The snakes threaded around my body as thick as black milk, so heavy I could not lift my hands. The road to hell was paved in snow—and the mouth of the devil was always hungry (for my gristle and bone).
I offered my knife to the slicing moon and pierced the blood under my veins with the edge as ice crept in through the slit in the sky above me. I had journeyed far from Mama’s cottage, her basket of bread and cheese in hand, I cloaked in a bloody red cape.
But the Wolf? He had found me. We were beasts of black poison, he and I.
Red and Wolf. Wolf and Red.
And so, I was paying the tithe to hell, to visit my Lupine King.
My arms bled, and the buxom black snakes acted as underworld guardians, sucking me down in a scaled vortex into hellfire and cold-rotted sorrow.
My Wolf sat in leather and an iron crown, a pool of blood surrounding his throne in Hell.
“Red, my beauty. I was waiting far too long,” Wolf said, hungry—black hair and yellow eyes thirsting for carnal delight. Wolf licked his fangs and smiled unholily.
I sashayed my ample hips toward him, my ripe breasts unfurling from my crimson cloak like a song as I danced Salome for the Lupine King and undressed. I reached down, cupping the blood from my slit wrist to mix with the gore of Wolf’s throne. I drank the gory elixir, then smeared alizarin Xs over my cheeks and brow.
Wolf gave a hearty laugh. “Oh, girlchild. How I have missed you this too-long summer, Red, when you were bringing in the buds, flowers, and harvests in the mortal realm with your Mother Spring.”
I smiled, moseying up to my husband and letting Wolf drink the ichor that still slowly trickled from my wrist. “I fretted after you too, husband dear and mine. Winter and fall are our time, the Wild Hunt the closest home in these earthen harrows and hells we call home, where I can lead our pack and discard my maiden’s flesh. Give me that kiss of little death, oh Wolf, and unleash my true form that Mama would never approve of. Let us run free!”
Wolf bit my mouth, shredded my skin with his claws—like opening a pitted date—and discarded my cloak and flesh. Inside was orange fur, tooth and sharp claw, and I unfurled like a kitsune, chasing after Wolf—I half-pup, half-Fox, all Wild.
All Woman.
All free.
