Gothic Retelling Contest

Here goes my story!

Here goes your story!

Here goes my story!

Here goes your story!

Here goes your story!

Once upon no time, and on the rim of a grey sky--Babushka began that way. When she pricked the beads and stitched them neat to the hems of her sleeves; when she snipped the cord and tied the knots in the prayers beads; when called the crows, she said (turning aside to Krasniy, once upon no time.

Days drew long and longer. Greys dwindled to dusk. Krasniy listened with half an ear; the rest she kept for the crows.

When the crows coiled in the sky, blacking out the spackled sunlight between the leaves, Babushka closed the windows.

Good, but not good, kharasho, nye kharasho.

Once upon no time...

Krasniy collected the beads and the threads and the dried bread, while Babushka stitched. In her red coat, she bundled robin's egg blue, brown, tangled threads; bright things; old things; new things; cold things. Crow things.

May I walk? she asked as Babushka murmured.

Da.

May I go away from grandmother's house?

Da, said the old woman.

May I--

Shoo.

Into the woods, with her hood pulled up, with her skirt flapping, with her snub nose scuffed by the cold, away from the house she went.

And the day dwindled.

And the crows came for beads and gold thread and buttons. And blood.

Where of course a wolf smelled the sounds and the tastes of dying things, and came, too.

The crows scattered; like shadows they hung in the trees around the girl and the bread and the basket and the pins and baubles and thread. Though here and there, bright as a bird eye, a bead glinted in a beak or in a claw.

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere," said Krasniy, rubbing her beak-clipped skin.

'Why are you going?"

"No reason," said Krasniy, clenching her aching teeth.

"What do you want in the woods? ...girl?"

"Nothing," said Krasniy.

And because she was empty, the wolf followed her. Where there is no time, there is no life; where there is no want, there is no heart; where there is no heart, there is nothing to take.

Babushka brought the axe down when the wolf stepped through the door behind the girl, whose red coat was brighter than its blood. "What big eyes it had," said Krasniy. "What big teeth it had," said Krasniy.

"What a..." said Krasniy. She considered its heart, split out of its ribs. Beating time, still: tum-tum, tum-tum. A clock of flesh and blood.

There is no time... Babushka smiled, all teeth, and walnut skin. She set the axe against the doorframe; she shook the droplets, red as the beads in her sleeve hem, free. ...like the present. Da?