Red Riding Hood Gets Lost

by Joan Holub

  But legend had it that the enchantress was a good person. Someone who was utterly trustworthy. So she couldn’t possibly be associated with E.V.I.L.!

  Quickly, Red explained all about the mapestry, and the treasure she and her friends were hoping to find.

  “And you thought you’d find the treasure here?” the enchantress asked. “What did you think it would be?” She’d stopped rocking. Her gloved hands gripped the arms of her chair.

  “Since the mapestry was leading us to your cottage, we were kind of hoping you would know,” said Red.

  “I see.” The enchantress began rocking again. “I’m afraid I know nothing about any treasure,” she said. Her voice sounded much stronger now than it had at the beginning of their visit. “The mapestry, as you call it, is undoubtedly a hoax.”

  “Oh,” Red said, feeling terribly let down.

  “I think it would be best for you and your friends to forget about hunting for treasure. Concentrate on your studies instead.”

  Though her heart felt heavy with disappointment, Red managed to say, “Thank you for the advice.” As the wisest person in Grimmlandia, Grandmother Enchantress must know what she was talking about.

  Changing the subject, the enchantress said, “So, Wolfgang tells me you want to act. He says there’s a part in a play at the Academy that you’re just right for.”

  “Um, I’m not sure about that,” Red replied. She was surprised that Wolfgang had talked about her to the enchantress. At the same time, she felt pleased that he thought she was “just right” for the part of Red Robin Hood.

  Grandmother Enchantress pulled her kerchief lower around her face and smiled at her. “That Wolfgang has a good head on his shoulders. You should listen to him.”

  “Uh. Okay,” Red said. This legendary lady obviously thought highly of Wolfgang. So maybe he wasn’t all bad. She remembered how apologetic he’d looked just before he’d changed into a wolf and run off. Maybe she’d been right to think that Ms. Wicked had some hold over him. After class, it had kind of sounded like she’d ordered him to steal her basket. But he wouldn’t really turn it over to Ms. Wicked, would he?

  The enchantress had begun to rock more energetically again. Her eyes were twinkling. They were gray, Red noticed. Just like Wolfgang’s.

  “My, what nice gray eyes you have!” she blurted. Then immediately she worried that she was being rude for saying something so personal.

  But the enchantress didn’t seem to mind. “Why, thank you,” she said, batting her eyelashes in a teasing way. “All the better to see you with.” Then she leaned forward in her chair. “Forgive the nosy question, but I’m wondering if there’s a special boy you like at school?”

  Red looked down, feeling her cheeks flush. Because for some reason a picture of Wolfgang leaped into her head. “I … uh … not really,” she mumbled. Had she thought of him just because they’d been talking about him? Or did she like him?

  As the enchantress rambled on about what a wonderful boy Wolfgang was, but so underappreciated by other students, Red suddenly noticed the woman’s feet. She was wearing sneakers, which stuck out from under the bottom edge of the patchwork quilt!

  “My, what big feet you have!” Red blurted in surprise. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth, totally embarrassed. What was wrong with her? She knew better than to comment on the size of people’s feet!

  However, Grandmother Enchantress only laughed. “All the better to get around the forest with,” she said.

  “Oh, uh-huh,” said Red. She was beginning to think that there was something kind of fishy about the enchantress. Only she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.

  Then she noticed something long and shadowy sticking out the back of the rocking chair. The long, shadowy thing was switching back and forth like the Hickory Dickory Dock clock pendulum.

  It was a tail, she suddenly realized. A wolf’s tail, to be exact. Wolfgang! Her eyes narrowed. Though he’d somehow managed to disguise himself as Grandmother Enchantress, it was definitely him. And for some reason he was starting to shift into a wolf again — at least his tail was.

  Seemingly oblivious to what was happening, the phony enchantress went on praising Wolfgang’s many admirable qualities, including (according to her — er, him) his sensitivity to others, his love of nature, and his intelligence.

  “Yeah, but no one is perfect. He must have some faults,” Red insisted. Casually, her eyes roved the room, searching for her basket. Wolfgang had to have hidden it somewhere!

