The Wolf and the Girl

By Aster Glenn Gray

A Little Red Riding Hood retelling set in pre-Revolutionary Russia.

When a wounded wolf collapses on Masha's doorstep, Masha nearly kills it before her grandmother convinces her that this wolf is a transformed human. Once transformed back, the wolf turned out to be Masha's old friend Raisa, who has fallen afoul of a sorceress determined to use her magic to bring revolution to Russia.

After a brutal confrontation with the sorceress, Masha and Raisa flee to France. They develop an act that catches the eye of a film director, who casts them in a silent film adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood… which alerts the sorceress to their whereabouts in France. Now the sorceress and her pack are coming for Raisa and Masha again. How can Raisa and Masha defeat their dark magic?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aster Glenn Gray
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223958345

Aster Glenn Gray

Aster Glenn Gray writes historical romances and fairy tale retellings. (And maybe other things too. She is still a work in progress.) When she is not writing, she spends much of her time haunting libraries and contemplating whether it is time for another hot chocolate.

Book preview

Part One

Chapter 1

In the spring of 1911, when the snow was still on the ground, Masha walked through the woods to her grandmother’s house with a round loaf of rye bread in her basket.

Masha’s grandmother did not live in the village of Kostin with all the other peasants, but a little way outside it, in a cottage in a birch grove in the forest. She was a good help to have at your side during a birth or a death, and it was said that she’d saved Count Michugin himself when he was a little boy suffering from fever; which all in all meant that she was a person of power, and the villagers were a little afraid of her. As she grew old and bent, everyone began to call her Babushka, and the children began to whisper that she was a cousin of Baba Yaga, the old witch who lives in the forest in a cottage on chicken legs. One day Masha, quiet Masha, sweet little round-faced Masha, surprised everyone by punching big Foma Fomich in the nose after he made chicken noises at her.

No one talked about Baba Yaga in front of Masha after that.

A few of the girls in the village used to come to Babushka’s house to hear her tell stories. Not that they believed her stories of talking blini and men who turned into wolves, of course, for they had all been to the school Count Michugin set up in the village; but a good story is a good story. And perhaps there was something to the talk of Babushka’s powers, after all, for all these girls went on to great things, by the standards of the village, at least.

Alyona became a maid in Count Michugin’s St. Petersburg house, and married a footman. And Manya emigrated to America, and sent back enough money that her little brother and sister could go join her in that land where the streets are paved in gold. And red-haired Raisa Petrovna rose highest of all, for she won Count Michugin’s scholarship to go to university in St. Petersburg.

But Raisa Petrovna fell the farthest, too, for she joined up with a group of anarchists and tried to assassinate the tsar (actually it was a mere tsarist official, but no one was about to let facts get in the way of the story), and got sent to Siberia, which gave the good people of Kostin no end of satisfaction. 

But they were all so proud when she went to study in St. Petersburg, Masha protested to Babushka. Why are they happy it ended like this?

Pride and jealousy are two sides of the same coin, Babushka told her. If you toss it up in the air, you never know which way it will come down. 

Masha did not understand. When Raisa Petrovna had gone off to study in St. Petersburg, Masha had been so jealous she could spit. And yet she seemed to be the only person in Kostin who took no satisfaction in Raisa Petrovna’s fall, but grieved over it as if it were her own wound.

But Masha did not expect to understand everything Babushka said, for Babushka was old and wise, and Masha young and inexperienced.

For alone of the foursome who once sat on Babushka’s stove to listen to her stories, Masha had never gone far. She was the youngest of the four, the plainest, the shyest, who sat in the shadows and listened quietly while the other three laughed and talked, and knew she had the pleasure of their company only because she was Babushka’s granddaughter, and came as it were with the house.

They all went on to great things, and meanwhile the farthest Masha had been from Kostin was the year she spent as a maid on Count Michugin’s estate. There she picked up a few French words like baubles, for the Michugins often spoke French to each other.

But then last summer Babushka had taken ill, and Masha had come back to Kostin to take care of her. All winter Babushka had been failing; and now the spring had come, and Babushka was no better.

Masha had walked into the village that morning to visit her brother Tikhon and his wife Anna and their four children, who were soon to be five, for Anna was big with child. Anna packed a round loaf of good rye bread in Masha’s basket, and invited Masha to stay for a cup of tea; but Masha said, No, I don’t like to leave Babushka alone.

Anna nodded, and looked grave, for everyone knew that Babushka was dying.

In the village the snow was all melted, except in the shadows of the houses. But in the woods, the snow persisted, and Masha walked along the path in her felt boots. That path wound up past Babushka’s house, and before Babushka was so sick they used to follow it to secret places in the woods to gather mushrooms or berries or the mosses Babushka used to stanch bleeding wounds.

Masha had never reached the end of the path, and Babushka said there was no end to it, and it just wound on forever until it met the road, for paths, she said, are like streams, which converge on the rivers which flow to the sea.

And Masha was thinking about this as she walked. She had never seen the sea, but in Count Michugin’s house there was a great oil painting of a crystal blue bay, with a high blue sky and a gay little boat with a bright red sail, which seemed as different from the rowboats Masha knew as a plow horse from one of Count Michugin’s racehorses. Masha imagined following the path till it met the road that wound on down to the sea (although she knew, of course, that Babushka had only been speaking figuratively, and roads flowed to cities rather than oceans), where she would stand on the shore and smell the salt air and watch the boats sail past beneath the shining blue sky.

And so, lost in her thoughts, Masha didn’t see the wolf until she reached Babushka’s clearing. But there it was, amber eyed and big as life, lying almost at Babushka’s door.

***

Masha had grown up hearing stories of the wolves. They were fearsome beasts, the wolves of Russia, who moved in packs so vast that they darkened the hills, and feared neither man nor beast. Everyone knew the story about the bridal couple who did not hear the wolves howling above the tinkling of the bells on their sleigh until it was too late: though the groom whipped the horses to a frenzy, and the beautiful bride clung to the sleigh with the moonlight bright on her tears, they could not outpace the pack, and the wolves dragged the bride and groom from the sleigh and rent them in the snow, and nothing was ever found of them, unless perhaps (this was a detail Raisa Petrovna liked to add) one of their silver sleigh bells had been found, years later, in the belly of a wolf killed in one of Count Michugin’s wolf hunts.

And so when Masha saw the wolf, she nearly gave herself up for dead. She froze stock still, clutching her basket in both hands, and the wolf filled her vision like it was the only thing in the world: its amber eyes, the reddish tinge like dried blood on its fur, the glistening white fangs that must lurk behind those black lips.

She must not run. Masha had learned this lesson young, with the dogs of the village, and it must hold good for wolves too. If you run, they will chase you.

She took a step forward instead. Her foot crunched on the snow.

The wolf’s ears flicked toward her. It lifted its head. Masha screamed, half in panic and half in fury, and ran toward it full tilt.

The wolf cowered. If Masha had been in fit state to see anything, she would have seen that it was trembling. But she was in