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Red Wolves: A Fairy Tale.
“Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life.”
~ Henry Beston
* * * * *
‘This is how the story works...’
At the main entrance to the village there were towers of figures and gaping jaws, but back here there were only a few worn statuettes of wolf cubs, chasing their own tales. Red looked at them, and wondered how such creatures could ever have threatened a civilisation.
They knew better, of course. Wolves were more solid than statues. The matriarch’s story, written in lines which look far too much like finger marks across her face, was proof of that.
But for now, Red thinks, this woman was not quite the Matriarch. Matriarchs sat in large wooden chairs in council chambers and told people where to go and what to do; rewarded them for working and punished them for not doing the right thing. They dressed in wine-coloured cloaks and looked important for visiting mayors. They were strength and wire, and beneath that they were beauty and warmth, but the warmth should never show on the surface because that wasn’t the Matriarchs’ way. The world was too complicated for such simple, emotional stances.
Matriarchs didn’t hold the hands of children as they led them into the forests. Well. Not usually. Except for these times, when a child was going to the forest to bring back the head of the beast. This was taking some getting used to.
‘There are the wolves, and there are the children;’ the Matriarch said. ‘The Red’s, such as yourself. And when the beast has gone, then so has the child. It’s up to you to make this story work.’
Red tripped on an exposed root, but kept standing; holding the Matriarch’s hand helped a little, but for someone who had grown up for twelve years on stone pavements and solid ground, where even the arenas and schoolyards were designed to be smooth beneath your feet, balance was harder than it honestly should have been. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
The Matriarch chuckled and brushed a hand through Red’s hair, all dry brown stalks and sharp nails beneath a woollen hood. ‘Not yet. But the beast exists, all the same. And so do you. You are the latest of the Reds, and you were chosen because you showed the most potential. Remember that, when things seem difficult.’
The trees were not as tall as Red had imaged they would be. From inside the village they had seemed so big, but the closer they came, the more and more that seemed like an illusion, put together by the landscape. The forest had only seemed dense because the village was so sparse. It wasn’t size that made the trees of the forest intimidating, or their depth, but the staggering openness of it all. There was nowhere to hide.
But nowhere a wolf might hide either, Red supposed.
Which begged the question of where exactly they were supposed to be.
‘I suppose you’ve read all the books the mothers told you to.’ The Matriarch said.
Yes, they had read them together. Most of them had been pretty boring. Books about traps and power and Hunters’ tricks. Stories about how one Matriarch had risen above another and another throughout history and why nobody had ever respected the ones that used poison. The differences between Matriarchs and mothers, and where there weren’t any real differences between them at all.
‘Yes, except...’
‘Yes? Or is it too private to share with me what you read with your mother?’
Red would never see mother again, because the children never did, after they’ve been into the forests. It was said that this was because they didn’t need them any longer.
But Red wouldn’t cry. Not in front of the Matriarch. Not in the middle of the Test.
Red shuffled and mumbled something about not reading the ones about life cycles, and biology, and what happened inside a wolf’s stomach. The Matriarch didn’t scowl; she laughed instead, and for just one bizarre second, made a face like a disgusted child. Red blinked until the surprise of seeing this went away. ‘So... so I don’t know what to look for. Not really.’
‘Neither did I. It hardly matters. The wolves will not resemble anything you read of in your picture books. It has been a long time since the first Red. The forests have changed... They used to be green, you know.’
Red didn’t quite know how to answer this, and so asked another question: ‘So... I won’t necessarily be able to recognize a wolf on sight?’
‘No. But what it looks like isn’t important. You know what the beast is, don’t you, girl?’
The blade was a dead and heavy weight in Red’s hands. The picture books had lied, which wasn’t strange for stories, in general, but was rather an odd thing to discover about this one. You couldn’t swing an axe over your head with arms like bare bones and just a twist of sinew, and the hood... The hood was bothersome; it got in the way and would stand out like a beacon in the middle of the woods. In the stories, the woods were red as well; and grey, like the statues that surrounded almost every building in the village. The village had been built just as it had been in the stories, but this wasn’t like in the stories at all. The Matriarch knew this.
