The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales

by Emily Brewes

  The big evergreen in the backyard, framed by the kitchen window, was laden with pinecones frosted white with sap.

  Perfect!

  It felt like I was moving in a dream, like I couldn’t gain speed no matter how hard I tried. Everything took too long. The process of getting a fire going wasn’t more than half an hour, but it seemed like half the day was gone before I took a break with my head against the armchair.

  Just five minutes, I promised. Then soup.

  Doggo was still breathing. It might’ve only been in comparison to the heat radiating from the wood stove, but he felt cooler than he did before.

  “Hang on. We’re gonna get you better in no time.”

  I rifled the kitchen cabinets first, just in case. Deep in my brain lived the knowledge that there were human foods dogs shouldn’t have, but the only ones I could call to mind were chocolate and grapes. And there was fat chance of finding either in any fit state to eat.

  “They’re probably worst, then.” I figured. We’d just have to take our chances, otherwise.

  I found a bulging can of minestrone, a couple tins of smoked oysters in broth, and one big can of wet dog food with a bright yellow label.

  “Holy shit, it’s a Christmas miracle!”

  With a bigger pot than the one I’d swiped from Canadian Tire, I could add a bunch of water to the “rich and meaty” dog food and boil the crap out of it. Soup! That way, it’d go further plus get some fluids into Doggo. That was important with a fever, right? Lots of fluids. Something about water, about drinking or swallowing, tickled the back of my brain, but it was neither strong nor specific enough to slow me down.

  In a big wall cabinet by the back door, I found a gigantic stock pot. After some physical comedy with a rickety chair, I got it down. I took it to the river at a trot. Once full, I was barely able to lift it, though I managed through sheer will. Everything seemed to be catching up with me at once: my age, my health, my ignorance. On the verge of giving in, the running coach’s voice piped up to say, “C’mon, Vanderchuck. Just a few more steps, and we’re home free.”

  The purification tablet packaging was printed with instructions, but they’d been rubbed to illegibility. I could make out something per litre but couldn’t tell what the something was, nor could I easily recall what a litre looked like, let alone how many I’d got in the pot. I put two tablets in, then added a third for good measure. Then I crossed my fingers that giardia’s defences against chlorine had become especially frail.

  The fire was still going, which, considering my lack of experience in managing such things, seemed downright miraculous. It would need more fuel soon enough, or else I’d be stuck starting it from scratch. I needed another short break before I could think about that. With luck, there was enough heat to boil the water.

  Religion was never much of a thing in our house. The nearest church was a town over, in Powassan, and seeing as Mum didn’t care much for driving, we didn’t go often but she took a few times when I was small. By the time Olivia was born, she only went herself and only by convincing Dad to take us kids for bacon and eggs at the diner across from the church.

  Even so, I knew the basics of praying.

  It wasn’t formal enough or formed enough to give voice. I only put my head down and begged anything listening to help Doggo pull through. Capital Gee God, Odin, Zeus, the Great Forest Spirit — anybody. There’s nobody else but him, I told them by radiating thought. And I will not go back to being alone. Not now, not having tasted companionship. Olivia, my dad, they were just ghosts of maybes. Possibly still alive but probably not. Doggo was there, and real, and I loved that dumb idiot more than … more than maybe anybody, ever.

  Please, I begged. Please don’t leave me.

  The intensity of my feelings on the matter was a bit shocking, even for me at that stage of our companionship. I hauled myself up from the floor and staggered into the small enclosure, which turned out to be a small washroom. The cottage didn’t have running water, and never had, but a manual water pump stuck up through the floorboards.

  My paternal grandparents’ place, as well as a few neighbours in Trout Creek, had had such devices. They were usually away from the house, and often as not used as a means of watering animals. I knew enough to tell that with nothing to prime the pump, there was little hope that it would do anything. Still, I tried. On the second or third pump, I felt the catch of suction. It took another dozen pumps, but it eventually coughed icy water all over my shoes.

