Beauty Read Free Page A

should have been a beautiful sight but today, as had happened on too many days recently, it was marred by a bloody trail of innards that emerged from behind the house and vanished at the edge of the forest.
    ‘Oh, not again!’ Granny gasped and the two women, age being no impediment to panic, ran to the small enclosure behind the cottage where granny kept her precious goats. It was as Petra feared. The gate had been broken through yet again. From somewhere deep in the trees a low howl of victory drifted towards them. It had none of the plaintive texture of the sound that drew Petra to the mysterious forest wall; this was all animal, fierce and hungry.
    ‘Bloody wolves,’ her granny swore. ‘Bloody bastard wolves.’
    ‘I’ll mend it again,’ she said, quietly. ‘Make it stronger.’
    Her grandmother was moving through the rest of the scared goats who had huddled at the far corner of the pen. ‘Adolpho. It’s taken Adolpho.’
    Petra had never tried to persuade her grandmother to move to one of the houses in the village as she grew older – she knew how much the old lady loved the peace and quiet of the forest – but recently she’d started to think it might be a good idea. It had been a hard winter and the wolves, normally a rarity in this part of the forest, had arrived as a hungry pack and, when the weather broke, they’d stayed. Where foxes were a menace they’d learned to deal with, the winter wolves were braver and stronger. Men in the village talked of cattle lost in the night to the wolves working in twos and threes, and although they had tried to hunt them, the pack was elusive.
    ‘Go inside, Granny,’ Petra said, knowing that the old woman would want a quiet moment to mourn the loss of the animal. ‘I’ll clean up out here.’ The wolves would be back, that she knew for certain, and she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before they saw the stout old woman as an easy meal. Especially if they couldn’t get to the goats. She needed a fence as high as that wall of greenery around her granny’s cottage. She needed to protect her. The wolf’s gruff howl was joined by another and she was sure they were mocking her. She cursed them silently, then went to the shed and pulled out more planks of wood and rolls of wire. She would not give up. The wolves would not win. Her hair fell into her eyes as she worked, angrily focused on her task and wishing that the wolf from far away would come and scare these rough relatives away for her. At least then her fingers wouldn’t be full of splinters and her skin slick with sweat.
    She was halfway through the job when there was a crash from inside the cottage, a scream, and the sound of plates being dropped.
    ‘Granny!’ Her heart in her mouth, she turned and ran.
    T hey had been travelling through the forest for several days before the two men eased into a comfortable silence. The first day, once out of sight of the fanfare and grand send-off the king had arranged for his son, had been a relatively slow one given the prince’s hangover. The huntsman’s own head was clear having been on the outskirts of the group for the night, gritting his teeth every time the prince introduced him to some new dandy as his servant. Huntsmen served no one but nature. He’d drunk one or two cups of beer but the group of rowdy young men hadn’t impressed him and neither had they particularly encouraged him to join them, which suited him just fine. He was glad when dawn broke and he could wake the prince and prepare to get out of the city. He’d had enough. He wanted their ‘adventure’ over so he could return to his people, and at least in the forest he would feel that he was almost home.
    By the time they’d made camp, the fresh air had revived the prince’s spirits enough for him to make a fire while the huntsman fetched water and killed a rabbit for their dinner. At first the prince had been determined to prove his superiority by trying to impress the