I tried to scoop Rat out of my hood while I talked. I wanted to hand him to Scarecrow. He wouldn’t go. He hooked his claws tight into the fabric, and if I pulled any harder I might take his finger off.
Rat grunted as I tugged at him. “I’m staying with you no matter what. No matter what.”
Scarecrow put her hands behind her back. She wouldn’t take him from me if I got him loose. “You need me.”
I gave up. They’d decided. It was none of my business. I let Rat go, and headed down the road again. I was a good walker, but I figured it would take another hour or two to reach the city limits. That would put me somewhere on the map. I wasn’t on the map yet, because I didn’t recognize all these tree stumps. With all the forests I would have thought there’d be plenty of lumbering, but I couldn’t recall any.
Rat twisted around until he could peek out of my hood again. Scarecrow’s footsteps plodded on the asphalt behind me. It wasn’t my business to change their minds.
It was completely my business. They were tagging along for one reason. I was so close, and they were sacrificing themselves to make sure I made it. I wasn’t letting them do this because it was their decision. I was letting them do this because they were standing between me and those sharp, curved teeth hooking between my ribs and chewing them up like potato chips, while—stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!
I took a couple of deep, slow breaths. Rat and Scarecrow watched me, not wanting to say anything.
I started walking again. What else could I do? Three hours was being conservative to walk just ten miles. I might be halfway. I didn’t need a map, just an arrow.
The road curved up a small hill, broken in two by a stream’s deep gully. I got halfway up before I spotted what I wasn’t seeing. A bridge. A few more feet and I could see over the edge. The metal bridge had never been much, and now it was broken off entirely.
I couldn’t know anything until I got to the edge itself, so I kept climbing. The logging must have been recent, because plenty of tree trunks jammed the waterway. One huge log lay on top of the broken off bridge at the bottom of the gully. The multiple dams had made a mess of the little river, but that didn’t make a difference to me. I could still get across. One of the log jams was dry over the top, and the bank sloped down and back up slowly enough I could climb over it there.
This was just a nuisance obstacle. I could even keep the road in sight. I couldn’t get lost again.
I knew I was wrong when Scarecrow twisted around, head turning this way and that. “This doesn’t look right. It looks like an event.”
Rat’s nose turned every which way, but he didn’t have to smell anything. He pointed back down the road. “Is that what I think it is?” The quiet horror in his voice made my heart clench up in my chest.
I didn’t want to look. That was stupid. I looked. The road wasn’t empty. A big black shape like a slow moving car drifted towards us.
Scarecrow could see better, because there was no doubt at all in her voice. “That’s the Wolf.”
I threw my body down the slope, and barely got my feet into place underneath me with each step. I wasn’t in control, I was just trying not to fall down. My right foot slipped, but the left held. I kept running. When the bank grew more gentle, I turned and slid down it onto the first log.
I needed a plan. I didn’t have one. My legs locked when I thought about that, and I pushed the thought aside and forced myself to run down the log towards the other side of the river. Thumps behind me came from shoes, not paws. Scarecrow was keeping up.
This slope was not nearly as gentle as I’d thought. Maybe it would be as hard for the Wolf to climb as it was for me. I dug the toes of my boot into a rock, grabbed a root, and sort of crawled, mostly climbed. I peeked over the top. I’d almost reached the end of the forest, and tree stumps ruled it all the way to the edge. The old-fashioned wooden sawmill they’d been cut for dominated the field, with a pointed roof and a conveyor belt like in a movie. The huge round saw blade looked ready to go. It had already gone plenty. I could see more tree stumps than trees. Way more.
Scarecrow pulled herself up beside me, and stopped where I had, looking around. “This is a bad place. I’m going to die here.”
“So am I.” My voice shook worse than hers, but it sounded just as hopeless and flat.
We’d stopped here. I didn’t have time to stop anywhere. I got my foot up on the edge and pushed upright, and Scarecrow did the same half a second behind me. I ran.
