The Wolf and the Woodsman

by Ava Reid

The trees have to be tied down by sunset. When the Woodsmen come, they always try to run.

But how did a perfect being create something as imperfect as humans, so prone to caprice and cruelty?

I only understood later why it was such a flawless ruse. She’d left no evidence of her wicked intent, no wound I could point to and say, See, she hurt me. When I tried to articulate my pain, I’d only seemed like a jabbering child. Why hadn’t I just come out, after all? Everyone knows the forest is dangerous at night.

It’s my own revulsion and terror, my own misplaced pity and guilt that’s wounding me, nothing more.

It’s hard to think that it took me so long to realize that the shape of our wounds is the same.

Gáspár wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and squints through the light, watching me. It is frighteningly easy to envision him on his back in the dirt: he would be as fumbling and gentle as a fawn, I think, and afterward anxious to conceal any bruises he had left.

“You’re worse than any monster, it’s true,” he says. He gives a soft laugh, but his eye is solemn, humorless. Ordinarily I might have chafed at his words. Now I only feel a small quiver go through my chest, a heady pulse of thrill twined with fear, the way the air grows thick and close before a storm. “And why is that?” “You have the uncommon ability to make me doubt what I once thought was certain,” he says. “I’ve spent the last fortnight fearing you would destroy me. You may still.”

My hand curls around the hilt of my knife. “Would you let me destroy you, then?” “It would be just as well,” Gáspár says miserably. “I should be struck dead, for wanting you the way I do.”