The Loaf of Bread

There was once a creature who lived alone in the forest near the outskirts of a small village. The villagers did not know how the creature came to be there. It was said that she was cursed.

The creature slept beneath the branches of an ancient oak on a bed of peat moss and pine needles. She drank fresh water from the cold stream, and she ate elderberries and honey.

She weaved her clothes out of scraps of material she collected from the village's waste fields. The villagers rarely caught sight of her.

But when the moon was full, she howled and howled.

She spooked the animals in the stables month after month, year after year, until after a few years of this, the villagers formed a committee and made a unanimous decision.

One night, on a full moon, the town elders followed the sound of her howls, and they captured her in a large silken net. Once in their grasp, they forced her to drink a sickly sweet herb that caused her to fall into a deep sleep.

When she awakened, she was lying on a bed in an empty room with a low ceiling over her head. She could not see the night stars, and it scared her. All she could see were white curtains, white bed sheets, and the white faces of the the village elders as they stared down at her.

The elders of the village tried to tame the creature with pale silks, tight laces across her back and chest, a pair of stiff patent shoes that they taught her how to shine daily, hair combs and pins that twisted her hair into tight knots that made her head pound, and layers of starched fabric that made her suck in her breath in such a way that she could never release it fully.

And though she never went hungry, and was never cold,

her heart was heavy,

her spirit was broken,

and she never uttered a single word.

She refused their foods laced with bitter herbs that made her tired, and she began to waste away. She paced the floor of her windowless room ceaselessly. And at night every night, not just during the full moon, she howled and howled. No one in the village could sleep.

So they released her back into the wild, and things went back to the way they had been before her capture.

But one cold winter night, the preacher’s son remembered her, and he left a warm loaf of bread for her on a stone by the oak tree where she was known to sleep.

The next morning, the loaf of bread was gone, replaced by a glossy white feather.

Every night for hundreds of nights, this ritual was repeated: he left the bread, and she took the bread; she left a feather, and he took the feather.

The preacher’s son collected the glossy white feathers, and he stitched the feathers together into a beautiful cape.

When the cape was finished, it was the one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen, second only to her.

One night, he left it on the stone for her to find, along with a fresh loaf of bread.

The next evening, he returned to the stone to leave her a fresh loaf of bread. She was waiting for him, resplendent in the feathered cape made from the feathers that he’d stitched together.

She’d transformed into an angel. He held out his hand to her, and she took it.