Juliet and the Wolf

A Tale Told in the Old Way

In the country of Verona, where the cypress trees grew tall as gallows and the wells ran red with the iron of the hills, there lived a girl named Juliet. She was thirteen winters old, with hair the color of rusted keys and a temper her nurse had tried, unsuccessfully, to drown in milk and prayers.

Her mother had been a girl once too, sold to the House of Capulet at fourteen. Her grandmother at twelve. Her great-grandmother at eleven, and so the line stretched back into the mist of the country, a long chain of girls handed off like loaves of bread, each one a little staler than the last.

Juliet did not intend to be a loaf.

* * *

Now, in those days, the woods around Verona were full of wolves. Common wolves, who took the lambs. Quiet wolves, who took the chickens. And one wolf in particular, who walked sometimes on four legs and sometimes on two, who wore a crown of bone beneath his fur and spoke the language of fathers.

The villagers called him Lord Montague.

They also called him Lord Capulet, depending on the day.

This is the trouble with old wolves. They wear so many names that the women lose track of which one is currently eating them.

* * *

On the night of her betrothal feast, Juliet's father set her on a chair of carved walnut and said, Smile, daughter, for the County Paris has paid your weight in salt and silver, and you must be salted now, and silvered, and made fit for his table.

Juliet smiled. Her teeth were small and even and entirely her own.

The musicians played. The torches guttered. And in through the open window, on a draft of plum-sweet wind, came a boy with eyes the color of wet slate. What light, he murmured, looking at her, through yonder window breaks? But the light was only Juliet, and Juliet was not the sun, and any girl who has been mistaken for the sun knows what happens next: she is asked to rise, and rise, and rise, until she burns out.

He said, Lady, I have heard you are to be married.

She said, I have heard the same.

He said, Deny thy father, and refuse thy name. Come away with me.

And here is the place in the story where the old grandmothers always lean closer, because here is the place where the girl is supposed to fall.

* * *

But Juliet had read the story before, in the marrow of her mother's bones. She had read it in the bruise-blue evenings when her aunts spoke in low voices about cousins married off and never heard from again. She had read it in the careful way her nurse touched her own jaw, as if checking each morning that it still belonged to her.

So Juliet looked at this beautiful boy, this Romeo with his slate eyes and his stolen-away smile, and she said:

And then what?

He blinked. He had not prepared for and then what.

And then we love each other, he said, for the rest of our lives. What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.

A rose by any other name, said Juliet slowly, still gets cut. Still gets pressed between the pages of a book by someone who wanted it for himself. Tell me, Romeo, in your story of us, who holds the shears?

How long is forever, for a girl? she asked.

He could not answer her. None of them ever could.

* * *

The Poem of the Wolf's Three Wives

(here the tale draws breath, and someone older than Juliet speaks)

The first wife was buried in linen. The second wife was buried in lace. The third wife was buried in silence, with a veil drawn over her face.

The wolf, he wept at each wedding. The wolf, he wept at each grave. The wolf, he wept and he wedded, for a wolf must have what a wolf must have.

But the fourth wife, oh, the fourth wife, she came to the altar with thorns in her hair, and a stone in her mouth like a swallowed bell, and a knife in her sleeve, and a knife, and a knife, and the wolf at the altar said, Darling, my dear, and the fourth wife smiled, and the fourth wife said, Husband, come closer. I cannot quite hear.

* * *

When Romeo came to her balcony that night, Juliet was not waiting in a nightdress with her hair undone. She was waiting in her riding boots, with her grandmother's knife strapped to her thigh and a leather satchel of bread, cheese, and three of her mother's gold rings.

Take me to the woods, she said.

To elope? he asked, hopeful.

To learn, she said.

He helped her down anyway. Boys will help girls down from balconies for almost any reason, if they think love is involved.

* * *

In the woods, they met the Wolf.

He was wearing his Capulet face that night, because Juliet was a Capulet daughter, and wolves are practical creatures. He had her father's beard and her father's voice and her father's particular way of saying her name as if it were a possession. His teeth, when he smiled, were a long white gallery. His tongue was the color of old wine left too long in the cup.

Juliet, he said. Come home. The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and this place is death, considering who thou art.

Romeo drew his sword, because that is what boys do in stories. I am fortune's fool, he cried, and lunged.

The Wolf did not lunge back. He simply opened his mouth, and his mouth kept opening, the way a cellar door keeps opening when you have forgotten how deep the cellar goes. Romeo's sword went in first, then Romeo's arm, then Romeo, who was, for one long breath, screaming a name. It was not Juliet's name. It was his own. Romeo, Romeo, he called, as if hoping to find himself in there.

The Wolf chewed slowly. He did not bolt his food the way young wolves do. He was the kind of old wolf who liked to taste each bone, who liked to crack the marrow with his back teeth and savor the boy's last warm thoughts. He swallowed Romeo's sword belt with the buckle still fastened. He spat out one slate-grey eye, considered it, and then ate that too. A plague on both your houses, he murmured, conversational, dabbing at his beard with one velvet paw. But mostly on the houses with daughters.

A cricket, somewhere, stopped singing. Then another. Then the whole forest, which had been pretending not to watch, became very still, the way servants become still when the master is in a mood.

Juliet did not scream. She had been preparing for this her whole life, though she had not known until this moment that the preparation was for this. Her hands did not shake. Her stomach did, but stomachs are private, and hers had always known how to keep a secret.

She said, Grandfather Wolf. I have a question.

