A friend shared this link on FB and so the story.

The old woman of the forest could no longer deny it. Waldeinsamkeit had hit her hard after those pesky children had left. With deep Iktsuarpok, she would look out of her cottage, looking for weary, lost travelers who might stop by to ask her for soup and bread and perhaps a place to stay the night. Komoreb filled her morning room when she sat there to have tea and Komoreb filled her evening room where she cast spells and sang old songs. ‘Such a shame that there is no one but me to feel such beauty’, she would think as purple and gold bubbles spilled over the floor. It was a long time since she and Baba Yaga had a Sobremesa and she wondered if she should call the batty woman over. The only thing stopping her was Baba Yaga’s Jayus.Nor could she put up with Baba Yaga’s Depaysement. ‘Oh well’, she thought. ‘Someone is better than no one’, and began to cast a spell for creating a Mangata. Panapoo! What could it be! What could it be! Something in the spell was missing, another door was opening. The old woman groaned, the old woman moaned. In walked Ariel, that infernal Pochemuchka who always left Cualacino all over the cottage!

Now-a-days Red takes the car and drives the long way around the forest to reach her Gran's house. The new, shiny, tarred highway is marked only by the occasional carcass of a dead deer or wolf. She always slows down when she passes these silent, still bodies, death spreading entrails and blood with precision, making patterns, splatters on the unyielding black. How real and how strange is death and how innocent. She does not ever tell Gran about the bodies or that she slows down. Danger lingers, leisures on highways, lazily waiting for lonesome travelers.

On this morning, the mist still hangs, invades, exhales on the windshield. Red drives slowly, headlights on full, the aroma of buns and cupcakes filling the car. She sees something on the road, a shape, dulled black by the mist, indistinguishable almost, from the road. Roadkill. She swerves and looks as she passes by. Breathing?. Movement?. Imperceptible almost, imagination and pattern recognition. A few feet ahead she stops, gets out the torch and walks back. It’s a wolf. Bleeding. Gasping for breath. Dying.
She picks him up, carries him to the car and lies him down next to the basket of buns and cupcakes. Wet fur, blood, poop and the aroma of cupcakes. She is nearly at Gran’s. A turn to the left, a bumpy ride down the mud path till the trees almost close in and she is there.

The basket of bakes is forgotten in the car. The wolf is next to the heater and Gran is cleaning out his wound: a big gash along his mouth. The jaw is broken. ‘He will recover’, says Gran. ‘Let him stay here’.

A week later he is dead. Red still drives down to meet Gran. Alongside her runs a silver-black wolf keeping the roads safe from huntsmen.

This is for day-2, poetry challenge by Terri Windling ( http://windling.typepad.com/blog/2013/10/poe.html#comment-6a00e54fcf73858834019affe630ba970b)



The Hag and I


The Hag and I,
For a living
We make rampion salads and spin gold.
To pass the time
she tells me tales
Of her sister‘s
love for mirrors,
or of her aunt’s cottage of candy,
I listen while I chop the herbs and vegetables,
But only she mixes the spices,
Secret, scented, seductive.


When I spin endless reams, she says
‘Careful, do not prick yourself,
Like niece Beauty did,
We really cannot afford a hundred year sleep.
Times are tough and even gold spun by a maiden
Has few takers’.


When she goes to the village,
I look out into clouds.
Far below,
Peasants and nobleman pass,
Look up furtively, hurriedly,
I wave but no one waves back.


In the evenings, I throw down a rope
Of gold,
And the Hag climbs up,
Takes out her pouch
Counts out the copper,
Dines on unsold salad,
And then it’s time to spin again.


‘This evening’s tale is about my brother Rumple’,
‘Stop me if you have heard it before’.
Nimble and swift, her bony fingers spin,
Fine threads of gold,
And I see,
Moistness and tenderness,
In old wrinkled eyes.

There are maidens and there are wolves,
And then there are the rescuers.
Big, burly, brave,
They burst in, uncalled,
Unasked,
Dragging with them death,
In bloody trails.

But the forest is old,
I, older still.
I have walked these paths,
Known each tree,
Known each beast,
And held their magic,
In me.

Know hunter, when you kill,
And spill life,
I am watching,
Waiting,
For you to burst in again,
Unannounced.

My grandmother and I,
We are readying a feast,
Wolf is by the hearth,
The fireplace warm,
Outside storm clouds gather.

You are lost, hunter,
Tired you drag
Feet weary and hands blistered,
Fingers caked in mud and blood,
You seek us.

In a lone cottage,
A welcoming light shines.
Inside two women and one wolf,
Ancient and endless,
Wait.

Wait, hunter,
For you.

I have been asked to mourn you,

to feel each thing that I said I did not feel.

Feel grief,

feel pain, feel the tears leave wet trails

along their downward journey.

Feel the despair, the hopelessness, the fear.

I felt nothing when I saw you, dead.

I held you,

hoping to feel warm.

I felt the softness of your fur,

the stiffness of your limbs and the paper thinness of your ears.

I picked you up, my mind scanning for space in the garden,

too full of the dead. I did not mourn.

A creeper, a rose, maybe a herb bush,

or some catnip.

But most importantly, for a few months

a heavy pot, I would have to find a very heavy pot to place

on top, so you would not be dug out, rotting and ghastly.

I did not mourn you.

I cannot mourn you.

My shoulders shrug,

I sigh.

What can I do?

I do not even remember the times together entirely.

You, asleep on my bed, purring.

You, heaped up in a pile of others, a rag patch purring quilt.

You chasing shadows and butterflies.

You hungry at 5 am.

You on my lap,

You, soft and prickly,

jumpy and purry,

crazy and wise.

I did not mourn you.

I have not mourned you.

I hope that it is not important to mourn, for you and for me.

I just hope that it’s a Dr.Who universe,

and you are there,

and a crack in time

will widen

and we will meet.