He does not mind my silences, my guttural sounds; he reads
to me from leather-bound books, stories about animals and princesses and faraway places. He wants me to learn the words again; he is teaching me the sounds, he is teaching me the ways of woman, to walk upright, to wear clothing underneath my tattered red cloak, to kiss instead of bite.
The first time he tried to take me during my full transformation, he retreated outside the cottage door, a bruised ribcage, bloody gashes on his cheek and neck. He was angry; he punished me severely. He caged me, then.
He reminds me that he rescued me twice. He says he is destined to save me, to care for me, ever after, and in return, he only asks that I accept him as my master. I serve him well, and he cares for me well, but under the swollen moon each month, I am slave to no one.
“Wolf moon,” he says, “is the first full moon of the New Year.”
It feels like want, deep want within me, ruthless, ice-bright and cold. He kisses me and pets the soft fur on my body, warming me. He leads me to the leather table he built for me, lifting me so I could sit upon it. I nuzzle against his rough cheek, and turn upward, looking into his face.
“What big eyes you have.”
He takes his time touching me, teasing me, pink-gold dusk slowly turning to royal evening blue. He says he loves me. Do I understand? He kisses me deeply, his cock rising hard and thick and wanting. He wants to train me; he wants to tame me. He wants to fuck me, to punish me, to take me as the moon breaks me; neither woman nor wolf, perhaps both, choking at the bit, shivering in my eclipse. His.
I am his obsession, his addiction. I am dangerous to want, to own. I change.
“Lie down,” he says and I submit, my hair gliding across the
table, my body finding the leather dry and firm, cold against my skin.
I watch him as he begins to work, rope in hand. He binds my wrists together and spreads my legs apart, licking and kissing each foot after tying each ankle to the table. I am stretched tight, knot, bound and secure. The hunter’s eyes burn like coal, deep and black, red hot at the center, lit by flames of desire and focus; absolute concentration crosses his face as he attends to me with such care; I see him. And all at once, I know love, and I know I love him.
He tried to save me, once upon a time; he cut red ribbons through flesh to release me. For so long, I wished that I would have died. Instead I lived, Little Red, still Little Red, cursed by the fairy tale moon, the happily ever after sky.
He saw me through the eye of a shotgun; he found me when I was so lost I would not recognize myself, matted with dirt and ragged red cloth, more wolf than woman.
And still, he knew me.
He pulls a thick leather belt across my waist and belts me to the table. He pulls a strap across my mouth. My long hair spills black against pale skin against black leather; my lips open, red and wanting. Silver clasps hold my nipples; each clasp attached by chain, pulled tight, pleasure waves of pain.
Then there is this slow arousal, the feathery touch of a fan brush dancing across the surface of my body, tickling my feet, the tips of my toes, in between my legs; wisps of intense longing heighten my desire, my infinite ache, and I shiver, gasping, laughing like a little girl.
“What big teeth you have.”
My jaws snap against the leather strap, wanting to taste, to tear the moon from the sky. His voice in my ear, deep and steady, is an anchor. “I own this body, whatever form it takes. I
own you, do you hear me? You are mine. You are my slave. Say, ‘Yes Master.’”
“Yes Master.” I am fully present, my delirium swirls, light expands and contracts, I ache.
My legs stretch as I grow, stronger. I pull at my tight restraints and remember the cage; my heart races, quickening to fear. Pain. Tears blind my eyes; I cannot move. He smoothes his cool hand across my forehead, relaxing me. He says I am a good girl, he would never hurt me. I believe him. I trust him. I breathe the way he taught me to when I get scared, in and out, steady, calm.
Master adjusts my bindings, resecuring each ankle with leather cuffs and chains. He tightens the belt around my waist and keeps the clasp chain of my nipple clamps suspended and held tight. Chains linked to chains, heavy ropes of silver hanging from the eaves, my legs spread in a wide V.
Master draws back, drawing a sharp intake of breath at the sight of me; he inhales the scent of me, beast he is. I am forest flowers freshly dug, dirt still clinging to the roots.
“Little Red, I am the wolf.”
