucinate, seeing food in every shadow, smelling it on every breeze. But this smell was real. Rich and warm and undeniably, unmistakably, porridge.
She followed the scent like a sleepwalker, pushing through bushes and climbing over roots, until she emerged into a small clearing.
There was a cottage in the middle of the clearing. It was a lovely little home with a thatched roof and flower boxes in the windows and smoke curling from the chimney. It looked like something out of a happy bedtime story, the kind of place where a kind grandmother might live—certainly the kind of place where lost little girls could find shelter and safety and someone to take care of them and tell them everything would be okay.
Goldilocks stumbled toward the door and knocked.
No answer.
She knocked again, harder this time. "Hello? Is anyone home? Please, I need help. I'm lost and I'm hungry and I don't know where my parents are. Please." Her voice was hoarse and weak but at least words came out at all.
Still no answer. The cottage remained silent.
Goldilocks tried the door handle. To her surprise and utter relief, it turned easily, and the door swung open.
"Hello?"
The cottage was warm inside, heated by a fire crackling in the hearth. There was a table in the middle of the main room, and on the table were three bowls of porridge. Three chairs were arranged around the table, one large, one medium, and one small.
Goldilocks's stomach cramped so hard she doubled over.
She knew she shouldn't be here. She knew she should wait for whoever lived in this cottage to come home. She should explain her situation and ask politely for help. But she was so, so hungry. So desperately, painfully hungry. And the porridge smelled so good.
She climbed into the biggest chair first, but it was so large that she couldn't reach the table properly. She tried the medium chair next, but it was awkward and uncomfortable, too wide for her small body. Finally she climbed into the smallest chair, and it fit her well, just the right size for a six-year-old girl.
She grabbed the smallest bowl and started eating.
The porridge was perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. She ate and ate and ate, shoveling the food into her mouth with her bare hands, not caring about manners or propriety or anything except filling the aching void in her belly.
When the bowl was empty, she licked it clean.
She was still hungry, but the edge had been taken off, and now exhaustion was setting in. Her eyelids drooped. Her head nodded. She needed to sleep. Just for a little while. Just long enough to rest her eyes.
There was a staircase at the back of the cottage, leading up to a loft. Goldilocks climbed it slowly, and her legs trembled with every step. At the top she found three beds. One large, one medium, one small.
She let out a whimper at the sight of them. She tried the biggest bed first, but it was too hard, even stiffer on the ground outside. She tried the medium bed, but it was too soft, like sinking into a cloud of feathers. The smallest bed, though? The smallest bed was perfect.
Goldilocks curled up under the covers, clutching her stuffed rabbit to her chest, and fell asleep instantly.
***
And she woke to the sound of roaring.
"Someone’s been eating my porridge!"
The voice was enormous, so loud it shook the walls, so deep it vibrated in her chest. Goldilocks sat up in bed, her heart pounding, her eyes wide with terror.
"Someone’s been eating my porridge, too!"
That was a second voice, slightly higher but still terrifying. And then a third, smaller and shriller:
"Someone’s been eating my porridge, and they ate it all up!"
Footsteps suddenly sounded against the stairs. Heavy, thundering footsteps, getting closer and closer. Goldilocks scrambled out of bed and looked around desperately for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run, and before she could do anything, three brown bears burst into the loft.
They were the scariest animals she had ever seen. The largest one, Papa Bear, was the largest by far, baring sharp fangs and brandishing huge claws. Mama Bear was much smaller but no less terrifying the way her fur bristled with rage. And Baby Bear, despite his name, was still bigger than Goldilocks by a considerable margin.
All three of them were staring at her.
"There she is!" Papa Bear bellowed. "That’s the thief who ate our food and slept in our beds!"
"Please," Goldilocks rasped. Her weak voice came out as barely a squeak. "Please, I didn't mean any harm. I was lost and hungry."
"Harm?" Papa Bear advanced on her, his massive paws shaking the floorboards with every step. "You think that matters? The damage was done, little girl!"
