Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(52)

3.


Of course, it isn’t true that there are no wolves left in the world. Not strictly speaking. Only that, so far as zoologists can tell, they are extinct in the wild. They were declared so more than forty years ago, all across the globe, all thirty-nine or so subspecies. But Maia has a terrible phobia of wolves, despite the fact “Little Red Riding Hood”

is her favorite bedtime story. Perhaps it’s her favorite because she’s afraid of wolves. Anyway, Shiloh and I told her that there were no more wolves when she became convinced a wolf was living under her bed, and she refused to sleep without the light on. We suspect ? 166 ?

? Caitlín R. Kiernan ?

she knows, perfectly well, that we’re lying. We suspect she’s humoring us, playing along with our lie. She’s smart, curious, and has access to every bit of information on the lattice, which includes, I’d think, everything about wolves that’s ever been written down.

I have seen wolves. Living wolves.

There are a handful remaining in captivity. I saw a pair when I was younger, still in my twenties. My mother was still alive, and we visited the bio in Chicago. We spent almost an entire day inside the arboretum, strolling the meticulously manicured, tree-lined pathways. Here and there, we’d come upon an animal or two, even a couple of small herds—a few varieties of antelope, deer, and so forth— kept inside invisible enclosures by the shock chips implanted in their spines. Late in the afternoon, we came upon the wolves, at the end of a cul-de-sac located in a portion of the bio designed to replicate the aspen and conifer forests that once grew along the Yellowstone River out west. I recall that from a plaque placed somewhere on the trail. There was an owl, an eagle, rabbits, a stuffed bison, and at the very end of the cul-de-sac, the pair of wolves. Of course, they weren’t purebloods, but hybrids. Both were watered-down with German shepherd genes, or husky genes, or whatever.

There was a bench there beneath the aspen and pine and spruce cultivars, and my mother and I sat a while watching the wolves.

Though I know that the staff of the park was surely taking the best possible care of those precious specimens, both were somewhat thin.

Not emaciated, but thin. “Ribsy,” my mother said, which I thought was a strange word. One I’d never before heard. Maybe it had been popular when she was young.

“They look like ordinary dogs to me,” she said.

They didn’t, though. Despite the fact that these animals had never lived outside pens of one sort or another, there was about them an unmistakable wildness. I can’t fully explain what I mean by that. But it was there. I recognized it most in their amber eyes. A certain feral desperation. They restlessly paced their enclosure; it was exhausting, just watching them. Watching them set my nerves on edge, though ? 167 ?

? The Road of Needles ?

my mother hardly seemed to notice. After her remark, how the wolves seemed to her no different than regular dogs, she lost interest and winked on her Soft-See. She had an eyeball conversation with someone from her office, and I watched the wolves. And the wolves watched me.

I imagined there was hatred in their amber eyes.

I imagined that they stared out at me, instinctual y comprehending the role that my race had played in the destruction of theirs.

We were here first, they said without speaking, without uttering a sound.

It wasn’t only desperation in their eyes; it was anger, spite, and a promise of stillborn retribution that the wolves knew would never come.

Ten times a mil ion years before you, we feasted on your foremothers.

And, in that moment, I was as frightened as any small and defenseless beast, cowering in shadows, as still as still can be in hope it would go unnoticed as amber eyes and hungry jaws prowled the woods.

I have wondered if my eyes replied, I know. I know, but have mercy.

That day, I do not believe there was any mercy in the eyes of the wolves.

You cannot even survive yourselves, said the glittering amber eyes.

Ask yourself for charity.

And I have wondered if a mother can pass on dread to her child.





4.


Nix Severn reaches the ladder leading up to the crawlspace, only to find it engulfed in a tangle of thick vines that have begun to pull the lockbolts free of the ’tainer wall. She stands in waist-high philodendrons and bracken, glaring up at the damaged ladder.

Briefly, she considers attempting the climb anyway, but is fairly sure her weight would only finish what the vines have begun, and the resulting fall could leave her with injuries severe enough that she’d be rendered incapable of reaching Oma’s core in time. Or at all.