As Red Riding Hood stepped into the forest, felt the swaying branches close in at her back, her breath came deeper. The usual burden clamped about her shoulders felt that much lighter in the gentle shade. Everyone knew her for her mother’s hand-me-down cape, but it was not her true covering. That would be the forest: the twigs now lodging in her hair, the chanting trees and animal chirps now surrounding her.
When she passed the brook, it was, indeed, babbling. The water gleamed, as bright and teasing to her as the older sister she had always wished for. She thought about breaking into a run across the strong riverside stones, or else kicking off her sandals and squelching deep into the mud. But those were childish thoughts and foolishness. Her fingers curled tight on the straw basket handle and all its hateful responsibilities so trustingly thrust upon her. She resolved to take in the forest slowly, with some attempt at maturity. First, she pulled the red fabric from her head, and for a moment her only hood was the golden lace of light through the canopy and the flicking pinwheels of leaves off the branches. Her favorite color was green – a treasured secret – and as for red, she could take it or leave it. Still, she had forced her biggest smile at her mother’s gift of the hood. She hadn’t known it would become her nickname, and then her actual name, swaddling close, despite her struggles to shrug it off.
Every tree along the path was like a song told in twisting knots and creeping mosses. The older trees were more beautiful it seemed, and more alive than their juniors, lush with old man’s beard and sparrow nests. Their scars and knots were broken in and worn well. Even as she recognized the beauty in them, a sensation she didn’t understand came to her. As though the whole world swayed with the trees. She pulled the hood back over her head and over her eyes and kept on her way. Her teeth gritted, and her knuckles went white with the puzzling anger.
When the stranger appeared and started asking questions, she took too long to realize it wasn’t a daydream. After it had gone trotting away into the bushes, the dark realization at her mistake set in. For a spell, the forest shone around her, even more brilliant than before. It cried out to be studied and understood, gathered up in her arms and strained through her fingers into a basket. Then it was all greys and splashed watercolor blurs as she ran ahead. After all, there would be no time to run for help. Her legs spun up dust on the path to her grandmother’s house. The gifts of food fell away to be forgotten. Each step drove in just how foolish she had been, just how much she now stood to lose.
Later in the cottage, with the beast advancing through a shredded mass of bedclothes and broken disguises, she wasn’t afraid. There was wolf blood in her nails before it was over, and she’d got the damn thing’s eye out before it managed to choke her down.
About the author
Matthew Kline is an author of speculative fiction and short-form poetry. His work has been published through the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, the Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival, and Tuxedo Literature & Arts Journal. He works at a bayside independent bookstore and sometimes draws black-and-white cartoons.
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