He feasts between my feral thighs, licking and sucking my pussy, devouring me. I cannot think; I claw at the rope, howl as his tongue flicks inside my lips bringing me to wild orgasm, again and again, as I growl and thrash, my body pulsating, bucking. He grabs my hips and fucks me with his mouth; over and over, I am moaning with pleasure, each movement pulling and pressing ropes and chains and belts of leather. I beg him to stop, not wanting him to stop, never wanting him to stop, my master, my god.
Moonlight moves through the curtained window; hours have passed. His eyes flicker across my body, sleek and strong, half-woman, half-wolf; I am panting. He kisses me, my sex on his mouth, and releases me slowly from my bondage. He holds me standing as I sway in subspace, shifting form, emptiness,
being, nonbeing, not knowing who I am, what I am. He rubs a collar of cold link chain against my cunt; cooling the red-hot heat between my legs, making me whimper and cry out, slave.
Around my neck, a pure silver choke-chain; Master owns me.
He kisses my lips then pulls the chain attached to the nipple clamps. I wince as he pushes the chain between my sharp teeth. “Take them off,” he says, testing me.
I bite down, brace myself, and pull up the chain hard; they snap, slaps of delicious pain.
“Kneel on the bed.”
I am eager to please him; I want to show him how I love him, how I want to suffer his power and lay in submission at the command of his desire. A hunter, he saved me; a beast, he entered me; a master, he conquered me. I kneel as he disciplines me. Lashes of exquisite touch sting, slap, and tickle. He spanks me red with the palm of his hand.
He grabs my hair and pulls me up, letting the heavy chain leash fall down my back. Holding the reins of my hair, he ravages me, riding me mercilessly, hitting my flanks with the crop. I whimper and arch my body, wanting more, more. We are savage; we could fuck each other numb. I am fur and claw; he is more animal than man.
Master enters me from behind, tearing within me, caressing me with his thick hard cock. He tortures my pussy, teasing me in and out, sliding and thrusting, fucking me with a whisper, with slow hot breath. Rising, he rages within me, he takes his pleasure from me; I am bound helpless, sobs and moans, songs of praise and worship, I am his. He comes, his hot cock swelling inside me, bursting inside me. Little Red I am, yes Master. The wolf moon howls, ever after, happily ever after, breaking the night into stars.
MIRROR MIRROR
Shanna Germain
S
he has a raven the color of coal. No, not coal. Blacker. The darkest night on the darkest day in the darkest minute of the year. An absence of light that is so full of nothing it makes everything around it shine like a jewel. Even if it isn’t.
Which is why she keeps the raven perched always on her shoulder. She’s no jewel anymore, and the creature offsets her graying pallor, her growing wrinkles, the way the half-moons beneath her eyes are the color of maid-bucket water. She’s growing thin, too.
What she can’t hide, she passes off to the king, and the kingdom, as mourning. “Your daughter,” she says to her husband, choking, as if that’s all she can bear to say. As if she cares so much for her stepdaughter that she is eating herself from the inside out.
And maybe she is. She’s called for the huntsman’s head on a platter, after all. Proclaimed him murderer. Sent search parties to the woods for the body that no one has found. She is taking
it harder than the kingdom might have expected, and they love her for it. Her unexpected generosity, her grief that mirrors their own.
The queen, she despairs, but not for what they think.
As for me? I despair for the missing Snow, for the king without a daughter. Of course I do. I even despair for the huntsman, who had small, delicate fingers, a lovely growl, and a bit of a masochist in him to boot. Well, perhaps more than a bit of a masochist, if even Snow found him satisfying enough.
But mostly I am happy. I have the queen to myself, for now, and there is nothing to despair of in that.
Today, like every day lately, the queen is having trouble getting out of bed. There’s a celebration of some sort, a baby shower that she must attend, and the sun is already halfway through the sky. Yet she lies beneath the covers, the ends of her black hair tipped silver.
I stand at her bedside, as I’ve stood for hours, waiting. There is no pushing the queen. Not yet. Even her raven sits still upon her headboard, quiet except for the occasional click of his jaw.
“Girl,” she says, finally. Her voice is ragged with age and exhaustion. The hand that tugs the covers is thinned to the bone, the long nails broken to claws. “Bring me my breakfast. The purple one.”
I do her bidding, quick and quiet, because I am a good girl, the best girl. Because even though I know my queen for all that she is and all that she is not, I love her. Because I am hers and she is mine in the way that all queens and their girls have ever been, will ever be.
