Red Rider (Chpt. 1)

There were two rules that every girl, every girl who wanted a happy ending, anyway, obeyed. The first was to stay away from old women. Old women were usually witches if they lived on their own and didn’t make cookies for the entire town’s children, and congregating with them meant that you could be eaten. The second was to stay away from the wolf-people, who were evil and tricky, leading girls off the roads to be eaten, or at least sold and used as slaves. Every year, a girl would be eaten, or be sold into the Far East, or fall from grace, apparently due to them, obviously confirming these troubling stories.

I wasn’t dwelling on any of this as the nanny lectured me for the millionth time about how I really shouldn’t visit Gramma. I was instead thinking about my upcoming sixteenth birthday, the one where I’d asked for money rather than gifts. I knew that my father would object to my little plan if I told them what I was going to buy, but, as West once told me, no one had any right to tell me what I could and couldn’t do. If I did, I was nothing more than a puppet of fate, someone with no control over their life. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone, according to West.

“Anyway, I don’t see why you have to go out at all. Can’t your grandmother afford servants?” Mrs. Creeper whined, as she leered at the state of my room. It was a comfortable mess, my little music triangles strewn about the desk, my bass-lute not in its case but laid on the bed. She didn’t like my room. She was the type who thought that any kind of mess ought to be punishable in some section of the Underworld.

I slipped on my red trench coat. The nanny made that grimacing face she always put on when I put on ‘that tatty old thing’. She disliked it, probably because it had charm and was old, neither of which she liked. She was more a tacky, new things kind of person, the kind who got excited about glitzy things.

“Probably not. Mother came from a poor family, you see. You might have lived in this big house, this big town, all your life, but Gramma is a village woman. Except the village moved away from her, which is why I have to go over with food and medicine, and make sure that she’s all right,” I snapped.

Mrs. Creeper, whose title was probably an honorific rather than actually being married, flinched. She’d been brought up with the ‘seen not heard’ rule, and she probably wasn’t used to her charges shouting at her. After all, most girls who fulfilled all the qualifications for a happy ending were quiet, meek, and would blink prettily, sighing and wishing their prince would come and carry them off into the sunset. I didn’t do that; rather, I actually tried to do things.

“Be back before sundown! Watch out for wolves!” she called, as I stepped out the door, basket in hand. I smirked at her obliviousness to the fact that I was impervious. I had someone who had personally made sure that no wolf-person would ever touch me.

The streets were almost devoid of people. They were probably all at work, or in any case loitering about their indoor realm. Nobody seemed to want to go out any more, except for the vagrants, the misfits, and they all hung out downtown. I couldn’t see why nobody would enjoy this admittedly mediocre spring day.

The sky was as blue as a gray squirrel that had been dipped into some blue dye, and then washed off a bit, and left for nearly a year. It was definitely blue, but faded to the point where it was practically gray. The air was brisk, sharp, like a cleaver, but with an edge of warmth that held the promise of the summer to come. It was still necessary to have my red coat on. It was probably the most useful of all my jackets, coats, and the like. It kept me warm if it was cold, and was quite thin should it be hot.

Gramma was an absolute genius when it came to clothes. She’d spin all day from wool, from those sheep she kept in the area of the forest she’d taken, or from the cotton, in the little area she’d fenced off. She would then knit and weave, sew the fabric together to make me the most beautiful clothes in the world, much better than anything the town tailor could make. The secret was that, although the tailor had to do a good job or he wouldn’t be paid, she did it because she wanted to, in her own time, adding in a little love with each step. I didn’t know whether she really meant all that or not.

When I was six, the year that Mother died and I went to live with her for a while, she began to make me red clothes, usually with a little hood to keep me warm in the rain. They felt edgy, seriously cool. I’d even started a little fashion amongst the downtown gangs, of having hoods with their jackets. They were, to me at least, beautiful, with enough warmth to be useful, as I would argue to Mrs. Creeper and the previous ones, and enough memories sewn in to make it special.

They smelt like the sheep they were made from, the old woman who made them, and, eventually, everything I did in them. The coat I wore now smelt like wet fur, the downtown area, and oil. Most of all, it smelt like how friendship would smell, warm and sweet mixed together with a little bit of something I couldn’t place.

People called Gramma a witch, because she lived on her own. Maybe she was, to make such good clothing, but really, it was all political. West had once said that the only difference between a witch and fay was that one didn’t go around to social events, give princesses personality attributes, and the like. It was my opinion that people at the top were stupid, and though some might have gotten there by being smart, being at the top made you stupid. That is, unless you listened for once to the smart people at the middle and bottom.

I drifted out of my thoughts as soon as I reached the edge of the forest. It was quiet, almost eerily quiet. Normally, it was buzzing with noise, if you knew what to listen for. There would be birds calling out and being startled by things, insects whirring, the squirrels chirping. Deer’s hooves could be heard by the thumping squelch as they stepped on dirt and mud, rabbits from the same sound, the badgers... not making much noise at all, but their presence still noticed. Even the creaking of trees, the rustle of leaves in the faint wind, although today there was no wind. There was usually some noise, however hard I had to strain to hear it. Today there was nothing, just a faint bleat in the distance. Something, beast or man, had to be scaring the animals and their sounds away.

I squinted into the trees. I could just glimpse movement amongst the shadows, something that was big and burly. I cupped my hands to my mouth, and howled the best I could. It was our little signal, a joke we shared.

“West! If you’re in there, come out,” I shouted. The howl seemed to linger, as if telling me that I might be calling something else, something darker, something that could disembowel me with one paw. West had said that not all the wolf-people had been persuaded yet, so for all I knew, I was being stalked by one of them. Anyway, I had no idea if West had been telling the truth or not.

“West? W-West? Anybody there? West, stop playing around and come out. West?” I called out, feeling the hush close in on me, choke me with the air that seemed to be on the silence’s side, the air that carried diseases and death.

I couldn’t help it; I always got absolutely terrified by darkness and silence. It made me think of how Mother had died, how the last thing she did had been to blow out the candle, before she succumbed to the sickness she’d been battling for months. I’d been left alone in the dark, the silence, and the door just wouldn’t open, it was stuck, and I couldn’t get out.

Ican’tbreatheIcan’tbreathe, I thought, as the memories flickered through my brain. It felt as thought the entire world was against me. Even the trees seemed to loom out at me, branches reaching out to grab me.

I closed my eyes, breaking off from the outer world, and tried to take a few deep breaths. I thought of Gramma, probably making socks or something. And although West hadn’t persuaded them all, those unconvinced wolf-people lived on the other side of the forest. Nothing could hurt me any more. West was just being a complete idiot, as usual, and not coming out in order to scare me.

I knew that I would be following Mrs. Creeper’s rules if I went back without giving the stuff to Gramma. And I would not be cowed by some silence, air, and something in those trees, not if it meant I was giving Mrs. Creeper what she wanted. I had to just calm myself, go in, and get to Gramma’s cottage. That was it. There was probably nothing especially dangerous in the shadows of those trees.

Heart beating, half my brain screaming at me not to go anywhere near them, I took a step forward, into the trees. Almost as soon as I did, I was knocked to the ground by a massive thing with fangs, fur, and claws.