By the time you drag your broken body out of the woods and back to your father’s doorstep, the waxing moon’s cold light has been entirely swallowed up by the tree line. There is frozen earth under your fingernails, and frost-tipped wind rattling in your lungs, and your clothes are sticky and wet with blood. Everywhere you touch, there is blood. There is so much blood.
It’s the family dogs’ barking that wakes your father in the night. David and Samson are their names – you raised them from puppyhood. Their paws beat against the ground as they sprint to your motionless frame. Two wet noses sniff at your clothing, and it’s comfort for a moment, but then something changes.
Suddenly, their whines turn to growls; suddenly they snarl and snap at your clothing. White teeth flash inches from your eyes and a bolt of fear wracks your body. They bark into your ear, louder and louder until:
“Stop!”
And there is your father, woodcutter’s axe in hand, broad shoulders framed by light in the doorframe. He drives the braying dogs away. He takes you in his arms, though blood stains his cotton shirt. He pulls you in from the cold. He cleans and salves your wounds, stitching up the rended flesh along your arm. He makes you whole again.
“Daughter,” he murmurs into your hair, once your shakes have settled and the fireplace warmth has seeped back into your bones, and you are tucked under his chin just like when you were small. “Daughter, what beast did this to you?”
The memory rushes up all at once, like a burst of flame: thick matted fur stinking with smoke and rot; rough snarls like wood bark; sharp fangs crushing muscle and bone; strong jaw nearly wrenching arm from socket; pulsing rivulets of blood, sticky and hot.
How to describe such a creature?
“A wolf,” you finally whisper. “Black like the night.”
He frowns, but says nothing.
Your hands begin to tremble, and you force them to still. You wish it were gone from your memory, banished forever, but the blood and the teeth and the stinking fur remain.
“He took me from the woodshed,” you tell your father, voice shaking, and now the words spill out of you. “He dragged me into the woods, out past the village walls. I thought he would tear me apart.” The fabric of your father’s shirt twists in your grip, tightening with your fists. You blink moisture from your eyes. “I don’t know why he left me. I thought I would be devoured.”
The silence grows, until your father breaks it.
“In the morning,” he says finally, “I will take you to the minister.”
You freeze.
“No wolf would do such a thing,” your father continues. “This must be a spirit, or a demon. You cannot trust the woods, daughter. The minister will ward you from evil.”
You cannot protest. Your father is of the village. The village trusts the minister.
You do not sleep for the rest of the night. Instead you stare out through your window, where the woods stretch ever outwards beyond the village wall, seeking icy blue eyes. But there are no eyes. Only the pale moon stares back.
You run your tongue along the ridges of your teeth and find them ever so slightly sharper.
***
You cannot bear to face the minister, so instead you find the witch.
You’re not supposed to know the way to her hut –you belong to the village, after all, and the witch lives far too beyond the village wall for you to ever safely tread. But you know rumors, murmured over kneading dough and wringing clothes, of cracks in the cobblestone wall where the woods can draw the village in. Really, that’s all it takes to leave the village – you simply allow the woods to draw you in.
Passing through the village wall feels just like shedding a skin.
Only sundown light guides your path through the woods. With your eyes cast downwards, you pick through gnarled roots and thornbushes that snatch and tear at you – the intruder. The air is cold and the light is fading and each passing moment brings a fear that something – someone – will find you.
But no harm comes your way on the path to the witch’s hut. And as much as you must trust the woods to carry you forward, you decide, you must also trust the witch. She will put you back to the way you were, before that awful night. She will sew you up in all the ways your father could not.
“Show me your teeth, child,” she commands the moment you step inside. The witch seems unsurprised by your presence, as if you’re already familiar to her. As you open your mouth dutifully, like a dog performing tricks, you wonder how many other girls have braved the tangled path through the woods to seek her out. The witch runs a bony finger along the ridge of your teeth. Her skin is paper-thin, moving separate from her flesh like that of an overripe fruit. You wonder if she sees your knobby knees and wide eyes as just another echo of the same story. The witch frowns and closes your jaw for you.
“A wolf,” you start to explain as she turns away. Her fingers ghost over vials of strange liquids and string-bound herbs, all set in rows of off-kilter shelves and labelled with indecipherable scribblings. “Black like the—"
“Of course it wasn’t a wolf,” she snaps. Though the witch stoops to just below your height, her temper sends a tremble through your spine. She plucks a stoppered bottle of brackish fluid from the shelves and sets it on her oaken table. “If it were only a wolf, why come here? There are doctors in the village” – The witch glances back at you – “and you are of the village, aren’t you?”
You don’t know what else you would be. You’ve never known anything else. But before you can consider your answer, the witch waves you away with a disinterested hand.
"There are worse things in your village than wolves, child," she says, selecting two more vials of dried herbs, "and not all of them belong to the woods. Tell me of its form.”