  I grabbed the basin from the counter and filled it. The water was utterly glacial. It numbed my skin as I splashed it on my hands and face. The sensation brought me back to the here and now, like a firm slap to a hysteric. In the mirror, I saw a face so old that it looked like a mask. When I pictured myself, I didn’t see a geriatric with the purple-scabbed scar of a facial brand. I saw myself: familiar and fifteen. The Jesse who went Underground, not this resurrected husk. I wondered if the adults I’d known saw themselves similarly. If they held the pearl of their youth as an image of their true selves, or if this was the result of my forced hiatus Underground.

  There was no one to ask, so I pushed the question away. Maybe think more on it later.

  I chopped up some more hunks of table and brought them stove side. Doggo’s face was burrowed into the sleeve of his coat-blanket. Movement. That was a good sign surely. I scritched his exposed shoulder before crouching down in front of the stove door to feed the fire.

  Well before the second batch of wood was burned through, the water got hot enough — not boiling but its surface steadily steaming. I pulled the tab, easing off the can lid, and dumped its contents into the pot. The solid slab of chipped meat and gravy made an oozy sucking sound as it exited the can. It flopped into the hot water like a manatee diving gracelessly into a jacuzzi. I used a long-handled ladle I’d found in the kitchen to break it apart, stirring it through, and rinsing the dregs from the can.

  Shallow bowls from yet another cupboard, ones that looked like a plate and a bowl had a baby, waited nearby. I figured one of those would be easy for Doggo to get his face into, and it would help the soup cool more quickly than a deeper vessel.

  While I sat blowing across the surface of his soup, Doggo began grumbling in his sleep. Better and better! When the soup was just barely warmer than my finger, I gently roused him, peeling the coat away from his face.

  “Hey there, kid. Get some of this in you.”

  He managed to lift up his head. Once he caught a whiff of the stuff, he dove in whole hog, getting more of it on his face and the floor than in his mouth. I had another nagging feeling that I was missing something vital but brushed it aside. In moments, the last drop was gone and Doggo was cleaning the empty plate.

  “Hold on, hold on. Let me get you some more.”

  We continued this way for four bowls before his neck went noodly again. The floor, the edge of the chair, and my nearest pant leg were soaked in soup. And as I pulled the coat up around him, I noticed it was pretty wet, too. I made sure Doggo was getting good heat from the stove. When he was good and snuggled, I got up to resume my ransack of the cottage with a focus on clean, dry linens.

  I found stacks of flannel sheets and woollen blankets in the bedroom. The sheets were fine, but the blankets were Swiss-cheesed by moth holes. I took the biggest sheets and trucked them back to the main room.

  During my earlier rummage in the kitchen, I’d come across a drawer of hand tools. I went back to it to grab a hammer and some nails, plus a roll of twine. At the top of my reach standing tiptoe on the floor, I nailed the twine in a loop around the wood stove — along the walls and spanning the width of the room, cutting it more or less in half. I used this to hang the sheets, nailing in places where I could, draping them over the string and clipping with clothes pegs where I couldn’t. My aim was to keep some of the warmth in and make a smaller space to heat. That would save fuel, stretching what little we had into a virtual bounty.

  Back in the bedroom, I chanced on some viabl
e blankets that had been stored in a cedar chest. I brought these back and spread a couple across the floor as insulation. Another one got warmed by my body before being swapped out for my coat as Doggo’s cover. I figured I’d need to go outside before bedtime, and the coat was far more manageable to wear.

  I walked around outside our little yurt of sheets, making sure all the windows and doors were locked or blocked. Wherever there were curtains, I pulled them closed. Before I latched the front door, I took a jog to the treeline to do my necessaries. There was little to be done since I’d upchucked earlier and not eaten since, but I buried it all the same.

  The sun was sinking low behind the trees nearest the road, so it seemed later than it was. There was a level of local gloom that didn’t match the lightness in the sky above. Much as I longed to linger, just sucking air, as my dad used to say, a damp chill was setting in. Plus Doggo needed me.

  I needed Doggo.

  It was hard to distinguish which of those statements was truer.

