Mallie's POV:
We were walking for a while making sure we step in the right places "I hear moaning." Virginia says. "I hear lots of things before us is magical." I picked up a scent of dead animals.
We looked up and see a lot of dead rabbits. "Do you actually know where we're going?" Virginia asks. "We're following our noses." We say together. "Who is this Huntsman?" Tony wonders.
"One person you don't want to invite to a party." I replied. "We can't walk all night." Tony said. We heard horses not so far from where we were.
We went towards the noise and then heard voices, I move some leaves out of the way, "Gypsies." Me and Wolf whisper.
"What do we do now?" Tony whisper asked. "Come!" Another voice said, it was one of the Gypsies, "Join us of course." He told us.
"Let's go." I agreed. They took us into their camp, "Poachers. They'll kill us if they so choose." Wolf informed the other two. "Do not refuse anything they offer, but do not consume anything that you haven't already seen them eat first."
I take a look around at the Gypsies, and noticed they're looking mainly at me and Wolf. "It's like having dinner at your grandmother's house." Tony looked to Virginia.
"I think we should sit down." We all go and sit on a log by the fire, they were all dancing around the fire and playing music as others made conversation. "This is the best hedgehog I've had in weeks!" Tony weakly lies through his teeth, trying to make them happy.
Me and Wolf were clapping along when Wolf was looking in one direction, I look over to see what he was staring at and see a boy, he looks to be around 12, I can sense he's like me and my brother, he noticed us looking at him and slowly stops clapping along.
When the song finished a guy, that was playing a fiddle, looked to Tony, "Now it's your turn, stranger." Tony looks at him for a second before replying, "Oh, well, no, I don't actually play." I look to him like he was crazy, we said to not say no to them. "Then sing us a song." "Not a singer." Tony said shaking his head. "Tony, sing!" Me and Wolf say to him, hinting at him to shut up and sing, before they decide to kill us! "Let's not insult our hosts." I say trying to get him to sing.
"I, I can't think of any songs." The guy that we first had a encounter with came up behind us, looking to Tony, "Is our hospitality not with a song?" "I don't, I can't." Tony turned around to look at his, before seeing the knife the man was playing with, "Sure." Tony finally agreed.
He was thinking for a second before he started to 'sing',
Picked up a boy,
just south of Mobile
Gave him a ride, filled him
with a hot meal
I was 16 he was 21
Gypsies, tramps and thieves
We heard it from the people
in town they called us
Gypsies, tramps and thieves
And every night, the men would
come around
And lay their money down
Tony finally finished the so called song, everything was silent until Wolf started clapping, nobody else moved.
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I was sitting next to Wendell, just staring at him, watching the golden statue of him. Hoping some day we can get him out of the golden prison.
Some guys came over looking at him, one guy started touching him muzzle, I let out a low growl and stared at his hand, hoping to burn holes into them. "Is he real gold?" The guy looked to Tony, "What? No, no." He tries denying, "No, no, no, no, oh please don't." He said to the guy that was touching Wendell, "No, no it's just gold paint. I bought a couple, a pair, to put the end of my driveway." I looked at him weirdly.
I turn my head around when I heard a door to one of the trailers open. "Set up a table." She commands.
They started setting up her table, as requested, and pulled out fortune cards, Tony was the first to sit at the table. "I see great wealth coming to you." "Yeah, that's what I like to hear." "And passing, straight through." Tony looks down at his stomach, "That was the, bean I had." He looked at Wolf and I, we both look away muttering under our breath.
"And what about the future?" "I find the Fool." "Uh-huh, and that card? What's that card?" He asked looking and pointing at the card.
"The Fool's friend, the Oaf. He's joined by the Buffoon and the Village Idiot." I laugh at the last one. He gets up and goes to sit where he was before.
She looks up to Virginia, "I will read the girl." "No thanks." Virginia denies the request. The lady looks at her. Virginia's smile was wiped away clean. She gets up and slowly makes her way to the table. Once she sits down the lady started, "You are full of anger. You conceal much about yourself." She then picks up a pair of scissors, "I need a lock of your hair." She beckons Virginia closer, then she takes the scissors up to her hair can cuts a lock of it off.
She then puts it into a bowl, "You have a great destiny which stretches way back in time." she tells her, "I'm just a waitress so I don't think there's any prizes so far." "You have never forgiven your mother for leaving you." She says, "As I said, I'm not really interested in having my fortune read." She then gets up and walks away. Wolf grabs my hand and brings me over to the table with him.
"Love and romance, please." Wolf begs her. "Marriage, children, how long is it going to take for the creamy girl of my dreams to say yes, that sort of thing." "Yeah, me too." I say. She takes our hands and looks into them, she looks up at us and says the thing that I don't want anymore, "I see death. Young girl dead. Torn to pieces." Wolf thought see was playing, but I knew she wasn't.
Wolf takes a while but then denies it. "No!" She looks him right into his eyes. "No." He said a little quieter. "See, I was thinking more along the lines of three girls and two boys?"She continues, "I see a fire being built." I whimper and closey eyes remembering what happened to our parents.