The child nodded, all the same.
‘And you know what happens when you find it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that,’ the matriarch smiles, ‘will be your answer. Do you understand?’
No, Red thought. ‘...Yes.’
And then, there were the woods.
The Matriarch was saying something, the things she was supposed to say in times and places just like this, but the blood was pounding in red’s ears and drowning whatever it was out. The forests seemed tall and foreboding all over again. The wind pulled at the dead grey branches and made a noise as if somebody were laughing. As if they found this whole thing ridiculous and funny.
Maybe it was. Maybe everything they had ever believed in was ridiculous. It seemed as much, when the reality was turning out to resemble the story about as much as The Matriarch resembled Red’s mother.
But in the end, Red supposed, they had both killed their wolves and returned as adults. The newest of the Red’s would do the same.
Three more steps, and Red was inside of the forest, standing in the shadows of those trees, and the Matriarch was a snatch of grey and plum in the outlines of the branches. Red spun around finally thinking to ask. ‘Matriarch?’
‘Hm?’
‘Do you... do you remember when the forests used to be green?’
The Matriarch stared, and the seconds between the question and the answer seemed to stretch into forever. Then finally, she said: ‘How old do you think I am, child?’ in a dry tone of voice, and was gone.
And Red was alone in the woods which, all of a sudden seemed as dark and deep as they’d ever been in fairytales.
* * * * *
In the beginning, Red thought while picking yet another broken twig out of the red woollen cape, there was Red Cap, and the girls of our village have followed after her ever since. They have hunted down the wolves and killed them, and that’s what I must do as well. It’s what every girl must do. Even now, when there isn’t much left of the forest, and the wolves are all but hunted to extinction.
Red did not feel sorry about this. The wolves were as symbols to the village. And yet, the children who came back as adults never spoke about what they had seen. They never explained the blood on their blades, which was not always the thick red that it should have been. Sometimes it was black as dirt. Or green, the way the forest used to be.
Red practised. The axe was still barely light enough for her to lift and when she swung it, it didn’t cut deep into the wood of the trees the way she had hoped. The blade barely glanced off the bark and dug downwards, creating scars and cuts instead of deep gauges. Patches of bark snapped away from the trunk and caught her in the eye. Red cursed.
She remembered reading the stories of first Red; all the different variations and types, because not every writer in the world believed exactly the same thing about the first Red. They chose to tell her story in different ways. Mother had always told Red the original story. The one the previous Matriarch had told her was the right one. But some would have her pick the poisonous flowers only and kill the wolf with their broth. Some would call her an adult already when she went into the woods, and that meeting the wolf had only helped her prove it. in some versions, there was even a hunter, but nobody seemed to care a great deal about that.
The only thing which everyone agreed on was the wolf.
Sometimes, Red felt certain that her forbearers must have cheated. That they brought back the blood of monsters which were not wolves, or just sat in the darkness afraid for the twenty four hours. That thought made her sicker to her stomach than the fear did. Cheating was not the right way to do it. Cheating was the way of the wolves. So she held her head upright, and clutched the not so heavy sword to her chest and continued walking until darkness fell over the scrubland. Until the path ended, and the story finally began to play out the way Red had always thought it would.
The path had gone, and now she would leave it, and the village of her childhood would be behind her once and for all. This was how it was supposed to go.
The road –or absence of one– became rough and ragged after that. The twigs pushed down into her face and scratched. The shadows seeped into other shadows, and made patches of darkness so dim that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The forest, which had seemed so sparse and empty earlier, was now as deep and dark as anything.
Red rubbed her stinging eyes and kept walking, dragging the axe behind her.
The forest continued long into the night.
* * * * *
The wolf saw Red before Red spotted it.
It leaked between the trees like liquid air and seeped into puddles as Red slept. It had smelt her from many miles away, as it smelled them all. It had travelled through the darkness of the night to reach her.