"I'll leave," Goldilocks said, backing away until her shoulders hit the wall. "I'll leave right now and never come back. Please. I'm just a little girl. I don't have anyone. My parents are dead and my village burned down and I don't have anywhere else to go."
For a moment, she thought she saw something flicker in Mama Bear's eyes. Something like sympathy, or at least hesitation.
Then Papa Bear roared again, and the moment was gone.
"No excuses! You have to pay the price!"
He lunged for her, and it was clear he was intending to kill her.
Goldilocks screamed and ran. She ducked under his grasping claws and sprinted for the stairs, her bare feet slipping on the wooden floor. Behind her, the bears gave chase, and their roars shook the walls as they followed in hot pursuit.
She made it down the stairs and through the main room, knocking over chairs and scattering porridge bowls as she went. The front door was still open. She could see the forest beyond. Dark and dangerous as it was, it suddenly seemed so much safer than what was behind her.
She burst out into the clearing and ran.
But the bears followed.
They were faster than her, too. So much faster. She could hear them gaining, could feel the ground shaking under their weight. Papa Bear was almost on top of her now, close enough that she could hear the snap of his jaws, and she knew she wasn't going to make it.
And then something massive and black exploded out of the treeline.
It happened so fast that Goldilocks barely saw it. One moment Papa Bear was reaching for her, and the next he was gone, snatched out of the air by jaws even bigger than his own. There was a horrible crunching sound, a spray of hot blood, and then silence.
Goldilocks stumbled and fell, landing hard on her hands and knees. She looked up, trembling, and saw the wolf.
He was enormous. Bigger than the cottage, bigger than anything she had ever seen. He was a mountain of gray and black fur and gleaming teeth and eyes like molten gold. Papa Bear's legs were still sticking out of his mouth, twitching feebly, and as she watched, the wolf tilted his head back and swallowed the rest of him whole.
Mama Bear and Baby Bear had frozen in their tracks. They stared at the wolf with expressions of pure, animal terror.
The wolf licked blood from his lips and smiled at them.
"Well," he said in a voice like rolling thunder, "that was disappointing. I expected more from a papa bear. All that size and no flavor at all." He turned his golden gaze on the remaining bears. "Are you two going to be equally bland, I wonder?"
Mama Bear grabbed Baby Bear and ran.
The wolf watched them go, his tail swishing happily behind him. He made no move to follow, just staring as they fled. When they had disappeared into the trees, he turned to look at Goldilocks.
She was still on the ground, trembling, and much too terrified to move. The wolf padded toward her, each step making the earth shake, until his massive head was hovering directly above her. His breath was hot and smelled like the bloodied soles of her feet.
"Now then," he said. "What do we have here? A bruised and bloodied little girl with pretty golden curls. A survivor."
Goldilocks couldn't speak. She couldn't even breathe. The wolf's eyes were so close she could see herself reflected in them. She was just a tiny girl in a dirty nightgown, clutching a stuffed rabbit like it could somehow protect her.
The wolf sniffed her. His nose was at least the size of her entire head, realistically bigger, and when it touched her hair, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited to die.
"Hmm," the wolf said. "You are an interesting little one. Are you to blame for that storm?"
Goldilocks had no idea what he was talking about. She still did not dare to open her eyes.
"I’ve been walking alone for days," she whispered. "My village burned up. I’m scared, Mr. Wolf."
"I’d be offended if you weren’t," The wolf laughed, a deep rumbling sound that vibrated through her entire body. "How did you end up here? You have come a long way on your own."
She told him the whole story through noisy sobs. The wolf was more patient than her own father as he listened without interrupting. When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"Those bears are shameful beasts. Pursuing you is unsporting," he finally said. "Three bears chasing a single wounded human child through the woods. No challenge at all. No game in it." He sounded viscerally disgusted. "If I'm going to eat someone, I at least want them to have a fighting chance. And if someone does get the better of me, well, then let them have the win, I say. Where's the fun otherwise? Where’s the pride?"
"Are you going to eat me?" Goldilocks asked.
