Once Upon a Happy Ending: An Anthology of Reimagined Fairy Tales

by Casey Lane

  I raised by eyebrows, challenging him to continue. “Go on.”

  He poked the fire with a stick, stoking the embers. “It started thirty or so years ago—the Elders got a call from the outside world. Turned out the plague hadn’t decimated everything like they thought. Some pockets of civilization survived, and those pockets wanted to help us. Of course, getting through a forest full of predatory monsters to do so wasn’t something they were willing to try with already thinned out numbers.” He stood and pulled the boar from atop the fire, careful not to touch it as he slid it onto a plate. “You’ll have to tear it apart yourself, I’m afraid. Just the way it is.”

  He plopped himself back down as my fingers went to work on the hot meat. “Anyway, the Elders decided getting through those woods and out into the world was to be top priority. After all, who wants to stay in some self-contained prison if there’s a big beautiful world out there? To that end, a full third of the population was moved underground to work on a solution.” He pointed to the hood around my shoulders. “And we found one.”

  “This?” I asked, hungrily snapping hunks of meat into my mouth. The salty goodness made my stomach rumble as hot grease rolled down my face. “This is a rag,” I said.

  “Hardly,” he answered. “That’s our only way out. There’s energy in these woods. In the old world, it might have been called magic or science. Now, we just call it handy. That hood, like all the previous hoods, is made from the fabric created from a very specific type of insect. There are stories that say those insects, the worms of wonder, are the reincarnated spirits of those who lost their lives with the plague. They say they came back to help us, to give us the resource we needed to rejoin the world.” He shook his head. “And, though I don’t believe it myself, once I saw what it could do, I could see where they were coming from.”

  I paused, lowering the meat from my face and setting it down. Magical worms? How could that be the true reality?

  “It’s just a garment,” I said, wiping my hands and standing. “It doesn’t do anything but keep me warm. Maybe draw attention to the beast with its bright colors, but that’s about it.”

  He stood to meet me. Ridiculously, my heart skipped a beat as he moved toward me. It wasn’t that I was afraid of him. Perhaps I should have been. After all, I didn’t know this man, and there was a good chance that what he was telling me was nothing than a series of lies orchestrated to put me at ease. And, though I had no idea what the reasoning for that might have been, it didn’t matter. He put his hands on my shoulders, and my heart sped up even more.

  “What did you think the cuts were for?” he asked, looking me up and down in a way that made me feel both excited and uncomfortable as his breath fell soft on my cheek. “What is it that they tell you people, that it’s a method to draw the beasts to you? Is that right?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “No, Lila.” The same sly smile reappeared on his face. “It’s to bind you to the hood, to its powers. Once the hood touches your blood, it belongs to you. It can never belong to someone else.” His grin morphed into a full on smile as he read the confusion in my eyes. “I can see you’re not exactly following me. Let me show you.”

  Hunter stepped back a few paces, then lunged toward me. My body tensed as his hands reached for me again. I thought he was going to grab me, though I wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he had. Instead, his hands fell on the hood. He jerked onto it hard, trying to pull it off of me. I braced myself, waiting for it to be removed.

  Instead, a whoosh of red energy surrounded me. I felt a rush of heat as it expanded, and a circle of red threw Hunter backward into a tree.

  I winced as he slid to the ground below.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, though I didn’t move. The circle of red energy was still surrounding me, and who knew what it would do to Hunter if he came into contact with it again?

  “Oh, yeah,” he answered, grabbing ahold of the trunk as he pulled himself back to his feet. “I’m aces. Curious as to know what happened?”

  “I’m curious about a lot of things,” I answered, breathing heavy. “The least of which isn’t how I’m supposed to deal with the swirling circle of magic around me!”

  “Take a breath,” he answered, leaning against the trunk and sucking in gulps of air. “Take a breath and command it in. I told you, the hood is connected to you. It belongs to you, and it’ll do what you say.”

  “I didn’t tell it to do that!” I yelled, pointing to Hunter and the mark he’d left in the tree.

  “That’s a protective reflex, sort of built in to the hood, I guess. We don’t really understand everything it does. But we understand the main purpose, and that’s to get us all the hell out of here.”

  I panicked a little as the energy still circled around me. “What?”

  “Just command it inward, Lila!” Hunter yelled.

  I took a deep breath and did as he asked as best I could.

  “Get in here!” I yelled, throwing my hands around. “Just, you know, do it!”

  The red sphere pulled back into me, disappearing into the hood. I gasped, looking around with a still pounding heart.

  “Right now,” I breathed heavy. “Tell me what this has to do with me right this instant!”

  His breathing started to level off, and he straightened to level his gaze at me. “The beasts don’t see the way you and I do. They use scent instead of their eyes. They smell certain physiological combinations. Things without those physiological combinations are basically invisible to them. Unfortunately, those combinations are nurtured by things like electromagnetic waves and refined chemicals, things that exist in the outside world.”

  “But don’t exist in the Clearing,” I finished.

