A Sort of Fairytale (closed to Elisa)

[not_the_philistine]

There seemed, on the surface, nothing mysterious about the events that had transpired as of late in a rural Irish town. A wolf had slain several Irish women in as brutal and bloody a way a beast could, and this was not the only attack by wolves on humans across Europe recently. The Irish culprit had already been killed by a local human, to the relief of all the mortals who lived nearby.

The mystery of the case was that the Irish wolf that had done the killing was a faoladh, an Irish wolf guardian of a clan that shared their land peacefully with mortals. For one of their sons to brutally murder a pair of humans was a strange and terrible thing, wholly unexpected.

Combined with the epidemic of recent European wolf attacks, it suggested any number of conclusions that people could draw. Disease, a curse, cold blooded murder - and the job wanted a detective to determine which conclusion was the right one.

Fortunately for the Guardians, they were recently fortified by one.

Goliath exited the snowglobe wormhole into Ireland first, checking that the scene was clear before Elisa followed behind him. The morning mist turned the sun into a bright smudge over the trees of the nearby forest. The wolf's beheaded body lay on the grass in a browning patch of old blood outside one of a small collection of old, simple homes. A bloody massacre had taken place in one.

"Only one house has windows unlit," Goliath pointed out, looking around instead of closely at the body. His job was to keep Elisa safe and attend to their surroundings while she did her work of attending to small details. "That must be where the murders took place."

Comments

[toserveandprotect]

"Looks that way." Elisa had gotten over being squeamish her first week on the beat. Her dad had prepared her pretty well for the truth of how humanity could sometimes fail in it's moral contract. So the blood and scene didn't disturb her and she liked that Goliath never made her feel like he had to protect her from the truth.

He could watch her back against other things for sure but the truth was another matter. Elisa stepped closer and knelt down, she scanned the wolf's form and frowned.

Gingerly she picked up a paw and turned it over before holding it up to the light. "I don't get it, how does a wolf kill and not get blood on it's claws?"

There was aspirated blood, a little on the lips but no caked blood on the muzzle where one would expect it if this wolf had torn through people.

She looked around with a critical eye. "And why take the head?" Elisa let the paw drop and rested her elbows across her thighs as she squatted by the canine body. "This doesn't smell right to me."

[not_the_philistine]

"A trophy of the kill? The hunter would not need more proof that the beast had been slain than this."

No, it didn't smell right at all, but that was what had brought them there.

A movement in the mist caught Goliath's eye. An old woman was walking down the path between the houses, weighted down by an armful of bags. As she walked, she coughed once, twice, and paused beside a thin, tall tree that looked as though it had burned recently.

The look she gave it was far too long, far too confused, for that not to be of note, and as her glance returned to the road, it passed over Goliath and Elisa and paused, as if she'd seen something that made her start. But the old lady shook her head, and moved on without the alarm that seeing a gargoyle in the mist should have given her, so if she'd seen them, it had only been in a flash.

Still, that was strange.

"That woman saw us," Goliath commented, as she walked to the front door of the house with the blackened tree in the front yard. The house next door to the darkened one. "The one going into the house, there. Maybe she did not believe her eyes, but she looked a little too long."

[toserveandprotect]

"Right, this wolf was executed, not hunted. This wasn't a sport killing, it was judgement." And that meant the taking of the head had a whole different context.

Elisa stood and surveyed the area, noting the pattern of blood spray from the beheading. She also caught movement and her hand was inside her jacket reaching for her pistol before her next breath. She didn't draw, and it's usefulness on anything not a spirit was questionable, but she felt comfortable in old routine.

Goliath was right, the woman did pause, she did linger in her gaze on what should be nothing. "But..if she did see us why wouldn't she react? Gargoyles aren't commonplace and if someone had died recently people here should be more on guard."

Things were getting stranger by the second. "So, let's go check it out." Elisa moved forward following the path the old woman had walked.

[not_the_philistine]

"She may have seen only shadows in our likeness, something she could dismiss as a trick of the mist," Goliath said. "As we are, we only appear real to children who believe. Perhaps the woman believes in some things, but not enough to see us clearly. She was guarded, though," he went on, as they followed the old woman's path past the darkened house, to the door she'd just gone in. "This tree caught her attention."

He glanced at the tree, but more quickly turned his gaze past it, up and down the road to look for movement.