He licked the last of Romeo from his teeth, delicately, with the tip of a tongue that had tasted every bride in three generations. Ask, little morsel. Speak, bright angel. For thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head, as a dish of lamb to a hungry man.

How many girls have you eaten?

Oh, said the Wolf, I do not eat girls. I marry them. I keep them. I house them in my belly, which I have decorated very prettily, and they want for nothing there, in the dark, where I can hear them at night, knocking.

And what is the difference, between marrying and eating?

The Wolf was quiet. The forest was quiet. Somewhere, a nightingale that had been singing about love decided, abruptly, to sing about something else. It is the lark, the nightingale sang now, the herald of the morn, no nightingale. And the lark, hearing itself named, came and sat on Juliet's shoulder, because the birds of that country had been waiting a long time for a girl who would ask the right question.

* * *

And then, from somewhere very near and very far, came a sound. A small sound. The sound of knuckles on a door that has been closed for a long time. The sound of many knuckles. The sound of girls.

* * *

The Song of the Belly-Girls

(here the women inside the wolf speak, all at once, and yet each alone)

We are the brides. We are the meals. We are the hush beneath his breath. We are the names he ate for supper, we are the something that won't quite death.

Knock, knock, go our knuckles on his ribs. Knock, knock, go our heels on his spine. Sister, we whisper to the new one falling, welcome to the dark. Have some of mine.

He told our fathers we were treasure. He told our mothers we were safe. He told the priest we were a blessing, and the priest, who was hungry too, said grace.

We are Rosaline. We are Susanna. We are the cousin no one mentions now. We are the aunt who went to visit the country. We are the wife of the wife of the wife of the vow.

We have been waiting in his belly for a girl with a knife and a question and a name. We have been keeping our teeth sharp on his ribcage. We have been practicing. We are no longer tame.

Little sister at the threshold, hear us knocking from within: cut the wolf and we will help you. cut the wolf and let us in

to the morning. To the orchard. To the road that leads away. We have been the meal so long, sweet sister. Let us, just this once, be the day.

* * *

Juliet drew her grandmother's knife.

The wolf was large. The knife was small. None of that mattered, because what she had learned, between her balcony and this clearing, was that Romeo had been a door, and her father a door, and Paris a door, and the Wolf the door behind all the doors, and every one of them led to the same small room shaped like a grave.

She had not come to the woods to be sensible. She had come to be the last girl through.

So she did not stab the Wolf in the heart, because wolves like him do not keep their hearts in their chests. She stabbed him in the name. Right through the soft place under the jaw where Capulet lived, and Montague lived, and Father and Husband and Lord all lived together in a writhing knot.

A plague, she said softly, twisting the blade, on thy house. And thy house. And thy house.

The Wolf fell. He did not die. Wolves like him do not die. But he fell, and he was, for a little while, only a wolf.

And from the long wound under his jaw, the women came out.

They came out slowly at first, blinking, in the wedding clothes of three generations. Linen and lace and silence, just as the first poem said. Some had been in there so long they had forgotten the taste of air, and they stood in the clearing weeping, not from grief but from the strangeness of weather on their faces. Rosaline came out, who had been the wolf's first love, before he had known he was a wolf. Susanna came out, who was Juliet's great-aunt, and who had been listed in the family Bible as died of a fever, aged sixteen. The cousin no one mentioned came out, and was mentioned again. They came out, and came out, and came out, until the clearing was full of women in old gowns, and the moon, embarrassed by the abundance, slipped behind a cloud to give them privacy to be alive.

None of them thanked Juliet. They knew better than to thank a girl for a thing she had done for herself. But the eldest of them, who had been a bride in a year now lost, took Juliet's bloodied hand and pressed it to her own dry cheek, and said: Daughter. Now we begin.

* * *

Juliet walked out of the woods at dawn, and the women walked with her, a long bright line of them, like a wedding procession going the wrong way, which is to say: the right way at last.

She did not go home. She did not go to a nunnery, or a tower, or another man's house. She went into the next country, and the next, and the women went with her, and where they passed, other girls looked up from their needlework and their ledgers and their kneading and their mending, and put down whatever they were holding, and picked up something better.

And as they walked, they sang.

* * *

The Walking Song

(here the freed women sing, and the road sings back, and any girl who hears it is changed by the hearing)

Left foot, right foot, out of the dark. Left foot, right foot, into the lark. We were the lambs. We were the bread. We were the names the hungry men said.

Now we are the road. Now we are the weather. Now we are the women walking out together.

Take the loaf. Take the knife. Take the ring. Take the life. Take the daughter from the door. Take her where she's not a for.

Not for marrying. Not for burying. Not for eating. Not for greeting at the gate of any house with her face arranged like a vow.

Now we are the orchard. Now we are the gate. Now we are the verb, sweet sisters, and no longer the bait.

Sister at the window, sister at the loom, sister with the baby, sister in the room where they told you to be quiet, where they told you to be small, where they told you that a wolf was the best you'd have at all,

step into the doorway. Step into the dust. Step into the line of us. Step. Step. Trust.

Left foot, right foot. The road is wide. Left foot, right foot. The wolf has died. (The wolf has not died. The wolves never do. But we have learned to walk now. And the walking will do.)

* * *

Juliet taught girls how to sharpen knives, and how to ask and then what, and how to recognize a wolf no matter what face he was wearing on a given Tuesday. The freed women taught the rest. There was, it turned out, a great deal to teach.

And when, many years later, a young scholar from England came to Verona and asked the old women what had become of the Capulet girl, the old women smiled with their small and even teeth, and they said:

Oh, that one? That one got away.

Write it down however you like.

We know how it really ended.