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Ylfa had to build the campfire because Mother didn’t know how. And Ylfa killed the rabbit in the woods, because Mother didn’t know how. But Mother cooked the rabbit over the campfire. And he said she did such a good job hunting it down – “How did you find such a juicy rabbit? Not evil or anything!” – that’s what he said, exactly, and he patted her on the back a little, and nobody has touched her since she, well, and she got to sit sort of close to him by the campfire, which was almost like being at a dinner table with people who loved her. It could have been, if she squinted.
And now the night is like a thick black blanket pressed to her nose, and Mother is asleep on the ground by the fire, and Ylfa is still hungry.
She watches him sleep. (She can see in the dark now.) In dreaming his face relaxes, loses that constant edge of worry that he’s never quite able to hide from her. He looks younger. Early sixties, maybe. Instead of how he looks when he’s awake: old. Unimaginably old.
Ylfa swallows down the drool in her mouth and fidgets with one of her pigtails to give herself something to do with her hands. She shouldn’t even be hungry. Really, she shouldn’t even be hungry at all. So it’s stupid that she is. She had half a rabbit. Before,
before,
when she was still a person, when people loved her,
when she wasn’t so hungry,
…well, before, half a rabbit would have been a feast. A bounty. And now here she is, drooling, desperate.
“I’m not,” she whispers to herself. (Desperately.) “I’m not. Hungry. And if I was, I would eat some berries or something. There’s berries in the woods and I’d eat those. That’s, um, that’s what I want. Berries.”
The way they’d burst open between her teeth. Flooding her mouth with the taste of hot metal, the vital gush of life, that thing she aches for constantly but refuses to put a name to—
Outside of the campfire’s small circle of light, a branch cracks. Ylfa’s head snaps up, her arms shiver up a shaggy coat of fur. When she breathes in through her nose, she can smell Mother: the sour smell of his sweat, the mouth-watering smell of warm meat, no, not that, not that, berries, she can smell something else. In the woods. Something small. Another rabbit.
“Rabbits are okay to eat, right?” Ylfa whispers. “Mother had some. Before. So they’re totally fine. Good, even. It’s good for me to not be hungry. So I don’t, um…and it’s not like, it’s not like I need to be right here to keep watch…I’d be able to hear…”
It’s a moot point, anyways: she’s already in a crouch, padding quietly into the woods. Her whole body begins to ache, each of her bones ache – it would feel so good to let it out, it would feel so good. Now that she has promised this to her body, it wants her to deliver. It begs her to turn the key, to open the door, to let herself inside.
And she loves her – Ylfa – Ylfa standing outside the door, just wanting to come in. Wanting to be warm, and safe, and come home. She can’t stop herself from loving that little girl in her neat red hood.
She throws open the door.
And then everything’s sort of messy, for a while.
When she blinks and wakes up from her rage, she has her face buried in the chest of something that looks like it could have been a deer, once, maybe. She is gnawing on – um – gosh, she really should have asked someone to teach her what all the different body parts are – a lung, maybe? Probably a lung. Whatever it is, it tastes so good. So good. And the warm satisfaction purrs through her, suffuses her, licks at her face with such affection. She has done so well. She has done exactly what she was supposed to do. What she was made for. Her belly is so full and it’s as warm as a fireplace, packed up to the brim to ward away winter cold and agonizing loneliness. She’ll get (she chews through the cords in the throat) her brother to give her his blanket, (she eats the tongue out of its mouth) because he’s always been easy to (scrapes the flesh from the roof of its mouth with her teeth) bully, but he’ll know (she can smell Mother) she doesn’t mean it, not really, (hear the forest floor under his feet) she never means it, (he’s stepping closer) she loves him (she could kill him) and she loves him (she wants to kill him) and she loves him (and it would be easy) and she wouldn’t. Ever. Hurt. Him!
With effort, Ylfa lifts her face from the deer and snarls in Mother’s direction. Please stay away from me, please, this is all I can do, this is all I have.
“Red?” Mother says sleepily. “Were you still hungry? You should have told me, you could have had the other part of the rabbit.”
Ylfa lets out another frothing snarl, full of teeth and panic.
“Come back to the fire, okay? You’re gonna get cold out here.”