I open her secret closet—I overheard the magic word from Snow before she was gone, and the queen is not well enough to notice that I have hold of something I shouldn’t. Inside, there
are dozens of bottles, of all sizes and colors. Some are clear as water and as still. Others bubble and sparkle inside the glass. Still others, the ones I find hard to look at, hold golden rings and skeleton keys, preserved toads and coils of snakes, finger bones and stag hearts.
The purple one is so deep and inky it’s nearly black. It is small, and I carry it to her in the palm of my hand. She takes it without opening her eyes. The color stains her lips and teeth and tongue so that when she grimaces, her mouth becomes a black, endless maw.
She lets the bottle fall to the floor, not enough left to worry about staining the rug. The transformation is not as instant as it once was. She is farther gone, and luster takes longer to paint, even with magic.
Old becomes young, grey blooms to pink, flesh shifts and plumps. Her eyes are the one thing that don’t change—black as her raven, deep as the end of the world.
“Girl, my red dress,” she says. Red for blood, red for mourning, red for death.
“Perhaps a bath first, your Highness?” I venture. She doesn’t need one, not with the potion, but we are in no hurry. She is the queen; the world will wait.
“Ready the bath, then,” she says as though it were her idea.
“I’ve done so,” I say. I’ve learned a few things from her too. How to be still like a spider in a web. How to keep a bath warm at all hours of the day. How to be someone I am not.
She pushes back the covers and reaches an arm out so that I may help her from bed. She’s naked, her body still shifting, breasts filling, hips growing rounder. Even as I let her lean on me, inhale the scent of stream water and crushed petals, I have to look away from her so that I don’t drop her. Only the raven notices, his beady black eye watching.
I lead her to the tub, its steam rising to cloak us both. Her skin is soft and warm, tingling with magic. She leans back, and I soap her curves, the hollows of her shoulders, the gorge of her breasts. Her nipples pucker in the steam. Faint pink lines crisscross the upper half of her back, a few graying bruises show on the inside of her arms, between her thighs.
Poor work, really. An amateur is what she had in Snow, although I doubt she knows it. Still, I scrub those pained places harder, just to hear her soft moans of protest, the quiet whimpers. When I run the cloth over her tight nipples, into the closed space between her thighs, she shudders a little, splashes on my white cotton dress, and I let the warmth sink into my skin, imagine it’s something other than water.
The magic is doing its work, and soon she is stronger, doing the work herself, relegating me to hand her soap, a new cloth, a dry towel.
As she dries, I pull the red dress from the not-secret closet. It’s one of her proper dresses, fully covering her in its scarlet sheen, the headdress imposing and regal. It’s a bitch dress, a top dress. A queen’s dress. Not like the dresses farther back, the purple one that is corset top and black embroidered sheer along the arms and legs. Not like the emerald one with the cut-out cups, the waist straps for tying her wrists together. Not like the one in the very back, the one I’ve only seen her in once, its tiny bits of fabric the same alabaster as Snow’s skin, the splashes of red the colors of rubies, of lips, of blood.
Naked, she stands and faces the mirror. Its surface has been covered since Snow disappeared. Every day, she lifts the cover and watches her own reflection, just as she’s doing now.
“Mirror, mirror…,” she begins. She can’t finish. She never finishes anymore. She is afraid to ask, afraid the mirror will tell her the thing her heart knows to be true. That Snow is not dead,
not, after all, murdered by the handsome and wicked huntsman for her trophy heart, but that she’s run off with him. That Snow is still out there, beautiful and living, without her queen.
“Let me prepare you, Your Highness,” I say.
She acquiesces, lowers the drape back over the mirror and sits at her dressing table. There’s a mirror here, too, but it’s not magic. It isn’t forced to tell her the truth, and so she can eye herself in it, slyly, from the side with half-closed lips while I powder her pale skin and lipstick her mouth in red. She doesn’t need the makeup—the potion has done its work fully, and it will keep her until tonight, at least—but this is part of the ritual, and it means she does not yet have to leave her room. I wrap her hair the way she likes, two tall black cones that will fit into the circle of her crown. It’s how I first came to be her girl, my deftness with her hair and later, with Snow’s, and I relish the pull and tug of the strands between my fingers.