Girl in the Red Hood
Read Girl in the Red Hood Online
Authors: Brittany Fichter
Tags: #romance, #true love, #fairy tale, #happy ending, #clean, #retelling, #little red riding hood
A Retelling of Little Red Riding Hood
A Classical Kingdoms Collection Piece: Book 4
Brittany Fichter
GIRL IN THE RED HOOD
Copyright 2015 by Brittany Fichter for Smashwords
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the
express written permission of the publisher except for the use of
brief quotations in a book review.
This book is available in print from other online
retailers.
Cover design by Armin Numanovic
Edited by Julia Byers from
byersediting.wordpress.com
room and write. You encouraged me to explore. You taught me to love
the library and to hoard new notebooks and pens. And most of all,
you believed in me.
Thank you.
15. To Grandmother's House We
Go
1. GRANDMOTHER’S
WARNING
"You don't understand!" Liesel watched in
alarm as her grandmother ran after her father and grasped his arm.
She'd never seen her grandmother so upset. "People that go to that
town...they never leave! You can't take Liesel and Amala
there!"
"And why not, Old Woman?" Warin demanded
gruffly. He tossed another sack into the wooden cart before turning
to face his wife's mother. The burly man crossed his arms across
his chest defiantly. "Once and for all, if it's so dangerous,
surely you're willin' to share those secrets you guard so closely,
if only to keep your daughter and granddaughter near." Liesel
didn't know what secrets her father spoke of, but she wished her
grandmother would tell him. The idea of moving to a village her
grandmother hated terrified her. Despite her wishes, however, her
grandmother just stared up at him desperately, her mouth open and
her jaw trembling. But no words fell from her lips; just a silent
fear that Liesel could feel from where she stood. A strange pain
that the girl had never seen before filled her grandmother's hazel
eyes. Warin watched the older woman as well, nodding impatiently
when she failed to answer.
"That's what I thought. Liesel, make sure
your mother's comfortable. We're goin’!" Liesel hurried to the back
of the cart to make sure Amala was well tucked in beneath the
blankets she and her father had piled upon her. As she did, Liesel
could hear her father muttering about superstitious foolishness
under his breath as he stalked back inside for another bag. "Just
an old woman making up stories to keep her children near." He threw
a disgusted look at his mother-in-law as she paced back and forth
in the darkness of the early morning.
Liesel wished it wasn't so early. She would
have liked to see the large cabin once more in the glow of the
morning sun, rather than the flicker of torchlight. This darkness
felt alien to her.
"I know why you're leaving now!" Ilsa
suddenly stopped pacing and yelled, so angry her voice shook. "My
husband is gone hunting, so you think you can sneak out of here
like a thief in the night!"
"A thief?" Liesel's father stormed over to
where Ilsa stood and glowered down at her. "We finally hear of a
healer that could cure your daughter, and when I try to take her
there, you call me a thief?" His face was red, even in the light of
the flame, and each angry word cut Liesel's heart like a knife. She
wanted so much to plead for him to stop, to wait until her
grandfather came home. He knew much more about the forest than her
father did. Shouldn't they ask him if he knew about this village in
the great forest before they left for it? But she knew from
experience that her pleas would only make her father angrier.
"Liesel!" Warin barked, still holding Ilsa's
glare. "We're leavin’!" With that, he threw the last bundle into
their rickety cart, jumped in, and clicked at the horse. Liesel
stood frozen in terror behind it as it began to roll away. Without
a word, Ilsa turned and ran inside the house.
"Grandmother!" Liesel shrieked, unable to
move her feet. She could hear the cart stop behind her, but she
didn't care. She couldn't leave her grandmother. Not like this. As
the shriek left her lips, Ilsa sprinted back out of the house
clutching a large, colorful, bound leather book to her chest. She
shoved it into Liesel's arms.
"Whatever you do," she sobbed fiercely to
her granddaughter, "You
must
escape those woods!" Warin's
large arms closed around Liesel's waist before lifting her and
roughly dropping her into the back of the cart. Ilsa still cried
out. "Come back to me, no matter what!"
Tears streamed down the girl's face as she
watched her grandmother fall to her knees, wailing as she grew
smaller and smaller in the distance.
By the time the sun rose, Liesel knew the
fields they passed were not her grandfather's. They were flat,
unlike the rolling hills of her grandparents' land that lay at the
foot of the mountain. Her mountain. She watched sadly as its sharp
crags softened into blurs, and her eyes strained to see them as
their cart rolled along. The dark blue shadows became less
pronounced, and the green tree line turned gray. Green rows of
vineyards gave way to golden wheat and barley as the land slowly
dipped down, and soon the trees came into view.
The trees were nothing like Liesel had ever
seen. Her grandparents' vineyard had small clusters of wooded land
here and there on their property, large enough for her grandfather
to find some game in, but they were nothing compared to these.
These woods towered so high they looked from
a distance like a great dark cloud hovering over the ground. Their
depths seemed measureless, and they stood blacker than anything
she'd ever seen before. There were no smaller trees leading up to
the giant trunks. The grass simply ended at the bases of the
ancient sentinels that guarded the entrance to their wood.
