The forest was dabbled with light. It was a cool place, mostly of very tall trees with the occasional patch of light and grass. Birds twittered overhead as a young girl with a blue cape and hood wandered through the forest.
“Hi Butterfly. Hi Turtle. Hi Grass.” The bright and bubbly girl was off for her morning trip to take a basket of goodies to her grandmother, the wicked wolf. Adelina and the entire village knew that her real granny was dead but they also knew it was safer to pretend that the wolf was the same person who had lived in the woods for many years. The wicked wolf no longer attacked people at random, the forest was now safe for even the smallest of children to wander in.
Once the basket of goodies that Adelina carried would have been filled with newly baked bread, fresh fruit and maybe a flower. Now the basket held a few pieces of raw meat and a jug of wine. No, wine is not good for wolves but he rather liked it and no one dared say nay to the wolf.
After greeting every forest creature that she passed, and picking a few flowers; the girl in blue made it to her grandmother’s place.
She knocked on the door. Her small hand didn’t make much noise on the thick wooden door. That had been a problem when her real granny was alive but the wolf did have keen hearing. “Granny, are you in?” she asked.
“Don’t be an idiot, child. Of course I’m in. Where else have you ever found me?” Originally the wolf was going to save the little girl for a second meal, the granny having been his first. But the wolf fell asleep in the soft bed waiting for the girl to arrive and Adelina had come in while the wolf was still asleep.
She realised quickly that the person in the bed wasn’t her real granny. Once she knew it was a wolf, she made sure that the next basket had enough food to keep a wolf from needing to eat her. Ever since, she had been bringing a basket with meat to granny’s house.
“Shall I pour you some wine?” asked Adelina.
“Yes child. Pour the wine. And what goodies have you brought for me today?”
“Well, old man Codger just butchered his old cow. So he sent you a few bits that he thought you’d like.”
Adelina placed the meat on a plate, poured the wine into a large mug and set both items down on the table. It was rather a cruel thing to do, the wolf had to walk over on two legs which was quite a difficult thing for it. Still, if a wolf was going to pretend to be granny, it had to put some effort into the act.
Adelina sat on the other chair at the table watching the wolf slowly cross the room. “So, Granny, would you like to play a game today?”
“No thank you, dear,” panted the wolf.
“Would you like to sing songs?” the girl persisted.
“No thank you, granddaughter,” replied the wolf. It sat on the chair with a loud thump.
“What would you like to do today?”
“Oh, now that these old bones are out of bed, I might just see how my garden fares. Would you like to help by tending the plants?” The wolf always waited till Adelina had turned her back for a moment before eating the goodies. While the wolf could do somethings that looked human, eating was never one of them. The mug of wine was also hard but the wolf had learned how to hook two claws around the handle so he could drink more like a human. “You go on, I’ll be out after I eat.”
Adelina skipped outside. She always went outside before the wolf started to eat, she didn’t really want to see how a wolf ate raw meat. She started gathering the veggies that were ripe and ready to pick. She placed them carefully in the basket.
When she heard the wolf approach, she asked, “Granny, you don’t mind if I take this stuff home, do you?”
“The vegetables?” the wolf shuddered for a moment. “Of course not dear.”
Adelina was not surprised. She picked vegetables nearly every day and the wolf always let her take them home. After that, she turned her attention to the weeds. Her wicked wolf granny didn’t really tend the little garden patch, but granny’s garden was worth some effort. The garden was one of the most productive in the village, even without granny tending it.
Now why, you may well ask, did the villagers do nothing about the wolf that had eaten Adelina’s granny? Well, my children, after the wolf moved in, he actually was less of a problem then he had once been. The village could send him the parts of the animals that there were few or no uses for and that keep the wolf from killing anything.
Before, they had tried to kill the wolf but he was too clever for them to catch. He was clever enough to pretend to be a granny and that’s a very clever wolf you must admit.