He steps closer. Just an old man – sleep-wrinkled, frail. She watched him try to do a push-up yesterday and halfway through he collapsed and started crying. To gut him would be effortless. It’s what she’s supposed to do. What she was made for.
But instead, she says: “You aren’t scared of me?”
Her voice is high and thin, gone phlegmy from the blood that’s gumming up her throat.
“What?” Mother says. He steps closer. (Why?) “No, of course I’m not scared of you, don’t be silly. You’re just a little girl. Really, let’s go back now, we’re going to catch our deaths out here.” And he holds out his hand.
Ylfa stands up, slowly; she feels like she is in a dream as thin as a soap bubble, and if she moves too quickly she’ll pop it. She steps forward. She takes Mother Goose’s hand.
“There you are,” he says cheerfully, and he begins to tug her back towards the campfire. “Really, next time just tell me if you’re getting, you know, peckish. You're a growing girl, I know you need plenty of food to build strong muscles – and in these times—”
He keeps talking. His voice is warm. Like a dream of a bed shared with five other people, soft and cozy. Ylfa doesn’t say anything, in case the blood messes up her voice – in case she says something terrible or, like, snarls again. She just stays quiet. She holds onto his hand; she licks the blood off her mouth. She watches as they follow the trail of bloodcrumbs past the deer, and a huge bird, and three rabbits, and another deer – its skull cracked open by sharp teeth – until they’re back at the fire, and Mother tugs her to sit down.
“Oh,” he says, “I am too old for this. Honestly. My bed back home…you know, my pillows had goose feathers in them? What a twist of fate, right?”
“I’m sorry,” Ylfa whispers.
“What? What for? You don’t…oh, Red, you don’t think I’m going to be mad at you, do you?”
A silver knife pierced through her shoulder.
“Yes,” Ylfa whispers.
“You’re a good girl,” Mother says decisively; he carefully begins the work of unsticking his hand from hers. “You’ve found yourself in a situation, definitely, but who hasn’t? My boy…” and he exhales, finally gets his hand free. He turns it back and forth in the light; he studies his bloody palm. “Well,” he says finally, “you remind me of him, actually. When he was your age.”
She ate too much, probably. That’s why she feels like this – sick – bubbling over, like a pot of soup kept on the fire for too long. She feels like she has to run into the forest and keep running, forever, until she finds whatever it is that she deserves.
“Um,” she says. “My mom didn’t…”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, and he hugs her. There’s one brief bright moment where it’s just a hug, where she doesn’t think about his throat or his heart or the thin powdery softness of his skin. It’s just a hug. Like she used to get, when she was real.
And then the moment passes and she’s just herself again: Red, red. Bloody and tired. But not as hungry.
“I’m sorry,” Mother says, “that they were cruel to you. I know that’s hard. I won’t…well, I’ll be here for you. If you need a friend, or a hug, or someone to talk to. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ylfa whispers. “I think, um. I think I need to do more hunting, I mean, I have to take longer, um. Next time. And you can have the whole rabbit! If you want it.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Mother says, and she can hear his heartbeat rattling away, and she squirms until he lets go of the hug. (She wishes he was still hugging her.) (Also, she doesn’t.) “Now let’s both get some sleep, okay?”
“You can sleep,” Ylfa says. “I can, um, I can watch. Still. Just in case.”
“I don’t think anything’s going to try to try to pick a fight tonight,” Mother says wryly, and he looks off towards the closest carcass. Looks back at her. Waggles her eyebrows a little, in a way that makes her snort out a laugh.
“There you are,” he says, and smiles. “Now lie down and keep an old man warm, won’t you? My bones, yipes. I’m too old for this sort of thing. Did I say that already?”
“Yeah,” Ylfa whispers, “you did,” and she lies down with him in front of the fire. When she closes her eyes she’s home again. Her sister kicking her in the knee, her other sister starting to snore. And her mother in the doorway, saying—
Her mother, saying—
Mother, saying “Good night, Red.” His breathing starting to slow as he drifts slowly towards sleep.
When she knows for sure he’s asleep, Ylfa whispers: “I’ll protect you. I’ll stay with you. I won’t run away from you, I promise.”
He can’t hear her. That’s why she says it. So she can make that promise to him, but also to herself. So she can hold both of them close to her heart, and keep them there, and keep them warm in the slaughterhouse of her chest until they all fall asleep.