Red Riding Hood

by David Leslie Johnson; David Leslie Johnson; Catherine Hardwicke Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

  Valerie wanted to cover up her uneasy sister now and tell her not to worry, to say, “Shhhh, sweet Lucie, everything will be all right by morning.” Instead, she turned, holding down the latch of the door with her thumb and letting it ease noiselessly into the jamb before she plunged into the cold.

  The village was especially sinister that night, backlit by the brightness of the moon, the color of shells that had been bleached by the sun. The houses hulked like tall ships, and the branches of the trees jutted out like barbed masts against the night sky. As Valerie set out for the first time on her own, she felt like she was discovering a new world.

  To reach the altar more quickly, Valerie took a shortcut through the woods. She stepped through the moss, which had the texture of bread soaked through with milk, and avoided the mushrooms, white blisters whose tops were speckled with brown, as if dusted with cinnamon.

  Something pulled at her out of the dark, clinging to her cheek like wet silk. A spider’s web. It felt like her entire body was crawling with invisible insects. She tore at her face, trying to brush off the filmy web, but the strands were too thin, and there was nothing to hold on to.

  The full moon hung lifeless overhead.

  Once she reached the clearing, her steps became more cautious. She felt queasy as she walked, the same feeling she got while cleaning a sharp knife—the feeling that one small slip could be disastrous. The villagers had dug a sinkhole trap into the soil, staked sharpened wooden rods into the ditch, and covered them with a false ground of grass. Valerie knew that the hole was somewhere near, but she had always been led safely around it. Now, even though she thought she’d passed it, she wasn’t entirely sure.

  A familiar bleating pulled her on, though, and there ahead she could see Flora, pathetic and alone, stumbling in the wind and crying out. Valerie began to run toward the goat’s sad form struggling alone in the bone-white moonlit clearing. Seeing Valerie, Flora reared up wildly and craned her slender neck in Valerie’s direction as much as her rope would allow.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” Valerie began to call out, but the words died in her throat.

  She heard something bounding furiously over a great length at a quick pace, coming closer and closer still through the darkness. Valerie’s feet refused to move, much as she tried to continue.

  In a moment, everything went still again.

  And it appeared.

  At first, just a streak of black. Then the Wolf was there, facing away from her, its back massive and monstrous, its tail moving seductively back and forth, tracing a pattern in the dust. It was so big that she could not see it all at once.

  Valerie’s breath burst out in a gasp, jagged with fear. The Wolf’s ears froze, then quivered, and it turned its eyes to meet hers.

  Eyes that were savage and beautiful.

  Eyes that saw her.

  Not an ordinary kind of seeing, but seeing in a way that no one had seen her before. Its eyes penetrated her, recognizing something. The terror hit her then. She crumpled to the ground, unable to look any longer, and burrowed deep into the refuge of darkness.

  A great shadow loomed over her. She was so small and it was so immense that she felt the cover of the standing figure weigh down upon her as though her body were sinking into the ground. A shiver coursed through her body as it responded to the threat. She imagined the Wolf tearing through her flesh with its hooked canines.

  There was a roar.

  Valerie waited to feel the leap, to feel the snap of its jaws and the ripping of claws, but she felt nothing. She heard a scuffling and a tinkling of Flora’s bells, and it was only then that she realized the shape had lifted. From her crouch, she heard gnashing and gnarling. But there was something else, another sound that she couldn’t identify. Much later, she would learn that it was the roar of a dark rage being let loose.

  Then there followed a panicked silence, a frenetic calm. Finally, she couldn’t resist slowly lifting her head to look for Flora.

  All was still.

  Nothing was left but the broken tether still tied to the stake, lying slack on the dusty ground.

  2

  Valerie sat waiting at the edge of the road with her legs outstretched, the ground damp with early morning dew. She didn’t worry about her feet getting run over; she never worried about things like that. She was older now—ten years had passed since the awful night when she had looked into the eyes of evil. Walking past the sacrificial altar today, though, Valerie hadn’t even noticed the pile of bones left over from the previous night’s offering. Like all the other children in the village, she’d seen it once a month all her life and stopped thinking about what it meant.