The wolf tilted his head, considering. "Probably eventually. I haven't decided yet. You're very small. You’ll need to heal first and get some food in that little belly. Hardly worth the effort of digesting as you are." He lowered his head until his nose was almost touching hers. "Tell you what, little girl. Climb on my back and hold on tight. If you fall off, I'll eat you up. If you become too heavy or too annoying, I'll eat you up. If you ask too many questions or cry too loudly or do anything else that irritates me, I'll eat you up. Understood?"
Goldilocks nodded, but for some reason, she did not feel scared of his threats, nor did she think she was supposed to. Instead, she found herself smiling for the first time in days.
"Good. Then climb up, cub. We have a long way to go, and I'm not slowing down for stragglers."
***
The wolf's back was surprisingly comfortable, once she got used to it. The fur was thick enough to act as padding, and he moved with enough grace that the bouncing never made her uncomfortable.
His fur was actually softer than any blanket she had ever owned. She buried her fingers in it and held on tight as he bounded through the forest, moving so fast that the trees blurred around them. The wind whipped her hair back and stung her eyes, but she didn't let go. She didn’t want to disappoint her new friend.
After what felt like hours, the wolf slowed and then stopped. They were in another clearing, this one dominated by a small stream and a cluster of berry bushes.
"Eat," the wolf said, lowering himself so she could climb down. "You're skin and bones. If I decide to devour you later, I'd like there to be something worth devouring."
Goldilocks ate obediently. The berries were tart and delicious, and she stuffed herself until her belly ached. When she was finished, she drank from the stream. The cold water soothed her parched throat.
The wolf watched her the entire time. She felt like he was smiling at her, but she couldn’t tell for sure.
"Thank you," she said when she was done.
The wolf laughed. "Express gratitude at your own peril, little cub. I'm only keeping you alive because I haven't made up my mind yet." He stood and shook himself, his massive body rippling. "Now climb back on. There's a village not far from here, and you need clothes. That little gown might have been pretty once, but it’s barely holding together now."
“Yes, Mr. Wolf.”
The village was small and quiet, nestled in a valley at the edge of the Darkwood. The wolf stopped just outside the tree line and sniffed the air.
"Stay here," he said. "Don't move, don't make a sound, don't do anything until I get back. If you disobey, I'll—"
"Eat me," Goldilocks finished, smiling up at him. "I know."
The wolf's mouth curved into a sharp-toothed grin, and he pressed his nose against her forehead before turning. "Quick learner. I like that in a meal."
He vanished into the darkness, and a few minutes later, Goldilocks heard screaming.
The screaming didn't last long. Within minutes, the wolf was back, carrying a bundle of cloth in his jaws. He dropped it at her feet and sat back on his haunches.
"Get dressed."
Inside the bundle she found a simple dress, a pair of shoes, and a woolen cloak. All of them were slightly too big for her, probably taken from a child a few years older, but they were warm and clean and so much better than her tattered nightgown.
"Did you hurt anyone?" she asked as she pulled the dress over her head.
"It matters not." The wolf yawned, showing all of his teeth. "But no. I couldn’t have you wearing bloody clothes."
She wasn’t sure why a wolf of all things would care about her clothes being bloody. "You didn't kill any people in the village?"
"Well, I didn’t say I didn’t kill any people. I have to eat too, you know. Unless you prefer I snack on you?"
She shook her head. “No, sir.”
They traveled for two more days. The wolf fed her when she was hungry, let her sleep against his belly when she was tired, and growled at anything that came too close to her. He complained constantly about what a burden she was, about how he should have just eaten her and been done with it, about how delicious she looked now that she’d had a bath or two. But he never actually hurt her. He never even raised his voice at her.
He was like the best big brother a little girl could have.
But it had to come to an end eventually. On their tenth day together, they came to a tall stone building surrounded by a high wall. A bell tower rose above the trees, and Goldilocks could hear singing coming from somewhere inside. Women's voices, high and clear, lifted in hymn.
"A nunnery," the wolf said. "They take in orphans here." He lowered himself so she could climb down. "This is where we part ways, little girl."
Goldilocks slid off his back and stood in front of him. He was so big that she had to crane her neck just to see his face.
"Why can’t I stay with you, big brother?" she asked.
