by David Leslie Johnson; David Leslie Johnson; Catherine Hardwicke Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
RED RIDING HOOD
a novel by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
based on a screenplay written by David Leslie Johnson
introduction by Catherine Hardwicke
Little, Brown and Company
New York Boston
To Catherine, Lauren, Laurie, and Ronee, four incredible women
Introduction
IN AUGUST 2009, I was sent a script called The Girl with the Red Riding Hood, written by David Leslie Johnson and based on an idea by Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio’s company, Appian Way, had been developing the project with Warner Bros. I immediately fell in love with the idea of making a new, dark, layered version of the classic story.
Fairy tales are rich blueprints that help us understand and create our own worlds, which is exactly what I attempted to do with this one. My head was filled with images and ideas about how to make this world come alive. For inspiration, I pulled from creative sources all around me—my sister’s paintings for the magic and the mood, current fashion runways for the clothes, a little northern Russian architecture book I’d been saving since I was a teenager for the design of Daggorhorn.
In this version of “Red Riding Hood,” I was interested in the modern feel of the characters and their relationships. The story explores themes of teenage angst and the pitfalls of growing up and falling in love. And, of course, there is the Big Bad Wolf. The Wolf in our story represents a dark, dangerous side of man and fosters a paranoid society.
This social paranoia stuck with me during the development of the script, and eventually it was built into the DNA of Daggorhorn’s architecture. The villagers live in cottages that feel like miniature fortresses—they are elevated on stilts and have heavy wooden shutters and ladders that are pulled up at night. The people of the village are just as guarded emotionally as they are physically, and when their decades-long peace with the Wolf starts to break down, so do the ties among them.
The deeper we went into the world, the more I realized that the characters and their backstories were too complex to fit into the film, so I wanted to help create a novel to fully explore the tangled web of emotions in the village of Daggorhorn.
While on a trip to New York, I saw my friend Sarah Blakley-Cartwright. She had just graduated with honors from Barnard College with a degree in creative writing. I’ve known Sarah since she was thirteen—she’d even played small parts in all four of my previous films. She’s always had an original, poetic spirit—full of whimsy—and I realized she would be perfect for this project.
From the moment I mentioned the idea to Sarah, she dove in headfirst. She flew to Vancouver, British Columbia, when we were building the sets for the movie, and she completely immersed herself in the world of Red Riding Hood. She interviewed all the actors about their characters, she participated in rehearsals, and she danced across hot coals in the festival scene. Sarah really became a part of the storytelling process.
I feel that Sarah has written a beautiful novel that has deepened the world of the characters. She allows us all to linger in the emotional moments, the ones that tell us that Red Riding Hood is not just a fairy tale, but rather a universal story about love and courage and growing up.
Enjoy.
Once upon a time…
… there was a Girl,
and there was a Wolf.
Part One
1
From the towering heights of the tree, the little girl could see everything. The sleepy village of Daggorhorn lay low in the bowl of the valley. From above, it looked like a faraway, foreign land. A place she knew nothing about, a place without spikes or barbs, a place where fear did not hover like an anxious parent.
Being this far up in the air made Valerie feel as if she could be someone else, too. She could be an animal: a hawk, chilly with self-survival, arrogant and apart.
Even at age seven, she knew that, somehow, she was different from the other villagers. She couldn’t help keeping them at a distance, even her friends, who were open and wonderful. Her older sister, Lucie, was the one person in the world to whom Valerie felt connected. She and Lucie were like the two vines that grew twisted together in the old song the elders of the village sang.
Lucie was the only one.
Valerie peered past her dangling bare feet and thought about why she had climbed up here. She wasn’t allowed to, of course, but that wasn’t it. And it wasn’t for the challenge of the climb, either—that had lost its thrill a year earlier, when she first reached the tallest branch and found nowhere left to go but the open sky.
She climbed up high because she couldn’t breathe down there, in the town. If she didn’t get out, the unhappiness would settle upon her, piling up like snow until she was buried beneath it. Up here in her tree, the air was cool on her face and she felt invincible. She never worried about falling; such a thing was not possible in this weightless universe.
“Valerie!”
Suzette’s voice sounded upward through the leaves, calling for her like a hand tugging Valerie back down to earth.
By the tone of her mother’s voice, Valerie knew it was time to go. Valerie pulled her knees up under her, rose to a crouch, and began her descent. Looking straight down, she could see the steeply pitched roof of Grandmother’s house, built right into the branches of the tree and covered in a thick shag of pine needles. The house was wedged in a flowering of branches as if it had lodged there during a storm. Valerie always wondered how it had gotten there, but she never asked, because something so wonderful should never be explained.
It was nearing winter, and the leaves had begun to loosen themselves from their branches, easing their autumn grasp. Some shuddered and fell free as Valerie moved down the tree. She had perched in the tree all afternoon, listening to the low murmur of women’s voices wafting up from below. It seemed like they were more cautious today, huskier than usual, as though the women were keeping secrets.
