Bait for the Wolves

I woke up inside a fairy tale gone rancid.

My mother had vanished without a trace three weeks ago, leaving me behind in a cramped timber cabin at the edge of the woods to nurse my bedridden grandmother.

"Take this bottle of blackberry wine to the hunter," Grandmother rasped from beneath a mound of moth-eaten quilts, her fingers trembling as she pointed toward the door. "Make sure you thank him, child. If it weren't for his rifle, the beasts would have torn us to pieces by now."