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few hours, the old man had passed.
    “That is very kind of you,” Red smiled. “Perhaps when you have finished here, you’ll come to the cottage and join us for a cup of ale?”
    She lowered her chin and looked up at him coyly.
    The woodsman’s eyes sparkled in the lamplight.
    “Aye. Maybe I will. Very good of you to offer, Miss Red.”
    Red nodded, and backed out of the shed.
    She strolled up the path to the front door and peeped through the star-shaped hole at eye-level. It was dark inside. Red wrapped on the door with her knuckles and called out.
    “Grandmama! Are you awake? It’s me, Red. May I come in?”
    Silence. Red tapped again and pressed her ear to the wood.
    “Grandmama!”
    This time, there came a rattling cough and the rustle of bed-linen. At last a gruff, slurred voice said,
    “It’s on the latch. Come in, child.”
    Red lifted the latch, pushed the door open with a creak and stepped inside. Her heels clattered on the dusty wooden floor. She walked across the room, seeing cold ashes piled high in the grate of the huge fireplace. It was colder inside the house than outside, the shutters having kept the sunlight and warmth of the day out. An empty cauldron hung in the hearth. Bundles of dried herbs and glass bottles of various sizes and shapes cluttered the dresser. A jar of withered monkshood flowers and another of something which looked like tiny animal bones sat on the counter next to a foul-smelling paste, long since crusted over, in a large, stone mortar. The rocking chair in the corner pitched gently backwards and forwards as Red’s footfall bent the buckled old floorboards. She put the basket down on the rickety table.
    She reached the threshold of the bedroom and saw a prone figure in the cot, swaddled in linens and woolen blankets. A fetid stink filled the air, and Red gagged at the thought of changing the old woman’s soiled sheets or emptying her overflowing chamber pot.
    “Grandmama? I’ve brought you some good things to eat. They will give you your strength back in no time, I’m sure.”
    “Come closer, dear.”
    Red hesitated. That was not her grandmother’s voice. Her heel slipped a little as she moved toward the bed and she saw that there was a dark, greasy puddle at her feet. Her heart thumped wildly, the blood thundering inside her head.
    Her eyes began to adjust to the low light, and Red knew for certain that the body in the bed was too big to be her grandmother’s. The stench intensified with each step, and now she recognized the metallic tang of blood under a nauseating whiff of human excrement.
    “Closer,” the thing in the bed whispered, and turned towards her a little, revealing the monstrous size of its head.
    Red’s stomach fluttered.
    “Oh Grandmama,” she said quietly. “What big ears you have.”
    A low rumble of laughter emanated from the bed.
    “All the better to hear you with, my dear.”
    The voice was guttural and wrong. It was not the voice of a woman or a man. More like a dog trying to mimic a human master. Red took another step towards the bed. Something pale and snake-like glistened on the floor under the bed. The smell was terrible. The thing in the bed faced her, bedclothes tucked up over the lower half of its face, huge eyes yellow and round. Animalistic.
    “And Grandmama! What big eyes you have.”
    “All the better to see you with.”
    Red’s knees hit the edge of the bed and she stumbled forward into the soft pile of blankets. She reached up and tugged the covering from the muzzle of the wolf. Its mouth hung open, blood smeared on its teeth. Its tongue lolled over pointed canines as it panted hot gusts.
    Red glanced down at the floor and saw long, gnarled fingers, the joints swollen and blue. There was a ring on the littlest digit. Her mother’s gold wedding band. Grandmother had started wearing it after they dragged her daughter-in-law’s body from the mill pond. Red knew in her bones that if anyone had cared to check, there would have