Nearing the lower branches that grazed the tree house roof, Valerie saw Grandmother float out onto the porch, her feet not visible beneath her dress. Grandmother was the most beautiful woman Valerie knew. She wore long layered skirts that swayed as she walked. If her right foot went forward, her silk skirt breezed to the left. Her ankles were delicate and lovely, like the tiny wooden dancer’s in Lucie’s jewelry box. This both delighted and frightened Valerie, because they looked like they could snap.
Valerie, herself unsnappable, leapt off the lowest branch and onto the porch with a solid thump.
She was not excitable like other girls, whose cheeks were pink or round. Valerie’s were smooth and even and pale white. Valerie didn’t really think of herself as pretty, or think about what she looked like, for that matter. No one else, though, could forget the corn-husk blonde with unsettling green eyes that lit up like they were charged by lightning. Her eyes, that knowing look she had, made her seem older than she was.
“Girls, come on!” her mother called from inside the house, anxiety bristling through her voice. “We need to be back early tonight.” Valerie made it down before anyone could see that she had been in the tree at all.
Through the open door, Valerie saw Lucie bustle over to their mother clutching a doll she had dressed in scraps that Grandmother had donated to the cause. Valerie wished she could be more like her sister.
Lucie’s hands were soft and round, a little bit pillowy, something Valerie admired. Her own hands were knobby and thin, tough with calluses. Her body was all angles. She felt deep inside that this made her unlovable, someone no one would want to touch.
Her older sister was better than she was, that much Valerie knew. Lucie was kinder, more generous, m
ore patient. She never would have climbed above the tree house, where she knew sensible people didn’t belong.
“Girls! It’s a full moon tonight.” Her mother’s voice carried out to her now. “And it’s our turn,” she added sadly, her voice trailing off.
Valerie didn’t know what to make of it being their turn. She hoped it was a surprise, maybe a present.
Looking down to the ground, she saw some markings in the dirt that formed the shape of an arrow.
Peter.
Her eyes widening, she headed down the steep, dusty stairs from the tree house to examine the marks.
No, it isn’t Peter, she thought, seeing that they were just random scratches in the soil.
But what if—?
The marks stretched away from her into the woods. Instinctively, ignoring what she should do, what Lucie would do, she followed them.
Of course, they led nowhere. Within a dozen paces, the marks disappeared. Mad at herself for wishful thinking, she was glad that no one had seen her following nothing to nothing.
Before he’d left, Peter used to leave messages for her by drawing arrows in the dirt with the tip of a stick; the arrows guided her to him, often hiding deep in the woods.
He had been gone for months now, her friend. They had been inseparable, and Valerie still couldn’t accept the fact that he wasn’t coming back. His leaving had been like snipping off the end of a rope—leaving two unraveling strands.
Peter hadn’t been like other boys, who teased and fought. He understood Valerie’s impulses. He understood adventure; he understood not following the rules. He never judged her for being a girl.
“Valerie!” Grandmother’s voice now called. Her calls were to be answered more urgently than Valerie’s mother’s because her threats might actually be carried out. Valerie turned from the puzzle pieces that had led to no prize, and hurried back.
“Down here, Grandmother.” She leaned against the base of the tree, delighting in the feel of the sandpaper bark. She closed her eyes to feel it fully—and heard the grumbling of wagon wheels like an approaching thunderstorm.
Hearing it, too, Grandmother slipped down the stairs to the forest floor. She wrapped Valerie in her arms, the cool silk of her blouse and the clunky jumble of her amulets pressing against Valerie’s face. Her chin on Grandmother’s shoulder, Valerie saw Lucie moving cautiously down the tall stairs, followed by their mother.
“Be strong tonight, my darlings,” Grandmother whispered. Held tightly, Valerie stayed quiet, unable to voice her confusion. For Valerie, each person and place had its own scent—sometimes, the whole world seemed like a garden. She decided that her grandmother smelled like crushed leaves mingled with something deeper, something profound that she could not place.
As soon as Grandmother released Valerie, Lucie handed her sister a bouquet of herbs and flowers she’d gathered from the woods.
The wagon, pulled by two muscular workhorses, came bumping over the ruts in the road. The woodcutters were seated in clusters atop freshly chopped tree stumps that slid forward as the wagon lurched to a stop in front of Grandmother’s tree. Branches—the fattest ones at the bottom and the lightest on top—were piled between the men. To Valerie, the riders looked like they were made of wood themselves.
Valerie saw her father, Cesaire, seated near the back of the cart. He stood and reached down for Lucie. He knew better than to try for Valerie. He reeked of sweat and ale, and she stayed far away from him.
“I love you, Grandmother!” Lucie called over her shoulder as she let Cesaire help her and her mother over the side of the cart. Valerie scrambled up and in on her own. With a snap of the reins, the wagon lumbered to a start.
A woodcutter shifted aside to give Suzette and the girls room, and Cesaire reached over, landing a theatrical kiss on the man’s cheek.
“Cesaire,” Suzette hissed, casting him a quietly reproachful glance as side conversations picked up in the wagon. “I’m surprised you’re still conscious at this late hour.”