And then it laughed, shaking the trees, and extended it’s claws. The laughter woke Red up, and for a few seconds Red simply say there, confused and lost. Maybe the first Red had to stop and think and remember who she was and what her duty was as well, or else she would’ve gotten lost. She had already strayed from the path, after all... That was how this whole damned mess had started. This was exactly how the first Red had done it.
Doubtless, though, she probably hadn’t screamed.
‘Oh, do shut up.’
A dark patch, curling about her throat, clutching at Red’s skin with clammy claws.
‘What have we here, what have we?’
A living shadow eating up the woodland as it passed. It had red eyes that glistened in the darkness, and seemed far more solid and real than any other part of its body. And it was darker than anything Red had ever known or could have believed existed before here and now. It had no fur. There was nothing there but dark and static just pretending to be fur. You couldn’t stroke it like a cat, even if you had wanted to.
And it was huge. The size of a chapel. It looked nothing like the books had told her it would, and when she reached for the axe, and snatched it in one hand and twisted it around, and struck...
Her aim was no better than before. The scratch appeared in the wolf’s stomach, and the blood came out, as red as the woollen cloak.
So her forbearers had cheated after all.
The wolf snorted; making a sound like a furnace swallowing coal. It seemed not to care for its pain. It curled back its many limbs and pushed its torn skin back together, and then the axe left Red’s hand, as if torn out of her grip by shadows. The trees around her made a deep grey cage and the only light she had came from her candles: little to nothing, and perhaps the shadows only made the wolf seem larger than it was.
That didn’t change what it was, however.
‘Did I not tell you to shut up, brat? Be quiet, or else I’ll make a mince out of your skull, the way I did your mother.’
Red shut up.
The wolf pushed closer. ‘Yes, yes, I remember your mother; I remember her skin and frightened eyes... I remember her sword. She had a sword, you know, because the axe was too heavy for her.’ The creature licked its not-quite-jaws and sniffed. ‘But you.... you are not as you appear, child. You think I can’t smell it?’
You didn’t talk to the wolves. Red knew this. The moment you opened your mouth and started speaking the wolf had you; it would talk back to you, and it would trick you, the way it had tried to trick the First One.
‘N-No...’
The shadow of the wolf curled around the trees. ‘Aha! It breaks it’s first rule; it speaks to the forbidden one!’
The axe was not close enough to reach for, and Red was too frightened to be anything but honest. ‘I said... I said no .You. You didn’t eat my mother. I know... I knew my mother. Mother came back.
‘Hah. Doubtless she did, child, doubtless she did. A lot of them do. Mind you, the death does them the world of good.’ The shadow curled and Red felt the air shifting along with it. as if the forest moved and breathed to the wolf’s bidding. ‘Every year, every year. You come out of the village like rats, you children. You come with your red cloaks and your spellbound fantasies. But this fantasy has a twist in its tale, does it not, little boy?’
The axe glistened in the almost-darkness, and Red felt the cold breath of the wolf. It spoke as if the words didn’t mean anything. As if they were discussing the moonlight, or the dark patches that the moonlight misses. As if Red’s gender was utterly unimportant.
And it was unimportant, Red thought. But... it was not unimportant in this way. ‘Don’t...’
‘Why not? You are a boy, after all. If a pretty one. I do not suppose that was part of your plan, when you took on his duty... Did your mother dress you this way?’
The wolf was mocking red. The rage burned inside of her so tightly he could almost feel it. ‘I’m not a boy. And my mother didn’t do anything wrong.’
The forest shrieked in rage and discomfort. ‘Pah, foolish child, do not justify your petty human morals in front of a god. Your concepts of shame mean nothing to me.’
The trees were lass of a cage now, but they were still a prison, and the weight of truth pressed down on red as hard as the wolf’s shadow-claws pressed into the dirt.
‘I’m not ashamed...’