  Most children became obsessed with full-moon nights at some point in their lives, stopping at the altar the following mornings to examine the dried blood and asking questions: Does the Wolf talk? Is it like the other wolves in the forest? Why is the Wolf so bad? The answers they were given were often more frustrating than none at all. Parents tried to protect the children, shushing them, telling them not to talk about it. But sometimes they let slip some information, saying, “We put a sacrifice here so that the Wolf doesn’t come and eat up cute little girls like you,” while nipping their noses.

  Ever since her encounter with the Wolf, Valerie had stopped asking about it. Often at night, though, she would become overwhelmed by the memory. She would wake up and watch Lucie, an easy sleeper, lying much too still in their shared bed. Feeling desperately alone, Valerie would gaze at her sister for a long time until the panic became too much, and she would reach up to feel Lucie’s heartbeat.

  “Stop it!” Lucie would slur sleepily, reaching up and swatting at Valerie’s hand. Valerie knew that her sister didn’t like to think of her heartbeat. It reminded her that she was alive, that she was fallible, just flesh and bones.

  Now Valerie ran her fingers over the chilled ground of the walkway, feeling the grooves between the hunks of old sandstone. The stone felt like it might collapse, like it was rotting from the inside and, with just a little more time, she would be able to crumble off bits with her fingers. The leaves of the trees were yellow, as though they had absorbed all the spring sunshine and were saving it for winter.

  It was easier to shrug off last night’s full moon on a day like today. The whole village was in a commotion as everyone prepared for the harvest: Men ran with rusty scythes, and women leaned out of their cottage windows, dropping loaves of bread into passing baskets.

  Soon Valerie saw Lucie’s broad, beautiful face as her sister came up the walk on the way back from taking a broken latch to the blacksmith for repair. As Lucie came up the path, some of the villagers’ young daughters trailed behind her doing a strange, ritualistic walk. As they came closer, Valerie realized that Lucie was teaching the four little girls how to curtsy.

  Lucie was soft in a way that no one else was, a softness of nature and being. Her hair was not red or blond; it was both. She didn’t belong here in Daggorhorn; she belonged in a cottony land where the skies were marbled yellow, blue, and pink, like watercolors. She spoke in poetry, her voice sweet like a song. Valerie felt as if her family were just borrowing Lucie.

  How strange it is to have a sister, Valerie thought. Someone you might have been.

  Lucie stopped in front of Valerie, and the train of girls stopped, too. A small one with dirt-stained knees looked at Valerie judgmentally, disappointed in her for not being more like her older sister. The village had always thought of Valerie as the other one, the more mysterious sister, the not-Lucie. Two of the girls studied a man across the road who was frantically trying to yoke his ox to his wagon.

  “Hi!” Lucie twirled the fourth young girl around, bending down to hold the girl’s small hand above her head. The girl was hesitant to make the turn, to look away from her idol. The other girls looked impatient, feeling as if they, too, should be included.

  Valerie scratched her leg, peeling at a scab.

  Lucie stayed her sister’s hand. “It’ll scar.” Lucie’s le
gs were unblemished, flawless. She moisturized them with a concoction of wheat flour and oil when there was extra to be had.

  Examining her own legs—bug-bitten, bruised, and picked at—Valerie asked, “Have you heard anything about the campout?”

  Lucie leaned in. “Everyone else has permission!” she whispered. “Now we have to go.”

  “Well, now it comes down to convincing Mother.”

  “You try.”

  “Are you mad? She’ll never say yes to me. You’re the one who always gets whatever it is you want.”

  “Maybe.” Lucie’s lips were big and pink. When she was nervous, she chewed them pinker. “Maybe you’re right,” she said, grinning. “In any case, I’m a step ahead of you.”

  With a sly smile, she held her basket out to Valerie, who guessed what was inside before she saw. Or maybe she’d smelled them. Their mother’s favorite sweet cakes.