Valerie had heard accusations like this before, always veiled behind a false overtone of cleverness or wit. And yet it still jolted her to hear them said with such a tone of contempt.
She looked at her sister, who hadn’t heard their mother because she was laughing at something another woodcutter had said. Lucie always insisted that their parents were in love, that love was not about grand gestures but rather about the day to day, about being there, going to work and coming home in the evening. Valerie had tried to believe that this was true, but she couldn’t help feeling that there had to be something more to love, something less practical.
Now she hung on tight as she leaned over the back rails of the wagon, peering down at the rapidly disappearing ground. Feeling dizzy, she turned to face back in.
“My baby.” Suzette pulled Valerie onto her lap, and Valerie let her. Her pale, pretty mother smelled like almonds and powdery flour.
As the wagon emerged from the Black Raven Woods and rumbled alongside the silver river, the dreary haze of the village came into full view. Its foreboding was palpable even at a distance: Stilts, spikes, and barbs jutted up and out. The granary’s lookout tower, the town’s tallest point, stretched high.
It was the first thing one felt while coming over the ridge: fear.
Daggorhorn was a town full of people who were afraid, people who felt unsafe even in their beds and vulnerable with each step, exposed with every turn.
The people had begun to believe that they deserved the torture—that they had done something wrong and that something inside them was bad.
Valerie had watched the villagers cowering in fear every day and felt her difference from them. What she feared more than the outside was a darkness that came from inside her. It seemed as if she was the only one who felt that way.
Other than Peter, that is.
She thought back to when he’d been there, the two of them fearless together and filled with reckless joy. Now she resented the villagers for their fear, for the loss of her friend.
Once through the massive wooden gates, the town looked like any other in the kingdom. The horses kicked up pockets of dust as they did in all such towns, and every face was familiar. Stray dogs roamed the streets, their bellies empty and drooping, sucked in impossibly tight at the sides so that their fur looked striped. Ladders rested gently against porches. Moss spilled out from crevices in roofs and crawled across the fronts of houses, and no one did anything about it.
Tonight, the villagers were hurrying to bring their animals inside.
It was Wolf night, just as it had been every full moon for as long as anyone could remember.
Sheep were herded and locked behind heavy doors. Handed off from one family member to another, chickens strained their necks as they were thrust up ladders, stretching them out so far that Valerie worried they would rip them clean off their own bodies.
As they reached home, Valerie’s parents spoke to each other in low voices. Instead of climbing up the ladder to their raised cottage, Cesaire and Suzette approached the stable underneath, which was darkened by the shady gloom of their house. The girls ran ahead of them to greet Flora, their pet goat. Seeing them, she clattered her hooves against the rickety boards of the pen, her clear eyes watery with anticipation.
“It’s time now,” Valerie’s father said, coming up behind Valerie and Lucie and laying his hands on their shoulders.
“Time for what?” Lucie asked.
“It’s our turn.”
Valerie saw something in his stance that she didn’t like, something menacing, and she backed away from him. Lucie reached for Valerie’s hand, steadying her as she always did.
A man who believed in speaking truthfully to his children, Cesaire plucked at the fabric of his pants and bent down to have a word with his two little girls. He told them that Flora was to be this month’s sacrifice.
“The chickens provide us with eggs,” he reminded them. “The goat is all we can afford to offer.”
Valerie
stood in stupefied disbelief. Lucie knelt down sorrowfully, scratching her little fingernails up and down the goat’s neck and pulling softly at her ears in the way that animals will only allow children to do. Flora nudged Lucie’s palm with her newly sprouted horns, trying them out.
Suzette glanced at the goat and then looked at Valerie expectantly.
“Say good-bye, Valerie,” she said, resting her hand on her daughter’s slender arm.
But Valerie couldn’t—something held her back.
“Valerie?” Lucie looked at her imploringly.
She knew her mother and sister thought she was being cold. Only her father understood, nodding at her as he led the goat away. He steered Flora by a thin rope, her nostrils flaring and her eyes sharp with unease. Holding back bitter tears, Valerie hated her father, for his sympathy and for his betrayal.
Valerie was careful, though. She never let anyone see her cry.
That night, Valerie lay awake after her mother had put them to bed. The glow of the moon streamed through her window, stretching across the floorboards in one great pillar.
She thought hard. Her father had taken Flora, their precious goat. Valerie had seen Flora birthed on the floor of the stable, the mother goat bleating in pain as Cesaire brought the small, damp kid forth into the world.
She knew what she had to do.
Lucie padded along beside Valerie, leaving the warmth of their bed and heading down the loft ladder and to the front door.
“We’ve got to do something!” Valerie whispered urgently, beckoning for her sister to join her.
But Lucie stayed back, fearful, shaking her head and wordlessly willing Valerie to stay, too. Valerie knew that she couldn’t do as her elder sister did, huddling in the doorway, clutching her doe hide. She would not just stand by and watch the events of her life unfold. But just as Lucie had always admired Valerie’s commitment, Valerie admired her sister’s restraint.