Sometimes The Woods Swallow Pretty Girls by Aarti Patel

Every five months or so, the townsfolk begin to whisper.

It starts with a missing woman or two, always a little too beautiful, a little too loud, a little too could have just run away, you know how it is with girls like that, don’t you? Then seven children go missing—six is too few to bother with, eight suggests something unholy—innocent little morsels who wandered too far into the woods or saw a flicker of silver in the river and got swept away or maybe—but surely not. No, of course not. Little ones will wander, it’s just what they do. Sometimes, but not always, a cottage is broken into and left in such disrepair that the survivors, as they are called, flee as far as they can, to a distant village with no name. A pity the husband didn’t survive. What a hero. What a tragedy. It’s the half-eaten livestock that finally sends the folk into an uproar. This time, it is three stolen chickens, one thoroughbred frothing at the mouth, and two goats with maggots wriggling through the ribcages. Gather all the Hunters.

The innkeeper finally tacks up the poster in the very back.

It reads: Wolf terrorizing the town. Wanted dead. Reward: thirty gold coins.

#

Wearing that thing all around town, so bright, so red. Well, what did she expect?

#

The Girl has many names but none they deign to remember.

She is pretty thing, girl with the red cloak, seductress, and once, plump peach.

It is the same in every town, but she prefers it that way.

She arrives on the eve of the Hunt, carrying a basket of freshly-baked muffins and a crimson cloak draped over one arm. When she pushes the doors of the inn open, a thick gust of sour-smelling air that tastes suspiciously like piss nearly sends her stumbling back, but she has tasted worse. Hunters from distant villages have congregated by the poster, whetting their blades.

The Girl finds a seat at the back and orders mutton stew.

She does not remember who is first, only that he says to his companions. “Oi, see her?”

Like flesh-eating beetles nibbling at decaying bones, their gazes scuttle over her, narrowing on the press of her crimson lips and the wisps of raven curling around her cheeks and the curve of her hips hidden by the trousers. Not all of them look, of course, and not all the ones that do are contemplating how to get her out of her clothes, but there are enough of them that she nibbles on a muffin and then one more—just in case. One looks away, disgusted, and she frowns.

“Why don’t you come join us, darling?”

The Girl tears off a hunk of bread and dips it in the stew.

“Just a kiss for luck, pretty thing. We don’t want the wolf to snatch you up, do we?”

The clouds part to reveal the moon, a ball of silver, ghostly and pale, crowning the skies.

“Or maybe we could go out back? Take a peak beneath that blouse?”

The Girl grabs another muffin to nibble on.

A large man with scarred fists and a sword equally as battered is the first to rise. He glances out the grime-encrusted windows of the inn to the woods, spindle-thin trees with gnarled limbs and blood-red leaves. The hunters quiet as they wipe the sleep from their eyes and sip their last sips of ale before shoving to their feet. A full moon, one mutters. An omen. Another one leers at the Girl as he passes by her seat and stoops to whisper in her ear, I’ll take you home later, love.

She licks the bowl clean and meets his jade eyes. “Maybe I’ll take you home instead.”

#

Didn’t her mother teach her not to wander alone in the dark? It belongs to them.

#

The Girl isn’t really a girl, but she likes to pretend.

She learnt from them, of course—the wolves that are not really wolves. She loved a creature like that once. When she was just a girl and he was just a boy but sometimes, it is easier to be something else, isn’t it? Except, he wanted to be too much and she was supposed to be too little and in the end, sometimes one plus one doesn’t become two but becomes one or even none.

A pity she became something worse—not quite alive, not quite dead.

Her cottage finds her, as it always does, the moment she enters the woods.

But it is the garden out back she heads towards.

The scent is the first thing she notices—that sickly-sweet itch at the back of her throat which raises the gooseflesh on her arms and makes her mouth water. The dichotomy of it still surprises her and she scans the neat little rows until she sees a shard of white poking out. She removes her boots and socks, then her blouse and trousers and underthings but keeps the cloak to ward off the chill. There is a bite to the air and she has already lost an arm to the cold. She does not need to lose another yet. The Girl kneels and digs the finger out of the soil and licks it clean.

Beneath the silver of the moon, she studies her skin.

But it is not her skin, or rather, not just her skin.

She traces the patchwork of flesh across her bare stomach and higher, following the incisions of needle and thread. She rotates her left arm, marvelling at the way the new limb feels. Memories linger in the hollow of the new finger and she wants to hold it close and remember—scrabbling at dirt, blinding pain, Why are you doing this?—but bits of rot have already begun to creep up the digit so she bites a decayed one off and sews the new one in place.

She does not have to wait long for the wolf to find her.

It creeps closer on silent paws, jade eyes fixed on her breasts.

It does not see the dagger in her hand or the fangs woven in her hair or the rot on her lips.

When it pounces, the Girl opens her mouth wide and welcomes it home.

#

Sometimes the woods swallow pretty girls. Sometimes they spit out something worse.

#

The Girl takes the carcass of the wolf to the butcher’s before dawn.

If he wonders where all the blood went, he does not ask and she does not offer an explanation. He eyes the dead thing lying on his table and frowns. “Where did you find this?”

The Girl licks at the blood crusted on her thumb. “It found me.”

“You don’t look much like a hunter,” the butcher remarks.

She pries the jaws of the wolf open, tears out a fang. “The trick is to let it hunt you.”

Later, when asked who slew the creature, the butcher will not remember the daggers strapped to the Girl’s waist or the fangs braided in her hair or the bit of blood crusted on her lips.

“Can’t remember,” he will say. “But did you see that girl? Softest lips I’ve ever seen.”