With Christmas approaching like a headless rider, I thought it would be nice to post something here a little more regularly (and a little more entertaining). I hope, Reader, you enjoy How Red Riding Hood Stole the Moon, if you do, drop me a line in the comment section. This story was firs published in Beyond Centauri in 2011. Enjoy!
How Red Riding Hood Stole the Moon
By Alexandra Seidel
Red Riding Hood, who was once a little
girl, stole the moon.
Red Riding Hood was a child no more, she
had grown into a young woman ingrained with the knowledge of the woods and with
all the things she had learned from the old huntsman and from her beloved grandmother,
who had passed on three years ago, come winter. The huntsman had told her about
knives and how they cut down wolves. As a parting gift, he had given her one of
his favorite knives, too, a knife that fit the young woman’s hand just
perfectly.
Her grandmother had told her other tales,
tales about old things and things that were almost forgotten, tales about
things that people dared not speak about. Red Riding Hood had listened to both
of them with much care and devotion. She knew that the wolves were vain
creatures who took joy in hunting that which was beautiful, taking it into
their foul muzzles and crushing it with their lightning sharp teeth. Her
grandmother had once whispered into her ear that the wolves were enamored with
nothing as much as with the moon, for no matter how they tried, they could not
get to it and crush it in their jaws, which was why they howled out their
frustration at the cream colored white ball.
Red Riding Hood also knew the bodiless
voice at the bottom of the well.
“Oh why, oh why are there wolves in the
woods?” Red Riding Hood would often say to herself when she wandered along the
twilit forest paths, gathering wild berries, strange mushrooms, and rare herbs.
The woods would answer her only with a twinkling
shadowplay of leaves moving in the breeze or with the countless sounds of
things growing and dying one next to the other.
One day, when Red Riding Hood was again in
the woods, she met an old crone who was wearing a shawl of dusty gray and faded
lace. The old woman’s face was wrinkled and faded like weather-worn leather and
her clothes looked like rags, patched and moth-eaten. She walked slowly as if
on chicken legs and her back was all hunched, which made her look small and
pitiable. The old woman’s voice was grating metal as she spoke.
“My beautiful young girl! Come here, help
and old beggar woman.”
But Red Riding Hood was not a fool, and she
had learned to see things for what they were.
“Keep you stories to yourself, old woman,
you won’t fool me with an act,” Red Riding Hood said, eyes hard as the sky.
“I’ll give you nothing and I’ll take nothing from you, but perhaps we can make
a trade among equals, you and I.”
As the crone heard the girl speak so, she
began to chuckle. She straightened her back and looked at Red Riding Hood.
“Well, my dear, forgive me, I just had to
try. You would trade with me, you say?”
“If you have anything of worth to offer.”
The crone chuckled again.
“Oh, but I always have things of worth to
offer, the only question is, of worth to whom? Well, let’s see,” she said and
began to pad herself down and rummage around in the many pockets of her dirty
skirts.
Red Riding Hood watched the crone with a
dark frown on her forehead as she made a show of producing a simple and
battered looking cup of bronze, an old quill, and a silver ring set with a
black pearl and several white diamonds.
“This is what I have to offer you, child,”
said the crone to Red Riding Hood. “What will it be?”
Now, Red Riding Hood was well aware that
she could either leave the crone or trade with her. But leaving her would do
little good, as chance meetings have a way of making you regret it if you
didn’t venture anything in the first place. And so, the question was really not
if to trade with the old woman but what to trade with her.
Red Riding Hood picked up the quill and
felt the soft feather touch on her fingers.
“Ah. The quill that knew the voices of all
the things and creatures. A rainbow bird once dropped it while cleaning her
plumage in a mountain lake.”
Red Riding Hood turned the quill around in
her long fingered hand, but it did not feel right there. She put it down again.
She picked up the silver ring next.
“You might yet be happy with this ring,” the
crone said. “The black pearl is actually the voice of a mermaid princess who
wished she could fly just like a seagull. The diamonds are the tears her
sisters cried when she left them to find her destiny, and the silver for the
ring was made from the scale of an ancient sea serpent that could crush whole
continents with the coils of her body.”
But Red Riding Hood put the ring back down again.
It bit her hand with the freezing teeth of frozen sea water and crying wind.
The only thing left was the old bronze cup. Red Riding Hood picked it up.
“The cup then. I should have known you’d
take the cup. It once belonged to a beggar who wasn’t really a beggar. People
thought they were dropping coins into his cup, but as you can imagine, the cup
doesn’t really collect coins.”
“Of course not. What do you want for it?”
Red Riding Hood asked. The bronze cup felt light in her hand, and the metal was
soft to her touch as if her fingers knew every inch of its surface already.