“Black fur,” you tell her, keeping your eyes pointed to the floor. “Blue eyes like ice. And his fangs—”
“Its,” the witch corrects. “Not his. This is not a man.” She strikes a match, lighting a set of melting, waxy candles along the windowsill that illuminate the circular room despite the darkening sky outdoors. “I can make you a poultice, to keep the wound from festering, but I’ll need to know more of this creature to—"
“His,” you insist, though you’re careful with your tone. “I knew him. I swear I knew him.”
“Oh?” She pauses, skeptical, and raises a single eyebrow. “Then who was he?”
“His eyes were blue like ice,” you repeat, careful to keep the tremble out of your voice. “And his fangs were made of gold.”
The witch stills. She waits for you to correct yourself.
“I told you,” you say, your voice rising. “I knew him.” And though you can’t speak it, you hope desperately she understands your meaning: Please help me.
“What black magic,” she says slowly, “have you brought into my house?”
A sudden pounding on the door shatters the silence. Her eyes snaps to the door, then back to you, blazing with anger.
“Were you followed?!” She takes you by the shoulders, shouting with a new urgency. “Child, what beast have you led to my doorstep?!”
“I don’t know,” you beg, but when you reach out to calm her, she shoves you violently. You stumble to the floor, scrambling to find balance as the pounding only gets louder. The door is starting to give; it shudders and quakes with each strike. You look for a place to run, or hide, or defend yourself. You look to the witch for protection. You trust the witch. She will put things back to how they were before.
But the witch’s gaze is pulled from the pounding at the door. You follow her horrified gaze to the window. Bright moonlight flashes through the panes of glass, bathing you in silver.
And then you start to turn.
***
First your bones splinter and crack, stretching and splitting until they’re overgrown for your flesh. Suddenly your jawbone is far too long, suddenly your knees twist at the wrong angle, suddenly all the meat on your body is stretched so thin you think you’ll tear it off. Your limbs twitch and convulse and grow as enormous canine teeth force their way through cartilage to split out of your gums with a spurt of blood. Everywhere there is thick fur, matted with copperish blood. There is so much blood.
Next the door bursts off its hinges with a crash. Heavy boots pound against the floor, too many to count, and the room is overcome with shouts of anger and fear. As you writhe on the ground, a boot drives into your stomach. Your eyes fly open with a cry of pain. You grasp for something to hold onto, but your fingers just don’t move right – rigid and narrow, your nails drive deep gashes into the floorboards where you drag them. Someone binds your limbs with rope to stop the thrashing, and a gloved hand grabs at the scruff of your neck, yanking your head upwards by thick skin and fur.
The minister grins at you, pale blue eyes boring into your own. His smile, a glint in the shadows, reveals gold-capped teeth.
“Hello, wolf,” the minister whispers. “Have you missed me?”
You snap at his face, but he just steps back and laughs. Though your vision has become yellowed and blurry, you look to the witch: one of the minister’s men has her bound in his arms, and despite her thrashing she cannot escape. The other men, brandishing scythes and axes and knives, just eye you warily. You don’t understand why they won’t help you. Don’t they recognize you?
The minister steps back, his boots clicking against the floor. He steps from shadow to shadow, and though moonlight dapples his black clothing, his wide-brim hat keeps his face in the dark.
“Look upon this wild thing,” the minister cries out, turning sharply to face his men, “and see what demons spawn from beyond the village walls! Gentlemen” – the minister kneels at your side, grabbing your jaw roughly and forcing your snout upward – “we have finally caught our beast.”
“Go ahead, wolf,” the minister snarls, leaning into your ear. Spittle flies out from his golden teeth. “Tell them all what happened last night.”
And so you tell them everything. The icy blue eyes peering out at you from the woods; the gloved hand that took your arm and led you deeper into the dark; the teeth against your throat growing sharper and sharper. It was brutal, you tell them. It was hungry. He lapped up your blood as it spilled from your veins. He gnawed on your limbs, teasing out gristle and fat. He left you for the crows. You still don’t know, you tell them, what strength possessed you to crawl back home to your father. You don’t know why your body has taken this form. You beg for their sympathy, their understanding, anything.
But when you speak, your words come out as howls.
The minister’s men panic. They shout and bray, circling you with their jagged blades and jumping back when you snap in their direction. The minister, though, only smiles wider.
“Gentlemen,” he says, tugging his gloves on tightly. “The woods have threatened us for far too long now. Let us end this violence! Woodsman!"
He gestures to the man holding the axe. You cannot make out his face through your unfocused vision, yet you can see how he trembles. You do not smell fear; instead, by the set of his shoulders and the grip on his weapon, you recognize his true emotion: anger.
“Woodsman,” the minister repeats. “Slay the beast.”
And you thrash, and fight, and snap your newfound jaws, and rake your claws against the floorboards, but none of it does anything. The men wrestle you to the ground. The witch stands aside with her eyes cast downward. And the minister only looks on, somewhere between amusement and indifference.
The woodsman steps forward, and then your snout is shoved into the floorboards to expose your ruff. You stare out through the window, eyes wide with fear, and into the dark woods. Perhaps you can still escape. Perhaps you can run.
But when you feel the cold kiss of the axe against your neck, only the pale moon stares back.