She looks at us seriously, "You are going to be burned on it." I open my eyes. "No!" I growled. "You two are not what you seem. You are a wolf." Suddenly all the poachers grabbed their weapons, me and Wolf look around nervously. "And so is your grandson." We say together, we look behind us to see her grandson, we turn back to look to see her smiling at us.
"You must stay with us tonight. Friends must stay together in the dangerous forest." She tells us I nod in agreement.
Everyone went to bed, Wolf and I are still awake though but we're not the only one's who aren't asleep, we saw the gypsy lady's grandson, we both looked at each other then start to make our way over to him.
He turned to us, a little spooked, "Hi, I'm Mallie, this is my brother, Wolf." I tell him in a sweet voice a mother would use. "What's your name." I ask. He doesn't respond though. "It's okay, you don't have to tell me." I say. I move in front of him and sit on the ground while Wolf sits next to him. "I've never seen other wolves before." He says, for the first time.
"Yeah? Well now you have." I softly tell him. He breaks into a smile, and that put one on my face as well. "Would you want us to tell you about everything?" He nodded his head and Wolf took over the conversation. I started to feel my eyes get heavy, I lay down and after I do I instantly can't keep them opened, I let out a very big yawn, that only a wolf can do, and sleep covered me like a blanket.
🐺
Morning came along and woke me up, Wolf comes over to me, "Go get Tony up, I'll get Virginia." I nod and quietly go over to Tony, I wake him up gesturing with my hand to tell him to stay quiet, I grab Wendell and put him up right.
We were almost gone when we saw Virginia open the birds cages, she tried to get the one that was on the Gypsy Lady's trailer, but she knocked some stuff over, she runs to us, while the lady called for them to catch us.
"Go, go, go, let's gets out of here." Tony tells us, I grab Wendell and start carrying him, while literally running for my life.
We made it to a little spot hoping they couldn't find us, suddenly Wolf shoots his hand up and grabs the person he caught down and that person was non-other then Virginia. "I don't understand, the old woman called off the hunt." Wolf said. "Maybe we just got lucky, okay? Let's just keep going the sooner we get out of this forest the better." Tony says. "Help me get Prince up on the path." "Oh, can't we just bury him? We can always come back sometime in the future." I cut out their argument, buy covering my ears.
We start moving again I scratch under my left ear, I stop every now and then to sniff around and to see or hear if we're being followed, "It's grown." Tony suddenly says, "Grown?" Virginia touches her hair, and low and behold, her hair is longer...much...much longer.
"So it has." Commented Wolf. "Oh, my God." She goes over to the river that was by us. "What happening?" She wonders. Realization hit me like a ton of pitchforks, "The Gypsies." I quietly said. "Of course they had some of your hair. The gypsies have cursed you!" Wolf worriedly says. "Cursed me? What do you mean cursed? What am I supposed to do?" "Um, braid it?" Her father said, she just looks at him and turns away touching her hair again.
🐺
It started to rain, hard, how lovely, just what I want, to smell like wet dog. I walk glumly in front of everyone, "Ow, stop it! You're jerking it!" She yelled to Wolf, who was holding her hair.
"I'm sorry, it's not that easy. You've got a lot of split ends." Wolf apologizes. "How long is it now?" I asked. "Oh, don't ask." Wolf answered. "Where are we going?" Tony asked. No one answered.
Virginia yells out when her hair gets caught on a branch, that's why I like my short hair, you don't always have to worry. "This is crazy, we can't keep going we've got to stop somewhere." Virginia said, "Well, where are we going to find shelter in the middle of the forest?" I ask getting fed up from the rain. "I don't know." She responds. "Look." I see a little cottage, we run towards it.
"Anyone home?" Virginia called out. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure someone is still here, let me see if they're still in their caskets!" I growl. Everyone looks at me surprised, except for Wolf, he knows how I get when I'm tired, and or wet from rain, it's worse when it's a full moon.
"Sorry."
"It's okay, no one's been here for a long time." Wolf reassures. Wolf walks up to me, "Hey why don't you go lie down." He whispered to me. I nod and head to a little room, I find a little place and lay down.
"Why don't you keep Prince with you, to keep you company." Tony places Wendell on my other side, I nod almost half asleep. I turn on my side and bring Wendell down too, I cuddle up to his statue form, kinda wishing he was actually himself in his true form.
A few moments pass before everyone came back down, Virginia wanted Wolf to make a fire so she didn't have to go to bed with wet hair.
"You know, here's a question I never thought I'd be asking. What happened to Snow White after she married the prince?" Tony asked curiously. "She became a great queen. one of the 5 women who changed history." Wolf started to explain.
"Five women?" "Snow White, Cinderella, Queen Riding Hood, Gretta the Great, and the Lady Rapunzel. They formed the first five kingdoms, brought peace to all the lands." Wolf continues. "But they're all dead now. Some say Cinderella's still alive, but no one's seen her in public in nearly 40 years. She would be nearly 200 years old." Wolf chuckled at the end.
"The days of "happily ever after" are gone. These are dark times." I finished looking at the fire sadly. I layed back down and lay Wendell next to me, and let my tiredness take over.
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word count 2219