‘I doubt as much,’ the wolf said, slowly and evenly, in voice so quiet that the trees barely rustle. It seemed... to sit, though Red was not entirely sure what a wolf sitting down should look like. His mind was filled with images of shape shifting monsters from storybooks, changing into harmless old ladies before trying to devour the heroine... and failing. Always failing.
The first Red would never allow herself to be eaten. The first Red was stronger and braver than any Matriarch had ever been.
‘But what you are does not match reality. You make little sense to me, boy...but I admit, you have this old beast curious.’
The wolf was not supposed to engage in conversation, Red told herself. The wolf was not supposed to be curious. The wolf as supposed to fight and die, or fight and kill. One of the two, but never neither. She tried to reach for the axe once again but it seemed as if the cold of the wolf’s breath had frozen her in place.
‘It is so that only females can become gods where you come from? Is that it? Is that the reason you dress this way and fool everyone you know and love and hate? Even your Matriarch? How long can you keep that secret up, once you become a man? You understand that that is why you are here, don’t you? ‘
Red shook her head as hard as she could, and refused to accept the words. ‘...N-no. No. Boys can be Red I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen boys come out here.’
‘I know. I’ve even eaten a few of them. Still, none have ever pretended one thing while being another. Your answers are not as interesting as the questions. You bore me, child.’
This was... not in the story. And she told the wolf as such, because now that they were talking they might as well finish the conversation. ‘This isn’t what’s meant to happen, I’m supposed... I’m supposed to fight you.’
There was a long pause of silence before the wolf chuckled, its great form heaving into the darkness. ‘If you are to fight me, then you shall answer my questions. Don’t think I am not curious about the beings who murder my kind as part of their peculiar rituals.’ There was an aching groan throughout the trees as the wolf stood up again. ‘Follow me, child, and I shall take you to the sacred place.’
Red swallowed. ‘The sacred place?’
The wolf bristled, as if insulted. ‘Why Red’s place, of course. The place where the first Red killed my ancestor. We shall do as we wish there.’
Another lesson the storybooks told you: you should not walk with the wolves anymore than you should talk to them.
But Red figured that having already broken the first rule, one more probably wasn’t going to matter anyway.
* * * * *
They walked down a dark path speckled with flowers in all the wrong colours; greys, browns and blues that were nothing like the sky, and the wolf spoke with Red as they walked, the most bizarre travellers together.
‘Most of them ran away screaming, as you may have guessed.’ It said as it seeped through the forests, eating patches of the darkness as it went. Small creatures which Red had not noticed before were scurrying to escape from the monsters path, yet she walked alongside it, barely trembling, in spite of the terror crushing down on her with every step. ‘They must have lied about killing me, and either the Matriarch believed them, or she didn’t wish to send them back to me. I never let a Red live, if I catch them a second time. Sometimes they killed a small creature and took back its blood, as evidence that they had destroyed me.’
‘Nobody has ever... nobody destroyed you, then?’ Red’s heart sank, but rose again when he refused to believe mother had lied. That mother was one of the pretenders for whom the shadows of wolf in her eyes were more than just a haunting memory, but also lie.
‘Oh no. Many did. But they were not so bold as to boast about it. Myself and all my brothers. And we can only live so many times. I am the last of the wolves, child. And I cannot be reborn any longer.’
Then this was the power of a thousand years of history, Red realised. The power of the wolves compressed into a single being. History had created this beast out of trappings of their myths and legends, and history had created a shadow out of it, so strange and ark and twisted that it barely resembled the original wolf of the first legend.
But what it had lost in form, the wolf had gained in mind and knowledge.
‘If you’ve ... if you’ve been killed before—’
‘I am always killed, in the end. If not by your legend then by someone else’s. That is the curse of wolves,’ the creature growled, and Red remembered, without having ever truly forgotten, what a beast it was. ‘That is how the story works. As of yet... ‘ The wolf’s maws cured into what was almost but not quite a smile and almost but not quite a sneer ‘...Nobody has thought to change the ending. Many prefer to change the story, and leave the ending as it is. Red kills me and throws me into the river to drown my spirit. Then she returns to her village as a woman and a heroine. But I return; it is all a part of the story. The fantasy that your village had created.’
