Jill was nine years old and bold and she went on a walk out into the world. Skipping down the side road, taking the back trails, off she went; twists piled on turns till she was a good ways from home by anyone’s reckoning, and much farther by a nine-year-old girl’s. She stopped to look for frogs in a small pond, and that’s when she came face to face with the big wolf. It was standing under the trees a few feet from her, watching her with its sad wolf eyes.
Who are you? she asked.
I’m the big bad wolf, said he, and I’m going to eat you.
Jill was very upset at this, and her frown showed. My mommy says wolves don’t eat people unless they’re starving to death, she said.
I’m always starving, said he. It’s like a big pit in my stomach, little girl, and I’m going to eat you.
Jill was a quick thinker, and she knew how stories went. Wouldn’t you rather wait ‘till I’m bigger and have more meat on me? she pleaded.
The wolf sniffed her, and wrinkled his big wolf nose. You talk sense, little girl, he said, but I can’t stay hungry forever. I’ll see you when you’re older. And then he bounded away into the bushes, his ragged grey tail whisking away through the greenery.
Jill smiled to herself around then, and she kept going on her walk. She went out of the woods and down a lonely side road, one with only a single old farm on it, and then she stopped and knocked on the door. A tall, thin man and his tall, thin wife answered it.
Yes child? they asked.
I’m lost, she said. Which way to line seven?
The tall, thin wife smiled, lips pressed firmly together, and her husband scratched at his lank hair with one cadaverous hand. Take the road left from the end of the driveway, then walk to the intersection, then go right, and you’ll be homeward bound before you know it, said they.
Thank you very much, said Jill, and as she walked down the driveway she felt their stares on her back, heavy like a bear’s paw. She smiled again.
Jill ignored the directions and went the other way at the intersection, and before long she was on the highway’s side. Night was coming on, and the cars zoomed by without seeing her, because she was wearing dark clothing. Jill walked careful and quiet, and before long she heard something breathing in the bushes near her.
Hello? she asked.
Hello? came her own voice back at her.
That’s not funny. And once again, doubled over: that’s not funny. But there was a bit of a difference, a small strangled edge, like it was coming from a very big throat screwed up tight and twisted about to sound like a little nine-year-old girl’s.
She spun about on her heel and faced the bushes. What do you want? she demanded.
There was quiet, and then a voice floated up, deep and raspy and colder than a skeleton’s love. You, said it.
Why?
I love the children. Their parents tell them to look out for me, and I watch them from the forests all day, and run away when they play near. Then come sundown, I take who I find, and I have found you. I play and play and play with them all night, but in the morning they never want to move again, and they lie still and let bugs and birds pick at them. I don’t know why. Can you tell me why?
If you’ll let me go, she said. I’ll tell you someday, when I’m older and know more.
I’ll wait, said it, and then the bushes were empty.
Jill smiled again, again, and she skipped towards home. She made it to the end of the driveway before she heard the flip-flap-flop and gentle whisper of leathery wings, and then the tall, thin man and the tall, thin wife descended upon her, one in front, one behind. They were ghastly in the faint starlight, and it glittered off their teeth.
Fair is fair, child, said they. You took directions from us and gave nothing in return. Now we take ours, and with no price set, we want blood.
Jill was a quick thinker. All I took was your time. Don’t you want that back? You can get blood anywhere, from anyone or anything.
The tall, thin man frowned. Time is precious. Ours more than most, with our living so long. We saw the crusades, we fed on battle-spilt flesh, we’ve glutted alongside ravens on the campaigns of Alexander. A moment of our time is worth a lifetime of yours.
Then come to me when the lifetime is almost over, said Jill.
The tall, thin wife laughed silently, fangs spread wide at this. Good girl, said they. We will collect your lifetime at the end, and find you by its smell. Good girl, said they, and they lifted up and away into the darkness overhead.
Jill walked up the driveway and into the house and shut the door. Well, she said, that was easy.
Years went by and Jill grew up a little more with each one, a little bigger, a little smarter, a little more crafty. She saw things in the bushes now and then, and sometimes sounds came from outside her window at night. Her neighbour’s pets started vanishing, and she felt a bit bad about that, but not too bad. And each and every year, one of three visitors would come to her door on her birthday, sometimes the same one twice, once thrice, but never four years running. One would come in the day, one in the evening, one at night. And they would ask if she was meaty enough yet, if she had enough time, whether or not she had the answer, and she would always say not yet, not yet, try again next year. The visitor would leave, grumbling or silent, and life would go on.