  Back in the cottage, I closed and latched the door. We were as safe as I could make us for the moment. Which was just as well, since I was more exhausted than I could remember ever being. Every muscle and joint throbbed from use. My brain was foggy and ready for sleep. I ducked into the yurt of sheets to settle in for the night.

  “Food Bringer,” Doggo croaked. His voice was thin, like a ghost of itself. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him at all, or if I just wanted so badly to hear him speak.

  I leaned in close, pushing my forehead against his while scritching his jaw. “Hey, buddy. How you feelin’?”

  He groaned and rolled over. One foreleg lifted, inviting me to scratch his belly. The gesture was so familiar amid all the newness, of being aboveground, of Doggo being sick, I teared up. Of course, I obliged his simple request. It felt like time for a story, but they were playing coy. Didn’t matter. Good enough to be sitting there with Doggo, my best and only friend, warm and safe and dry. We could be back Underground. We could’ve woken to find we were alone in the world.

  We could’ve died in our sleep and this was Paradise.

  Despite any uncertainty, that moment was perfect. I hoped it would last for the rest of our lives as I fell into a gentle doze. Only the story woke me when it was ready to be told.

  The Girl Who Followed a Cat

  In a faraway land, there was an only daughter whose mother ailed. With no money for medicine, the girl, who was called Millicent, feared she would soon be orphaned. Her father had left years before and not returned. And nary a day passed when Millicent’s mother did not curse his name for doing thus.

  King’s men arrived in the town to recruit lads for the navy. “Stout, strong lads who’re not afraid of the sea,” they said. “A year’s pay in advance for a contract of five. Take home the rest should you live.”

  Millicent heard these words as she was at the market one day. Like a shot, she was home to their tiny cottage at the town’s edge.

  “Mother, mother,” she cried. “Our prayers are answered! I’ll join the king’s navy, and you’ll have a year’s pay on the instant. In five short years, we’ll be set for life.”

  Millicent’s mother hung her head. “Oh, foolish child! So like your father. If you’re that desperate to be rid of me, just go. They’ll not take girls to the navy any more than pigs can fly.”

  The girl was unswayed. She cut her long hair and took her Sunday best from the garderobe. Then she kissed her mother and was away.

  In town, she sold the hair and the dress for a suit of jacket and britches. Once dressed, Millicent rubbed the cloth and her skin with dust from the road. She climbed a tree and got sap on her hands. And she ran up and down the fields to catch some cockleburs and work up a lather of sweat. This done, back she went to the town square to meet the recruiters.

  The king’s men looked her up and down and seemed satisfied with her pedigree. They asked her but one question: “Have you ever been to sea?”

  She replied, “Sure as the love of my mother and father, I have.”

  They nodded and had her make her mark upon the contract. Then they presented her with a pair of coins — one of silver and another of gold — representing a year’s pay.

  “Have you a trusted runner?” asked Millicent. “I would take this pay to my ailing mother, only we’ve fallen out over my enlistment, and she told me not to darken her door the more.”

  The elder of the men nodded sagely. “All too common, my boy. Worry not, for we’ll get the coins to your mam.”

  That night, Millicent slept in the billet with the other newly enlisted men. The low-ceilinged room buzzed with snorts and snores, grunts and coughs. The girl lay awake, frightened of her decision, and tried to remember her new name. Her father’s name.

  Crispin. I am Crispin. How d’you do? My name’s Crispin, friend. What’s yours?

  They were a week’s journey from the sea, and another two weeks from setting sail. Old salts spent the time barking orders at the new blood, showing them the ropes. One old timer named Galt, bald and brown as a nut, took a special shine to Millicent, now called Crispin. He took great delight in finding fault in Crispin’s work or in kicking, tripping, or shoving the lad at any opportunity.

  “Missed a spot,” he’d cackle, just having pushed Crispin to a freshly swabbed deck with one axe-blade hip.

  Two days out to sea, bruised and beleaguered, Crispin sat among the stores and wept. It was cold comfort to know that Millicent’s mother was surely on the mend by now. Meanwhile, he looked down the barrel of another five years of torment.

  From a gap between casks of salted lemons sauntered a cat. Her beautiful tortoiseshell coat gleamed even in the dimness. She butted her head against Crispin’s knee.

