“What a Big Heart You Have” by Marissa Lingen

I don’t mean to sound disloyal, because I love my grandmother. But I have to say my other grandmother would never have been so foolish as to be eaten by the wolf. There’s nearsightedness and then there’s failure to smell a full-grown wolf when it’s at your door. They are pungent. This one talked, sure, but it didn’t wash. And if it had, it would have smelled like wet wolf.

There’s no amount of lavender soap that can cover that.

But my grandmother trusts people. She always has. Even wolf people. Maybe especially wolf people. So I had to get there with my snacks and my axe, charging in to the rescue. It was very dramatic. Word got out.

This was a problem for me. I never intended to set up as a wolf slayer, and I had to refuse the job from several eager farmers who didn’t understand the concept of defense being different than offense. They became insistent enough that I had to take myself and my grandmother on the road, because they weren’t leaving her alone either. And she kept making friends with people in taverns. Her fellow old ladies selling apples and combs all “meant well” and “had the biggest heart.” (I saw it. It was in an intricately carved wooden box. Probably a camelopard, but I wasn’t going to tell her.)

And cats. Talking cats were my grandmother’s downfall. (They did look very soft, I had to agree.) I am entirely sure that cat did not work for the Marquis of anything in particular, but Gran would hear nothing against him.

“I just don’t understand why you didn’t want to visit the Marquis,” she said. And again: comparisons are odious, but my other grandmother would never. Still, I insisted, and the discussion (Gran does not “argue”) meant that we were traveling the forest road late, with the inn we sought nowhere in view. Of course it started raining. Of course it did.

And then Gran lost her footing on the slippery stones of the forest road and reached out to steady herself. She caught me with one hand, and I held her up.

With the other she caught a rose hedge, and the branch broke with a snap.

Even in the dark of the rainy forest road I could see the perfect pink rose in her hand for the moment before she dropped it, wringing at the places where the thorns had cut her skin deeper than she expected.

“Gran, are you all right? Here, use my handkerchief.” I bound the wounds as best I could for a temporary fix. She never complained—she never does—but she flinched, and I could tell this was a turn of events she didn’t much care for.

She picked up the pink rose with some dignity. “Well, I paid for this, I might as well enjoy it.”

“You haven’t paid,” rumbled a deep voice from the shadows.

I reached for my axe, not waiting to see who was rumbling at my grandmother. “You want a price beyond her blood, then?”

“Your blood is useless to me. The rose took that, not I. But it is my rose.”

“Well, I should think you’d have it under better control if it’s yours,” said Gran.

And then looming out of the shadows was a beast—shaggy and fanged but the size of a large man standing on two legs. He was wearing the fine clothes of a lord, but his ears were laid back in displeasure. “Come with me,” he said. Gran put a hand out, restraining my axe hand. He had not framed it as a request, but she was not ready for me to spill blood for her again.

We followed him up the barely visible side road. A castle loomed above us in the darkness, grey stonework and every color of the world lit up in stained-glass windows full of candles. Even I couldn’t hold back a gasp.

“How lovely,” said Gran. “We’ll dry off, and then you can tell us what you need.”

She sounded like she was visiting her next-door neighbor Fern, whom she’d known since earliest childhood. She sounded utterly at home with a sudden castle. Well, of course she would, my grandmother could make herself at home anywhere. I…was significantly less at ease with either the castle or the creature’s intentions.

It was warmer inside, though the stone of the castle was not what anyone might call cozy. The Beast’s fangs were no less daunting in extensive candlelight, and he smelled not entirely unlike wet wolf. He produced towels from an unseen source, though they felt solid enough. I dried my hair and face warily and waited for an explanation.

It was familiar enough when it came: he was the Beast of this forest, lord of all he surveyed, and when someone damaged his property he took payment in their company. Gran would need to stay with him for a year and a day as payment for the rose. He looked at me. “Many people seek for a near relation to serve this term for them,” he said questioningly.

“No, it’s fine,” said Gran cheerfully, before I could even open my mouth to answer.

I stared at her, holding the towel out like a statue of a bather. An invisible presence took it from me and whisked it away. This seemed the least of my troubles. “Gran, what are you saying?”

“I quite like him.”

“You…like me?” said the Beast.

“Well, you seem a nice fellow.”

I did not tell him that she felt that way about con artist cats and usurping witch queens as well. The slow delight spreading over his muzzle and snout was too lovely to dislodge. At that point I rather liked him myself.

I mean, not in that way.

Gran took his paw in her hand—as much as would fit. “I think we’d suit admirably. You have a really lovely space here, but it’s a bit chilly. I crochet and quilt. I could fix it right up for you.”

“Oh,” said the Beast, thunderstruck.