"You make for a charming pet, little cub, but you are safer here. Besides, should I grow hungry, I know where I can come retrieve you."
Goldilocks looked into his golden eyes, so close she could see the patterns in his irises, the flecks of amber and honey swirling together.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay? That's all you have to say?"
"I’ll find you when I grow up, Mr. Wolf." She reached up and put her small hand on his nose. His fur was warm and soft. "I love you."
The wolf held very still for a long moment. Then he pulled back, shaking his head as if trying to dislodge something.
Goldilocks walked toward the nunnery gate. When she reached it, she turned back one last time.
The wolf was still there, watching her with his big, golden eyes.
She waved.
He didn't wave back. He didn't do anything at all. He just stood there, a massive gray shape against the darkness of the forest, until she turned away and knocked on the gate.
Teaser 3: Gretel the Witch-Eater
Once upon a time, in a land where magic still aspirated through the trees and burbled in every bubbling brook, there lived a woodcutter and his wife with the man’s two children. The children were called Hansel and Gretel.
The woodcutter was a kind, well-meaning man with a weak spine. His wife, on the other hand, was a cruel woman with a heart like a stone left out in a great Northern winter. When famine came to the village where they traded their wood for wheat, she told her husband they could not afford to feed four mouths. Two would have to go.
"Take them into the forest," she said. "Take them both. Leave them there to fend for themselves. Let God sort out the rest."
The woodcutter wept, but weak of will as he was, he did as his wife commanded. He led his two precious children deep into the Darkwood, farther than they had ever gone, and when they weren't looking, he slipped away like a bat at dawn.
But Hansel was clever. He had filled his pockets with breadcrumbs and dropped them along the path, and when the children realized they were alone, they followed the trail home.
Their stepmother was furious.
The next day, she sent them out again. And again, Hansel dropped his breadcrumbs. And again, the children found their way back. This time, emboldened, they even laughed behind their stepmother’s back, but loud enough so that she could hear.
Their laughter only incensed her all the more. On the third day, Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother sewed their pockets shut and inspected them thoroughly before sending them away. She gave them no bread, no water, nothing but the clothes on their backs and a kiss on the forehead that felt more like the bite of a spider. Their father could not meet their eyes as he led them away.
This time, he took them so deep into the forest that even the birds were silent. He left them in a clearing where the sunlight barely tickled the ground, and he ran. He ran and ran and did not look back. The children never saw him or their stepmother ever again.
Hansel and Gretel wandered for three days.
It was a long-suffering three days. They ate berries that made their stomachs cramp. They drank from streams that had a foul aftertaste. Worse of all, they heard things moving in the darkness between the trees, things that growled and chittered and laughed in voices that sounded vaguely human, but not quite. On the second night, something with too many legs crawled over Gretel's arm while she slept, and she most certainly did not fall asleep again after that.
By the third day, Hansel could barely walk. He leaned on his sister's shoulder and mumbled nonsense, his lips cracked and bleeding. When she looked into his eyes, Gretel found them glassy with fever. Gretel carried him on her back as far as she could, then dragged him, then simply held his hand and pulled.
She was only ten years old.
She had decided that they were going to die in this forest. Even just a child, she still managed to find a grmi humor that their bones would be picked clean by wolves and scattered by rain. She was about to burst into a laugh when she suddenly smelled something impossible, something that calmed her mind and sobered her from her starvation-induced delirium immediately.
Gingerbread.
She followed the scent through a thicket of thorns that tore at her dress and skin. She pulled her brother through a creek so cold it made her teeth ache. And then she saw it.
There was, in the middle of a clearing, a whole house made of candy.
The walls were gingerbread, mortared with frosting. The roof was shingled with chocolate tiles. The windows were made of spun sugar. Peppermint sticks formed the fence posts, and the garden was full of lollipop flowers in every color Gretel had ever seen and some she hadn't. Even the doorknob on the front door appeared to be made of a giant gumdrop.
Hansel tore free of her grip and ran.