  “Such a good idea!” Valerie stood, brushing the dirt off the back of her tunic.

  Lucie, pleased with her foresight, put her arm around Valerie. Together, they returned the little girls to their mothers, who were working in the gardens. Women were tough in this village, and yet even the gruffest among them smiled up at Lucie.

  Heading home, they passed a few pigs wheezing like sick old men, a baby goat that tried to tag along with some disdainful chickens, and a serene cow munching on hay.

  They passed the long row of houses, standing on their stilts as if ready to wander away, and arrived at the second one from the end. Hoisting themselves up the ladder, the girls entered the landscape of their lives. The wood dresser was so warped that the drawers refused to close. The wooden rope bed gave splinters. The washboard their father had made for their mother the winter before was worn down now—she needed another. The basket for berries was low and flat, to ensure that none got crushed. In a shaft of light from the window, a few bits of feather stuffing hung in the air, reminding Valerie of when they jumped on the mattress as girls and entire clouds of feathers would float around them.

  There wasn’t much to distinguish their home from the others. The furniture in Daggorhorn was simple and functional. Everything served a purpose. A table had four legs and a flat top, nothing more.

  Their mother was home, of course. Working over the stove, she was lost in thought. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun at the top of her head, a few strands hanging free at the nape of her neck.

  Before the girls came in, Suzette had been thinking of her husband, of all his faults and all his virtues. The fault that she blamed him for most of all—the fault that was not forgivable—was that he was unimaginative. She was thinking of a recent day. Feeling dreamy, feeling like giving him a chance, she’d asked hopefully: What is outside the walls, do you think? He’d chewed his food, swallowed. Even tossed back some ale. He’d looked like he was thinking. A whole lot more of the same, I reckon. Suzette had felt like falling to the ground.

  People left her family alone. Suzette felt cut off from things, like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.

  Stirring the stew, she realized she was caught in a whirlpool—the more she struggled to get out, the more vehemently she was dragged down, down, down….

  “Mother!” Lucie came up behind her and gently tickled her back.

  Suzette returned to the world of daughters and uncooked stew.

  “Are you girls thirsty?” Suzette brightened, pouring out two cups of water. She sweetened Lucie’s with a nip of honey, but Valerie, she knew, had no use for it. “You two have a big day today,” she said, handing the appropriate glass to each girl.

  Suzette was grateful that she had the excuse of staying home to cook the men’s harvest meal. She went back to stirring the stew in a huge round pot with handles on both sides. The pot had a low-seated belly that always made Lucie feel strange because it was not quite a half sphere. Lucie didn’t like things that seemed incomplete. Valerie peered in. In the pot was a medley of brown oats and tan and gray seeds—some green peas stood out garishly.

  Lucie chattered while Valerie set to work helping Suzette chop the spindly strands off the carrots. Suzette was silent. Lucie’s talking filled the dead air, but Valerie wondered whether something was wrong. Waiting out her mother’s mood, as she had learned to do in the past, she added some vegetables to the pot. Collards, garlic, onions, leeks, spinach, and parsley.

  What Valerie could not know was that Suzette had returned to thoughts of her husband. Cesaire was a caring father, a supportive husband. But that was not all Suzette had promised herself. If expectations had been set lower, his failures might not have been so devastating.

  For what he did do, for the end that he had held up, Suzette was grateful. For those things, she felt she had repaid him sufficiently by keeping a tidy household and by loving their children. She had to acknowledge that maybe in marriage, as in any contractual obligation, in matters of owing and being owed, there was no allowance for love.

  Feeling satisfied with this conclusion, Suzette turned to her girls to find Valerie gazing at her with those penetrating green eyes, almost as though she could hear her mother’s thoughts. Suzette didn’t know where Valerie’s eyes had come from; both hers and Cesaire’s were fawn brown. She cleared her throat.

  “Good that you girls are helping out like this. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You’ll need to be able to cook, Valerie, when you start to build your own home. Lucie already knows.”

