Red Riding Hood

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

  “No, it is you who are wrong,” Solomon said, meeting the glares of the men who’d risked their lives in the caves. Father Auguste’s eyes shone.

  The Reeve shifted his stance.

  “A werewolf is never truly human no matter how it appears. During a normal full moon, a Wolf bite will kill you. But during the days of the blood moon, your very souls are in danger.”

  The room chilled.

  “For how long, exactly?”

  “Four days.”

  Two nights are left, Valerie thought. Tomorrow will be the final day.

  “As I’ve said,” the Reeve interjected authoritatively, smiling, his jowlish cheeks pulling out to either side, “none of this matters. We’re safe now. The Wolf is dead. I killed it myself in its lair, the cave at Mount Grimmoor.” The Reeve began to turn, hoping that would be the end of it.

  Solomon looked at him as though he were a child. The villagers were unsure which patriarch should receive their allegiance.

  “You’ve been deceived by this beast.” Solomon systematically cracked his knuckles. “Right from the start. Most likely, it lured a hungry wolf to the cave and trapped it there for you to find. It fooled you into thinking it lived on Mount Grimmoor so that you wouldn’t look for it in the most obvious place.”

  He paused, letting them understand their own folly.

  “The Wolf lives right here. In this village.” He looked at the villagers. “Among you. It is one of you.”

  Starting at one end of the crowd, he met the eyes of every villager down the line. The masked bowman scanned the throng alongside him, his crossbow slung across his back.

  “The real killer could be your neighbor. Your best friend. Even your wife.” His eyes were like cut gemstones.

  Valerie saw men thinking back to the cave. Who had been missing? It was impossible to know, in the chaos of the dark. Her own eyes crossed Madame Lazar’s, Peter’s, her parents’. She began to replay her friends’ stories of what had happened at the campout in her mind. How was it possible that they had lost sight of Lucie? Had one of them held her back and dragged her away into the dark… or written a note to lure her out?

  Her suspicious gaze settled on the people she had known her whole life. Then she realized they were staring right back at her.

  “Barricade the village,” Father Solomon commanded. “Post men at every gate along the town wall. No one leaves until we kill the Wolf.”

  The Reeve rubbed his teeth with his tongue.

  “The Wolf is dead,” he growled. “Tonight we celebrate.”

  Solomon stared at him, his eyes lit up like fire.

  “Go ahead and celebrate,” he said, throwing up his hands as only a man who was used to being listened to would. “We’ll see who’s right.”

  He turned and strode out of the tavern.

  Father Solomon was a brisk walker, and Valerie had to run to catch up with him. But she stopped short as his back stiffened and his hand went for his sword. Not a man to approach suddenly.

  He turned, and the menace drained from his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, no. What is it, child?”

  “I need to know… my sister…”

  “Yes?”

  “Why? Why has the Wolf waited until now to attack? And why her?”

  “Only the Devil knows.”

  He could see she wasn’t satisfied, that she was not a simpleminded village girl who could be deterred by pious platitudes.

  “Go speak with my scribe. He can show you things that will help you understand the unfathomable.”

  She dropped back as he strode onward.

  “The unfathomable, yes,” came an unfamiliar voice. “Understand, probably not.”

  She turned, and the scribe, who had been following Solomon, stopped and held out a leather-bound tome. He had an underbite and a kind face. Valerie inspected the clasp of the book. It felt like it was made of horse hooves, and it might have been. She didn’t ask.

  She opened the book with a clack. The images were beautifully rendered pencil drawings of the beasts Father Solomon and his men had slain.

  The scribe fitted his spectacles onto his nose. Neat handwriting crawled steadily across the pages.

  “That’s the obour. Survives off blood and milk. Tears the udders off cows in the night.” The scribe had a shuffling, breathy voice. “You don’t want to come across one of those in your pantry.”

  She leafed through, noting the careful, elegant lines, the surfaces of the pages smudged with lead from having been touched and gone over many times. She ran her own fingers gingerly over the fantastical images.

