The Wolf and the Brush (A fairytale)

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away from the one which we are living in now, there lived a lonely girl who was friends with a wolf. Every evening she would sit at the window of her little cottage and call to him in the language of his kind while brushing her hair with a magical brush. First the noble creature would answer back with a howl so loud and heart wrenching it would seem as if the stars might fall out of the sky. Then the wolf would run to her, lithe body moving like a ribbon of light across the dark fields which surrounded her home.

On arriving, the girl would pet the wolf’s glossy white fur in greeting. She would then immediately use the magical brush which her mother had given her before she died to brush the wolf from head to tail 99 times. When this affair was finished, the wolf’s eyes would turn blue instead of their normal brown, and he would be granted the power of speech.

One night the girl and the wolf were lounging outside of her window as usual, and the conversation turned to the inevitability of the girl’s upcoming marriage to a carpenter’s boy.

“He’s just awful, Wolf,” she sighed as she braided her hair in the moonlight, “All skin and bones he is, and so curt and unromantic! He’s never spoken a sentence more than three words long to me in his life.”

“Why do you marry him then?” asked the wolf. At this she sighed again.

“My father works in the fields all day, and he sells everything we can spare in the marketplace except for my brush, but we are still miserably poor. Only the carpenters, who are even poorer than we are, would accept the size of my dowry. Now that father has found me a suitor, he will marry me off as soon as he can. Though he never says it, I know he wants to get me into the town and away from you.”

“But why?” asked the wolf, puzzled.

“It’s because you’re a wolf and I’m a human girl. He says I should be socializing with the other women of the village, but they are all so boring and sad,” she lifted her eyes up to the moon, “My mother was the prettiest and happiest of all of them, but now she is gone, and the only thing I have to remember her by is this brush, and in turn, you.”

The wolf whimpered a little in sympathy.

“That does sound like a bad lot,” said Wolf, “I will miss you when you are married to the carpenter.”

A silence fell between them for quite a stretch, and the wolf tried to revive the conversation by talking about a deer he and his pack had killed that morning, but it was no use. The girl was staring sadly at the sky, and a single tear lingered on her pale cheek.

  “You know, you don’t have to stay with them,” the wolf said suddenly, “You could come with me and be my wife.”

“What?” the girl cried, “That would be wonderful!”

And so it was settled that she would run away with Wolf the very next night.

It just so happened that this night was the Summer Equinox, which was a time when fairies everywhere rose from their glistening houses in the dew, from droplets inside unopened flowers, and rejoiced in the summer air. It was at this time every year that the strength of magic was most powerful.

So, as the girl did her normal washing, drying, cooking, and cleaning tasks throughout the day, fairies from far and wide were being drawn to her room by the magic of the brush, which she had left out on the nightstand.

Tulip fairies, firefly fairies, and willow tree fairies danced about her room, laughing and weaving spells that made her bed do a dance, and the floorboards beneath their feet sing lullabies.

 Alerted by all this noise, the girl ran to her room and glimpsed the fairies for a spilt second before they disappeared, along with her brush.

When she realized that the brush was gone for good, the girl cried and cried on the no longer singing floorboards, cried through the return of her father from the fields, cried into the night.

As soon as the moon had risen, the wolf could be seen fairly sprinting towards the girl’s little cottage. Though he had not been summoned by the brush that night, the magic of the 99 strokes he had received last night still lingered in his blood on account of the equinox. He arrived in no time at all at the window.

“My human! Come away with me now!” he cried eagerly in the room. When he saw that she was crying on the floor, Wolf asked what was wrong.

“Never mind that,” the girl sobbed, “Just take me away from this place.” So she hopped on his white back, and they loped away across the fields and into the darkness of the woods. After a time, the wind on her cheeks dried her tears and the clean smell of the forest opened her mind. The girl became a little nervous.

“What will your wolf friends think of me? Do you believe they will accept me into your pack Wolf?” said the girl.

“Ah,” laughed the wolf, “Do not be afraid. As soon as you show them your magical brush, they will be charmed and won’t hurt you.”

The girl gasped, and was about to implore Wolf to turn around, but at that moment they arrived at some large rocks where the wolf pack had made their dens. Wolf let loose a piercing cry, and his pack mates immerged from the darkness, all twenty of them. With eyes of black, they looked on her hungrily.

“Show them your brush,” said Wolf urgently to the girl, but she could not.

In less than five minutes they had ripped her to shreds beneath the summer stars.