Violet Riding Hood

Chapter 8

The celebrations at Swordhorn had been all nice and easy when it started, but some time later the weather became colder and most of the children returned home to sleep. The Thanksgiving Mass was over, the church bells would not ring anymore and finally it was time for everyone to start having some real fun!

Harry ordered the musicians to play the wide variety of Folk Songs of the Northern Mountains, and even though the village had already ran out of fireworks, the wine and rye beer were flowing from a seemingly endless amount of barrels taken from the underground cellars...

The campfires were joined by the Firewalk trails for the bravest people to walk across, everyone were dancing, you would hear old stories about the Wolf everywhere and the soldiers remained as quiet as they had been when the party started.

The Purple Moon was gleaming at the highest part of the sky, perhaps looking eerier and more sinister than ever...

"Stop this madness of a party!" Father Novembrus said, striding from one side of the square to the other- "You have had enough fun already, the Wolf could show up any moment!"

The friendly priest looked as sweet as usual with his long hair and brown cloak, but he was getting more and more desperate as he realized that there was nothing he could do to stop the celebrations. The people were already too distracted, too drunk or too high on something else to even listen to him, and the music and singing were getting pretty loud.

"The Wolf is Dead! We shall fear no more when the Moon is in the Sky..."

"Carrow, please!"

Novembrus was displeased to find the famous Carrow Silvermoon lying on the snow with wine spilled on his clothing and also all around him, apparently passing out and smelling accordingly.

"W-What?" Carrow replied, but the Priest had already retreated back to the church looking quite furious...

Novembrus turned around to take a last look at the celebration, cursed them all and slammed the wooden gates closed, and that was the last that they knew about him that night.

Carrow was barely awake when two teenage girls drew closer to him wearing their wolf costumes, and he just stirred a little as they dropped stale beer and bread crumbs on him. The girls laughed, but then a powerful voice screamed at them before they could get away to find some other victim:

"Leave my father alone!"

Vallery dashed to hit the girls with a long wooden stick, and she was quite successful in scaring them away. Carrow managed to force a good smile for his daughter, and it took Vallery a good effort to get her father on his feet again.

"You look terrible!"

"What, this?" Carrow asked, trying to brush off the combination of stale beer, bread crumbs and wine- "Vallery, this is nothing! Give me a minute and I'll be fit to see her Majesty..."

"Dad, just go home..."

"Whatever..."

Vallery sighed as she watched her father stumbling miserably all the way out of the party, still chanting Wolf songs and carrying a bottle of wine in his hand. Carrow finally turned around a corner and disappeared from view, and after that point all that Vallery could hope was that he would be successful in finding his way home.

"My poor father, he misses Lucy so much..."

Vallery was enjoying the party as much as she could, but there were certain questions that remained swirling like a storm in her mind... What had really happened that night at Mount Grimdark?