RED RIDING HOOD PART 3

Rhea crouched behind a crooked pine, her hat slipping over one eye, muttering curses that could curdle soup but so far hadn’t managed to curdle a single villain’s plans.

            ‘All right, think. Wolves. They smell, they stalk, they snarl. So if I were a wolf, where would I hide?’ She whistled through her fingers—a loud, off-key shriek so effective that every bird in a half-mile radius abandoned its branch and fled screaming.

            ‘Well done, Rhea,’ she scowled, hands on her hips. ‘You’ve singlehandedly cleared the avian population. The wolf, however, is not a dog.’

She tried another tactic. She pinched her fingers over a murky puddle and whispered, ‘Water, boil.’

The puddle belched, bubbled for half a second—then spat muck directly into her face.

            ‘Perfect, just perfect,’ she sputtered, wiping mud from her cheek. ‘Note to self: summon afternoon tea next time. Far more dignity.’

But Rhea was stubborn. She tugged a vial from her hat—a vial she had no memory of bottling. Its contents rattled, fizzed, and occasionally giggled.

She pondered. ‘Right. This potion has the same probability of being a wolf-tracking elixir… as it does a toe-dissolving agent.’ She cackled once, the kind of laugh that’s despair wearing a party dress, then jammed the vial back into her hat. ‘Not feeling that positive, though.’

Next attempt: a trap. With a grunt, she coaxed the loamy ground, ‘Roots, rise. Roots, dance. Roots, do something useful.’ A few obliging roots wriggled cautiously from the earth, twining about her ankles. At once, they knotted into something that looked suspiciously like trousers.

Rhea blinked. ‘Not bad. I’ve seen wizard fashion shows that ended worse.’ She tried to walk; the roots dragged heavily, like boots made of boredom. A squirrel in a nearby tree held up a tiny, handwritten scorecard with a large ‘2’ on it.

            ‘Oh, pipe down! I don’t see you inventing couture.’

The squirrel dropped an acorn dead centre on her head—the world’s most unforgiving critique. She tore the roots away, shaking her fists at the heavens.

            ‘Grandma says a good witch works with what she has. Well, what I have is nonsense and dirt. I should have just stayed home and argued with the broom.’

But in her tantrum, her eyes fell on what Red represented: a girl in a cloak, a character the forest feared and the story demanded.

An idea struck, lightning fast. ‘Of course. What if the wolf follows the story?’

She dug into her hat and grabbed another regrettable vial. A powdery fizz leaked out, staining her sleeves pinkish. Then she tossed rose petals into a cauldron she’d improvised from an upside-down tortoise shell. (The tortoise, Shelly, grumbled, ‘The indignity. First a footstool, now a fondue pot,’ but stayed put.) With half-whistled, half-snarled chants, she boiled the water. ‘Oh, come on, Shelly,’ she whispered. ‘Think of it as a hot stone massage. Without the stones. Or the massage. Just… warmth.’

The wounded roots were shoved into the rosy brew—soaking and transforming until she could drape them over her shoulders like an imitation cloak. Not perfect, but from a distance—and possibly through the faulty eyesight of a predatory wolf—it might just serve.

She stood back. ‘Rhea, the Pink Riding Hood. Patron saint of improvisation and poor tailoring. We’ll just blame climate change for the faded red.’

The forest, unamused, sighed collectively. A nearby daisy seemed to snicker behind its petals.

            ‘Save your comments,’ she told the bark. ‘If I fail, at least it wasn’t from tripping over a spellbook. That’s personal growth.’

And so she set off, her pink root-cloak swaying. She whistled again, louder this time, and finally—on cue—something answered.

A low, resonant growl rolled across the clearing. Out of the brush stepped the Last Wolf, his fur the colour of old shadows, his eyes like dying embers.

            ‘Little girl,’ the wolf rumbled, his grin unveiling knives. ‘Alone in the forest, dressed so boldly. What makes you think you’ll reach Grandma this time?’

Rhea squared her fragile cloak. ‘Well, first, fashion aspirations. Second, I rather hoped you’d show up—saves me the effort of embarrassing myself with more puddle-boiling.’

The wolf blinked. ‘You’re an odd one. Is this another trick?’

            ‘You have no idea,’ she shot back, though her knees quivered.

The Last Wolf lowered his head, his breath hot enough to wilt her makeshift cloak. ‘And you’re certain I won’t just eat you first?’

Rhea grinned back, defiant. ‘Please. I’m sixteen. Fear is for homework, not bedtime stories.’