  “Now you’re getting it,” he smiled. “You guys who live on the surface of the Clearing, away from the outside factors that make the rest of us smelly bait to the beasts, are basically bred to move sight unseen alongside the beasts.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I blanched. I had lived my entire life scared to death of these things, and they couldn’t even see me.

  “The hood gives you abilities—strength, speed, magical protective orbs…you know the drill,” Hunter said. “Unfortunately, the fabric is limited and only responds to females. That’s why we only choose women, and why we only do it once a year, on this day.”

  I closed the distance between us now that I was orb-free. “What’s so important about today?”

  “They sleep,” he said. “The first day of the year, every year, these horrible creatures sleep. Your mission, as the Hood, is to do what no other Hood was able to do before you. Get through these woods to the outside world—to a safe structure currently going by the codename ‘Grandmother’s House.’ Then bring us salvation.”

  “Salvation?” I asked, my palms sweating.

  “There’s a talisman within—a token that, when combined with the Hood, is said to have the power to save all of us. You have to do it, Lila. It has to be you.” He swallowed hard and looked up at me, tension in his eyes. “Because the worms have all died out. There is no more fabric. You, Lila, are the last Hood.”

  Nature of the Beast

  “You’re not invisible,” I said, looking over at Hunter. The last few hours had been uneventful when compared with the ones they followed. I had spent most of them in quiet contemplation, trying to make sense of this horrible burden that had been laid at my feet.

  I was a warrior, a put-upon warrior. And not just that, I was the last one. No pressure, right?

  As Hunter explained everything in more detail, I learned that the worms who created this silk died decades ago. What they had been working with was old product, and what was now on my back constituted the last of it.

  I was the Clearing’s last hope, the one woman alive who might stand a chance of getting to the safe house and grabbing salvation. So why had I been saddled with a walking target.

  “Excuse me?” Hunter said, looking over as he str
uggled to keep pace beside me.

  I had never been swift back in the Clearing. I had been too methodical for that. Here though, under the persuasion of the Hood, I found my steps coming quicker and my breath lasting longer. We had walked for hours and I wasn’t even close to tired. In fact, I had never felt better in my life.

  “I’m invisible to the beasts,” I said, taking stock of things. “But you’re not. The area under the Clearing is full of all that stuff that makes you smelly, right?”

  “You think I’m smelly?” A playful glint appeared in his eyes.

  “Be serious,” I said, but a smile draped across my face nonetheless.

  “I went on a cleanse,” he said, quickening his pace. “For the last year, I’ve been in a hyperbolic chamber. No processed foods, no contact with electromagnetic waves, and no people who have had any contact with them. I’ve basically been in a giant tube for the last year with no contact from anyone.” He shook his head. “It was a long year. But it was for this.”

  “Wow.” So my people weren’t the only ones who suffered from all of this. “That’s why you couldn’t eat the boar,” I said, then I panicked, remembering the taste of it in my mouth. “I ate the boar!”

  “Barely,” he said, his hand going to mine for comfort.

  Still, my heart skipped a beat. I mean, yeah, I barely knew him, but that didn’t change the fact that he was cute. Maybe it was just novelty of him not being someone I’ve grown up with, but I couldn’t help but feel the attraction.

  I looked away as he continued. “You lived your entire life without exposure. One meal won’t bring your levels high enough for detection, I can promise you that. You needed your strength for our journey.”

  “Our journey?” I asked.

  “I’m here, Lila,” he answered. “The whole way. Regardless of how this thing ends, I’m beside you. It’s what I trained for—beginning to end, start to finish.”

  Something fluttered inside of me. Maybe it was because I’d imagined I’d be all alone in this. Everyone knew that the Hood went through the forest on her own. It was part of the mystique.

  But as fate would have it, I had someone with me—a man who promised to be there until the end, whatever that end may be.

  “So what happens now?” I asked, my eyes flickering over to him. “I just walk through the forest until I get to the other side?” I shrugged. “You told me the beasts were asleep. So as long as we keep at our current pace, we should make it out in time enough to avoid them. Plus, they can’t sense us. Win win.”

  “Right,” Hunter said, but there was a note in his tone that made me look over at him, to see him stuff his hands into his pockets. It was the same tone my father used when he was breaking the news that my mother had been chosen to go into these very woods. He was hiding something.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, pulling to a stop beside him.

  I grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop. He winced as he pulled away from me, and I nearly pulled his arm out of its socket. Not on purpose, of course; I just didn’t know my own strength in this hood.

  “I have to go with you because you need to know more than the way there. You need someone who knows what to expect, and how to handle it. Someone who is trained for that.”

  “Someone like you.”

  “Correct.”

  And what is it, exactly, that we need to expect.”

  He pursed his lips. “A protector.”

  “A protector?” I asked. “Protecting who?”

  “The beasts,” Hunter answered flatly. “Every year, one of their own abstains from the hibernation. That beast is given the strength of all the other beasts to keep and use. Its mission is to protect them and keep the status quo. If he finds us, he won’t let us out of this place alive. He ripped the last girl’s arm off and drug her an entire square before finally putting her out of her misery.”

  “Annabelle Jenkins.” I gasped, my hand rushing to my mouth as I remembered the poor girl. She must have been so afraid. She must have been so horribly frightened. “You know, you could have spared the details.”