She called after him, but he wasn't listening. He fell upon the house like a starving beast, ripping chunks from the walls and shoving them into his mouth. Gretel followed more slowly. She was hungry too, so hungry that her hands shook and her vision blurred, but something about this place made her skin prickle with goosebumps. How could such a place exist? Here, in the deepest, darkest heart of the deepest darkest wood in all the land, why would a house made of candy be sitting here, waiting for them like a gift?
Still, when she broke off a piece of the windowsill and the taste of caramel exploded across her tongue, she found it hard to care about her instincts.
That was when the door opened.
An old hag answered—a witch, Gretel knew at once just from the look of her. She looked like every witch in every story she’d ever heard that featured one. The crone was old, older than anyone Gretel had ever seen or even imagined, with green skin like crumpled paper and eyes like two black coals. She smiled at the children with sharp, broken teeth, and she said in a voice like poisoned honey:
"Why, what darling little children. You must be so tired. Come in, come in. Rest your weary bones."
Gretel wanted to run. Every part of her screamed that this was wrong and that they should flee back into the forest and take their chances with the wolves and the hunger and the things that laughed in the dark.
But Hansel was already inside.
So Gretel followed. What else could she do?
***
The witch fed them well. She fed them roast chicken and fresh bread, sweet cream and ripe berries—more food and better food than Gretel had seen in her whole life. Hansel ate until he couldn't move, then fell asleep by the fire with a smile on his face. Gretel ate too, but much more cautiously. She watched the witch move around the cottage, and she noticed things.
She noticed that the witch's hands were stained with something dark beneath her nails. She noticed that there were scratches on the inside of the oven door. She noticed that there was a cage with a cover over it in the corner of the room, just large enough to hold a child.
That night, while Hansel snored by the fire, the witch locked Gretel in a small bedroom with no windows and a door that wouldn't budge no matter how hard she pushed.
"Sleep well, little one," the witch called through the wood. “Make sure to eat your fill tomorrow.”
She promised herself that she would never eat her fill, not even once.
The next morning, the witch put Hansel in the cage.
He didn't seem to mind or even really notice. He was still eating, always eating, accepting whatever decadence he was offered and shoving it in his mouth without question. The witch fed him constantly: pastries, cakes, puddings and pies, anything sweet she could conjure or produce with or without her magic. His belly swelled rapidly. His cheeks grew round. And his eyes grew more vacant by the day.
Gretel tried to talk to him, but he barely responded anymore. She tried to shake him awake from whatever trance held him, but his gaze just slid past her, fixed on the next treat the witch dangled before him. He had been so clever, so crafty not long ago, guiding them home with breadcrumbs. But this time he had broken first, and that had made him easy for the witch to control.
A week passed. Then two. It was clear to Gretel where this was headed. Hansel grew fat and listless. The witch grew impatient, rubbing her belly and licking her chops whenever she looked at Gretel’s brother.
One morning, she pulled Gretel aside and sat her down at the kitchen table. She poured two cups of tea and pushed one across to the girl. Gretel didn't touch it. The witch didn’t question her decision not to.
"You're a clever child," the witch said. "I've been watching you. You don't trust me. Good. Trust is for fools and the soon-to-be-dead. But cleverness? Cleverness is valuable. Cleverness is useful."
The witch leaned forward. Her breath smelled like rot.
"I'm going to tell you something, child, and I want you to listen very carefully. Your brother is going to die. There's nothing you can do to stop it, and I know you can sense that he’s already too far gone to save. When I cook him, that magic will crystallize. It will become something powerful. Something precious."
Gretel's hands trembled beneath the table, but her face stayed blank. "Why are you telling me this, witch?"
"Because I'm offering you a choice." The witch smiled with her ugly, jagged teeth. "When your brother is cooked, I want you to eat him with me. Consume him, and you will pass my test. In return, I’ll allow you to eat some of my own flesh. If you do this, you’ll gain the power to become a witch. My apprentice."
"And if I refuse?"
The witch's smile didn't waver. "Then I cook you next, bony though you are, and find another clever little girl. There are always more starving children in the woods, though I doubt I’ll find one with your potential ever again. You are utterly unbreakable, my dear."