  Lucie was like Suzette. They foresaw and planned. Valerie and Cesaire were quick to think and quick to act.

  “I’m seventeen. Let’s not rush it.” Valerie sliced a potato through the skin and the dull velvety meat. She let the two halves fall open and bobble on the uneven table. She didn’t like to think of the things her mother always insisted on talking about.

  “You are of marriageable age, Valerie. You’re a young woman now.”

  With this concession, all thoughts of any future responsibility dissipated from the sisters’ minds. They saw their moment.

  “So, Mother. We’re leaving for the harvest soon,” Lucie began.

  “Yes, of course. Your first time, Valerie,” Suzette said, looking down to conceal her pride. She had begun grating cabbage.

  “Some people, some women, are staying on afterward…” Valerie added.

  “… for the little campfire thing,” Lucie continued.

  “Mm-hmmm,” Suzette allowed, her mind beginning to wander.

  “Prudence’s mother is taking some of the other girls to camp out…” said Valerie.

  “… and we wanted to know if we could go,” Lucie finished.

  “With Prudence’s mother?” Suzette processed the one piece of concrete information she’d been given.

  “Yes,” said Valerie.

  She seemed to accept this explanation. “The other mothers already said yes?”

  “Yes,” Valerie said again.

  “All right. I guess that would be okay,” she said absentmindedly.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  It was only then, seeing the extent of their gratitude, that Suzette realized she’d consented to something maybe she shouldn’t have.

  “I can’t believe she said yes!” Valerie exclaimed.

  “That was so good, how you kept saying yes, so she didn’t have time to think about it!”

  The girls ambled down the rutty road to the town square.

  “And you were so good, tickling her back!”

  “That was good, right? I know she likes it.” Lucie smiled in satisfaction.

  “Lucie! Don’t tell me you brought your whole wardrobe.” Their friend Roxanne peered at them from around the corner, her pale brow knit into lines of concern. Two more girls came into view behind her: Prudence and Rose.

  Lucie was cradling her pack in her arms, and Valerie belatedly realized that it was bulging.

  “You’re going to have to carry it around all day,” Valerie said.

  Prudence scowled, knowing Lucie got overa
mbitious sometimes. “We are not going to carry it for you if you get tired.”

  “Extra blankets.” Lucie smiled. She got cold easily.

  “Planning on having company?” Rose asked, one eyebrow arched.

  Valerie thought their three friends looked like a trio of mythical goddesses. Roxanne’s hair was rust-colored and smooth. It was so fine, it looked as though all of it could fit inside one stalk of straw. Her freckles were faint, like spots on a butterfly’s wings. Between all her corsets and blouses and shawls, it was obvious to Valerie that she was shy about her body.

  Rose, on the other hand, kept the ties of her blouse loose and didn’t rush to fix it if it fell a little too low. She was pretty, with a heart-shaped mouth and a sharp face—she sucked her cheeks in to make it more so. Her hair was so dark that it was black or brown or blue, depending on the light. If you put her in a finer top, Rose could almost pass for a lady… at least until she opened her mouth.

  Prudence was a melancholic beauty with light brown hair and a calculating manner. She was often too quick with a sharp word, but she usually apologized. She was tall and somewhat imperious.

  All five girls headed out through the village gates and up the hill toward the field, falling in with the parade of men, who were excited, too. The town itself felt wide awake, the anticipation floating in the air like the smell of a strong, unexpected spice.

  Roxanne’s brother, Claude, caught up with them, stumbling as he tried to kick a stone forward with each step.

  “H-h-hi.” Claude’s eyes were quick and gray. He was a bit younger than the girls, a village outcast who’d always been a little… different. Claude wore a single suede glove without explanation and was always shuffling a deck of homemade cards that he carried with him at all times. The pockets were forever pulled out of his patchwork pants, a mash-up of all the pieces of burlap and hide his mother had lying around. He was teased about them, but he didn’t mind; he was proud of the incredible work by his mother, who stayed up late into the nights sewing, and who worked hard enough at the tavern as it was.