There were a lot of stumps. They were spaced widely enough I didn’t have to weave around them much. They did give me a useless way of marking my path as I passed one, and then another, and then another, and then another. I was coming up on the edge of the lumber mill.
That rapid scratching noise was my Wolf’s claws on dirt. He’d climbed up this side of the bank. I didn’t have time to doubt. His passionate bass voice called out, “There’s no point in running, is there, Red? Stop running. Turn around. I would rather hear you say you love me than hear you scream.”
My knees shook. I could hardly feel my lower legs, and they turned wrong with every step. It didn’t make a difference. I could hear the thump and rustle of each paw hitting the grass, and they were getting closer. He was so much faster than me!
Scarecrow stopped running and fell out of the edge of my vision. I couldn’t look. I had to keep running. I had to keep running even as I heard her yell, “Don’t you dare touch her!”
I had to do something. I kept running. The wolf’s footsteps stopped, and he growled, “You’re not getting in my way again.” He wasn’t following me. I heard his steps turn aside. Into the sawmill. Scarecrow kept grunting and squeaking. Each second took me farther away, but I knew what I was about to hear.
The saw started up.
Its whine turned immediately into the scream of metal cutting wood, and I almost couldn’t hear Scarecrow’s scream. Her scream stopped as suddenly as it started, but the saw kept slicing wood.
My next footstep passed the sawmill itself. I saw jagged lines on the horizon, with a a smoother line in front. That was the freeway that went around town! I could see it from here! All there was between me and home were some tree stumps, an old tool shed for the mill, and distance.
Lots of distance. A mile. Two miles. Beyond the shed, dying grass and flat space stretched on and on. The wolf’s paws beat the grass behind me. He could jump and hit me by now. I’d seen him jump farther.
Rat jumped. I felt his weight leave my neck. The Wolf screamed. I stumbled, unable to stop from looking back.
I saw the Wolf bend his head down and sink his teeth into Rat, ripping him away. The Wolf left a bloody hole in his own ankle, but the blood covering his teeth and the hairy lump in his mouth belonged to Rat. He spat Rat out and took a couple of limping steps.
He was so big. Limping, he was still faster than me. I turned again. My lungs ached and my legs felt weak. I couldn’t outrun him for miles. Rat, why? What did you get by making him kill you? Did you save me two seconds?
The freeway was forever away in the distance. I could barely see it. The tool shed was right in front of me. I staggered up to it, pulled open the door, and ducked inside.
That was so stupid, Mary. It wasn’t any stupider than running.
I shoved the door closed behind me and pawed the handle for the lock. There was no lock. The Wolf’s weight pressed against the door, and I fell against the far wall of the shed. The Wolf’s bulk blocked most of the doorway, and one grimy window did not add much more light. Useless tools, cans, and bags of dirt surrounded me. A trowel on a hook pressed against my back as I flattened against the wall.
The Wolf stepped up in front of me. I wanted to turn and run as he lifted a paw, but there was nowhere to go. He pressed it against my chest, pinning me in place. He didn’t have to. I stretched my arms out as far as I could, trying to make myself flat as my whole body turned to ice. I could smell him, above the earthy smell of the shed. He stank like old blood and hair. Blue eyes d
rew level with mine, Rat’s blood painted his lips, and his voice was still so deep, so gentle and playful as he whispered, “Thank you, Red. I’ve never had a chase like this before. You never gave in. I could never charm you into doing anything.”
His muzzle moved forward. His mouth opened. I heard myself whimper as the hard point of a tooth touched my neck. I could barely see over his spread jaws, they were so big. This was all my fault. If I’d been willing to give Rat boots, maybe he could have saved me. Scarecrow, you wanted to live and you followed me to your death. I’d let you both die for me, and now the Wolf had me anyway.
“Don’t worry. There’s one thing I know I can convince you to do before the end,” he whispered, his tongue sliding over my throat and his breath puffing around my head. “Let me see you shaking with terror. Let me feel your pulse race as I bite into you. Be afraid for me, Red Riding Hood.”