  “Beautiful, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Things that haunt your dreams.”

  The pages were vellum with red and blue underlines surrounded in flowery gold, depicting strange creatures with crow heads, sea monsters with the bodies of lizards and the faces of men perched atop towering letters and breathing out red smoke. She could not bring herself to believe they were real.

  But her heart caught when her eyes fell on a hulking image of a bipedal werewolf. She thought of sweet Lucie and closed the book, unable to look any longer.

  15

  What remains of my sister will soon be no more, Valerie thought as she walked down the sloping path to the river. It was late afternoon now, and Cesaire was carrying one end of the thin raft that held Lucie’s body, Valerie and Suzette the other. They reached the shore, where the dirt was too soft and felt like ash shifting beneath the snow. It was scattered slightly with the faint tracks of feet and paws that preceded theirs.

  They saw that the Lazars—what was left of them—were already there, standing vigil over Adrien’s body, lying on its own raft. Madame Lazar stood stiffly upright, as if the older woman refused to stoop. Henry stood behind her.

  They both nodded as Valerie and her family approached. Henry raised his eyebrows at Valerie, silently apologizing for how he’d acted at the smithy. They set Lucie’s raft beside Adrien’s. The sight made Valerie glance at her mother, but Suzette was lost in her silent double sorrow.

  Cesaire squatted and began preparing the two torches, sparking the flint, assessing the river.

  Valerie couldn’t help feeling like her father’s sadness was unbearable.

  Valerie stood back near the woods. A great tree had been swept over in the previous night’s wind, and its upturned roots clutched at the air for its lost ground.

  Cesaire looked up; the torches were ready.

  Henry stepped down the uneven bank, receiving a torch. Before he could think about it for too long, he pitched it onto Adrien’s raft and helped the floating coffin into the river, which rippled like smoke-colored silk. Its cuts and swells met always in the same furrows and creases, so that it looked at one moment just the same as the next. It seemed the water wasn’t moving at all. It would douse the flames, but only after the fire had finished what it had been called upon to do.

  Henry moved to his grandmother as the flames took hold of the raft, standing to her side, rolling a pebble back and forth with his foot. Madame Lazar closed her drapelike eyelids, and Valerie could see the tears threatening to brim over. For a moment she was just a mother who had loved her son. Valerie felt that she was glimpsing the older woman’s olive pit heart.

  Valerie could not imagine Madame Lazar as a young girl, someone reliant on another. It was hard to believe that she participated in such human necessities as sleeping and eating. And yet, Madame Lazar was not all bad. Valerie, who had explored everywhere, knew that, privately, the woman left bowls of milk out for stray dogs.

  Through the haze of grief, the five mourners heard the sound of feet scuffing through pebbles. It was Claude, who’d come to pay his respects to Lucie. Catching Valerie’s eye, he moved down the bank. He was coping as best he could. Claude had believed in many things, and yet before that day, he had not believed in evil. It had taken seeing Lucie lying dead in the wheat field to convince him.

  Evil was
everywhere.

  Madame Lazar sniffed and turned away from the intruder, but Valerie offered Claude a small smile. She didn’t mind that he came to join the family in their grief.

  Cesaire, seeing that Adrien’s raft was well out into the river, stepped forward. Valerie shook her head. One more moment.

  Valerie took in her sister for the last time—her flesh, those small feet that did not seem ready to disappear forever. She looked and tried to say good-bye.

  But good-bye was not easy.

  Suzette moved to the raft, trembling with tears. Mothers should not outlive their children, Valerie thought. Nature should have a law against that.

  Looking first for permission, Cesaire touched the torch to the edge of the raft. Once it had caught, he delivered it into the river.

  Suzette hovered behind him, far enough back that it was clear they were not grieving separately but also not together.

  Valerie felt a touch, and she turned instinctively into Henry’s chest. A quiet place. She felt an arm around her, and Valerie realized she was crying, wetting his leather collar with her tears. When she looked up, Madame Lazar had disappeared.

