How To Survive This Fairytale

Chapter 1

FIRST, YOU HAVE TO WANT TO LIVE.

Which you do, more than anything else. Why else the pebbles? Why else the bread crumbs?

Here’s the thing: you can lie down and die at any time. When you and your sister are abandoned in the woods, with no way home, and no one at home who wants you, you can surrender and sink into the sleep that has no end.

But you don’t.

No: you take your sister’s hand and you wander through the labyrinthine wood until your feet blister and your bearings blur. Even then, you’re not ready to die.

And when the wolf comes?

When the wolf comes, with its fur drawn tight over its bones, with its visible ribs a mirror of your own withered body, you can submit to the mercy of its slavering maw: you and your sister. You can let it end for the both of you, but you don’t.

Instead, crushing your sister’s hand in yours, you run, even though you’re certain you can’t outrun a wolf, even though you no longer have the strength to sail through the underbrush, even though the low-hanging branches of the trees try to snatch you in their snaring embrace.

Despite it all—despite soiling yourself in fear, despite Gretel’s endless tears—you run and keep running.

Why keep running?

Why resist, when the ending seems inevitable?

Why eat of the house made of spun sugar and gingerbread?

Because you have one glorious, wretched life, and for whatever reason, you’ll hold onto it until giants grind your bones to make their bread.

Remember this when it gets harder. Because it only gets harder from here.