She left Gretel alone with her tea and her thoughts and the sound of her brother mumbling to himself in his cage. Greta poured the tea onto the floor and stared at the ceiling.
That night, Gretel crept to the cage and tried one last time to save her brother, though she knew the witch wasn’t bluffing when she said it was in vain. She shook the bars, she called his name, she even slapped him across his round, doughy face. Nothing got through to him. His eyes were glassy, his mouth slack. Whatever her brother had been, he was gone now. All that remained was a vessel, fattened for slaughter.
Gretel wept, but she was happy. She was happy that Hansel wasn’t truly alive to feel the pain that was coming for him.
In the morning, the witch came as she said she would.
She unlocked the cage and led him out. He went willingly, shuffling across the kitchen floor, still licking sugar from his fingers. The witch opened the oven door, and a wave of heat rolled through the room, making Gretel's eyes water.
"In you go, dear," the witch cooed.
Hansel climbed inside. The witch shut the door. The screaming started a moment later.
Gretel had thought she was ready for this, but she wasn't. No one could be prepared for the sound of their brother burning alive, for the way his voice cracked and rose and eventually dissolved into something that wasn't human anymore. She pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still hear it, could still feel the heat of the oven against her skin, could still smell the sickly-sweet scent of cooking flesh.
When the screaming stopped, the silence was somehow worse.
The witch opened the oven door and bent down to examine her work. Steam billowed out around her, obscuring her form, and Gretel heard her humming to herself as she reached inside with hands wrapped in enchanted cloth.
"Perfect," the witch murmured. "Absolutely perfect. Come, child. Come see what a treat your brother has become."
She pulled the body out with thick oven mitts and laid Hansel’s remains on the kitchen table.
Gretel looked. She had to look. Some part of her needed to see, needed to understand, needed to burn this image into her memory so that she would never forget what had been done.
Hansel was unrecognizable. His skin had turned golden brown and crispy. His body had contracted, curling in on itself like a dried leaf. His face was frozen in a look of surprise, like he still couldn't understand what had happened to him even at the very end.
The witch straightened up from the table, her back to the oven, humming a tuneless melody.
There was one moment of true weakness, where the witch’s guard was well and truly down, and Gretel didn’t miss it. She shoved the table forward, colliding it against the witch as hard as she could, making her violently stumble backward.
The witch tried to catch herself on the edge of the table, but her hands slipped in the grease that had pooled around Hansel's body. She fell backward, arms pinwheeling, and tumbled into the open maw of the oven.
Gretel slammed the door shut.
She threw her weight against it, pressing her back to the hot iron. It burned through her dress immediately, searing serious, scarring burns into her skin, but she didn't move. Moving was unthinkable. If she moved, the witch would get out, and then it would be Gretel in the oven next.
The witch’s scream was a different kind of scream than Hansel's had been. Deeper. Angrier. Full of rage and disbelief that a mere child had gotten the better of her. Gretel liked the sound of it, could see herself getting addicted to that sound. The door shuddered as the witch threw herself against it from the inside, and Gretel felt the latch strain against the force, but she held on for dear life. For Hansel, whose crispy remains were still lying sideways on the table, facing her.
Oh yes, she held on. She held on so long that she didn’t even feel the burning anymore.
Eventually, the screaming stopped.
Eventually, the pounding stopped.
Eventually, Gretel unlatched the door and let it swing open. She had won.
The witch was cooked just as thoroughly as Hansel had been. Her body was blackened and twisted, barely recognizable, but there was something different about her remains. A faint glow pulsed beneath the charred skin, flickering like embers refusing to die.
Gretel remembered what the witch had told her. If she consumed the witch’s flesh, she would gain her powers, right? Something like that.
She thought about her brother, who would never grow up, never marry, and never have children of his own. She wouldn’t be at his wedding. She wouldn’t play games with him anymore, or visit him on holidays when they grew older. She thought about her father, who had been too weak to protect them. She thought about her stepmother, who had sent them into the woods to die. Her heart burned with the ache of impotent hatred. She hated everyone who had led her hear, led her to watch her brother die. She would not be powerless any longer.