“What do I want? Well, you have an awfully
pretty knife there in your basket and those mushrooms that you put on a string
to dry are also very nice. But I cannot give you the cup for either.” The old
woman scratched the bristles on her chin as if lost in deep thought. “Ah, I
know! Give me your red red hood and we’ll be even!”
Red Riding Hood moved one hand
absentmindedly to her red hood. It was no longer as bright and shining a red as
it had been when her grandmother had given her the hood, but it was so much a
part of her that giving it away would hurt her deeply. It would feel as if
giving away some of the memory of her childhood and also of her grandmother.
Red Riding Hood sighed, but she took off
her hood anyway and handed it to the old crone.
“Here, take it then, old woman. It was the
first thing my grandmother ever gave me.”
“I know,” said the crone and took the red
hood with hands that looked as gnarled as old tree branches. She nodded once to
Red Riding Hood and left her standing alone in the woods, basket still in hand
but red hood gone.
Red Riding Hood considered the cup in her
hands and although she felt all wrong without her hood, she smiled because she
now knew how she could make the wolves vanish from the woods.
That night, the moon was full.
That night, Red Riding Hood stole the moon.
She pooled it into the bronze cup, well water filled, and then she hid the cup
in the hollowed out trunk of an old and stunted tree of wild cherries. That
tree of savage cherries stood in the depths of the woods where light was scarce
and sound was plenty. When it had yet bloomed, it had done so only on a whim,
to rival the flowers by its roots and shimmer brighter than the butterflies in
the air. Wild cherry trees do not come with a humble predisposition. However,
the tree had been dead for so long that both flowers and butterflies had
forgotten the color and taste of its silken petals, its sharp sap. Red Riding
Hood felt quite certain that her moon cup would be safely hidden inside the
dead cherry tree’s trunk.
That night, Red Riding Hood, who had traded
a battered cup for her hood of red, had stolen the moon from the night sky, and
she had left only starshine behind.
Now, as all the wolves in the woods saw
that the sky was hollow without the moon, they began to howl loudly. It was not
their usual howling but far more violent and angry; the wolves couldn’t stand
the thought that somebody else had crushed the moon in their jaws.
“Who ate the moon?” one chestnut furred
wolf asked his ash gray companion. “Did you eat the moon and forgot to tell me
about it?”
“Eat the moon! I could not have eaten the
moon without you knowing that I did, but perhaps you snuck away and buried it
somewhere! Did you not say a while ago that you would like to play a trick on
all of us?” and the other wolves agreed, saying that they had indeed heard the
chestnut wolf say so.
“I did not!” the chestnut wolf exclaimed
with a loud growl and sprang at the ash gray wolf’s throat.
It did not take long before all the wolves
were fighting like this among themselves and even quicker, they were piercing
their fellow wolves’ skins with their teeth of dark thunder.
For the most part, they killed each other
that night that Red Riding Hood had stolen the moon. The young woman of course
watched them from hiding, watched them first quarrel, then attack, then spill
their companions’ blood on the leaf-carpeted floor of the woods.
Sometimes when two or more wolves fought
among themselves, one might survive, wounded deeply and bleeding from long
gashes of claws and teeth. Red Riding Hood was very deft with the hunter’s
knife, and always she would use it on those wounded wolves.
When morning finally came to the woods, Red
Riding Hood, once more dressed in red, returned to her grandmother’s house that
was now hers and sat down by the fire and sighed with happy relief.
“Finally, all the wolves are gone from the
woods and from now on, there will be no more howling at night and their stinking
breath will no longer make the air taste like bile and rotten corpses; finally,
all is well.”
Red Riding Hood of course didn’t know that
all the wolves were gone but one.
There was still one wolf left in the woods,
a loner that had never liked to live with the pack. His fur was bright and
white as clouds in the summer sky and his eyes were dark as cinnamon and when
the sun hit them just right, they shone. The White Wolf lived not in the center
of the woods but rather at the fringes to the north where hard mountains rose
their heads to draw ragged edges along the sky. However, that night when Red
Riding Hood had stolen the moon, the White Wolf had heard the other wolves’
howling, and he had gone back into the woods to find what was the matter with
them.
He had returned to the sight of the young
woman dyeing her knife blade scarlet in the throat of a huge brown wolf. He
could have ambushed her and killed her then, but the White Wolf was not like
all the others. So, he just watched.
When morning came, he followed Red Riding
Hood to her house. His fine nose had picked up the scent from the well by the
house, the putrid scent of bitter waters poisoning the earth.
When the young woman closed the door behind
her, the White Wolf went back into the woods. He lay down on a patch of moss to
rest and to think, but while he was dozing off, he thought he could almost
smell something sweet. However, he fell asleep before his nose could tell him
what that smell was.
