Taming Red Riding Hood

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “You think? Of course, you’re not really a cad. More of a bore.”

  I didn’t show any sign of outward irritation. “And how do you think that is spelled?”

  “I haven’t got any idea!”

  “What do you think the first letter is?” I asked patiently. “You should be able to figure out that much.”

  She glared. “B.”

  “And then?”

  “A?”

  “Try again.”

  She clutched her head. “It’s too much!”

  “Too much? Just think. What are the vowels?”

  “A…e…o…i…? Oh, rot! They all make different sounds depending, and they have different combinations that are completely confusing, and—and I think you’re a lousy teacher! Pushing me too hard!” She got to her feet, pacing. “I can’t think like this and I don’t know how you can either! What’s the point?”

  “It’s a good question…” Tonight, I would try my best to explain it to her, but I wondered if I could. When I was young, the desire to know more felt like an unhealthy addiction. In the end, I wasn’t sure it had improved my life at all. As a child, I was happy. It all began to go downhill for me on the day I saw that the telescope. I had lost everything thanks to that telescope. Maybe I wasn’t doing her any favors.

  “Wolves might be happier than humans,” I admitted. “The more you learn, the more you question.”

  “I think so,” she said. “And why question? Pretty soon I’ll be moping around thinking about death and god and things like that like Janey.”

  “Who’s Janey?”

  “A girl I used to work with.” She tilted her head.

  “Would you like our lessons to end?”

  “Not like I have a choice.”

  “Why not? I’m just a hired tutor. I have only been in Pennarick for a few months and I haven’t exactly befriended the town gossips. I take it you are unable to return to your clan…”

  She paused. “The elves killed my clan. They thought we were menacing the town. They let the kids live. I was about fifteen. I was the oldest one who got to live and they sent me to a work house, making sails for their ships, things like that, until I finally managed to get a letter to my father….years later.” She looked at me with her face pinched and stubborn. “But I’m tough. I don’t want to talk and get weepy about it.”

  I was briefly rendered speechless, but I quickly nodded.

  “I’m smart in the ways that matter,” she added. “You remind me of those elves in Wyndyr. All high and mighty.”

  “I am not ‘high and mighty’. I think you’ll find that most tutors are somewhat strict. It’s my job.”

  “Is all this just so I can marry some stupid man? Can’t my servants do sums for me?”

  “If you’re going to marry a stupid man, you should definitely know these things. Do you trust your servants as much as you trust your own self?”

  She definitely understood that perspective. I didn’t expect that she was a very trusting girl.

  “I’m not sure what to tell you,” I said. “If you want me to say that the life of wolvenfolk is superior to this…well, maybe it is. But it’s not a life I can return to, personally. If it’s a life you can return to, then maybe you should consider it.”

  “No…it’s not,” she said, more soberly. “Why can’t you return?”

  “I lost my family as well,” I said. “But…it was after I had already chosen this life. Look—Fersa, maybe you are better suited to be a wolf. That might always be true. But I think you’re capable of learning everything I’m trying to teach you.”

  “You’re just trying to flatter me now. Well, we’re both just sitting here every day, pretending to be something we’re not. Have you ever seen children put clothes on the cats and dogs? They look ridiculous. That’s us, aye? Ridiculous.”

  She looked at me in a way I was no longer accustomed to, with the penetrating gaze of a wolf, and her nostrils slightly flared as she noticed my scent. Her human nose was not as keen, but wolves could never lose their awareness of such things. She knew I was only pretending to be this man. I might pretend to be a human scholar until the day I died. I would still always be a wolf trapped in a tidy and uncomfortable jacket, neatly buttoned vest, and cravat. Trapped by my own choices, my own mistakes.

  As she was trapped by misfortune, this lovely girl who was treading on dangerous waters with me, forcing me to come close to reckoning with what I had become, and the devastation I left in my wake.