[fearasaurusrex]

The tree was certainly a source of interest for someone with an eye for detail. The wood was dark and rough, as if charred by a recent fire, but there was no evidence of charring on the roof edges near to the tree's thin branches, as there would have been if a natural fire had burned it. But the grass beneath it was not blackened by soot. Instead it was thick and damp, rotting in the soft wet earth.

Across the street, at the house with the darkened windows, a healthy tree stood brown and tall, thick with summer leaves. But some of those leaves were browning, and beneath the tree spread an identical patch of moldy, rotting grass.

No other house on the street was so marked.

[toserveandprotect]

Elisa moved forward, keeping low and to spots of cover as she went. She might be essentially a spirit but old habits died hard, especially when they had been honed for good reason. Her eyes moved over the front of the house but that tree kept her attention. With her detective's inquisitiveness she moved closer to it, fingertips brushing the grass at the edges which had not yet begun to blacken.

"It's not burned, more... I don't know, rotted maybe? It feels... bad." That was as clear as she could put it, it felt off, wrong.

She turned to look at Goliath. "The body, the discoloration, why do I get the gut feeling this isn't just a coincidence?"

[not_the_philistine]

Goliath had noticed the matching patches in the grass of the two houses.

"This house is marked, as the other was," he said, looking through the window, where the old woman was paused in putting her groceries away, answering her ringing telephone. "I'm certain this woman is in danger. We may not be able to warn her if she cannot easily perceive us, but we can meet what comes for her when it does."

Then they might have their culprit, and know truly whether it was another wolf or not.

[fearasaurusrex]

Even as Goliath spoke, the ground beneath their feet became suddenly wet and boggy, the cold damp thicker than water.

"Yes dear, it will be wonderful to see you again," came the old woman's voice through her window as clearly as if it were open. "It's so kind of you to come such a long way."

Suddenly, the ground beneath them rose up, thick and liquid, to swallow them both in darkness. Cold water like a wave swallowed their voices up, and everything vanished except the old woman's house, windows lit, floating in the cold dark.

"I feel certain every time I turn around that I'm going to see something watching me," the old woman said, her voice the only sound to reach them. "I know it's just the nerves, dear, but, well, it's so hard not to be nervous. Ever since that awful thing happened to Lucy and her niece -"

Ever since it had ripped the old woman and the young apart with such big teeth, it had been waiting for the right moment. It had been looking for the right people.

And the right people had just walked through a ring of snow and into its reach - a beautiful young woman, and rarer still - a monster to pin the blame on.

Would wonders never cease?

A current swept between Goliath and Elisa and parted them. The cold deepened around Elisa as the lights of the grandmother's home swept farther away, though her voice was still clear as if she were speaking to her over the telephone - or as if Elisa were reading the words in a letter, out loud, in her own voice.

"I just haven't felt well a single day since. I'm sure when you come visit, it will do me worlds of good."

It grew colder still, pushing the woman into unconsciousness, and then going to work on her memories. It would be harder to convince the young woman to recognize the old as her grandmother, but it had been given the power to cast spells greater than that. Power to force sleep - to warp time - to create kingdoms where there were none. To play out old stories.

Once upon a time, there was a dear young woman, beloved by everyone, but most of all by her grandmother, who lived deep in the woods.

The woman was even wearing red already. It was no great magic to turn her garment from a red jacket to a red hooded cape.

The darkness grew into tall, tall trees, between the woman and the old woman's cottage, and a long path snaked into the dark woods before her. The cold retreated, the sound of birds in the wood filled the air again, and a voice called from behind her, her mother's familiar tone -

"And don't stray from the path!"

A basket weighed on her arm, laden with food, and the dark woods towered before her, the path winding all the way to her grandmother's house.

And in that dark forest, something darker still waited.

[toserveandprotect]

"Goliath!" Elisa called out and reached for him as things went black. She was pushed as if by a cresting wave and shoved gently backward. The further she moved the less she understood why she was so upset.

Things went black and her mind became still and calm, Elisa relaxed and drifted as she recalled her grandmother. Now she wondered why she hadn't been hurrying more to visit. Surely Grandmother was expecting her by now and she should not delay!

"Don't stray from the path, don't eat windfall apples." Her voice gave a mocking little sing song as she skipped along. The basket on her arm swung with her movements and the soft shuffle of the baked treats inside rustled quietly.