  “What troubles you, child?” inquired the cat.

  Far from being startled that a cat could talk, Crispin poured his heart out to the creature. He told his story and Millicent’s, start to finish.

  “And now here I am. Five years from my fortune, yet not sure I’ll last another five minutes. What am I to do?”

  The cat said nothing further for the moment but sat in Crispin’s lap, purring loudly. Crispin felt the gentle vibrations wash through his belly and was calmed. Tears ceased flowing and his heart felt peace for the first time since leaving port.

  “Worry not, child. I will help and protect you from the worst of things. Consider that you and Galt may have more in common than you realize. Help him understand that helping you helps both of you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Crispin, but by then the cat was gone, drifted back between the casks like a wisp of smoke.

  Crispin thought long and hard about what the cat had said about Galt. For days, he made no further headway in solving the riddle. Then one morning, he caught Galt alone on the watch. Having little other recourse, the lad up and asked Galt about it.

  “Tell me what we could have in common that would make you so bilious toward me?”

  Galt stared sharply into Crispin’s soft, new face. In that moment, without a word uttered, the riddle’s solution. For Galt’s eyes, well hidden by his gruff manner and mean looks, were doubtlessly those of a woman. Crispin was struck dumb for several moments. Then he managed to ask, “How? How have you gone so long in hiding? And nobody’s found you out?”

  Galt shrugged and spat over the railing. “Nothing to find. I’m no more woman today than I was when I walked up the gangplank as a pie-eyed youngster like you. But you’re so bad at hiding what you truly are that you’ll draw suspicion to us both.”

  “Then help me,” Crispin begged. “Why bully me?”

  “Because the best way for two men to keep a secret is if one of them is dead.”

  THE STORY SUDDENLY dried up on my tongue.

  Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck me, rattled my brain.

  He’s gonna die. I’ll be alone again.

  What am I doing? Telling some fairy tale to distract from how absolutely fucked I am. How fucked this all is. Baked Earth. Tunnel-grub human be
ings. Me and a dying dog against the uncaring universe.

  Fuck, Doggo.

  I’m so goddamn sorry for everything.

  Not for the first time since settling in, I cursed the cottage’s former owners — or whoever had pillaged the place before I did — for not leaving one measly bottle of liquor. I had to settle for a whistle wetting of cold dog-food soup instead.

  Do you mean to kill me then?” asked Crispin, bracing for a knife to the gut or to bethrown overboard.

  Galt’s fox-grey eyes glittered in the light of a false dawn. “Tell me first why you’re here. Perhaps I’ll think it worthy and spare you.”

  So, Crispin related the whole sad tale, the whys and wherefores of how he’d gotten there. All the while, Galt watched, eyes cruel as stars.

  When the boy was done, they stood in silence for a time. Around them, the ship spoke in creaking tones of what it was like to ride the salty swell of the sea. With a grunt, Galt grabbed Crispin by his tunic and pulled him close. Into his ear, the grim man growled, “You may not know it yet, but I do this for your mother.”

  So saying, Galt pitched Crispin over the rail. The sea swallowed him up with nary a splash and Crispin was swiftly passed by the clipping ship. When it was more than a league away, Crispin (or perhaps Millicent once more) heard a cry that sounded like Galt announcing, “Man overboard!”

  The ship was too distant to hear one drowning child’s cries for help. So it was quite surprising for that self-same child to hear a voice quite near at hand speaking words of calm. In the next moment, it became clear that the speaker was the tortoiseshell cat.

  “Worry not, child. ’Tis as easy to swim as to drown. Only hark me closely and do as I say.”

  This was a time when most ships kept close to shore rather than make the dangerous journey across the salty desert of the sea. So it wasn’t long before the swimming pair sighted land. A short time thereafter, they were pulled up on the strand.

  Crispicent (Millipin?) succumbed to exhaustion from the effort of the swim. As they passed in and out of waking, the cat brought them water and small fruits to eat. Thankfully, the tide was high as they arrived so that they were not overwhelmed by rising waters. Thus they stayed for a day and a night.