  “But you didn’t want me to.”

  He had a point there. But before I could process beyond that, a darker thought rushed through my mind. “What happened to my mother?”

  Hunter blinked. “Can I spare you the details on that one?”

  “I deserve to know,” I said, firming my voice. “If I’m going to do this, then I deserve at least that.”

  He motioned forward and started walking. I followed as he spoke. “She’s the whole reason you were chosen. Your mother came the closest of anyone to getting out of here. She was very nearly through these woods and likely would have gotten through if not for her ankle.”

  “She twisted it,” I said in a low voice.

  Hunter glanced back at me over his shoulder, his eyebrows pulling low over his eyes. “How did you know?”

  “No. Not here in the woods.” I swallowed. “A week or so before she was chosen, she fell down the stair chasing me and twisted her ankle. I had forgotten about that until now.” Tears filed my eyes. “She must have aggravated the injury. That’s why she died. If not for that—” I shook my head. “If not for—”

  “Don’t you dare go there, Lila,” Hunter said, pulling in front of me. “You can’t think like that out here. That’s kind of negative thinking that will get us both killed.”

  I stepped away from him. “So what? Just ignore how I feel? Is that what you do?”

  His jaw clenched. “We’ve all lost people. You need to focus on what is relevant—that we’re being held captive by monsters who see us as things to be picked off and held as treasure.” He put his hands back on my shoulders and squeezed. “You take what you’re feeling right now and you turn it into steel. This bastard won’t stop you. You’ll avenge your mother by finishing what she started. You’ll be the Hood who finally gets past the Big Bad.”

  “Big Bad?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.

  “That’s what we call him back at the base.”

  “It’s the same monster?” I asked.

  “Always,” Hunter confirmed. “Every year, without fail.”

  “So the one thing I’m going to face today is also—”

  “The same thing that killed your mother.”

  Anger flared up and rose into my cheeks as my body tensed to the point of near breaking. “All right,” I said firmly. “Let’s do this.”

  Not Afraid of the Big Bad

  Renewed fervor ran through me. Hunter and I talked for hours as we made our way through the woods, a straight line toward salvation.

  He told me about his own family: a quiet mother, an ever quieter father, and three older brothers who were all loud and rough enough to compensate for the rest of them.

  It had been hard on them when he decided to take this position, to throw himself into that isolation chamber for an entire year.

  “They understood, though,” he said, tipping his head back. I followed his gaze to look at the canopy above. “They’re good about stuff like that.”

  “What if they never see you again?” I asked, taking in the way the quickly setting sun cast an orange flow on his skin. The day was almost through. We needed to keep the pace up if we were going to get out of here before the rest of the beasts woke up.

  “They’re prepared for that,” he said. “They’re not necessarily fans of the idea, but they understand that there are more important things in life than living.”

  “You sound like my mother,” I said, biting my lip.

  “So do you,” he answered, smiling.

  “How well did you know her?” I asked, looking up at him expectantly.

  “I read her files and watched her tape. She seemed like an amazing woman, like the sort of person who valued character.”

  “She was the best. That’s why I’m afraid you might have made a mistake.”

  Hunter narrowed his eyes.

  “You chose me because of my mother,” I continued. “
Because of how good she was. But I’m not like her. No one was or ever could be. I hate to think that you people have wasted your last chance, our last chance, on someone who could never live up to what my mother did.”

  Hunter dropped all pretense as he looked over at me, his bright eyes searching my face. “It’s not just because you’re your mother’s daughter. That was only part of it. They watched you, Lila. They saw the way you rose to the challenge when your mother left. They saw the woman you’ve become and the strength you have. They saw the way you were willing to give everything up for the people you love.” He shook his head. “It’s all you, Lila. They saw it, and I saw it. Take the credit—you’ve earned it.”

  My heart thumped in my chest. Maybe they saw more in me than I saw in myself. If we were to survive, I needed to change that. I might not be my mother, but I was me.

  Hunter ran a hand through his hair as he walked a few more paces. Then he stopped, turning to face me. “You’re the reason I chose this mission. It’s why I couldn’t say no. Lila, you inspire me.”

  I smiled up at him. “Yeah? Guess we’re even then.”

  A long moment passed between us, unspoken words hanging in the air between us. But as we stood there, something started to feel…wrong.

  I pulled back a little, and Hunter’s expression changed. He sensed it to. There had been a shift in the air, a change. Something was here, and I didn’t think I’d need more than one guess as to what it was.

  “We’re so close,” Hunter said. He pointed to a hill off in the horizon. “It’s right on the other side of that mound.”

  My heart leapt. A low growl echoed from the distance, followed by the swift galloping of paws or claws or whatever beastly feet were made of.

  “We need to run,” Hunter said, grabbing my hand.

  I pulled it away. “Not yet.”

  “It’s right there. If we run—”

  “If we run, we won’t make it,” I said firmly. “Can’t you hear how fast that thing is moving? We’ll never outrun it. At least not both of us. But one of us can distract it while the other continues on.”