HOOD

🧣 Part Two 🧣

Robin stared deep into the hearth fire as if it would give her the answers, she needed to find the wolf king, infiltrate his people and take back her sister, Robin would destroy him if she got the chance, she knew that she would. If anyone deserved it, John did, bursting in to take peoples entire lives like they were just toys in his game, like they were just dolls for him to play with to his pleasure.

Robin couldn't imagine how Red was feeling, but it was all she could do to stop herself from ripping the door open and charging out into the dark to find them, and to make them pay.
But they were long gone, and Carmine needed her, the old woman had fallen hard, and she wasn't taking the loss of Red well, Carmine had already lost a daughter to the things that lived in the woods, she didn't want to lose another granddaughter now.

And Robin didn't want to lose her either.

Red hadn't been gone long yet as Robin tried to clean off Car's bruises she missed Red's steady caring hands, she had always been more careful and more compassionate. Robin would have done anything to protect her, but Robin just wasn't enough to save her.

Car began to move under Robin's hands, her grandmother, she realised, was watching her with her piercing golden-brown eyes.

"What are you still doing here girl?" Grandma Car hissed, her voice thin and quivering, "Robin, you must go after her, save your sister like I couldn't save your mother."

"Grandmother I can't just leave you," Robin whispered back,

"You can girl, I can see the fire in your eyes, you want to be out there hunting those bastards down,"

"But Grandma you-"

"I'll be fine Robin, I'll go into town in the morning, I can take care of myself, but your sister is the one in danger."

She grasped Robin's hand in her own gnarled fingers, "you have to save your sister little Robin, now fly away."

She slapped Robin on the back, she was right, Robin wasn't a nursing kind of sister, she was a fighter and the damned good hunter she had trained to be.

Robin dropped the cloth to the ground, and kissed her grandmother on the forehead as she lay in her bead covered in furs. Robin hoped when she returned home with Red she would have a new pelt to add, the pelt of the wolf king.

Out on the outskirts of the town of Rosebarrow the light from other houses were distant and obscured by the flurrying snow. It was going to be a long cold night. But the home of the wolf king was only known to his loyal followers, if Robin ever wanted to see Red again  she was going to have to go now whilst the trail was hot.

The cold bit at her exposed face, stinging her down to her bones, to the point it felt as if she was being stripped of her skin by the cold. All Robin could do was pull her grey hood closer and keep forging towards the tree line, in that sheltered darkness of the woods she would have more of a hope of finding that trail.

The woods seemed to be a completely different world in a snowstorm, it was a strange dark wonderland, the paths that Robin knew by day were gone, the sounds of the forest that she had learnt to listen out for, gone. The snow acted like an impenetrable barrier to sound.
But Robin pulled her hood low and crunched deeper into the snow.

Where the tracks had disappeared outside, swallowed by the ravenous beast that was the snow, here under the cover of the dense forest they were clearer.

The night would be long  and hard, but Robin had her heading, there was no way she was ever going to go home without Red.

•••

Red had not stopped fighting since the wolves had grabbed her and stolen her away like a sack of goods. But against these lumps of muscle her bites and scratches had done no good.

They had been running for what felt like hours now and she would have been cold if it wasn't for the extreme heat that the three wolf-men gave off.

She could tell that the one gripping her was tiring however, each of his leaping steps were beginning to slow and she could hear the exhaustion in the echo of his breathing. John too had begun to flag, his breath pluming out before them, huge and dramatic.

That's what all of John seemed to be about, the show, the big dramatic performance, to intimidate and to stun. In that way he wasn't too different from the boys back in town, acting tough to score the girl, to make the friends, whatever. Red never had had time for them.

The closely packed trio wasn't alone in the woods however, as they continued to gallop into the night a figure slipped between the trees to join them. Another wild joined the pack, surrounding John from another angle, this one's fur a patchy grey-white.

A few more minutes and they were joined by another. Then another, the colour of hardwood, against grey and the inky darkness of the first wolf and their second new companion.

Red still bounced along undignified, like a sack of potatoes, the wolves took no notice of her, only to watch their king carefully as they stepped into time with the royal entourage.
Soon their destination made itself obvious, despite the discomfort of her position, bouncing over the guards shoulder Red could see the well kept secret of the Rosebarrow wolves hideout.

Their den as you will.

Twisted together from what looked like woven trees over the centuries, and in the form of looming tunnels down through the roots, the thought of dark holes making Red cringe at being down there in the smelly warm dark, it made her feel even more trapped and claustrophobic.

She had used to hate sleeping on her own, in the warm dark of the Hood lodge, until Car let her and Robin huddle in with her, she hadn't felt so alone then, the dark not so close and so crushing.

Red was a long way from home, hanging onto the back of the man who had helped to kidnap her. As the got closer Red could see that across their path cut a river, the fast flowing waters carving a gash into the forest around it. As they approached its steep banks the wolves around Red began to howl, a long undulating note.

It was all Red could do to watch as with a rusty screech the gates of the twisted castle like den, split from the surrounding wall and as a huge drawbridge lowered itself down. Red had lived in Rosebarrow all her life and yet this was more advanced than anything she had ever seen in her eighteen years.

With a slam that shook the ground the drawbridge lay across the river, and Red was unable to do a thing as she was carted away into the belly of the beast.