  As the flames settled to meet the river, Valerie stepped away from the shelter of Henry’s body. Not wanting to go to her mother, nor feeling she should go to her father, she walked along the skirt of the river, the surface marbled like unmixed batter. Her sister was now water, cool and clear. She found a place where the river lapped gently at the shore, where a few plants stood up through the snow. How could it be that plants still grew? She sat, letting the cold, biting tide shock her as it washed over her feet, rinsing them, until Claude called for her, the wind carrying his voice.

  Turning, she saw her mother watching the two rafts, wondering why she hadn’t been taken, too.

  Lucie was gone—there was no doubt about that now.

  Valerie and her parents walked home together, following the dark tree line along the village wall. Entering through a reinforced barricade, they passed under the relentless glares of Father Solomon’s soldiers patrolling on horseback. The soldiers ate as they watched, their weapons slung across their bodies. Out of the sides of their mouths, they took yanking bites of massive loaves or tossed back mugs of ale in two great gulps, but they did not take their eyes off the family.

  The newly erected barricade was frightening; it meant that now the world was just the village against the Wolf. But it frightened Valerie for a reason that she was afraid to admit, even to herself.

  The barricade meant that she would be trapped inside.

  It didn’t even matter to her where the Wolf was, she realized in a moment of clarity. What mattered was that there was an outside and that she was not a part of it. She felt like she was way down at the bottom of a well and that someone at the top was closing the hatch.

  Through the dark, the family of three heard a deafening noise, and then something jumped out of the bushes at them, surreal and terrifying.

  It was a wolf with a man’s face.

  16

  The man in the wolf costume jangled Valerie’s nerves, already raw. She’d almost forgotten that the Reeve’s “celebration” was still happening. Wandering into the square with her senses heightened, she felt eyes staring up at her. Afraid, she looked to her left and saw that they belonged to a boar’s head being carried by on a pewter platter. It had a blushing apple in its mouth and grapes for eyes, which gave it a faraway look.

  A towering effigy of the Wolf had been built from a pyramid of roots, sharpened sticks, and debris. It burned at the far end of the square, coughing out sparks from its blackening mouth. The blood moon hung ripe in the voidlike sky.

  A stage had been cobbled together out of a few sagging planks, upon which the goat herder and a few woodsmen were cranking hurdy-gurdies and strumming lutes. Simon, the tailor, had gotten his hands on a bagpipe, and the thing wheezed shrill and loud, like a dying animal. The musicians blew as hard as they could into their horns, running out of breath, gulping down more before beginning again.

  Despite all the delicious-looking food, wafts of rotten garbage and men’s sweat still filled the square. Valerie felt her stomach turn.

  She looked for Solomon and his men but did not see them. She had noticed their camp set up in the expansive barn behind the granary and figured they must be holed up there now, refusing to participate.

  Everyone seemed to be celebrating all the harder to convince themselves that they should be celebrating at all. They danced, frantic and wild, so that they would forget in the frenzy. A few men, respectable by day, lumbered around on all fours, ruining their pants in the snow. A woman tripped into the mud in front of Valerie, but before she could help her up, she had already been yanked into a dance. Red-faced men swung their heavyset partners, admiring their wives’ curves from an arm’s length, hands joined overhead. Sisters danced with their younger brothers but held their eyes fixed on the boys across the stage. Voices ricocheted across the square, making it seem like hundreds more people were there.

  Surrounded by everyone she knew, Valerie felt completely alone.

  Suzette kept her eyes down and melted into the crowd without a word. Valerie saw the Reeve, his bald head shiny with sweat, lording over the scene at a long table set up in front of the tavern. He beckoned for her to join, but she ignored him out of contempt. It was difficult, though, to maintain her embittered sense of outrage. There were too many people caught up in the delirium of the celebration to lay the blame on one particular person. It was exhausting to be grief-stricken. Valerie gave up.