Red took a moment to try and make sense of this, and found that she couldn’t. ‘What?’
‘You sit here, in the middle of nothingness. Why? You humans, you have no substance... nothing more than the meagre lives you create for yourselves. Out of these lives come your fantasies, which you craft to give yourself importance. Red’s is only the latest of the fantasies. I have seen a great many more.’
The wolf’s substance dripped onto the rocks, and Red was reminded of the sound of a waterfall crashing. ‘I always return. Sometimes I kill them, instead. We are here.’
It was not the place that Red had expected it to be.
The cottage was not a cottage any longer, for it was old and rotting, and green with mildew. There were no tiles, and before the patch of what had once, many centuries ago, been a garden, there stood half a bricked up wall, surrounding a well half the size of the house itself. The wolf passed slowly around the edge of the bottomless well, scratching claws against the walls. The building creaked with age and mock pain, and the not-fur upon the wolf’s back stood upright, curling around the building the way a mother curled her arms around a child. An ancient place filled with ancient stories.
The wolf seemed... comfortable here. Which didn’t make any sense.
Red remembers the legends and tales of the village. The junior classes learning of red in the woods and the shape of poisonous leaves... She remembers her little red dress and play pretend in the streets. She remembers imagining what Red’s house had looked like.
Fairy stories.
...There were no fantasies in this scene. There was only the cold harshness of a reality Red couldn’t understand. And likely tiredness as well. Red could see it now where she hadn’t before – the sluggishness of the wolf’s ancient form. Too many centuries, too many deaths... no wonder the wolf was on its final mission.
The wolf laughed, reminding her once again of what it was, and what she was to do. ‘Foolish child. Can’t you see, that this is the point? What other purpose would this little ritual –and I– have, if not to strip away your fantasies? Do as the stories have wished you to do, Red. Live this fantasy with me, live or die, and then absolve it. Go back to your village as an adult, if that is possible.’
Red held the axe quite tightly in both hands, and thought very hard. The cottage should have stood before her with the same foreboding-ness as the forest had done from a distance, but up close, it was only a house. ‘You don’t... you don’t really want that, do you?’
The wolf’s form sneered. ‘What is your name, pretty boy?’
‘Red.'
‘Ha. Your real name. There is nothing real about Red any longer.’
‘No. You’re wrong. ‘The child whispered. ‘Red was real, and she is. And... and that’s my name now.’
He wolf sniffed. ‘Fair enough. It matters nothing. The consequences of your adulthood shall be your own, boy. Or girl. Whichever you prefer.’
Red had expected many things from the forest, and very few of those expectations had come to light. What she had not excepted, however, had been understanding.
The idea dawns on Red out of nowhere. ‘W-what are you, anyway? Male or female?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘...Yes.’ Red said, although she knew that this was a lie.
‘No. It has not been important for a great deal of time. What I was had never been of any consequence. I took the guise of a female or a male; whatever was the best disguise for each particular child. I fooled many of them, but not all. and... you are too accustomed to lies and pretending. You would see through my illusion, if I tried.
‘I do not normally speak with Red like this. But then, you are a peculiar one. Tell me once more, why did you pretend to be what you are not? Why did your mother craft you as a female?’
‘No. She didn’t make me, she... nobody knew us. We stayed away from the main village. Nobody knew what I was. Pretending...’ the word made a bitter taste on Red’s tongue, but she bore it. ‘...it was easy. But I didn’t do this to be a girl. I did it to be like Red.’
The wolf paused in silence, as if these words somehow or other made a great deal of sense. ‘Ah. Perhaps I understand.... You know then, that they used to kill women for the wolves. Men such as yourself.’
Red shivered, feeling the cold compressing her bones and seeping up into her spine. ‘...No.’
‘Don’t deny it. Look in your books, child, look in your precious libraries, or whatever remains of them. Look far, far back, beyond the origins of Red. Find out who created her, and why. What she was supposed to mean. The truth will be in there somewhere; the daughters of the forest sacrificed to keep my ancestors happy.’