At twenty she entered university, by twenty-five she had a degree in law school. She made friends there, some boys, some girls, and one of the girls came crying to her in the night one day, full of alcohol and sorrow and a story about a date gone very, very wrong. Jill soothed her and sympathized with her and put her to bed, and said she’d phone the police, and since that day was her birthday, she heard the caller at the door just after the friend drifted off.
Hello, she told the wolf. I have meat for you, young tender meat, tasty and fine.
Then give it to me, said he, for I’ve followed you too long and my poor belly’s aching for you.
It’s not mine to give, but it’s yours to fetch. You can find your fare at this address, she said, and she gave him the name that the friend had cried from.
Thank you, howled he, and then he was off into the night with his grey tail wagging. The friend was fine in the morning, and she never heard from the boy again.
There were only two visitors now that she might entertain each year. At thirty she entered local politics, by thirty-five she was a senator, and she was in a dangerously close vote for a bill she could not afford to miss. The deciding motion was to pass the day after her birthday.
Hello, she told the thing that arrived in the darkness. I have your answer.
Tell me, said it.
They die, said she. They wither away and die in your dancing, die of fright. Do you know why this is, what this is?
No, said the voice.
Go and ask this man, she said, and she named another name, one of her fellows of the senate. Go and ask him, and he’ll show you what I mean.
The chief opponent of the bill died of a heart attack at home before the vote could take place, and it was passed by a narrow margin, thanks to some clever arguments from Jill.
At forty-seven, Jill became the President of the United States of America, with fifty-seven percent of the popular vote.
She won her re-election campaign at fifty-one with fifty-nine percent, and most people thought those eight years were pretty good years. And every year, the oval office would get a little bit darker on one day, when she had a special visitor that she sent away all her aides to meet. They never showed up on any of the cameras, and they always went away disappointed and left the white house a bit darker than before.
She left office quietly and without fuss at fifty-five, and most people thought she’d done a pretty good job, and were more than happy to put her in the supreme court. At ninety-two she was sick, and stepped down from office to live in her house, a new house near her old home. There, as she sat in bed writing, she heard the door open.
In they came, the thin couple, and their stares were all the demand they needed.
She put down her glass of water. Well? she said.
We come for what is owed, said the couple.
Jill smiled for a fourth time. Then you will have it.
Our lost time? Asked they.
Oh, it will be properly compensated for, she said. A moment, wasn’t it?
For us, a lifetime, said they. Our time is worth more than yours.
Oh is it? said Jill, in a sweet voice. When she was a nine-year-old girl, her parents would’ve known that for trouble, when she was a forty-nine-year-old president, her opponents knew the same.
Yes, said they, and she heard a bit of uncertainty there. They were used to using fear, and its absence troubled them like a weaponless soldier.
Not by a long shot, said she. You are speaking to a woman who was for eight years the most important person in the world. For the next forty, she was heard closely by all those who followed her, and she’s just finishing up her memoirs, which many, many people are also waiting for.
You have done much in a short time, said they, but we have lived for long.
Jill laughed. And what have you done in that time? said she. Eaten a few dead men out of many dead men on a nameless, pointless battlefield before history began? You are crows, but without the intellect of crows. Jackals without cunning. Vultures without craft. You have done nothing, have lived nothing. Empty, long, hollow lives. And my time is worth more than yours. You took a moment from me in my youth with your bartering and threats, and you have stolen several from me now. And you will repay me what is mine, in the proportions that are mine, NOW!
At the shout the tall, thin man and his tall, thin wife flinched backwards, as if they’d been struck, and then at the next instant they unravelled into less than dust, all their time unrolling out of them in a sigh that sounded like a scream.
Jill took in all those moments with a small gasp and a giggle, then picked up her pen and wrote the last word of the epilogue. On her way out the door, she posted her memoirs in her mailbox and tipped up the little flag. It was going to be more fun, thought she, to find another set of parents this time around. She’d helped make the orphanages better, after all.
Jill walked on out into the world, nine years old and bold.