Other children had probably walked into this house with hope in their hearts, children whose bones were probably buried somewhere in the garden beneath those lollipop flowers. Their parents had perhaps abandoned them too. How else could they have made it this far?
Gretel quenched the flames and reached into the oven to tear off a piece of the witch.
She ate it.
It tasted awful and foul, and it made her teeth tingle and her vision blur. She ate more. And more. She ate until there was nothing left but bones and the flickering ember-glow, and then she ate that too, crunching through charred ribs and sucking marrow from blackened femurs.
When she was finished, she looked down at her hands.
Her skin had turned green.
Not a sickly green, not the green of rot or disease, but a deep forest green, the color of moss on ancient stones. Her nails had grown longer and sharper. Her hair, once a mousy brown, had darkened to the color of pine needles in shadow.
She caught her reflection in the sugar-glass window and saw that her face was still her own. Still young, still round with baby fat, still recognizable as Gretel Gruber of the village at the edge of the Darkwood. She turned to look at her back, where the dress had burned and her skin had blistered from the heat of the oven door. It was ugly, but it was already healing. It might scar, she thought, but she would live.
But her eyes had changed. They were the color of amber now, with pupils that narrowed to slits when she looked at herself too closely.
On the shelf above the stove, she found the witch's spellbook. It was bound in leather that felt uncomfortably warm to the touch, and the pages inside were covered in spidery handwriting.
She took it. It was hers now. Its secrets belonged to her, and she would use them to inflict her vengeance on the world.
She buried her brother beneath an oak tree at the edge of the clearing. When she tried to say prayer, her lips started burning, so she abandoned that effort and just stood there for a while, staring at the ground, trying to think of something to say.
"I'm sorry," she finally managed. “But not as sorry as every witch in this world will be.”
She walked out of the Darkwood alone, ten years old and already a monster in her own right, already a killer, with a spellbook under her arm and a heart full of hate.
And she never ate candy again.
***
Gretel Gruber woke with a gasp, her hand already reaching for the knife beneath her pillow.
The nightmare had made her break out in cold sweat. She could still taste ash on her tongue and feel the phantom heat of the oven against her back. Twenty years since she'd cooked that witch, and the dreams hadn't gotten any better. If anything, they'd gotten worse. A part of her wondered if it had even been as bad as all that—or had it only grown worse in the recalling?
She sat up and ran her fingers through her pitch-black hair, grimacing at the tangles. Her bedroll was damp with sweat, and the fire she'd built before sleeping had died down to embers. Above her, the stars seemed still and indifferent to the nightmares of one green-skinned woman alone in the wilderness, with little to her name but a spellbook and a sack full of witch scalps.
She threw off her blanket and crawled toward her pack. Sleep wasn't coming back, not tonight. Might as well make use of the time.
The spellbook was at the bottom of the pack, wrapped in oilcloth and buried beneath her spare clothes. She pulled it out and settled back against a fallen log, tilting the pages to catch the moonlight. After two decades of study, she could read the witch's cramped handwriting as easily as her own, though some of the older entries still gave her headaches.
She wasn't looking for spells tonight. There was only one thing on her mind these days.
She flipped to the very last page.
There it was. The active prophecy of this era, written in a different hand than the rest of the book, older and more elegant. According to the witch's notes, it had been copied from an even older source, passed down through generations of covens until it finally ended up here. Gretel had read it hundreds of times over the years, parsing every word, cross-referencing with other texts, trying to understand what it meant. Now that she knew what it meant, she was more focused on how to stop it.
She read an except of her latest translation again now, mouthing the words silently:
When three fair maids from slumber wake, And princely lips their curses break, Their blessings joined shall overflow, What vessel holds them, none may know.
If mortal blood should claim all three, Then magic drowns in a mundane sea, The world collapses, the wonder dies, And fairy tales become mere lies.
Gretel closed the book and stared up at the stars.
Last month, the Ice Queen had announced that her three sons were embarking on a quest to liberate Snow White, Rapunzel, and Briar Rose, the three Perfect Princesses, and end their curses. Her three princely sons, Prince Charming, Prince Gallant, and Prince Stalwart, were the chosen champions, and it was easy to justify their selection. Three princes for three princesses—it lined up nicely. It almost seemed like fate.
