The true story of Wolf and Redcap and how vengeance was wreaked on the Woodcutter...

The scar in his belly still ached, but he could live with that. The Woodcutter had taken Redcap, and that left Wolf with restless nights and an anger that gnawed.

She-Wolf was a little bit in love with Wolf. She had warned Wolf not to get involved with Redcap, to be satisfied with being Wolf by day and howling in the forest jazz combo at night. Anything else would lead to trouble. Keep out of the way of the Woodcutter, too. He does a sideline in wolfskin coats. But for Wolf there was something missing, and what he had wasn't enough.

When he first saw Redcap, picking flowers near the woods with two of her friends, she had immediately struck him as different. Three girls chatting and smiling, yet only one of them with a face that was not all surface. The other two existed as their shining eyes, their animation over whatever trivia of the moment had seized them, their dimpled smiles. She had a face which was not the emotions it expressed, but through which they passed, as though that body concealed a world. Those unadorned lips, no tension spoiling their perfect form. Those eyes, impassive, innocent, impossibly beautiful. To the other two, she was one of them, but to Wolf, she was something mysterious, a being of another ilke.

One day, her two friends had errands elsewhere, and they left. Redcap picked up her basket and ventured into the woods. Wolf moved from one tree to the next, following her for a while without being seen. Eventually, as if by accident, he had walked onto the same path and greeted her. They had walked for a while side by side, and talked.

Wolf, thinking back on it later, understood that his motives had not been entirely pure. By night he had dreamed of her face, of her hidden being, of a world he would like to enter, be part of, she, a garden in Arcadia. He would cherish her, protect her from the treacherous world in which he knew too well how to survive. She would complete him, or perhaps he would disappear altogether into her greater being. By day, he remembered her well-formed legs, imagined her young breasts, formed the outline of her body from the memory of how her skirt and blouse had caressed it. He wanted to eat her up.

What sensible mother sent her daughter out on her own into the woods? It was to protect her that Wolf had walked by her side, talked of who knows what, every word a meaningless delight, every word now forgotten, only the memory of her presence burned into his soul. Passing the Woodcutter's hut, Wolf had seen him staring through the window, understood that peeping villain from the badness in his own heart.

Then they had glimpsed Baba Yaga's hut in the distance. What did you expect, that an honest grandmother lives in the middle of a forest? The whole set-up was suspicious from the beginning. The very fence posts had skulls on top of them, and the hut was crooked. It did not exactly stand on chicken legs, but neither did it stand properly on the ground, being supported by random pieces of wood, some looking like bones. Baba Yaga had a reputation for eating everyone.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Wolf had asked her.

"Oh yes," she had replied, her smile innocent of any sense of danger.

He had become absorbed in love and fascinated by desire, he thought. That is why he didn't notice that the Woodcutter had crept round by another route, he hadn't seen him creep behind the trees, he hadn't heard the latch of Baba Yaga's back door.

"Well, here we must part," Wolf had said.

Redcap had smiled at him, looked at him with the sweet expression that was habitual to her, but which Wolf believed to signal love. Then Wolf had also crept unseen through Baba Yaga's back door.

Tap tap! He could hear Redcap knocking at the front door.

Terror gripped him. Baba Yaga may have been small but she was not to be trifled with. He peered round the door-frame of the scullery and there in the half-darkness he could make out Baba Yaga's back as she slouched towards the front door. Only later was he to find out that the Woodcutter had hidden in the cupboard like the cowardly villain he was. Hiding was not the way of wolves.

There had been only this moment in which to act. He leaped. Baba Yaga turned, saw him in mid-flight and shrieked a curse. Suddenly there was no Baba Yaga. A rat scurried across the floor towards a hole in the wall. Wolf twisted his body, jaws wide, and swallowed the rat whole as his front paws hit the ground.

Tap tap!

Already his insides began to ache horribly. Tap tap!

Quickly, he opened the cupboard and rummaged among the dirty clothes that hung and rested in screwed up piles, failing to see the Woodcutter clutching his axe and trembling in his wolfskin coat. Wolf put on a selection of what he could find, mainly a large nightcap that would at least cover his ears. It was dark indoors, and Baba Yaga was no oil painting. Redcap would not notice.

Tap tap!

Wolf rushed into the bed, covering his hairy legs with the duvet covered in spiders.

