“No one wants to eat a human!  They are sacred animals,” the wolf said gravely.

Selphie had never heard an animal talk before and to hear the wolf explain in such eloquent language the philosophies and privileges of being a wolf was frankly astonishing.  

“And eating an underage, human woman is out of the question.  No one would do that unless they were starving to death and even then the level of self-loathing they would experience for the rest of their life might not make the ordeal worth it.”

“What’s so special about a human woman?” Selphie asked, looking down at her white arms and touching her flushed cheeks.  She had never been treated like she was anything special.  A boy was something special, especially if he was strong, if he could wield an ax, if he was healthy, and if he was brave.  

“She’s a descendant of the Gods,” the wolf explained seriously.  He was very white.  Selphie had never seen an animal as white as him and certainly not a wolf.  He was as white as a ghost.  Each of his hairs reflected so much light that he barely seemed to be in the room at all.  His eyes were steely, framed by very black waterlines.  He appeared to be a supernatural being to Selphie and if he said that she was descended from the Gods, as God’s messenger, haloed by light, he was completely entitled to say it.

“What about boys?” she asked between the fingers she had raised to her mouth.

“Boys?  Human men?  They would be equal with women if they behaved themselves.  A proper son of God could never be killed by a wolf.  There is no reason for you to fear being here with me.”

Selphie did not understand what was happening around her.  

She was in a room with no doors and no windows.  The only way out was up and it was a long way up, and it was only a possibility, not a certainty.  On the bottom floor of the room, where she and the wolf were, was a bed.  The wolf was tired and he was busy informing her that he was going to sleep in the bed and she was welcome to sleep in it alongside him as he was not hungry and, even if he were, he would never kill a human woman child.  

He closed his eyes to show his intention, but Selphie still did not understand what was surrounding her and she could not go to sleep until she understood.  

The ceiling of the room went up and up.  There were ladders on the walls, all four of them.  In each corner, terraces that poked out here and there in quarter circles filled the corners.  She couldn’t see the ceiling of the room.  As far as Selphie could tell, the room went up for eternity.  If she was supposed to climb a ladder, how was the wolf going to follow her?  There was no way out on the bottom floor, except by way of a ladder.  Selphie had tapped on every panel, yanked on every baseboard, and pulled on every wainscotting.  The tapping did nothing, but make a sound as low as if there was a brick wall on the other side of the panels.  She couldn’t find a single nail holding the baseboards in place.  Reefing on the wainscotting had to be the most depressing as it should have been flimsy.

Where were they?

Was the wolf meant to terrify her and keep her chasing upwards?  If that was the intention of the setup, that she was like Daniel who had been placed in the lion’s den, then whoever inserted the wolf did not understand the animal’s logic.

Yet, animals had killed people lots of times.  They’d killed women lots of times.  Out in the world, in the forests, in the wild places, a lone woman could be killed by a wolf.  Selphie had heard so many stories.

She glanced at the wolf.  

His eyes, which had been slightly open slits, closed immediately.

Selphie shook her head.  If the wolf wanted to kill her, he certainly could have done so already.  She was a thin girl, slight, and weightless, though not in a good way.  It was in an undernourished way.  She felt the sinewy meat of her arms.  There was not enough muscle to hide her bones.

If she had been industrious, she could have climbed the first ladder.  If she had decided to be suspicious of the wolf and slapped him to assert her dominance.  She could have sobbed on him to establish reliance.  She could have done any number of things.  She could have screamed, accused the wolf, she might have even tried to kill him if he was being so docile, but none of those things crossed her mind.

Instead, she felt heaviness in her eyelids.  She was so thoroughly tired and a bruised ache spread over her body.  It was how she always felt: unwell, unsure, unsafe.  

She’d also never had a human being tell her she was a daughter of God and that she was so precious they wouldn’t harm her.  She’d believed lots of people before when they said they wouldn’t harm her.  Some of that trust had been mislaid.

So, she got on the bed and didn’t even try to put any distance between her and the wolf.  If the talking wolf said he wouldn’t hurt her, there was more reason to trust him than any human.  Besides, no matter what happened next, she had every intention of dying warm.  She cuddled right up to him, pretended he was her puppy, buried her face in his strange white fur, and let his heat soak into her until it entered her heart.

She fell asleep and dreamed of the wolf.