  Why had my brothers kidnapped a princess? Or was it all a misunderstanding? Why did King Brennus kill them? If I touch this girl, I might be accused of the same things…

  She was wearing a gown of green today, with red ribbons criss-crossing her bodice, like a branch of holly plucked for the indoors. Too beautiful to be ridiculous.

  I could not forget that, on paper, I was a nobody hired to tutor the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in town. I could not forget the human world I had become a part of.

  Her eyes briefly flashed a brighter gold. A challenge. Her cheeks were flushed pink. I didn’t need to be in the mating season to know exactly what she wanted. A good tussle of fur and teeth and then—

  “Miss Fersa,” I said. “I think you are forgetting yourself.”

  She dug her fingernails into the cushion. “Do you not feel it, then? You don’t have the high voice of a man who’s lost his balls.”

  I slammed my hands on the table. “Do you want me to have my way with you? And can you explain it to your father if I did?”

  “I—I can hardly help feeling what I feel. Wolves don’t—that is— Wolves act on their feelings right away.”

  “Then, you had probably best get married as soon as you can. It’s all acceptable once the ring’s on your finger. But it won’t be to me.” I huffed. “Your stepmother may have told you, I’m going to give you an extra lesson this evening. The one I promised you.” I stacked up my books and gathered up the papers where she had been scratching out letters and leaving ink blots everywhere. “Maybe we should adjourn for now. I’ll return when the sun goes down. I expect you to behave yourself better than you’ve done today. I suggest a cold bath and some chamomile tea to calm yourself down.”

  Chapter Six

  Fersa

  I was restless after that, in a way that made no sense. My body must be responding to him simply because he was the only wolf I’d been around since I grew into a woman. My instincts ought to respond to a man who would make a good mate for me, but that couldn’t possibly be a strange wolf like him.

  I couldn’t quite hold back some urge to please him. I was supposed to change clothes for dinner in the evening, as if getting dressed once wasn’t enough.

  “Is there a special way to get dressed if you want to look nice?” I asked Ina.

  “Like what, miss?”

  “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve heard of girls taking extra care when they get dressed, but what do they do?”

  “They tie their stays tighter.”

  “What? I’ll die if they’re tied any tighter than this.”

  Ina laughed. “Miss, I suppose I could put your hair up. Someone ye hopes to impress?”

  “Yes, I want Mr. Arrowen to think I’m good at being human. Maybe he’ll stop harassing me about learning things.” I gave my reflection an exasperated look.

  “Just make sure Mrs. Rafferty knows you’re not a-courtin’.” Ina put up my hair with some combs and tied it with a red ribbon. I was a little afraid to move my head now. The dress was a chocolate brown velvet, almost as soft and warm as fur, with white ruffles at the wrists and around my breasts. Ladies didn’t have to cover their breasts in the evening. It was all very confusing. I threw my red cloak on over everything and slipped out my gloved hands.

  Mr. Arrowen met me in the room where family met guests. I think it was a parlor—or was it the drawing room? I got them all mixed up sometimes.

  He had a book in his hand, and was dressed for the cold weather in a c
oat and hat and gloves. “It won’t be long,” he told Katherine. “I know Miss Fersa must be back for dinner.”

  He held open the door and nodded to me. I slipped out past him, my stiff petticoats knocking into his trousers. I tried to hold them closer, but my underthings forced the skirts wide, like it or not. I shoved them back down with a grimace. “Damn things.”

  He shut the door behind us. “You don’t even try, do you?”

  “Oh, I’ll try when I go to this yule ball business. You’d be surprised if you saw me going out with Mrs. Rafferty. I hardly say a word. And I’m supposed to go to church tomorrow. Have you ever been to church?”

  “Wolvenfolk aren’t really church-going, are they?”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean much where you’re concerned.”

  “I’ve never gone that far,” he said. “It would feel false. But I’m sure Mrs. Rafferty will guide you through anything you need to do. The people of this town seem genuinely committed to their belief in not judging others.”

  “Yeah…well. It’ll feel false to me, too.” Now my thoughts were veering back to my mother again. Whenever I thought about my father praying or being thankful to the heavens I just got plain angry, thinking about her death. “So tell me this story I’ve been waiting for all week.”

