Wolves and Witches by Amanda C. Davis & Megan Engelhardt

Author:Amanda C. Davis & Megan Engelhardt [Davis, Amanda C. & Engelhardt, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fairy tale, folklore, horror, fantasy, magic, dark, Rumpelstiltskin, Red Riding Hood, wolf, Little Mermaid, retelling, short story collection, book club
Publisher: World Weaver Press
Published: 2013-02-19T07:00:00+00:00

The Best Boy, the Brightest Boy

Megan Engelhardt

Once, at the beginning, you asked me why you were brought here. This is what I told you: your parents, your town, made a deal. I would rid them of their plague of rats, and they would pay me. I cleared the town of pests, easily done, and returned for my payment. They laughed at me and tried to send me on my way with far, far less than they promised. Money is not important. Deals are. That is why I took you.

One hundred and thirty children I led from the town, across the bridge the villagers named Death of Pests, across the fields all chewed and fallow, into the mountains that closed behind us with a snap like the jaws of a good rat terrier. And you were there, my last boy, the least boy, the leaping boy who danced and twirled with the others in your magical ecstasy.

That is where the story ends, with the mountains closed and the town waking in weeping and sorrow. That is where their story ends, with no rats and no children and no future. But that is where our story starts, child, in the halls of the underground king. In my home of cobwebs and chimes, chimes, always chimes, we played our games, do you remember? Fun games: games of running and hiding and choices and death. Oh, what games we played! Recall, sweet child, the shouts and cries in the tunnels and catacombs! Gleeful cacophony echoing back and forth, day and night, night and forever—sweet hymns to my ears.

One hundred and thirty children I took into my maze, into my playground of red dirt and bones left to rot in the dark. Five crawled out again. One carried another in his arms. Pity has no place in my palace of pain. I killed them where they stood. One crept into my room as I slept and tried to steal my magic pipe. He burned, flames from the wards of protection creeping into his eyes. One tried to charm me, the beautiful little wench, but I am uncharmable, I am the charmer of stars and worlds and rats and children, and she was clumsy and young and when I kissed her forehead she shrieked and fell and fell and fell and died from the fall that I placed into her mind.

And then there was one.

Did I not take you in my arms and tend to your wounds? Did I not taste your ensorcelled blood? Did I not reach into your chest with my music, my magic, and burn on your heart the runes that claimed you as my own? Did I not name you Piper’s Boy, Heir Under the Mountain, Victor of the Maze?

Did I not make you my son?

Your past life: gone. Your brothers and sisters: dead. Your town: left with only the stigma of greed as a fairytale moral. I was all you had: I, the musical mage, the maledict merchant. I was your father and mother and master and friend, and you learned to love me.

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