Author/Uploaded by Margaret Atwood
Contents Cover Other Titles Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Part I: Tig & Nell First Aid Two Scorched Men Morte de Smudgie Part II: My Evil Mother My Evil Mother The Dead Interview Impatient Griselda Bad Teeth Death by Clamshell Freeforall Metempsychosis: Or, the Journey of the Soul Airborne: A Symposium Part III: Nell & Tig A Dusty Lunch Widows Wooden Box Old Babes in the Wood Ac...
Contents Cover Other Titles Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Part I: Tig & Nell First Aid Two Scorched Men Morte de Smudgie Part II: My Evil Mother My Evil Mother The Dead Interview Impatient Griselda Bad Teeth Death by Clamshell Freeforall Metempsychosis: Or, the Journey of the Soul Airborne: A Symposium Part III: Nell & Tig A Dusty Lunch Widows Wooden Box Old Babes in the Wood Acknowledgements A Note About the Author Landmarks Cover Cover Title Page Contents Start Copyright Print Page List ii iii v vi vii 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 175 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 255 256 257 259 Also by Margaret Atwood Shorter Fiction Dancing Girls Murder in the Dark Bluebeard’s Egg Wilderness Tips Good Bones and Simple Murders The Tent Moral Disorder Stone Mattress Novels The Edible Woman Surfacing Lady Oracle Life Before Man Bodily Harm The Handmaid’s Tale Cat’s Eye The Robber Bride Alias Grace The Blind Assassin Oryx and Crake The Penelopiad The Year of the Flood MaddAddam The Heart Goes Last Hag-Seed The Testaments Poetry Double Persephone The Circle Game The Animals in That Country The Journals of Susanna Moodie Procedures for Underground Power Politics You Are Happy Selected Poems: 1965–1975 Two-Headed Poems True Stories Interlunar Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 1976–1986 Morning in the Burned House Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965–1995 The Door Dearly Non-Fiction Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature Days of the Rebels: 1815–1840 Second Words: Selected Critical Prose Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (republished as On Writers and Writing) Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982–2004 Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983–2005 Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004–2021 For Children Up in the Tree Anna’s Pet (with Joyce Barkhouse) For the Birds Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop’s Wunderground Washery Graphic Novels Angel Catbird The Handmaid’s Tale War Bears This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by O.W. Toad, Ltd. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. www.doubleday.com Doubleday and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgements to reprint previously published material appear on this page–this page. Cover illustration © Noma Bar / Dutch Uncle Cover design © Suzanne Dean Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Atwood, Margaret, author. Title: Old babes in the wood : stories / Margaret Atwood. Description: First Edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2023] Identifiers: LCCN 2022025775 (print) | LCCN 2022025776 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385549073 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385549080 (ebook) Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories. Classification: LCC PR9199.3.A8 O43 2023 (print) | LCC PR9199.3.A8 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20220623 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025775 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025776 Ebook ISBN 9780385549080 ep_prh_6.0_142781534_c0_r0 For my readers. For my family. For friends and absent friends. For Graeme Gibson, as always. CONTENTS I TIG & NELL FIRST AID TWO SCORCHED MEN MORTE DE SMUDGIE II MY EVIL MOTHER MY EVIL MOTHER THE DEAD INTERVIEW IMPATIENT GRISELDA BAD TEETH DEATH BY CLAMSHELL FREEFORALL METEMPSYCHOSIS: OR, THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL AIRBORNE: A SYMPOSIUM III NELL & TIG A DUSTY LUNCH WIDOWS WOODEN BOX OLD BABES IN THE WOOD Acknowledgements _142781534_ I TIG & NELL First Aid Nell came home one day just before dinnertime and found the front door open. The car was gone. There was a trail of blood splotches on the steps, and once she was inside the house, she followed it along the hall carpet and into the kitchen. There was a knife on the cutting board, one of Tig’s favourites, Japanese steel, very sharp—and beside it, a bloodstained carrot, one end severed. Their daughter, nine at the time, was nowhere to be found. What were