  The wolf-enchantress blinked. “Um. Yes. Of course he does,” she said. “Though I can’t think of any. I’m sure they’re small faults. Hardly worth mentioning.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Red caught a small movement near the floor, under a cloth lying between the rocking chair and the couch. Aha, she thought. So that’s where Wolfgang (aka Grandmother Enchantress) hid it. He must have cast some kind of spell on the basket to keep it still, or else it surely would have leaped into her lap as soon as she’d arrived.

  “What an interesting basket you have,” Red couldn’t resist saying as she jumped from the couch. In two quick steps she was reaching under the cloth and grabbing the basket. “Only it’s not yours. Is it … Wolfgang?”

  Knock! Knock! Red’s gaze flew to the cottage door. She heard her friends talking outside.

  Startled, the fake enchantress sprang from the rocking chair with a liveliness you’d expect from someone a quarter of the real Grandmother Enchantress’s age. Maybe even younger. Say the age of a thirteen-year-old boy, er, wolf?

  As Red clutched her basket firmly in her arms, Wolfgang threw off the kerchief and spectacles and grinned somewhat wolfishly. “You got me, Cerise.”

  “My name’s Red, you … basket-napper!” she yelled.

  “Yeah, about that.” His eyes went to her basket.

  She swung it behind her back, holding its handles tight with both hands. Perhaps because of the fierce look she sent him, or maybe because he knew her friends were right outside the door, Wolfgang didn’t even try to take it from her. Instead, he tossed off the rest of his disguise, leaped out a window at the side of the cottage, and landed outside. There, he fully shape-shifted into wolf form, and ran off. Owooo!

  Still clutching her basket, Red ran to open the door. Her friends’ faces lit up with surprised pleasure when they saw her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here!” Snow exclaimed. She wrapped both arms around Red. Rapunzel and Cinda joined in, making it a four-way hug.

  “We were so worried about you!” said Cinda when they finally let go. She peered around Red into the cottage. “Is Grandmother Enchantress here?”

  “No, but wait till I tell you —” But before Red could tell them about Wolfgang and everything, Rapunzel interrupted. “When we realized you weren’t behind us, we tried to find you.”

  Snow nodded. “We called out over and over, but you didn’t answer.”

  In a rush, Red explained how she’d gotten separated from them. “I tried to find you, too, but I only got more and more lost.”

  “We hoped you’d somehow find your way here to the cottage,” Cinda said. “We would’ve been here sooner ourselves if we hadn’t lost the mapestry.”

  “Oh, no!” Red said. Drawing her friends inside, she shut the door behind them. “Where? How did it happen?”

  Cinda looked a bit shame-faced. “I had folded it and stuck it in my pocket. It didn’t really fit all that well, so it must have fallen out without my realizing it. I’m so sorry!”

  Losing the mapestry was actually a gigantic disappointment, but Red gave Cinda’s hand a quick, gentle squeeze. “Could’ve happened to anyone,” she assured her. “Especially me. I’m pretty much the queen of anything to do with the word lost!”

  “We retraced our steps as best we could, but no luck,” said Snow. “It’s like it just disappeared. Poof!”

  Putting aside the subject of the mapestry for now, Red began to recount some of what had happened since they’d los
t each other. “Wolfgang found me. And you know those rumors about him being able to shape-shift? Well, they’re not just rumors.” She paused to let that sink in. “It was him making those wolf howls we heard earlier. He was following us, and he led me here.”

  “Why?” asked Snow.

  “I don’t know exactly. If you’d come two seconds sooner, you could have asked him yourself.” She pointed to the window. “He took off through there after you knocked.”

  “Hmm. I’m worried about the enchantress. I mean, where is she? What if she’s in trouble?” said Cinda.

  “How about if we do a little snooping?” suggested Rapunzel, gazing around the cottage. “To see if she left a note or some clue to her whereabouts.”

  “Yeah, maybe we’ll turn up some clues to the treasure while we’re at it,” said Snow.

  “It was my fault Wolfgang followed us,” Red admitted as she and her friends began to poke around. “I told him we were all going flower picking today, and —”

  “Flower picking?” Cinda quickly closed a cupboard door on a magical sugar bowl that had tried to hop out as soon as she’d opened it.