Furthermore, they seemed up to the task. Charming was said to be untouchable with a blade, making him perfect for Snow White’s rescue. Gallant had never missed a shot, making him a good choice for braving the cursed woods hiding Rapunzel’s lost tower. Stalwart had conquered a kingdom before his voice finished breaking, so it was possible he may be able siege the thorns that covered Briar Rose’s castle and free her from her centuries-long sleep at last. By any measure, they were exceptional men.
But they were still men. Mortal. Mundane. Not a drop of magic in any of them. Which lined up disturbingly with the cryptic warning in the ancient prophecy.
The princesses, on the other hand, were practically made of magic. Their very existence was miraculous. Snow White's beauty could stop hearts. She had blood-red lips, coal-black hair, snow-white skin, and the most alluring shape a woman could possess. She could speak to animals and heal wounds with a song. She could walk on water and bring music out of thin air.
Rapunzel's hair held its own mysterious magic, being unbreakable and possessing many gifts of fortune and strength. Briar Rose's slumber kept an entire kingdom frozen in time, and she was famously gifted by three fairy godmothers with unique blessings. If these maidens’ magic was transferred through the bonds of marriage to men who couldn't possess them, who couldn't anchor them the way a magical being could...
She'd seen what happened when too much magic concentrated in a vessel that couldn't hold it. A witch in the northern provinces had tried to absorb her entire coven's power at once. The resulting explosion had leveled three villages and left a crater where a mountain used to be.
It was hard to imagine that on a continental scale. On a dimensional scale. The magic wouldn't just explode. It would implode, collapsing in on itself, dragging all magic down with it. It would destroy this world and give birth to another one—one without magic.
Gretel had spent years hoping she was wrong. She'd consulted other witches, other scholars, anyone who might be able to poke holes in her theory. But the more she learned, the more certain she became.
The princes' marriages would end the world.
Well, in a sense. Not with fire or flood, but with mundanity. One day there would be dragons and talking bears and magical princesses, and the next day there wouldn't be. One day magic would be as real as the ground beneath your feet, and the next it would be nothing but stories parents told their children to help them sleep.
Gretel rather liked the idea of witches ceasing to exist. She'd killed enough of them over the years that the thought of them simply winking out of being had a certain appeal.
But it wasn't just witches who would disappear. It was everything. Every magical creature, every enchanted forest, every last scrap of wonder in the world. Gone. Absorbed into some gray mundane reality where nothing was extraordinary and nothing was miraculous and nothing was worth believing in.
But there was another possibility. A few, actually, but one that might be able to complete the quests on its own. A prince, no less, which fit that requirement of the old prophecy.
The Big Bad Wolf.
Prince of Beasts, they called him. He was the last of the Great Wolves, monsters of legend who had terrorized the land for generations before hunters and princes whittled their numbers down to nothing. His mother had been a goddess of the wind, or so the stories went. His father had been the most noble wolf in all the lands—that much was known for certain. He was as much magic as he was flesh.
And according to every account Gretel had ever read, he was absolutely, utterly, irredeemably evil.
He'd eaten grandmothers. He'd blown down houses. He'd terrorized villages and devoured children and laid waste to anything that got in his way. He was the monster that mothers warned their daughters about, the beast that lurked in the shadows of every fairy tale. Some now say he had even captured a red-hooded bride.
But he was also, technically, a prince. And if anyone could claim three magical princesses without destroying the fabric of reality in the process, it was probably a giant wolf demigod that no weapon could slay.
There was just one small problem. How would she convince the most wicked creature in all the Darkwood region to do something noble and good?
She tucked the spellbook back into her pack and began breaking camp. Dawn was still a few hours away, but she had a long journey ahead of her, and she wasn’t about to fall back asleep. The wolf's territory was in the heart of the forest, weeks of travel through some of the most dangerous land on the continent.
If she was lucky, she might even survive long enough to find him.
And if she was very, very lucky, he might let her get a few words in before he ate her.