“I never meant to travel with my granddaughter indefinitely. She has so much she has to learn on her own.”

I resolved not to ask Gran exactly what she thought those lessons would be. I didn’t want to have to argue with her. But I was certainly not leaving them alone until I felt more certain of this Beast than a single facial expression could make me. Especially on a face with such long fangs.

“I’ll stay in a guest room,” I announced. “It’s a castle, it’s bound to have guest rooms.”

Gran did not look as delighted as I expected. “Well, all right, sweetheart.”

“Certainly!” said the Beast with significantly more enthusiasm. “I should get to know your family, shouldn’t I, my…uh, my dear? If this arrangement is to work, surely I should know your family.”

“I suppose so.”

Was she…sulking? Surely not, she was sunny in the worst of storms. I retired to the guest room confused.

The next two weeks were a combination of glorious time alone in the Beast’s garden and library and extremely awkward meals and conversations with Gran and the Beast. The invisible presences in the house continued disconcerting, and I couldn’t understand their agenda. I hoped that this would ease as we all got used to each other. Instead the silences stretched longer.

Just when I felt ready to break and drag Gran back down the forest road kicking and screaming, rose or no rose, Beast or no Beast, a knock came on the massive castle door. The invisible presences opened it before I could answer.

It was my other grandmother.

I had never seen her in traveling clothes—mostly she stayed at her loom and made things with quiet, slightly grim determination. Occasionally she would go blackberrying, but just a hat was enough for that. But there she was, plump and serene and very settled in herself—on the Beast’s doorstep.

“Hello, darling,” she said.

“Gramma—I—what are you doing here, Gramma?”

“Hannah invited me, of course. To meet her new gentleman. We’ve known each other sixty years, sweetheart, you can’t think she’d just run off and not tell me. Not like some people.”

Gramma was expecting a gentleman. Did Gramma fully understand what the Beast was like? Did she fully understand what Gran was like? “There’s no gentleman here, there’s just—”

“She wrote to me about his little ways. There’s no need to be rude, we didn’t raise you that way,” said Gramma.

“We certainly did not,” said Gran, thumping cheerfully down the castle’s glorious main staircase. “Hello, Joan, you made good time on the road.”

“Well, when I have somewhere to be,” said Gramma. She hugged me, a bit absentmindedly, and then hugged Gran as well. And before I knew it I was trailing them back to the library so Gramma could meet the Beast.

“Well, I must say, this seems ideal,” said Gramma from the depths of a giant velvet armchair. She had been provided with hot tea and a fresh scone, which does tend to improve one’s outlook. The Beast had gone back to his book, and everyone was comfortable except me.

Gran raised an eyebrow significantly. “Except the part where our granddaughter….”

Gramma laughed. “Oh, she’s too young to understand. Aren’t you, darling. You just need to give your grandmother some space, go off and see the world.”

“But she trusts everybody,” I blurted.

“Yes, she’s always been like that,” said Gramma. “It’s why she could appreciate your Grandpa Jack when the whole village had him written down as a scoundrel fiddler who would never amount to anything.”

I became belatedly aware that my mouth was hanging open in what was probably not a mature and dignified fashion. I closed it with a snap. “Grandpa Jack was—”

“You weren’t there,” Gramma continued relentlessly, “but let me tell you, Jack was a knave in his time. But Hannah here saw something in him that no one else could see.”

“Fascinating,” murmured the Beast. “I can see that I’ve only touched the very edge of the stories you have to tell, Hannah.”

I buried my face in my hands. This was all too much.

“You know, he knows some very nice frogs I could introduce you to,” said Gran.

Gramma looked intrigued. “That sounds damp.”

“Only temporarily.”

“Hmm,” said Gramma far too thoughtfully.

“If you take up with a frog, could you please make it a nearby frog?” I said. “I never intended life on the open road to be permanent, I just didn’t want to hunt wolves.”

“I should think not,” said the Beast from behind his book.

“I make no promises,” said Gramma.

But Gran said, “I will do my best, darling,” and I realized that my axe was no good here, I really would have to be content with whatever they managed. Nearby frogs or not.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be in line to inherit either castle, and I can’t say that I find either one comfortable. Still, having them look after each other was better than leaving things to chance and the goodwill of Beasts and Frogs. They made it clear that it was a good time to return to my journeying ways. They’re ridiculous and stubborn and probably right in this case—and if they weren’t, there wasn’t much I could do. They’re my grandmothers, and I love them. Talking menagerie and all.

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Marissa Lingen is a freelance writer who lives in the Minneapolis suburbs with her family. She is the author of over two hundred works of short science fiction and fantasy and has no intention of stopping any time soon. She also writes poetry and essays now, and there’s no telling where it’ll end.