"Come in! The door is open!"

There was Redcap, framed with light, standing with her basket covered in a gingham cloth. Wolf's heart melted, his loins filled with desire and his belly twisted in pain. She stepped into the darkness, came over to the bed, and sat down by the bedside. The light from the open door reflected softly from the bedsheets onto that face, the face of a radiant being, a face that could convert atheists.

The belly pain gripped him in a vicious colic, but it meant nothing. He was in an agony of love, a pain that overwhelmed everything. He wanted to grab her, take her to him, possess her, eat her up. She was so close.

She stared at his face, making out in the shadows only the glint in his eyes.

"What big eyes you have, grandmother!"

"I only want to see you." His nightcap came loose as he shifted in pain.

"What big ears you have!"

"I only want to hear you."

He smiled.

"Your teeth are bigger than I remember," Redcap said.

She did make a lot of personal remarks. But he could not bring himself to rebuke her. He wanted her. He could have grabbed her in a moment. Yet he knew also that if he grabbed her, he would lose her forever. Love prevented him. Then the Woodcutter chose to burst out of the cupboard, wielding his axe. Redcap started back in horror as the axe, aimed at Wolf's heart, cleft instead his belly as Wolf attempted to jump out of the way. A bloodied rat jumped out and scuttled across the floor, leaving a red trail as Wolf turned and leaped towards the Woodcutter. The Woodcutter grabbed the now blood-spattered Redcap by the wrist and dragged her towards the door. Wolf attempted to run after them, then he blacked out.

When he came round he was back in bed and Baba Yaga was standing over him. A continuous pain ran through him. He gingerly felt his belly and found to his surprise that it was bandaged.

"I don't eat creatures who are blessed, and you are half-blessed. You are of a different ilke, and might upset my digestion," Baba Yaga was saying. "Still, I reserve the right."

Wolf stayed with Baba Yaga for several weeks, healing and plotting. She bustled about like a harmless farmer's wife, feeding and nurturing him. The food was good, and he started to put on weight. Wolf worried about this occasionally, but then, he was getting better. Surely he could just run out of the door whenever he felt like it? Considering Baba Yaga's reputation though, Wolf decided that the best plan was to leave unexpectedly, to creep out at night when Baba Yaga was out flying about in her pestle and mortar. Baba Yaga was too nice, and it put him in mind of the story about the gingerbread house.

One night at full moon, Wolf decided to leave. He waited until he heard Baba Yaga's cackle as she flew off. He crept out of bed. The ache in his belly was bearable now. Deal with the Woodcutter. That was next. Then rescue Redcap. Padding softly out of the door, he sniffed the cold forest air. Then across the dry leaves, making no more sound than the rustling wind. From somewhere in the darkness came an eerie howl, like someone in pain.

"Don't think I can't see you!" Baba Yaga's voice came from nowhere.

He shook himself and his hair stood on end. But she did not appear, and she did not stop him as he ventured further into the wood. On he went, picking and sniffing his way back towards the Woodcutter's hut.

There in the clearing was She-Wolf, howling, her leg held in a cruel trap. Out of his hut came the Woodcutter, swinging his axe. Swifter than thought Wolf sprang, his snarling jaws slicing through the air towards Woodcutter's throat, oblivious of that axe. At the same moment, cutting the forest air, a sharp cackle came from up in the trees.

"Go lovely in a pie!"

Woodcutter looked up and fell back, eyes wide, arms flailing, axe handle slipping up out of his hand, body falling, axe arcing up and descending, slitting his throat before even hair or tooth or spittle of Wolf touched him. Wolf stopped, astonished. Then gentle as leaf-fall, Baba Yaga rowed the mortar down from the treetops.

"Vengeance is mine!" she said.

Wolf cried out. "The saying is, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'"

"The point is, it's not yours. Hahahahaha!"

Turning, Wolf used his jaws to open the trap, and She-Wolf limped out, circled him once then sat, nuzzling against him.

At that moment Redcap emerged from the hut, bedraggled and still blood-spattered but beautiful as ever.

"It's not me you love, but the beauty in your own heart," she said. "As for your lust, God will provide."

She-Wolf's soft fur and lustful growl melted Wolf's heart. He took up jazz, and they played wild sax all night, every night.