‘I meant no, not like me. A-and why are you telling me this?’
The wolf’s form raged against the landscape, echoing down into the depths of the well. ‘Because you are right, child, and I am the last. I do not wish to die this one last time, anymore than you wish to lie. Even beasts in hell can learn to love living. You can’t find your answers here, boy. And you can’t kill the wolf. It is not your place.
‘But you know all of this already, don’t you? You read the stories that they never told you to read. But the first Red... She was unlike any sacrifice that had come before. You realise this, or else you would not have taken her name. And if you wish to die now, then I shall kill you. That is all a part of the test.’
And the wolf leapt before Red could as much as think about it.
The pain tore through her stomach like something out of a bad dream, and she couldn’t tell for sure whether it was the wolf’s teeth or its sharpened claws which had struck her. Maybe it was neither. Maybe the wolf really was made of nothing more than shadows and darkness, and that alone was what was hurting her. She stood up again with the axe clutched tightly, but lost her grip when the second swing came, and the wolf lunged at her for a second time.
It made no sense, Red thought urgently as she ducked away from the blow of sharp claws that might have just been shadows made solid, the air ripping over her head. No sense at all. The wolf didn’t want to fight. It didn’t want her to kill it, however slim that chance may have been.
Then why did it try?
Because the wolf is bound into this as well, a small part of Red’s mind’s told him. It was made by the same legend.
Discovering that most of everything you have ever believed in is being twisted and used for unfounded means is quite a shock, particularly for someone who is then thrown headlong into a battle against a wolf, and darkness itself is crawling throughout history to get to you. This creature was just another wolf, and she was just another child dressing up in the trappings of a piece of fiction.
He was just another child...
Well. Maybe that part really wasn’t all that important.
Logic had no place here. Neither did duty or philosophy. The first Red probably had ran for her life after all. There was blood dripping down her shirt where the wolf’s clawsjawsteeth had caught her, there was the taste of danger in the air, and there was a force stronger than a thousand years intending to kill her. Red forgot everything that had been taught to her when she grabbed at her axe and ran into the almost safety of the decrepit house. The building screamed at her as she entered, as if imploring her to leave, but there was no way she would go back out to the wolf’s gaping jaws.
She caught a glimpse of the inside, first. It was empty, but there were still shadows of form there, as if created by magic itself. Shapes of pictures on walls and toys on the floor. There were no shadows of weapons or anger. There was the strangest sense hanging about a dirty corner where a bed had once been, and that was where she ran, as if the memory of the structure along could provide some kind of protection.
And she felt it again, then; the sensation of an ancient world and time; of a little girl who smiled and laughed and had no need to be a killer. Was this the home of the first Red? Was this who she had been?
And the shape of the wolf budged up into the living room, its teeth snapping, its eyes screaming red.
She knew that the only option she had was to run until it caught her. There was no room for both her and the monster in the house. Red saw now why she should have escaped. She was trapped in here with the wolf. There was no way out. No going backwards. So she did the only thing she could do. She would hurt the wolf the way the sharpened twigs of the trees had hurt her.
It no longer mattered if her aim was true or not, for the wolf’s eyes were as weak as they were bright, and the slicing blade cut into the left one as easily as a knife slides into butter. The wolf screamed and lurched, its form billowing against the window frames of the broken house. Fragments of the shattered rooftop rained down on them like solid thunder, and Red picked up the axe from where she had dropped it, and she swung again.
This time she hit where she supposed it’s stomach might have been. And unlike before, the wolf did not simply pick up its shattered limbs and pull itself back together. This time it fell.
* * * * *
The wolf lay half blinded in the dirt, its breaths making the room around them heave, and for a long while, Red sat with the creature and gathered her nerves.
Then she stood up, whole body shaking, and took the axe in her hands.
