By The Moon’s Good Grace: Never Afters, #5

By Kirstyn McDermott

By the Moon's Good Grace is a wild and gothic re-imagining of a classic story from the award-winning Kirstyn McDermott. Ideal for fans of Kelly Link, Angela Carter, and Catherynne M. Valente.

 

The night after the tumultuous events at her grandmother's house, Little Red ventures into the woods to find her missing grandmother. Instead, she discovers a stranger who claims to be her aunt…and learns a startling secret. Her family are wolves, changing form in phase with the moon, and the beast slain in grandmother's cottage means she'll not be home again.

 

With the full moon overhead, Red learns she can undergo the change herself, but life as a wolf is not so easy as it might appear. The villagers distrust fanged beast and fell magic in equal measure, and every transformation places her family in peril. The secret her grandmother kept close could now bring death to her mother, her aunt, and even Red herself. There are paths that need to be chosen, and no decision will come without sacrifice.

 

By the Moon's Good Grace is the fifth novella in Kirstyn McDermott's Never Afters series. Dark, powerful, and brimming with magic, these tales weave a reimagined world in which fairy-tale girls grow up to find both love and heartbreak, family and friendship, loss, and forgiveness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brain Jar Press
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922479396

Book preview

By The Moon’s Good Grace

THE NEVER AFTERS

Burnt Sugar

The New Wife

After Midnight

Braid

By The Moon’s Good Grace

Winterbloom

BY THE MOON’S GOOD GRACE

A NEVER AFTERS TALE

KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT

Brain Jar Press

CONTENTS

By The Moon’s Good Grace

About the Author

Also by Kirstyn McDermott

Thank You For Buying This Brain Jar Press Ebook

BY THE MOON’S GOOD GRACE

It be all I can do to keep still in me bed, waiting in the dark for the snoring to start up on the other side of the curtain, that snuffling death-rattle of his I been hearing most of me life, and when it does come I gotta wait some more till I be sure me Mam be sleeping sound as well. She been giving me the side-eye since we come back damp and wretched from the woods, me stepfather carrying his story the way he sees fit to show it and me with me mouth pinned shut, not knowing what to do with the words even if I could lay tongue to the right ones. Not me story to tell, he says, not me place to bring such frightful tidings to me own Mam, specially when I don't see the proper shape of them.

I can still feel where his fingers dug into me arms, shaking sense into me; the bruises'll bloom with first light.

Waiting, waiting, while the crimson thread knotted round me breastbone thickens and twists, becomes a cord, becomes a rope, becomes a cable like them what pull Old Yag's punt across the river, and so it drags on me, tugging till I can't bear it one breath more and throw off the blankets. Quiet, mindful of the creak and tattle of the floorboards, I make me way to the door and grab me cloak from its hanging hook. So soft, this fine woollen weave me Granmama must've bartered more'n a few good hens over, more again to have it dyed red, red as a castle rose, and her stitching be finer still.

The thirteenth moon of your thirteenth year, my girl; a milestone to be well marked.

Me eyes prickle and I rub at them, angry and sad and scared all at once, but I push the whole mess down, throw the hood over me head and slip from the cottage into the night.

Full-bellied Moon shines the way but I don't need her, don't need nothing but me own bare feet that know this winding woodland path better'n any paved or cart-runnelled road, me feet and the pull of the thread that draws me on sure as any compass. Running till the breath catches cold in me throat, ducking each low branch and leaping over roots that hump and thrust from the dirt, running till me toe catches on some unseen thing, some stone or twig that sends me sprawling. I break the fall with me hands, palms scraping raw along the ground but better that than another bump on the head, and I roll panting onto me back to see I've landed in the same little clearing where I seen the wolf this afternoon.

Where it seen me.

Those sharp amber