  Her father, already hanging carelessly off a branch, blew fast and hard into an ox horn, pointlessly signaling the beginning of the festival that people had already begun. The horn sounded long and low, like someone blowing his nose.

  “Hey! Hey! Everybody!”

  Valerie and the people nearby turned to face the shrill voice. Marguerite had grabbed a rusty overturned bucket to boost her own height and was clamoring to get atop, lifting her arms above her head. “Quiet, all!” The would-be podium rested on a slant and began to give way backward. Henry caught it to stabilize the barmaid before she fell.

  Those at the ends of the table continued carrying on, either not hearing her or not bothering to listen. Marguerite raised a pewter mug. “To the Reeve!” Then, realizing she had commanded everyone’s attention, she added, “For, uh, his bravery and his courage and his fearlessness.”

  Valerie wondered whether she was going to say something more. It seemed Marguerite herself wasn’t sure, not having known what she was going to say in the first place.

  “And for… killing that Wolf dead as doornails. Like the nails made by little Henry.”

  Henry smiled, trying to steady his face into politeness.

  “Though he’s not so little anymore.” She winked at him, wagging her hips for emphasis. Though they were both bright shades of pink, Claude and Roxanne, standing off to one side together, graciously said nothing. This was not the first time their mother had embarrassed them. Valerie gave Roxanne a sympathetic glance.

  Valerie hung back from the crowd. Feelings of pain and fear flooded the villagers and mixed with rage, making them feel invincible and savage. Nightfall always made them feel lawless.

  A candlemaker, sitting along the edge of the well, kicked with his feet, drenching the musicians. The mandolin player peered into his sound hole.

  Prudence stole up to Valerie, the hem of her gray skirt clutched in each fist as she danced.

  “I’m so glad you came!” she called over the noise, letting her brown hair swish from side to side. Valerie hoped this meant she was forgiven for being betrothed to Henry. She decided to confide her concern to her friend.

  “Prudence, the Wolf’s not gone, is it?” Valerie asked, her voice sounding hollow in her own ears as she asked the question that burned and died in everyone’s throats, like a spent firecracker.

  Prudence stopped dancing and let her skirt fall.

  “Why would you say somethin
g like that?” She frowned. “You heard the Reeve.”

  “But Father Solomon—”

  “The men know what they’re doing. Now, come on!”

  Valerie saw Claude’s red hair standing out from the whirling mob. She hoped that he would be able to have some fun after the events of the day before.

  Seeing that Valerie was watching, he attempted an animated jig, kicking his legs out at odd angles to make her laugh. She forced a smile for him. However, not realizing his own size, the dance swung him into a group of grouchy women, who had to back reluctantly out of his way. He was smiling sunnily at them when a teenage boy, William, ran by and swooped the hat off Claude’s head.

  “Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?” William called out in mocking innocence.

  “Stop!” Valerie yelled, but the kid was already headed too far in the other direction.

  Claude ran after him, chasing him around the well. He skittered in the dirt as he tried to follow. Roxanne, who never lost sight of him for long, hurried over, shrugging meekly at Valerie as she comforted her brother.

  Who is everyone pretending for? Valerie wondered. Near the Wolf effigy, a couple of half-wits were throwing broken furniture into the bonfire. The crowd whooped as someone raised the full moon sign from the Wolf altar above his head and smashed it into the fire.

  She saw that Henry Lazar was making his way toward her along the edge of the square. She thought of the refuge she had found with him earlier and, oddly, felt no desire to avoid him.

  “Henry,” she said, feeling the bond of grief.

  “This all seems so wrong. They’re barely in their graves,” Henry said. Surveying the raucous mob, Valerie was horrified to see Rose swaying against Peter, seductively grinding her broad hips. He held her close to him, clutching her to his chest as they rolled their shoulders against each other in unison.

  “No,” Valerie said, suddenly turning on Henry, the compassion she’d felt for him inexplicably reaching its limit. “Let them celebrate.”