Red Riding Hood

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

  Confused, Valerie felt for hers. It was intact on her wrist.

  Valerie reached out to touch the metal of her mother’s bracelet.

  Caught off guard, Suzette pulled away. “I was wondering about a hinge,” she muttered before pivoting on her heel and hurrying away.

  But Valerie followed.

  Suzette began to speak but stopped when the words didn’t come.

  It was then that Valerie understood.

  “Mother, you told me you loved someone else before you were married.”

  Suzette didn’t answer, her silence speaking the words that she couldn’t.

  She walked faster through the square, and Valerie picked up her own pace. They passed two carpenters building a teepee of branches in which they would burn the body of the Wolf, passed the villagers spilling out of the tavern carrying the Wolf’s head on its pike.

  “Tell me who it was.”

  Suzette slowed, turning away. The words caught in her throat, not wanting to surface. “I think you already know.”

  “Tell me. I want you to say it.” Valerie couldn’t help it, the way she couldn’t resist pulling at a loose piece of string until the cloth had unraveled.

  Suzette was tearful. She chewed at her lip.

  “I’m the child,” Valerie spat out. “You’re supposed to be my mother. The least you can do is say it.”

  “The man I loved was Adrien Lazar.”

  Hearing it said out loud, Valerie shivered. She thought of the images her mother must harbor of Adrien, the things he must have said, the words that would have reverberated in her mind ever since. How often had she thought of him? For she must have.

  When Suzette’s eyes had fluttered in sleep, had she been dreaming of him handing her the hammered bracelet, helping her with the clasp, reaching for her? Washing at the basin, her hands dragging a cloth up and down the ridged wood of the washboard, had she felt his hands on her? The mazelike way the mind works, some unknowable thing that she or Lucie did surely prompted a crystalline image of Adrien. Valerie tried to imagine the memories her mother had of her lover, those that she kept in a private box to which only she had the key. Things that only she and Adrien would ever know, but Adrien’s half had disappeared in the caves at Mount Grimmoor.

  Valerie felt her blood stop flowing. It couldn’t be. And yet it could. It made sense.

  The evidence had been there in plain sight, hidden only by a lack of scrutiny.

  And, like the string unraveling, another suspicion came.

  “Does Papa know?” Valerie asked, her voice sounding to her like someone else’s.

  “No.” She looked imploringly at her daughter. “Promise me you won’t tell him.”

  Suzette saw Valerie’s face and calmed. She could see the lengths her daughter would go to in order to protect her father.

  “But know this,” she said, becoming very serious. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t love your father. It was just that I already loved Adrien.”

  Valerie was overtaken by a sense of sadness for her mother. She felt suddenly older, her childhood lost. She felt she had an overhead view of her mother’s life, that it could be mapped and that she could see where the route had gone astray. She couldn’t help feeling that her mother had made a bad choice in marrying her father.

  Tears stung Valerie’s eyes, regrets for her father, for her mother.

  Before Valerie could respond, a dark, glittering carriage rushed past. It was sinister and elegant; it came from the outside world.

  Father Auguste ran out of the churchyard and into the street, shouting.

  “He has arrived!”

  14

  Easy there,” the coachman growled at the horses, as the black carriage pulled to a sleek stop.

  Valerie heard hooves thundering across the snowy ground as a dozen fierce-looking soldiers rode in atop powerful stallions, their weapons gleaming in the afternoon sun. A masked bowman was carried in by a majestic white steed. The man wore a heavy helmet and shouldered a massive crossbow. The fearsome band of men wheeled behind them a huge iron elephant and wagons filled with all their gear: weapons and books, scientific implements and equipment. The crudely rendered elephant was huge and blocklike with a snaky, curled trunk and menacing eyes. Valerie saw the other villagers wondering about its use; it did not seem right that these big men would bring a toy. She noticed a hinged door in its iron belly and shuddered.

  Valerie saw her friends there, but before she could cross to them, the caravan had reached a halt in the square. She nodded at Roxanne, but Rose and Prudence didn’t see her. Either that or they were holding her engagement against her.