Tall grasses brushed her bare knees under her skirt, she blinked to realized she had stepped too far to the left. With wide eyes she moved back to the path and peered into the darkness for the light of her grandmother's window. It shouldn't be far now, and then she and granny would talk and laugh and share pastries and tea.

[not_the_philistine]

Half a league could be more treacherous than many, once the dark forest closed behind a person. And this forest had become so treacherous as of late.

Maybe if she took pains not to be spotted, maybe if she moved swiftly and quietly and kept her eyes and ears wide open, maybe if she knew secret ways and secret paths, she could make it to her grandmother's house without being met by the dangerous things that lurked in the woods.

But she was not taking such cares. Already, she'd drawn eyes from the shadows alongside the open road.

It seemed to the beast in the trees that the woman on the road was defenseless, underclad for a dangerous journey,

But looks and manners could deceive. He knew that well, for a beast of the forest. She might have a quieter guardian, following behind in secret. She might be her own guardian, with a secret weapon and skill in it that gave her confidence.

He did not know, so it was best to find out.

"This is not a good road for lone travelers," he spoke aloud, dropping to the ground.

Though sunlight dappled the flowered hillsides on either edge of the road, the thick trees still cast such deep shadows that he, for the most part, appeared one - a looming darkness in the shadow of a towering oak tree.

Polite, for such a deep-voiced growl, such a voice with a promise of claws and teeth.

[toserveandprotect]

She gasped and pulled short to a stop with the low resonant voice from the shadows. Red, for she had been so nicknamed ever since granny had knitted her the hood of fine red wool she wore, knew of the dangers of the woods. Mother and father and granny and all would tell her to stay on the path, to only follow it's sleepy winding way.

But she had strayed and not moved back before she had been noticed by something. She peered into the shadow and grasped the basket handle tighter to her. The voice was thick with power and intelligence. It made her want to run.

But... it wasn't a threatening tone, the timber wasn't unpleasant or terrifying. It didn't fill her with the fear of a boar's roar or a wolf's howl. Why not?

She took half a step and leaned slightly in, peering into the dark an dark of the shadow. "The forest is no place for travelers alone or not."

[not_the_philistine]

"And yet you've come here. Why?"

He did not ask skeptically, but curiously. What made her so confident?

If it had been a human who'd attacked him mere hours ago, if it had been a woodsman or a hunter he might have assumed she was safe. Safer than he where a hunter was involved, anyway. What little he knew of humans included that they did not hunt their own.

But the thing that had attacked him unknowing had barely had a form, neither man nor beast, and though it had retreated fast, it had retreated from a mighty battle that he'd known was meant to take his life. He'd followed, but had been outpaced and found no tracks. He stopped at the road to think, but as he'd done so, along came the woman in red.

He stepped out of the shadows slowly, eyes on her. Maybe she did not know what lurked in the woods. Maybe the sight of him, powerful and grim as a monster out of myth, naked but for a wolf's pelt, a creature stranger to her than her kind were to him, for all that he had seen many humans, would be enough to send her running away from danger, not towards it.

[toserveandprotect]

"Because..." She faltered, the reason seemed hollow to her, but in a moment it came to her clearly like an old favorite story. "Because I am visiting granny, I bring her treats and things and always follow the path."

She came because she had to, and her parents sent her, an unarmed child because... there was no good reason or explanation for it. She couldn't even recall how long she had been walking. She was just here and knew where and why she was going. Going to granny's like she always did, but this was a dark and forbidding forest.

There were wolves and worse in the dark and she wasn't so foolish as to think she was immune to anything there. So why was she so confident,how did she know she would be alright?

"I guess I just do what I have to do." Do what was right, that felt right anyway.

"Why are you here?" And why wasn't she terrified and running?

[not_the_philistine]

Why wasn't she indeed? Striking terror was one of his stronger talents.

This woman was braver than the men of her village. He had never expected such a long conversation.

"I am a beast of the forest. I know what dwells here and I am a match for it." He let the words out in a growl. "But you - your -" he paused over the unfamiliar word. He had no grandmother himself. "Your 'granny' is worth this risk?"

Something in his mind flared up, told him that family was worth any risk, but he wondered why he thought it. He was a lone wolf ... metaphorically speaking. He had no family. What did he know of family?

Only that if he did, he would brave danger for them, too.

It was in his bones, a thing that came to him without him having to be told it.

Like he knew that this woman, for all that he had seen few women, was lovely in her courage. And in her red cloak.