  He walked through the garden, a half-step ahead, but he kept checking that I was all right walking on the crust of ice that coated the snow. It had started to melt and then frozen again. I had new boots—I had new everything—and my feet crunched through just fine. He had some kind of contraption set up on a stand, a long wooden case with a glass lens pointing up to the skies.

  “When I was young,” he said, “I used to look at the stars and the moon.”

  “Well, who doesn’t?”

  “Yes. Indeed.” He sounded miffed. “But I wasn’t like the other wolves. I couldn't stop wondering what was up there.”

  “What is up there?”

  “I could tell you the latest theories, but it’s better just to see. Come and get a look.” He peered in the smaller end of the contraption and adjusted it a little. “This is a telescope. You’ll get to see the moon up close.”

  I hardly knew what he was talking about, but I decided to humor him.

  “Don’t touch it. Just lean down.”

  “I wasn’t.” I crouched a little until I could see through the telescope.

  I was startled by the clear vision of a pale sphere marked with what looked like…a landscape. The face of the waxing moon, nearly full, was clear and alien. “It’s…it’s…it looks lonely.” I shivered.

  “Aye…not always entirely pleasant to look at the sky. Makes one feel small.”

  I noted that his speech was slipping into the cadence of the woods, more like mine. He couldn’t help it out here in the fresh air, I thought.

  I kept gazing at the moon, and the longer I looked, the more I wanted to keep looking. “But that’s why you became a scholar?”

  “To make a long story short, yes, the sky is what got me asking questions, and my kin didn’t know the answers. One day, we went into town to trade with the humans, and there was a man there with a telescope. He asked me if I wanted to see the moon, just like you’ve seen it today. Of course I said yes, and…well, it was so surprising. So beautiful. I asked him a hundred questions before my mother pulled me away. From then on, when we traded with the humans and I asked them, they would tell me things here and there. Or they’d say, ‘You could ask so-and-so, he has some education.’ Every little piece of learning I picked up was like a treasure to me. I didn’t have any way of writing them down, but I held them all in my head when I was a boy.”

  “So you were part of a wolf clan.”

  A flash of something dark stirred in his eyes. “Yes. But I left when I was fifteen and got an education from a human man of considerable learning.”

  “I thought you might have been raised by a human relative.”

  He shook his head. “I have no human relatives.”

  “No?” I cried, surprised. I gave his arm a light smack with the back of my glove. “You're more wolf than I am! I hardly believe it!”

  “No one does…”

  “I’m sorry. I s’pose they didn’t always treat you kindly in your clan, then?”

  The small, disdainful grunt he made as he peered into the telescope again answered the question. “Do you want to look again?” he asked me. “It’s pointing at another planet now.”

  “Another planet?” I peered at the small red orb. With the naked eye, it looked like a star, but now I could see it like a clouded glass marble.

  “It’s another world, like ours, so the scholars think.”

  “Really? Do people live there?”

  “No one knows,” he said, his hand close to mine, keeping the telescope steady. “And quite likely, we’ll never know the answers.”

  “Oh? Then what’s the point of all that?”

  “The mystery is eternally intriguing. Maybe we will come to understand some sliver of it that we didn’t understand before. That’s why I keep looking.”

  “You really are a very strange wolf.”

  “In some ways. In other ways…I’m more of an ordinary wolf than I let on.”

  I met his eyes and edged my hand closer to his until our gloved fingers touched. He was still. “Miss Fersa…” His voice turned husky.

  “How come you’re Mr. Arrowen and I’m Miss Fersa? I don’t know your real name.” Wolves had family names and clan names, but they were always words describing family attributes and the forest landscape where they lived. I had been Fersa of the Bright Spirit family, of the Blue Pines clan. So I guessed ‘Arrowen’ was made up.

  “Agnar.”