  The coachman looked a bit sick from the uneven road. It had been a long, fast journey, evidently, and the proud horses, with world-weary eyes, stamped out their frustrations. Their jingling bridles were the only sounds, as the crowd had already poured into the square and stood silently in anticipation.

  Women peered down from porches and behind curtains, trying to see into the iron bars of the coach windows, which were molded into crosses. The tavern had emptied, and the men waited to see if the new arrival would live up to his reputation. Daggorhorn was a town accustomed to disappointment.

  Peter stood far from Valerie. They did not look at each other. It was a good thing there was so much else to see.

  She realized, though, that it might not be worth the risk. Hearing of her mother’s secret woe, of the trauma wrought by love, Valerie didn’t want to hurt like that. Love, desire—it was all so awful. She would forget Peter, she decided, and she would forget Henry. She would live a life in seclusion, live out in the woods like her grandmother, alone, self-sustained. Enough with “love.”

  A downtrodden village donkey clopped dejectedly out of the way, probably thinking he’d rather have been a horse. Children had been depositing small items, acorns and cornhusk dolls, into the twin grooves the coach wheels had cleared in the snow. They scattered, though, when they looked up and saw the army that had assembled.

  A few hulking men unloaded the coach, unstrapping wooden trunks and stacking them at the side of the road. The rest of the soldiers stood stock-still, awaiting orders. Even the monkey perched sharp-eyed on a pikeman’s shoulder seemed to be awaiting a command.

  “Presenting His Eminence…” a soldier said. He was a magnificent Moor, like no one Valerie had ever seen. His hair was cut close, so close it could have been drawn onto his skull, a shade of gray instead of black. He wore a two-handed sword slung coolly around his shoulders. His hands were huge, and looked capable of an easy throttling. He kept one hand on his side as he walked, resting easily on the coil of a black bullwhip. He was the Captain.

  “… Father Solomon,” a soldier who could only have been the Moor’s brother finished. The two men spoke in a way that felt like velvet against skin.

  The town marveled at Father Solomon’s arrival. It was as impressive as royalty. Women smoothed themselves, their flyaway hair, their dingy skirts.

  The onlookers held their breaths, waiting for the door to open. When it did, the townspeople were startled to see two small girls in the front-facing seats. They were so striking that the villagers almost forgot whom it was they were watching for. No one had ever seen two little girls with such grief written so plainly on their faces.

  Solomon was facing in, his erect back to the crowd.

  “Please don’t cry.” He bent over them. “See all these children? See how scared they are?” He motioned to those gathered in the square. One little girl held on to a window bar as she peered out, her fingers wrapped in a tiny fist. “They are afraid because there is something evil here, a Wolf. And someone has to stop it.”

  Valerie liked the way Solomon spoke, accentuating each syllable as if every sound were a keepsake.

  “Is it the beast that killed our mother?” the older girl asked, her cadence like a grown woman’s. The girls looked rumpled from travel, from slumping down in those great leather seats until they were shoulder to shoulder. Solomon, though,
did not look ragged or worn. When he turned, the crowd saw he was in impeccable, shining silvery armor, his windswept hair fiercely silver to match. He looked exactly as a Wolf slayer should.

  “It may very well be,” Solomon replied gravely, a darkness crossing his face.

  The girls shuddered; the thought of the beast trumped any girlhood claim to Daddy’s attention.

  He held out his arms. They hugged him, and he bent down stiffly to kiss each girl on the head. He softened as he touched the back of his hand to the younger girl’s hair.

  “It’s time.” He nodded to the Captain. A shadowy figure leaned forward to pull the sobbing girls into the dark interior of the coach. Their guardian.

  “Be good, now,” he said, shutting the door with a fatherly firmness. They would be safe in there. Valerie found that she was perversely jealous of Solomon’s two little girls, safe behind their iron bars.