My reaching fingers touched something narrow and hard. The handle of a shovel.
“No,” I told him, and hit him over the head with it.
His teeth dragged painfully at my neck, but he fell back a step, letting me go. It couldn’t have hurt him that badly. This time I had a better swing, and I smacked the metal shovel blade hard against the side of his head.
Even with the shovel, this wasn’t an even match. He could end it in one bite. He’d been hurt much worse chasing me. I could look at him now, in the light of the doorway. Scabs covered his hide, some of them still oozing red. He’d been hurt over and over chasing after me, and now he had me. All I had was a shovel. He stared at me helplessly as I slammed it down over the top of his head as hard as I could.
He spun around and ran. Ran badly. He lurched, but it was still faster than I could hope to move. He was out of the doorway and gone in a blink.
I lowered the shovel. I’d thought I was Eponine all this time, and I was Jean Valjean.
Stop that, Mary. I was being stupid, still looking for someone else to be when I knew exactly who I was.
The end of the shovel flicked up as something moved in the doorway, but—too low.
“Rat!” I shrieked in delight. I felt my body again as tears burned out of the corners of my eyes. I scooped his bloody body up off the ground and cupped him in both hands. “How can you be alive?”
“Rats don’t die easily, but I could use a bandage very much, Miss Mary,” he squeaked.
I was in a tool shed. I lay him out on a bag and scrambled around until I found a pack of empty bags made out of cloth that I could tear. I did, and wound strips around and around and around Rat’s middle. The blood didn’t immediately soak through. That might count as success.
“How is Scarecrow?” I asked as the next thought hit me.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
I scooped him up in both hands again and stepped out of the shed.
The Wolf had gone. I could see the road from here, but I didn’t care about that anymore. The buzz saw still whined, so he’d left it on. I followed that sound into the huge open doors of the mill.
Red and white fabric and chunks of wood lay around the base of the saw. They had very obviously belonged to Scarecrow, and none of them were moving. Unlike Rat, the Wolf had made sure she was dead.
Oh, Scarecrow. I’m so sorry.
I had one pathetic hope, and I shuffled over and knelt down among her pieces. Cradling Rat in one hand, I pushed bits of her around. A third of a head. Her elbow. Chunks of her torso. That curve with the white fabric over it was her flat chest. The cut didn’t run down the middle. I pulled the cloth aside, and her heart sat nestled in place in the middle of her chest, its gears ticking away.
I wrapped my fingers around Scarecrow’s heart and twisted until it came loose. “If you weren’t fully alive, maybe you can’t be fully dead. Someday, somehow, I will find a way to fix you,” I promised. I shoved her heart into the bodice of my dress. It wasn’t comfortable there, but it wouldn’t roll out. I’d left the satchel all the way back at Joseph’s house.
I made myself stand up. “Before I can bring you back, I have to finish my story.”
“Miss Mary, what happened?” Rat asked. He wanted to know why I was alive.
I laid him against my shoulder and explained, “I’ve been trying to argue against the truth since the moment I got here. I’ve finally accepted it. I am Little Red Riding Hood, and this is my story to tell. Will you help me tell it?”
“Forever after, Miss Mary,” he whispered, clinging to my neck.
nce upon a time, there was a little girl who was not sweet. She thought that no one in the world loved her, except for her pet rat. The little girl’s mother would rather drink than love her, and the little girl feared one thing in her life most of all: Not her mother’s cruelty, but growing up to be wicked and cruel herself. One night, the little girl took her rat and ran away, because the dangers of the dark woods were better than watching the cruelty within herself grow day by day.
There was good reason for her to be afraid, for the first thing she found in the woods was a red dress and hood. “I will protect you in the dark woods, and my first warning is that you should not touch that dress,” her rat had said, because he loved her. The little girl loved him back, but she could not be anything but spiteful, and she put the dress on anyway. From that moment, she was known as Little Red Riding Hood.
