Crimson

Chapter 1

Allo! How are my lovely readers today? Excellent! Here's an old idea that had been floating in my mind for a while. I had written some up, and then abandoned it.

Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little riding hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called 'Little Red Riding Hood’…

 

Oh, we all know how that story ends. Little Red Riding Hood meets the wolf, is tricked, eaten and comes back out when a hunter kills and skins the wolf. Interesting, sure enough, but our story does not reside in the first to wear the red hood.

 

In the little town of Peter’s Field, beside a vast and dark forest, there lives a girl. She is no girl anymore, but not yet an experienced woman. Anyone in Peter’s Field can tell you where her family lives, and it is not hard to locate. The mansion at the center of the town, old and withering away, is the home she calls her own. If you are to enter, go up the stairs and down the hallways, you would find the girl in our story.

 

Beside her vanity she sits, brushing out her long brown hair. With the door closed and curtains drawn, she is in her own little haven from the other villagers who would worship her. To herself she hums a soothing melody, but only loud enough that her ears can hear it. Were her mother to hear the melodic hum of music, a fit would be thrown for sure.

 

The door creaks open, bringing in a girl three years younger than the other. “Crimson, mom wants to talk to you.” The youth says, laying herself down on one of the two beds.

 

“Thanks, Eliza.” Crimson turns the stool about, rising to her feet. A shock of ice went through her spine when her feet hit the hall floor. Now taking larger and longer steps, Scarlet bustled down two hallways and a set of stairs down by the fireplace where her mother would sit and think. And sure enough, the face of a tired woman is lit with firelight, and although she stares at the wall she searches her mind’s eye. “Elizabeth told me you needed me?” Crimson’s voice shocks her mother from her daydream.

 

“Yes, yes.” The voice of Crimson’s mother is tired as well. “I need you to take supplies to your grandmother.” While she stands to get what is needed, Crimson keeps her excitement from bursting through the painted face of indifference. Returning with a basket, her mother instructs, “I do not want you walking in the woods alone, so you will go along the forest and find your father. He will walk you to grandmother’s.”

 

Disgust trades places with the elated feeling. Her father, who had left them to live an hour’s walk away at the edge of the woods. The man who had broken her mother’s heart. “Mother, don’t you think I’m old enough to walk by myself?” She hints. Having lived seventeen years of the same old life, she wants to be free.

 

A sigh escapes her mother’s lips. “The woods are filled with wolves, Crimson. I don’t want my oldest daughter to die alone out there.”

 

“I won’t die.” Crimson says with pride. “I’m a Hood.” Crossing her arms across her chest, she notes the change in her mother’s face when she mentions the name.

 

A tiny smile paints the aged lips of Burgundy Hood. “Alright.” Again the excitement wells inside Crimson, and more comes as her mother travels across the floor to a glass case. “You do need to earn this, still.” Draped over a dummy is a red velvet cloak, untouched by time. Supposedly her ancestor, known only as Red Riding Hood, wore it while battling the wolves outside of Peter’s Field. A witch’s charm made the fabric unwielding to the claws of the beasts and the iron of men, keeping Red alive no matter who her enemy was. The full story has warped through time, making the legendary icon a child when in truth she was as old as Crimson is now.

 

Turning on the balls of her feet, Burgundy Hood stares Crimson dead in the eyes. “You will be extremely careful. Understand?” Crimson’s head bobs in response. “And do not speak to those who care for wolves in the woods.”

 

Crimson waves the warning off as childish fear. Not a howl has been heard in the town since her grandmother lived in the Hood house. “I’ll be okay, mother.” The two wrap their arms around each other in a meaningful hug before Crimson takes the basket with great care.

The excitement coursing through her veins causes her to run to the edge of the woods. Beyond the light pushing against Crimson’s slim frame there is very little light in the entanglement of branches. Air seems to resist entering Crimson’s lungs, but she forces it to and marches deep into the woods.

The only lines going through my head now are "Into the woods, it's time to go. I hate to leave, I have to go." Goodness gracious I love Into the Woods too much.