  Father Solomon watched them go as the coach rolled out of the square and then out of the village altogether, whisking the girls off to a safer place. The villagers envied them, wishing they, too, could run off, be patted on the head or chucked under the chin. Father Solomon took a moment, steeling himself for work, before turning to the crowd, who had begun to feel that they were in the presence of a great leader. In his elegant black gloves and his velvet cape, purple like the king’s, he was regal and commanding. The crowd knew from his face that he had seen a world they never would.

  Realizing that it was their turn for his prized attention, Father Auguste stepped forward to speak for Daggorhorn.

  “This is indeed an honor, Your Eminence.” He bowed before the older man, the man who was so magnanimous as to stand before them in their humility. Valerie wanted to run her fingers over the soft fabric of his cloak, which caught the light as it fell across his shoulders.

  Solomon nodded slightly. His motions were tight and complete.

  “Fortunately, we were traveling through this region already and were able to get here quickly. I understand that you have lost a village girl.” He paced in front of the crowd. “Who in attendance is the girl’s family?”

  Suzette didn’t move, and Valerie didn’t see her father—he was probably still inside the tavern. Villagers shuffled. Glancing at Peter, who offered nothing from far across the crowd, Valerie resignedly raised her hand.

  Solomon strode over to her and lowered her hand to rest in his. He smelled like oiled metal, like security.

  “Do not worry,” he said humbly with a bowed head. “Enough horrors have been witnessed, enough suffering endured. We will find the beast that killed your sister. I am sorry for your loss.”

  Even though she knew it was all theatrics, there was a certain comfort in it, in a public apology, in an acknowledgment that she, Valerie, was the one who had suffered.

  He bowed slightly, his tender face hardening as he turned back to the men and women who had lost no one yet.

  Valerie saw the Reeve swagger forward, unable to contain himself any longer. Valerie was disgusted by him and the other men; they were like children, with their violence and their vanity.

  “You and your men are late.” He set a great hand on Father Solomon’s shoulder. “But you have arrived in time to take part in our festival.” The tavern owner murmured support as the Reeve motioned to the furry head on the pike, its eyes glazed over, filmy and white.

  “As you can see, the Wolf has been dealt with.”

  Father Solomon glanced down at the Reeve’s hand, at his fingernails ringed with dirt. He stepped out from beneath its anchoring hold.

  “That is no werewolf,” Father Solomon muttered cryptically, shaking his head.

  Valerie saw Roxanne and Prudence look at each other, and then they looked across at her. She shrugged in reply. Rose missed the exchange, still transfixed by the scene before her.

  “Not anymore, it isn’t,” the Reeve said, meeting with approval from the crowd. “Maybe it doesn’t look like a werewolf now, but you didn’t see it when it was alive.”

  Daggorhorn men nodded in affirmation.

  “You’re not listening,” Father Solomon said quietly, in a way that made everyone listen. “That is not the head of a werewolf.”

  There was a beat as the crowd tried to make sense of this. Was he joking, some high-class humor they didn’t understand?

  “No disrespect, Father, but we’ve lived with this beast for two generations. Every full moon, it takes our sacrifice.” The Reeve’s broad smile was buried in his thick beard. “We know what we’re dealing with.”

  “No disrespect,” Father Solomon countered, unwavering, “but you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

  Valerie was intrigued. Someone dared to question the Reeve—this was new.

  “I see your denial. I was the same way once,” Father Solomon admitted, hesitating. “Let me tell you a story—my first encounter with a werewolf. I will think back to the night I would do anything to forget.”

  Valerie felt the crowd hold their breath.

  “My wife’s name was Pénélope. She gave me two beautiful daughters, as you have seen. We were a happy family, living in a village much like this one. And like Daggorhorn, ours was also plagued by a werewolf.”

  Solomon walked in front of his audience, his boots falling heavily.

  “It was six autumns ago. The night was still, almost dead. The moon hung full overhead, casting its glow on everything. My friends and I left the tavern late at night after some… revelry.”

  Valerie saw him smile to himself, remembering, a smile that hinted at other, untold stories.