The wolf snorted. ‘You are indeed a foolish child. The same myths to which you aspire are the very thing which constrain you. The very thing that holds you back within a form and role you do not desire. Do you not want more than my death?’
‘Yes. I do.’
There was blood tracing lines in the folds of Red’s cloak. She ignored both it, and the pain that came from it. She knelt down close to the wolf, and put her axe beneath its jaw. ‘I think... I think it’s high time we put an end to all this, isn’t it?’
‘Ah. Then alas, I have judged you wrongly. You shall kill me at last. At least then, we shall get this ridiculous legacy over with.’
‘...No. I’m not going to kill you.’ Red sat down very slowly, placing the axe on the ground besides her. There was a pain in her arm. She ignored it. She sat before the wolf’s face. ‘I’m going to do with you what the first Red did. The legends they tell us aren’t all true, are they? I read in the books. The first Matriarch was Red’s mother, sending her daughter into the woods. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s the story you told to the wolf cubs that chased their own tails. That’s the truth...’
Red licked her lips, realising suddenly how dry and cracked they were and how long it’d been since he’d seen fresh water. ‘The first wolf didn’t eat the Red Cap, but it wasn’t because she fought it. In saw her house and what it used to be. She struck a deal with it. That’s what I’m going to do now, wolf.’
There was silence.
‘You are an insolent brat. You speak words no human should ever speak. No human has since her. Since the first one. She was greater than you shall ever be, was she not? What deal can you possibly make that would entice a wolf? ‘
Red thought of the Matriarch. In her wine coloured cloak and scarred splendour. He wondered what she would think of this, and then realised with a shock that she did not really care. ‘I think you know the answer to that question.’
Wolves were something that the Matriarch thought of as symbols, Red thought. As dead beasts even before the blade is unsheathed. Wolves were not more solid than statues after all. Wolves were something that the village had created and given life to, with their legends and their stories, all so they could kill it again and keep the legacy going.
But the people of the village shouldn’t have to live with that. They should be able to see their myths and legends for what they really were. They should see the true pain that lay behind their myths, and they had the right, Red thought, to see how the first Red came into being, and why. They had to see the true origin of the wolves.
‘If you decide you don’t want to, then I can kill you and we’ll be done with it. If that’s what you’d prefer?’ Red said, dryly, and took the wolf’s silence as a negative. ‘Thought not. Then listen to what I tell you, wolf. And you have to promise me., you have to promise that you won’t kill anybody... No more killing, understand?’
‘And if I keep this promise?’
‘And so long as you do that, I’ll make sure that nobody kills you.’
A rather pregnant pause was broken by another snort, half laugh, half incredulous, and entirely bizarre. ‘You? A little boy in a cloak, who will never be an adult because he could not kill a wolf, or live up to his idol. What protection could one such as you possibly offer a god?’
‘Red was only a child as well. And she did more than just swing an axe around and scream.’ The child said, plainly, and the wolf found that it could not argue this point.
* * * * *
The Matriarch came back, and waited at the edge of the forest after darkness fell.
She always waited. It was the way of the village, since the days of the first Red, who had been sent into the darkness by her mother, and then returned and repeated the cycle with her own child. The Matriarch knew that she was the latest in a line that had stretched back for centuries. That every child who left under her eye would one day return, and perhaps, claim the Matriarchy as their own.
That day would probably not be today, but the woman waited, nonetheless. For the child to throw down the head of the dead beast, or else cough up their own blood at their leader’s feet. Whatever the case she would be there to see the transition into adulthood through. As she stood in the darkness, the moon slipped back over the edge of the forests and vanished into a red glow.
She saw it not long afterwards: A glimmer of light from a candle, making its way back through the forest. She did not call for her guards, though there were a million things besides the returning child that the light could have symbolised. An attack from a neighbouring village, for example.
The Matriarch sensed otherwise.
The child who was no longer a child was walking slowly back from the edge of the woods. The cloak crafted into a sling around a broken arm, and something dark and lumbering, with sharp red eyes and the countenance of a thousand years and a thousand deaths, walking alongside her.