No sooner had she tied on her hood than the Wolf himself came slinking out of the bushes. “Where are you going, Little Red Riding Hood?” he asked.
“I am following this path, and I don’t care where it goes,” she answered.
“But this is a path for little girls. You should take that path. It is the path for wolves, and we could walk together,” he said.
“Why would you want that? Wolves like innocent girls,” Red Riding Hood said.
“You are more innocent than you think. Your every word is an argument, but you argue with yourself. You did not take your rat’s advice, but you carry him with you anyway. I have never met a little girl so close to being a wolf herself. I love you, and I must have your love in return. Walk with me,” he said.
“Show me the path first, and I will decide if I want to take it,” Red Riding Hood said , and the Wolf slunk into the bushes, showing her the way.
As soon as he was gone, Red’s rat whispered, “No matter which path you take, he will murder you. That is what a wolf’s love means.”
“I won’t take either path,” Red Riding Hood said, and walked away into the trees.
Paths exist for a reason. Following a path would have led her to death, but leaving the path led Red Riding Hood into fairyland. The farther she walked, the more fairies she saw.
“Be careful,” her rat said, “Fairies are wicked and evil.”
At first, Red Riding Hood wanted to doubt him. The fairies laughed and played, and they were beautiful and ugly but always fantastic to look at. Unlike her, they were always happy. Then, she noticed that if a fairy fell or was hurt, the others laughed harder. They were always happy because they were cruel, and their own happiness was all they cared about.
That was when she came to the great feast where the Queen of the Fairies ruled, and learned how true her judgment had been. At that very table the Fairy Queen kept a human princess captive, enslaved for no other purpose than the Queen’s amusement.
“We have to get out of here, or you will be next. I know a way to escape,” her rat whispered.
Red Riding Hood had no chance to argue, for at that moment, the Wolf caught up with her.
“I waited, but you didn’t follow me,” he accused, yet he did not sound angry.
“Of course I didn’t. I don’t want to be a wolf, or an innocent girl, and I don’t want to love you most of all,” Red answered. She was angry, very angry indeed.
The Wolf shot back, “You know that’s a lie. I love you, and I cannot live without your love, so I will show you the truth.” Instead of Red Riding Hood, he leapt upon the captive princess, seizing her. “A wolf would run away and let her die. An in
nocent girl would give herself to me to save another. Which will you do?”
The Wolf had chosen a bad test. The fairies were angry that their queen’s toy had been threatened. As they rose up, Red Riding Hood thrust her rat into the princess’s arms. “From now on, you belong to her. Help her escape instead,” Red said. She ran as the Wolf fought the fairies.
Fear crept into Red Riding Hood’s heart as she ran. She knew now that the Wolf would follow her, and she was alone. As bad as she’d been at accepting her rat’s love and protection, now she had lost them completely.
So she ran. Fairyland’s exits twist and follow strange ways. She ran through long open fields and dark labyrinths underground, until finally she boarded a tremendous boat and hid in its holds.
If she had her rat, he could have told her not to. Without him, this mistake nearly cost her life. Those holds were a belly, and the boat a monstrous thing, part ship, and part beast, and part judge. She wandered in its endless halls until she came to an intersection, one way lit, the other in shadow.
“Avoid the darkness. Follow the light!” the boat ordered.
“I don’t accept your rules. The darkness isn’t wicked,” Red Riding Hood said, and stepped into the shadows.
“But you are wicked. You break the rules out of spite, and now you will be punished for it,” the boat declared.
“I don’t accept your judgment. I will decide if I’m good or wicked myself!” Red Riding Hood yelled.
The boat disagreed, and sucked her into the flooded halls of its lower belly to be swallowed. Just as its jaws closed, the Wolf wedged himself between them, forcing them open.
“Where did you come from?” Red Riding Hood said.
“I can always follow you, because we think alike,” the Wolf answered.
Those words made Red Riding Hood even angrier. “I am nothing like you.”
“We are alike in the most important way. I will only let myself judge what kind of person I am,” the Wolf said to her.
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