The Last Wolf laughed, a dry thunderclap, and coiled to pounce. He lunged—and Rhea screamed, flailing backwards with all the grace of a collapsed scarecrow.

At the same instant, the wolf yelped and jumped back, the two of them colliding with opposite ends of the clearing.

            ‘You’re not Red Riding Hood!’ the wolf roared, scandalised.

            ‘YOU ACTUALLY TRIED TO EAT ME!’ Rhea shrieked, diving behind Shelly, who promptly retracted her head with an indignant huff. ‘I thought this was metaphorical! Symbolic! A commentary on societal dangers!’

            ‘Metaphorical?!’ The wolf’s voice cracked. ‘I’m a WOLF! What did you expect, a philosophical debate?’

            ‘Actually, yes!’ Rhea poked her head up. ‘Look, clearly there’s been a miscommunication. I’m Rhea, a magic-less witch, recently transported here by falling through a book, which honestly explains a lot.’

            ‘I’m… the Last Wolf,’ he said, as if testing the words. ‘The Terror of the Deep Woods. The—look, I have many titles, but they all boil down to ‘eats people in cloaks.’’

            ‘Right, about that,’ Rhea said, plopping onto a log. ‘Why, exactly?’

The wolf blinked. ‘Because… that’s the story? The Narrator gets very cross if I miss my cues.’

            ‘But you’re the last one. Hunter McHunterson the Magnificent has magnificently murdered all your friends. Why are you still following the script?’

The wolf’s ears drooped. ‘Because I’m the Evil in the Forest. That’s my part. Someone has to be the monster, or the story doesn’t work.’

            ‘That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard, and I once animated my homework, and it spent three hours crying about commas, and when full stop and commas fought each other, I invented the semi-colon. Proud of but very hard to use.’ Rhea leaned forward. ‘What if you just… didn’t?’

            ‘Didn’t what?’

            ‘Didn’t go to the cottage. Didn’t eat Grandma. Just… walked away. Became a vegetarian. Took up pottery. Wrote poetry about the moon.’

The wolf stared at her. ‘But… but then what happens to the story? Think of the children!’

            ‘It ends!’ Rhea threw her hands up. ‘Or it changes! It becomes a better story, where the last wolf breaks the cycle! I can’t see a forest without wolves, but I can see a pattern now.’

            ‘I…’ The wolf looked genuinely distressed. ‘I don’t know how to be anything else.’

            ‘Neither did I until I fell into this one.’ Rhea stood up. ‘Look, my wand got confiscated after I accidentally turned the town fountain into pudding—which sounds impressive until you realise it was a simple water purification spell.’

The wolf’s mouth twitched.

            ‘Then I tried to make a love potion for the baker’s daughter. Innocent! Instead, I created a ‘mild obsession with root vegetables.’ She spent three months following turnips around the market. The turnips, meanwhile, started exhibiting signs of anxiety.’

A sound rumbled in the wolf’s chest—a dry, dusty bark that might have been a laugh.

            ‘And then there was the time I tried to summon a familiar,’ Rhea continued. ‘I ended up with a goldfish that could predict the weather, but only in the form of interpretive dance. Very accurate, completely useless. I named him Meteorologist Jim.’

            ‘What happened to him?’

            ‘He’s living with my neighbour, predicting rain for her garden. Last I heard, he was working on an interpretive dance version of The Tempest.’ Rhea shook her head. ‘Point is, I’ve never been good at being what I was supposed to be. Maybe the world needs more people making it up as they go along.’

The wolf was quiet. ‘But what if I make the wrong choice?’

            ‘Then you make another choice after that. That’s what life is—a series of choices, most of them terrible, all of them yours.’ Rhea grinned.

The wolf opened his mouth to answer, but the sound of magnificently heavy footsteps crashed through the underbrush.

            ‘BEHOLD!’ boomed a familiar voice. ‘I, HUNTER MCHUNTERSON THE MAGNIFICENT, HAVE TRACKED THE BEAST!’

Through the trees burst Hunter McHunterson, striking a pose. Behind him, Red Riding Hood entered with purposeful grace, her bright red cloak sweeping the ground and radiating an air of confidence. The vivid authenticity of her attire made Rhea’s pink creation seem all the more an earnest but inadequate imitation.

            ‘Oh,’ Red said, stopping mid-skip. ‘That’s… an interesting fashion choice.’

The wolf and Rhea exchanged a look—a frantic, unspoken agreement between two script-breakers caught in the act.

            ‘Well,’ Rhea muttered, ‘this is about to get complicated.’