  “We decided to hunt the Wolf. The thought that we might actually find it never occurred to us. But we did. And it proved to be fatal,” he said with an exaggerated candor. “I came face-to-face with the beast. It breathed—I could feel it. It blinked—I could hear it. Energy coursed through me. I trembled with it.”

  Valerie found herself as caught up in the story as everyone else was. Even her mother listened intently at her side.

  “But the Wolf let me go, turning instead to my friend and making me watch as he was ripped in half. Quickly. But not so fast that I didn’t hear his spine snap.”

  Valerie felt sick, thinking of Lucie, of what she might have heard had she been there.

  “I screamed, like a woman, and then it was on me. All I saw were yellow teeth. I hacked at it with my axe, and in a moment it was gone. I had cut off one of its front paws. Thinking it would make a clever souvenir, I took it home.” He spoke intimately, as though he hadn’t told any of this before.

  “I arrived home, drunk and stumbling, exultant and proud. When I entered the front hall, I followed drops of blood like a trail to a black form lying on our kitchen table. Dark liquid was dripping off the edge and pooling onto the floor planks.” The words had a physical effect on Solomon, his eyes glowing. “As I got closer, I realized with horror that it was my wife. A bloody rag was tied around her left wrist. Her hand was severed. And when I opened my sack, this was in its place.” He paused, building up the suspense.

  The Captain pulled a box from behind his back. He’d anticipated this moment. He marched up to the Reeve, coming too close, almost gratuitously so, and opened the box slowly, with a climactic flourish. The other villagers crowded in closer to look.

  The velvet-lined box held a woman’s mummified hand, wedding band glinting, lying atop a bed of petals. Children gasped and ran away, then hurried back for another look.

  “Roses,” Solomon cut in, “were Pénélope’s favorite.”

  The villagers looked eagerly, some even taking a step forward.

  “I told my girls that the werewolf had killed their mother. But that was a lie,” he said in a voice that was ghostly still. “I killed her.” Father Solomon’s words hung in the air. “Because she was the Wolf. Do any of you know what it’s like to kill the person you love most?”

  He looked up at a sea of blank faces.

  “You may soon. When a werewolf dies,” Solomon began, “it returns
to its human form.”

  He glanced at the wolf head, which had certainly lost some of its luster since he had begun his tale.

  “That’s just a common gray wolf. Your werewolf is still alive.” He crossed himself. The first act was over. “Come now. To the tavern.”

  When everyone who could fit had filed in, Solomon held out a silver, gem-encrusted sword bearing an engraved image of Christ on the cross.

  Seeing it, Father Auguste’s eyes lit up. “This…” He steadied himself. “This is one of only three silver swords blessed by the Holy See. May I touch—?”

  Solomon cast him a reproachful look.

  Father Auguste stepped back, chastened.

  “This is a very dangerous time,” Solomon told the people of Daggorhorn, who were held in thrall. Claude lay on his stomach in the rafters, overlooking the scene. Valerie smiled up at him briefly from where she stood, packed in, barely able to see. She wished she had thought to climb up there.

  “Of course, you know what the blood moon means.”

  Didn’t they? Everyone looked around for someone older to speak up.

  “I see you have no idea what it means.” His lips were tight.

  The villagers felt their cheeks flush hot with embarrassment; they didn’t like that.

  “The orrery.” Solomon held out his hand. It was all he had to do.

  The Captain set onto the table a brass instrument fitted with round glass bulbs.

  “The Persians invented it, but this one I made myself. Every little gear,” he said, twirling a globe with one gentle finger, adjusting the position of another. He lit a candle, casting the model in a scarlet glow. “See, the red planet converges with the moon once every thirteen years. This is the only time a new werewolf can be created.” With a snap of his wrist, the bulb exploded. They blinked at the sound.

  Solomon smiled that tight little grin of his.

  “During the week of the blood moon, the werewolf may pass his curse on with a single bite. Even in daytime—”

  “Pardon me, but you’re wrong.” The Reeve looked pleased. “Sunlight makes a werewolf human—”