Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

Time goes faster than I thought it would. I spend a lot of it looking at the books, but then I get hungry. I find the kitchen. The refrigerator! In there it’s like winter. I eat a lot of things that I don’t know what they are. I’ve heard of cheese. Besides, I can read the labels: cold cuts, cheddar, cottage cheese. I taste everything. There’s radishes. I’m glad Mother saw to it that I knew about these things. I think she was homesick for all this, so she talked about it. Actually she talked about a lot more than I wanted to hear — then, anyway. Talk about not listening! It’s a wonder I even remember radishes.

I wander around the whole house. Turns out they have lots of books. And all over the place. I start reading several of them, one after the other, bits and pieces of all sorts of things. Magazines, too. I’ve been missing a lot. Mother knew it. She tried to make it up to me. When I see all this I realize how hard she worked at it. I start feeling tearful. I wonder where she is and if she’s all right.

Their clocks already say after two. I think I’d better go back into that little house.

I bring some books and magazines, but I don’t read them. I start thinking about dads. I know enough to know I must have had one. I haven’t thought much about it. I thought the way Mother and I lived was the usual way. Like bear cubs and fawns, always a mother and a child or two. And here’s a dad living right with them. Out of the little windows, I saw whole families leaving all together. The dads were living right there with everybody.

There’s a lot Mother told me, but a lot she didn’t. I’d ask her, Where is my dad? Who was he? And, especially, how hairy?

I must have fallen asleep by mistake because Molly wakes me.

“Come quick,” she says, “before my parents come home. We’ll look you up on the Web. If Mother comes in. she always knocks first. you just scoot under the bed.”

“Scoot?”

So then I get my first lesson in computer stuff. We look all over the place, but not a one looks at all like me. They’re all chunky and have terrible faces.

Molly says, “You’re much nicer looking than any of these. I like your hair color. There’s a lot of gold in it.”

I’m glad she said that, but it worries me that one of these might be my dad. How could Mother have even gotten close to somebody like that? I hope at least he was a nice person. if I can think of him as a person.

I ask Molly, “You have a dad. What’s that like?”

“Oh, he’s okay. He thinks I’m a kid, though. I’ll be forty-five before he’ll think I’m grown up. Don’t you have your dad? Well, you don’t or you’d already know what he looks like.”

I’m thinking, looks aren’t everything. Molly’s father might not be so handsome either. But that’s too much to hope for. And, anyway, why would I hope for that? That isn’t nice.

Then I remember about cars and trucks. I ask Molly if she can take me for a ride in a truck.

“Truck! Of course not. We don’t have a truck. But I could take you in our car — after everybody’s gone to bed. I don’t have a license, but I do know how to drive. Dad already taught me. You’re not supposed to drive until you’re sixteen. I don’t know why they make you wait so long.”

I go to the little house before her mother comes back. Molly loads me up with cookies and milk (I never had milk before), just in case she has a hard time bringing me a supper.

“Don’t light the candle until all our lights are out here in the house.”

Finally she comes to get me.

She brings me a big floppy hat, one of her father’s white shirts, pants, socks, and sandals. The sandals are terribly uncomfortable.

She says, “I guess you really are a Bigfoot.”

I must look hurt because right away she says, “Sorry, that was supposed to be a joke. Not a very kind one. Look.” She puts her foot next to mine. “We’re almost the same size.” Then, “You don’t have to wear the sandals. I don’t suppose anybody will see your feet anyway.”

She tells me to button up the shirt and raise the collar to cover my neck as much as I can.

If I need all these clothes and to button up just to go for a ride in a car, I guess I really am entirely wrong.

Even just getting in the car is exciting.

Then it jerks forward.

“Sorry. I haven’t driven very much. But this will be good practice. Better put on your seat belt.”

We drive, and it’s wonderful. We go out in the country so we can go fast. She says in town we can only go twenty-five. We open the windows and get the breeze.

She says, “I’ll go even faster if you stop saying ‘Thank you’ all the time.”

I stop and she does.

She turns on the radio, which is another new thing — not that I haven’t heard all about it. She pushes buttons to get the right music. She says, “Dad has it on news all the time.” I wouldn’t have minded hearing news.

We start around a curve and all of a sudden we’re in the ditch. Then bouncing up and down, and then upside down.

We’re not hurt, but the front doors won’t open. Molly finally gets a back door open, and we crawl out.

She doesn’t look like Molly anymore. She looks scared and like she doesn’t know what to do.

She says, “I don’t even have my cell phone.”

It’s still the middle of the night. There’s not a light in sight. She starts to cry. I feel like I’m the strongest one now. I say, “Come on. Let’s start back to town.”

“I wish I hadn’t gone so fast. We wouldn’t be so far away if I hadn’t done seventy. Daddy’s going to kill me.”

“Your dad will kill you?”

“No, silly, of course not. Don’t you know anything?” Getting angry at me makes her feel better. She starts walking down the road in the dark and trips and falls flat. And then she’s crying again.

My eyes must be better than hers. I can see a little bit. There’s the sliver of a moon. I say, “We’ll be all right. Hang on to me.”

Pretty soon it starts getting light and we see a farmhouse and head for that.

“I’ll go in and telephone Dad. You have to hide. Don’t let anybody see you.”

The more she says things like that, the more I worry about myself.

“What will Daddy do? And we don’t even have a car now. And what will we do with you ?”

“I don’t want to be put in the zoo.”

“Look, there’s a barn. Go hide there while I go in.”

In the barn there’s stalls, mostly empty, but there are two horses at the back. There’s a ladder up to a loft full of hay. That’s where I’ll go, but I’ve never seen horses — except in picture books. I check on them first. I worry they might kick or bite, but they come right up to me to see who I am, friendly as can be. It makes me feel better, stroking something big and warm. Then I go up and lie down in the hay.

It takes so long for Molly to come back I think maybe she’s just left me here. I’m too shaken up to sleep. I go down again and talk to the horses. I get right in with them. I call one Spotty and the other Brownie.

Finally Molly comes.

“I couldn’t get away from the people here. They’re too nice. They were going to drive me home, since they had to go to town anyway, but I said I needed to call Daddy. They went off to town. I know their kid. He’s a couple of grades ahead of me in school. He’s still here. He takes the school bus. Daddy’s renting a car. He’ll be here as soon as he can, but it’ll take a while. I didn’t tell him about you. What’ll we do about you?”