  A pleasantly familiar wolf name. My clan had an Agnar before I was born. Agnar the River Hunter, they called him, because he would stand in the river and catch fish in his jaws. “Can I call you Agnar, then?”

  “It’s not how things are done. But during our lessons…why not.” He slowly drew his hand back from mine.

  I grinned at the withdrawing hand. “Took you a while, though.”

  “You’re asking for trouble for both of us,” he said. “Let me take you inside.”

  “I don’t think I need to be taken somewhere that's already within spitting distance. Go home, then, Agnar, if you think I’m so much trouble.”

  “You are.” He gave me a brief look, eyelids lowering, and I started walking to the door. I heard him give up on me, boots turning toward the front gate.

  I scooped up a handful of icy snow and pitched it at the back of his head.

  He growled, whirling on me. I laughed and dove behind one of the bushes as he reached for retaliation. I scooped up another handful, the cold seeping through my gloves and numbing my fingers. He edged around the bushes to get me in his sights.

  A snowball exploded on my hair. I felt the ribbon go askew.

  I tossed one back at him, right in the face. Aye, you do learn to play dirty in the work house.

  His hands, larger than mine, hastily scooped up a big clump of snow and threw it at me. It started breaking apart midair but the remains of it slogged me right in the cleavage. My cloak was flung back at this point, and ice trickled down inside my stays.

  “Now you are a cad!” I cried, rushing him, knocking him to the ground.

  He easily flipped me onto my back and pinned me down in the snow. I could feel my body prickling with an urge to change and wrestle him, to feel the nip of his teeth in my fur before we succumbed to desire. I struggled for deep breaths in the confines of my clothing, puffs of frost clouding the air between us.

  He was breathing hard too, his fingers around my wrists, his warm body pressing into mine, his hard shaft pressing against my pelvis through his trousers. For a moment, we were silent and his lust for me was so raw I thought he might lose control. I knew if he did, he would probably be sent away, and I would be in trouble.

  But wolves have a hard time thinking beyond the moment. No matter
what my logical human mind told me, my animal brain was on the brink of overruling her.

  He shoved me away, violently, and stood up. The silhouette of his disheveled hair glowed under the moonlight. “You will ruin everything for me,” he hissed.

  “Wait—oh, come on now, we’re only having a little fun—you bastard.” I quickly sat up and pulled my cloak around my body. “Don’t be like that.”

  “I have fought tooth and nail for every scrap of this life I’ve built,” he said. “To be treated as human.”

  “As a boring old human bachelor who teaches girls their letters? La di da. If that’s what you want, then.”

  “Obviously it’s what I want.”

  The front door flung open and the boys came dashing out the door.

  “They saw you throwing snowballs out the windows,” Father said. “I’ll assume the lesson’s done. I said they could come play for a bit. It is a beautiful night.” He stood on the stoop, lighting a cigar.

  Agnar shoved his hands through his hair, taming his fierce expression. He formed a fresh snowball, turning his attention away from me. “Is this a fair fight? I don’t know if these little pups can hit me.”

  “I can,” Francis said, with scrappy confidence. His gloves clamped around the snow, going straight for the largest snowball his hands could form.

  “Me too!” John screamed. The other two eagerly followed his lead. Soon they were ganging up on my tutor, pelting him with snow, while Agnar pretended to fall to their assault.

  My eyes blurred, imagining what kind of father he’d make as I watched him pelt the boys with gentle snowballs and make them laugh. Old bachelor! What wolf had ever declared themselves an old bachelor? Why did he have to push me away?

  I turned to the door.

  “Tired already?” Father asked.

  “No, not tired, but I suppose I had better keep my clothes clean,” I said, with vague sarcasm.

  My stupid body still wanted Agnar so badly that it was like a physical ache. Aye, just my body, I told myself. Certainly not my heart—or god forbid, my head. I didn’t really care if he didn’t come back on Monday after our argument. I wasn’t going to toss and turn all night thinking about him. I wasn’t going to have the letters he’d taught me dancing in my head, nor the sight of the moon and worlds beyond.