A chill moved down Liesel's back as they
turned right off the main road onto a smaller one that led into the
dark domain, leaving the sunlight behind them. There were no
flowers growing beneath the trees. Liesel could only imagine that
the lack of light choked the life out of anything that might begin
to sprout here beneath the twisted canopy. By the time they'd been
in the forest an hour, no sunlight reached the forest floor, just
the shadows of branches, which entwined themselves with a
surprising thickness.
As her courage thinned, Liesel tried to
remind herself why they were venturing into such a strange place to
begin with. Her mother didn't stir as Liesel gently tucked a stray
piece of hair behind her pale ear. She hadn't stirred in a long
time. After watching her for a moment more, Liesel sighed and
pulled out her grandmother's book.
It had shocked Liesel when her grandmother
had pressed it into her arms. The book was Ilsa's most guarded
possession.
"Reading is a privilege, Liesel," her
grandmother had sternly told her when she was a young child,
protesting the reading lessons Ilsa insisted on giving her. "Most
people do not have such a privilege. But believe me, in all the
places I've been, in all the disasters and miracles I've seen,
reading has been the key to unlocking the most wonderful of
secrets." Opening the book to a random page, Liesel began reading
to distract herself from the increasing darkness they continued to
ride into. Written in her grandmother's own hand, with pictures
drawn by her grandfather, Liesel marveled again at all the places
they had ventured to to record such wonderful adventures. If she
tried very hard, it was possible sometimes to pretend the path her
family journeyed was an adventure in her book. But then, some
strange sound from the trees would startle Liesel, and she would
have to start trying to pretend all over again.
When night fell, or Liesel guessed it had
fallen, as it was darker than she had ever known possible, Liesel's
father stopped the cart horse and started a fire, cursing quietly
into the night as he fumbled with the tinder. When the fire was
finally of a decent size, he began to roast some salted fish they'd
brought with them, and Liesel once again checked on her mother.
What had become a year of endless sleep for
her mother had begun more abruptly than Liesel could have imagined
possible. When it had happened, they'd been working in their herb
garden together, a task both Liesel and Amala enjoyed. The garden
was small and neat, nothing compared to the size of her
grandmother's garden out on the vineyard, but decently sized for a
garden in the city.
"Keep working on that mugwort, will you?"
Amala had slowly risen and begun to walk back to the house. "I'm
feeling a bit overheated. I think I'll go lie down for a few
moments."
"Are you sure, Mother?" Liesel had begun to
rise to follow her mother inside, but Amala had waved her back
down, her brown eyes smiling warmly at her daughter. "Thank you,
no. I'll be fine. I just need a bit of rest, that's all." That was
the last smile her mother had given. A moment later, Liesel heard a
thump and the sound of pottery breaking. Running in, she found her
mother unconscious on the floor. She'd feared the worst at first,
thinking her mother dead, but then she saw the shaky, shallow
breaths Amala stilled forced in and out. Sprinting into the street,
Liesel had screamed for someone to let the town healer. Women had
gathered to do what they could, but upon the healer's arrival,
nearly all hope was lost. A
slumber malady
, the healer had
called it, a sickness without a cure. Liesel had felt as though she
might pass out as she stared down at her mother on the bed, white
as the Holy Man's robes and as still as glass.
Upon the their friends' urging, Warin and
Liesel had moved out of their city cottage and into Amala's
parents' home on their vineyard at the foot of Liesel's beloved
mountain. From there, Liesel's father and grandparents had sent
word to towns near and far, begging the healers to come up and
examine her mother. And many had come, although Liesel sensed it
was generally in hope of the reward promised by her grandparents to
the one that could cure Amala, as opposed to a common sense of
integrity. Despite the generous reward, however, soon there were no
more healers, just a woman clinging to life with little more than
the ability to swallow and breathe. There had been little hope.
"We've seen this before, Warin," Liesel had
once heard her grandmother whisper softly to her father.
"Yes, yes," her father had brusquely
replied. From the corner that she’d hidden in to eavesdrop, Liesel
could imagine him rolling his eyes. "And the fairy of the land
healed the fair maiden and they lived happily ever after." His
voice was thick with mockery, but Liesel knew too well it was how
he hid the pain.
"But it's true!" her grandfather had
insisted. "If you would only be willing to go to them and ask for
the fairy-".
"I'll not be runnin' about the land, chasin'
after a daydream while my wife draws her last breaths!" Warin had
bellowed. "We've been through this before! There is no magic!" The
stubborn outburst was no shock to Liesel, who’d heard Warin's
countless rants before. That was why it
had
surprised Liesel
so much though, when her father had listened to the stranger
instead.
Just a few days before their secret escape,
Liesel had been chasing a runaway chicken in front of her
grandparents' house. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd been
watching a man walk up the long road from town. Considering the
vineyard was the last piece of land before reaching the mountain,
she knew he could only have been heading for them. He'd stopped for
a moment before starting up the path to their door, studying her
for an unusual length of time. Hesitantly, Liesel had waved, which
gave him the courage, or audacity, as Warin had put it, to come up
to the house and talk to the girl as if she was of age. Liesel had
found it quite enjoyable though, despite her father’s later
grumbling. Thirteen was a strange age to be. She was expected to do
the work of a woman, but was ordered around as the babies were. And
this man seemed to read her mind.