As both Red Riding Hood and the White Wolf
were resting, day finally bled out its light and night came, taking its place.
The moon meanwhile shimmered broodingly in
its well water chalice and the stunted tree that was its prison started to
bloom from the muted shine. Hundreds of rose colored wild cherry blossoms
sprang from its withered bark and branches, and when they bloomed, they smelled
of realms fallen and crumbled to sand, of longing and forgetfulness, and of the
silent solace of dream. A soft breeze uncoiled itself from the midnight black
and it gently kissed the blooming tree and took the petals in its arms, high
and away, spilling scent and luminous color everywhere.
Both Red Riding Hood and the White Wolf
woke to the scent of dream on the air.
While the White Wolf rose from his bed of
moss, Red Riding Hood likewise ran from her house; she recognized the scent for
what it was, and so she took the straightest way to the wild cherry tree that
was no longer quite as stunted as before. She found it in full bloom, and the
flowing petals had covered everything in so much rose-white that it was almost
as if fresh snow had fallen beneath the thick branches of the trees.
Red Riding Hood was now afraid that the
moon would no longer be safely hidden in the cherry tree and so she took the
shimmering bronze cup with the moon inside it out of the tree’s trunk. In her
hands she carried it back home with her, pondering all the while what she
should do with the moon now.
The White Wolf took a winding road to
follow the scent, and it led him not to the cherry tree but to the house in the
woods Red Riding Hood lived in. He arrived as Red Riding Hood was just walking
past the well, moon cup carried before her in both hands.
At the sounds of fur-brushing low-hanging tree
branches from behind her, Red Riding Hood turned around. Her eyes went as wide as
two rivers finding the sea when she saw the White Wolf.
“There’s still a wolf!” she whispered.
“Yes,” said the White Wolf.
“Have you come to crush the moon and grind
it to fine dust now that it is no longer fixed in the sky?” Red Riding Hood
asked.
“I don’t care to crush the moon, or even
possess the moon,” said the White Wolf. “The moon is not there to be taken.”
But Red Riding Hood had known the wolves in
the woods and she knew that they had been liars.
“I do not trust you, wolf! I know your kind,
you cheat and lie, and once you’ve shattered the moon between your teeth of
ice, you’ll swallow me and dress in my clothes and lie in my bed and live my
life, but I won’t let you!” and she held the cup with the moon in it over the
well’s darkly gazing eye, so as to threaten that she would drop it in, should
the wolf come any closer.
“Go back where you came from, wolf, and
just leave me be!”
“I can’t;” the White Wolf simply said and
took a step forward.
Seeing this, Red Riding Hood dropped the
bronze cup that held the moon into the well, and it fell, and fell a long way.
The White Wolf came closer still and was
soon close enough for Red Riding Hood to touch him.
“Feel my fur,” he told her, and sure that
she would be eaten anyway, Red Riding Hood touched her palm to his fur. It was
soft as white-woven silk and shone like robes fit for a prince.
“I will not eat you,” said the White Wolf.
“But that is what wolves do! Don’t tell me
that you have never eaten anyone!”
The White Wolf lifted his cinnamon eyes to
the young woman’s and said, “Can you tell me that you never drowned anyone in
that well, or that you didn’t replace your hood of red with rubies and fur?”
and at that, Red Riding Hood was silent.
“Take my paw,” the White Wolf told her, and
Red Riding Hood took his right paw into her hand. It felt warm and soft but
also a little rough, like the hands of one who has left his home to see the
world and find all the wonders in it.
“Now, smell my breath,” said the White Wolf,
and Red Riding Hood--reluctantly, for she feared to smell the foulness in
him--smelled the White Wolf’s breath.
But on the White Wolf’s breath, there was
nothing foul or rotten. He smelled like dark spices and like the high places of
stone and wind, like sleep, found in the company of stars.
And as Red Riding Hood kissed the White
Wolf, the cup with which she had stolen the moon, hit the bottom of the well
with a loud clanking of metal. The moon spilled from the cup and from the water
surface at the bottom of the well, it was reflected upwards again, rose from
the well’s belly to take back its place among the stars.
The cup remained at the bottom of the well
and from that night onward, the well’s waters were bitter and poisoned no
longer, but sweet and rich and they had the power to bestow a long sleep with
the most colorful dreams on anyone who drank from them.
Red Riding Hood left the woods with the White
Wolf. First, they went back north to where the trees faded and the mountains
began, and soon enough, they were climbing high and higher. It is not known
where they went after that, perhaps a palace with a tower room that they made
theirs so they could always watch the moon when night rose, but that is just a
guess.
