Wolf's Path (Monstrous Hearts: The Short Stories)

The Starving Times

Author's Note: Those of you who have read Wolf's Wife and Wolf's Bane might remember that Colton had known Alice's grandmother. This is a grim little fairy tale of how they met.

The witch was hungry. She was always hungry. The bones in the iron pot over the fire had long had their marrow picked out with a fork; now she boiled them to draw out enough gelatin to thicken the water into broth.

Ah, how she had suffered since Ruth had left. Such a selfish child, leaving her own mother to starve in the woods like a beast. Time was, she herself could have drawn in travelers through her swaying hips and sweet laughter, or tied her hair back with a handkerchief and put on sunworn clothing to invoke a sense of honest toil, of clearing out a safe patch of earth in a land where trees bewildered any sense of direction and foxes waited to feed on bodies lost to the rest of the world.

But now the witch was old, and only invoked the dryness of dust on forgotten objects and the yellowed teeth of a skull's grin. When people came to her little cabin in the woods, it was by accident, and it happened less and less. She had been lucky to catch that architect.

With a sigh, she stirred at the pot again to see if the liquid inside had thickened at all. The dull clacking of the bones against her spoon consumed her senses. When one starved, one's focus always narrowed in scope to what could be eaten. And yet, even as she bent closer to the sad attempt at soup, something else brushed against the witch's shriveled mind. A taste to the air, a haze to the sunlight. Like smoke traveling from a distant fire, intangible even as it overwhelmed.

Someone was approaching the cabin.

The witch forgot the way her stomach pinched and her hands trembled, forgot the broth bubbling in the pot. She hobbled to the kitchen table as fast as possible, waving a hand over the leftover rat bones and snail shells that rolled along the worn wood.

In the old days, when she'd been at full strength, a veritable feast would have appeared. Freshly-baked rolls twisted into fanciful shapes and nestled together in gingham cloth. A roast glistening with its own succulent fat, a proud centerpiece among the wild greens roasted with garlic and the split figs drizzled with honey. Hand-picked food, plucked from the earth and skinned of its hide.

But now—oh, how sad it all appeared. A bowl of broth with some withered carrots sitting in it. Dried strips of meat as gnarled as her own hands. A wrinkled apple, its sallow color warning all of its sour nature. For the best that the witch could do in her weak state was to inspire pity instead of hunger. Pity wasn't nearly as delicious, but to a pinched stomach, even mere gruel would do.

The witch sat there with her ancient face and worn clothes, and waited for her visitor to arrive.

The footsteps climbing her porch sounded sure and strong, and the witch's jowls nearly slavered. This would be a good meal. This would be one she could make last for the whole winter. When a knock sounded on the door, it was all she could do to sound surprised instead of ravenous.

"Whoever it is, come in. The door's unlocked and these old bones don't want to leave the fireside."

She hunched there by the weak flames, letting the creak of hinges fall silent before turning to look. Her painful movements were not exaggerated; in her state of starvation, age made itself known in the very creak of her bones, in the flabby sway of skin and the trembling of desiccated muscle. She was an ugly old thing, a vulture of a figure, and it sharpened her hunger all the more as her gaze fell upon the figure standing just inside the doorway, not yet within the reach of the firelight.

It was a man, that much was clear. One tall and broad in the shoulder. Despite the way he remained in shadow, with only the bare shape of him rimmed in sunlight, she sensed that he was strong beneath the worn clothing, his muscles well-used. Well, that was all right. She knew plenty of kitchen tricks to soften tough meat. The witch wished she could see his face—a man's face said a lot about his nature—but already she felt a twitching between her ribs. Not the savage stabbing that had happened after Ruth had left. Something much quieter but equally persistent.