  “I had to tell him something,” said Red. “But I never told him we were going to Neverwood Forest. You see, he —”

  “So he must have figured it out on his own,” Cinda interrupted again. She glanced over her shoulder at Red. “You didn’t tell him about the treasure though, right?”

  “Not exactly,” Red hedged. After all, she thought she’d been talking to Grandmother Enchantress when she’d revealed stuff about the mapestry and the treasure! She knew she should tell the rest of the truth, but first she needed to explain a few other things.

  She set her basket on the kitchen table. “Just now, after he found me in the forest, he stole my basket, and then pretended to be the enchantress,” she said. Going over to the hooked rug, she pulled up the edge of it and peeked under. She didn’t see anything suspicious like a trapdoor or a loose floorboard where treasure might be hidden, however.

  “He did what?” Rapunzel exclaimed just as she lifted the lid from a candy dish. She set it down again fast when the tiny seedlike firecracker candies inside began to explode like popped corn. She, Snow, and Cinda exchanged concerned looks.

  Going back to the very beginning, Red explained about Wolfgang offering to help her run lines after school was out.

  “Ha! I always thought he liked you,” interrupted Snow as she gently untangled a flower blossom from her hair. It had snaked down from one of the hanging pots and tucked itself behind her ear while she was poking through the nooks and crannies of a rolltop desk in one corner of the cottage.

  Cinda nodded, pushing her long yellow hair back over one shoulder as she scanned the books on the enchantress’s bookshelves. “Yeah, I noticed him staring at you at lunch on my first day at the Academy.”

  “What? No.” Once more Red could feel her cheeks warming. Turning away, she studied a portrait of a young woman on the wall beside the door. It was probably the enchantress herself. From a long time ago. Odd how the eyes seemed to look right into hers … and kind of follow her. “He just wanted to talk more about the auditions,” she added.

  “Uh-huh,” said Rapunzel. She grinned, showing she didn’t believe that for a minute. “Because as everyone knows, he’s such a social guy,” she joked. “So friendly and outgoing.”

  “He’s not usually social,” Cinda said to Rapunzel, “but he is suddenly buddying up with the oddest people. Don’t forget that we all saw him chatting it up with my stepsisters at lunch yesterday.”

  And he’d been chatting with Ms. Wicked, too, of course. Red moved away from the portrait and opened a closet. Immediately, the mop inside began to dance around and a bottle of liquid soap started blowing out bubbles. Snick! She shut the door again before they could escape.

  “He’s up to something. That’s for sure,” said Rapunzel.

  Red leaned against the closet door. “There’s more I didn’t tell you,” she said slowly.

  “What?” Cinda asked, abandoning the bookshelves.

  “Yesterday I heard Ms. Wicked and Wolfgang talking,” Red admitted. “And I think Ms. Wicked told Wolfgang to steal my basket from me.”

  “What?” Snow said, going pale. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s not your fault,” Red told her. “But I should tell you that she also mentioned the Society. So she definitely knows about it.”

  At this, Snow went even paler. “Is she a member?”

  “And is Wolfgang a member of the Society, too?” Cinda asked. “Is that why he did what Ms. Wicked asked and tried to steal your basket?”

  “I hope not. I don’t know.” Red went over to the table and gave her basket a fond pat, saying, “All I know is I’m glad I got my basket back.”

  As they continued their searching, she outlined all that had happened up till the time they’d arrived at the cottage. She explained how she’d guessed Wolfgang had disguised himself as the enchantress when she spotted the shadowy tail twitching back and forth. “Plus, he kept telling me stuff I didn’t think the real Grandmother Enchantress would say.”

  Rapunzel cocked her head. “Like what?”

  Red squirmed a little under her gaze. “Like she — I mean, he— kept going on about what a great guy Wolfgang was.”

  Cinda peeked under the rocking chair’s cushion, then plopped down to sit. “Sounds like he was trying to get you to trust him.”

  “But why?” asked Red. She hung up a sparkly white robe that had fallen off a coatrack while she was checking its pockets. There’d been nothing in them, of course. Zippo. Nada.

  “Hello?” said Rapunzel. “So you wouldn’t suspect him of belonging to E.V.I.L.? And so you’d tell him more stuff about what we’re doing?”

  “Um, yeah, about that,” Red said slowly. “When I thought he was the enchantress, the stuff about the mapestry and treasure kind of … slipped out.”

  The other girls all gasped. But then Cinda said kindly, “Could have happened to any one of us, Red. He tricked you into it.”

  “You do know now that you absolutely cannot trust him, right?” Snow told Red. “No more than we can trust my stepmom.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Red said ruefully. Wolfgang was shifty, and not just when it came to his shape-shifting abilities! Her friends must be right about him. She felt a little let down about what Cinda and Rapunzel had said, though. She’d thought maybe Wolfgang had talked himself up to impress her. She’d thought he really did like her and had been hoping she might like him back. After all, why ask if there was a special boy she liked at school if he wasn’t hoping she’d name him?

  Red glanced over at a window — the one Wolfgang had departed through. The shadows had grown deep. It was later than she’d realized.

  “We’d better go,” she said, picking up her basket. “It’ll be dark soon!”

  With Cinda in the lead, the girls left the cottage and started back through the forest toward the Academy. They were all wishing they’d met the real Grandmother Enchantress and were more than a little disappointed they hadn’t found treasure, either.

  “Can you guys get us out of here? Even without the mapestry?” Red asked the others.

  “I think so,” Cinda said. “I memorized most of it.” She looked at Snow and Rapunzel, a question in her eyes.

  “I remember it, sort of,” said Snow.

  “Me, too,” said Rapunzel.

  The woods grew darker and darker as they walked. Several times, they reached a point where they were unsure of their directions. Red felt bad that she had no clue which way to go and could only wait as the other three girls tried to figure it out.

  “Too bad we don’t have a lantern,” said Cinda.

  “Yeah,” said Red.

  “Could your basket bring us one?” asked Snow.

  “Duh,” Red said, tapping the palm of her hand against the side of her head. “I should have thought of that.” She looked down at her basket. “A tisket, a tasket. Please bring
us a lantern, basket,” she said. Within seconds her basket grew heavier.

  “Whoops!” The unexpected weight made her arm drop.

  After setting the basket on the ground, Red opened its lid. A small lantern lay on top of the flowers she and Wolfgang had picked a couple of hours ago.

  “Voilà!” With a theatrical flourish she pulled out the lantern. “For you, mademoiselle,” she said, handing it to Cinda, who grinned and curtsied in return.

  “We’ll need matches, too,” Rapunzel noted.

  After shutting the basket’s lid, Red made the request. When she reopened the basket, a few wooden matches were lying atop the flowers.

  As the other girls tried to get the lantern to light, Red suddenly got a brilliant idea. Quickly, she made a third request of the basket. And when she opened its lid, her wish had come true. She pulled out the object she’d asked for and handed it to Cinda.

  “The mapestry!” Cinda exclaimed. Just then, the lantern flared to life revealing a smudge of dried mud on one edge of the map. The smudge was in the shape of a paw print! A few strands of gray fur the exact color of a wolf’s coat were caught in it.

  “Wolfgang must have found the mapestry on his way back to the Academy!” said Cinda. She scratched at the dried mud with her fingernail, easily brushing it away.

  A satisfied smile flashed across Rapunzel’s face. “Won’t he be surprised when he discovers he no longer has it.”

  “Too bad he knows it’s a treasure map since I blabbed about it when I thought he was the enchantress,” Red said with a frown. What if he told E.V.I.L. about the mapestry? She was just shutting the basket again when the lantern light glinted off something shiny hidden among the flowers.

  “Hey! There’s something else in here, too,” she said. She dug under the flowers and lifted out a round glass object about the size of a large grapefruit.

  “It’s a crystal ball!” she said, holding it up so the others could see. She was surprised at how light it was. It weighed no more than a feather! If it had been one of the clunky, heavy crystal balls from Scrying class instead, she surely would have noticed the extra weight in her basket before now.