They tell her story as a warning—the little girl who was eaten by the Big Bad Wolf. In the nicer stories she was rescued. Older versions don't clean it up so neatly. The bold little girl in her brash red cloak dies, along with her grandmother, torn, savaged, and dissolved in the wolf's stomach. They erased even her name, those stories, caring only for the moral they could get out of it.
Her grandmother's name was also obscured. In the stories she is portrayed as a helpless old woman, too weak to need a name. In their own village, it was fear that stole away her name. "That crazy old woman from the woods" the villagers muttered when they spoke of her. "The old witch," whispered the children.
As crazy or witchy as she might have been, Red Riding Hood loved the old woman. She loved the crumbing cottage and the forest that surrounded it. She loved the trees, and the deep shadows they cast. She had always been a wild child, escaping from her busy mother as soon as she could crawl. By the time she could toddle, she was frightening her older sisters by grabbing on to the blacksmith's dogs or trying to climb up the legs of the farmers' plow horses.
People said that her parents would have done better to keep her out of the woods. Given that freedom, she became almost feral. But the old woman's herbs and spices were better than any grown in village gardens and her dyes were famous through the region. A few peddlers stopped in the village just for those dyes.
Someone had to go into the woods to collect plants and potions from the old woman. Someone had to take out the food, clothes, and trinkets that she asked as payment. The woods made the villagefolk uncomfortable and few were willing to venture farther than the closest berry bushes. There were old stories about the forest, of monstrous beasts, witches that ate little children, and strange hills that opened up and swallowed travelers. Only the woodsman and a few brave youths went hunting in the forest depths, and only the old wise woman dared live there. The villagers were as afraid of the crone as they were of the woods. Not so Red Riding Hood, who even as an infant had never seemed afraid of anything. She danced in places others cringed from, laughed where others whimpered, and loved where others fled in terror.
It was her grandmother who had given her the cloak, dyed a bright red. That was when the old woman still came into the village herself, before she grew too old and the villagers vague hostility too bothersome. It was a marvelous cloak, only in part because of its rich color; it neither stained nor tore and the child never seemed to outgrow it. She wore it everywhere and it is true that in time most of the villagers forgot her name and called her only Little Red Riding Hood.
Red Riding Hood was barely old enough to remember when her grandmother stopped leaving the woods. This was just after the dame's husband, the best hunter in the village, had died and the whispers had grown louder and the glares more pronounced every year after that buffer of propriety was gone. So, once a week, Red Riding Hood's mother would pack a large basket full of food and other supplies, and set off into the woods. When she returned, her hands would be clenched white-knuckled around the basket's handle, her shawl drawn tight around her, and her face pinched. She would snap at her daughters for the rest of the day, until her husband, a cloth merchant who had settled into the village for love of the dye-makers beautiful daughter, would draw her aside. Her hands always trembled for hours after a visit, sometimes curling into fists or clutching tightly at her clothes.
While their mother was gone, it was the oldest girls who watched Red Riding Hood. Their small sister would send them into fits, disappearing for hours at a time. A few times they found at the woodsman's cottage, peering over his apprentice's shoulder as the young boy carefully fletched his arrows or practiced carving woods signs into strips of bark. More often they didn't find the girl at all until she skipped back home, covered in dirt and scratches, all of her clothes ripped except for the bright red cloak When she was finally tall enough and strong enough to keep up, her mother decided to take her along through the woods, to give her harried sisters a rest.
Red Riding Hood was quiet through the long walk. She skipped along behind her mother, staring out into the strange new world. Every noise and flash of movement drew her attention. She wasn't afraid of the shadows that darted around in the corner of her eyes, or the rustling that told her some creature was in the trees, watching her. She was fascinated.
When Red Riding Hood arrived at her grandmother's house—flushed, wide-eyed, and with a smile that threatened to swallow her face—the old woman knew there was something special about her. So the old woman showed the girl her garden and cottage and patiently answered her many questions. She listened to her daughter's tired arguments for moving into the village and watched the small girl dance through the trees, laughing at the squirrels' antics and petting one brave deer that strayed into the garden. Here was a child who would never be happy with her parents' fate, never content to sit in the village and raise her children to do the same
When they returned home, Red Riding Hood and her mother brought with them an offer-for the child to become the wise woman's apprentice and live with her in the deep woods. Her parents loaded her down with chores while they considered the idea, cooking and cleaning, and tending the clothing shop the family owned. They feared that living with the old woman would make their youngest child more wild and strange than she already was. Her mother especially was loathe to let the young girl go.
However, they needed the concoctions made by the grandmother and the old woman would soon be too old to make them. So when it was time to send the basket to the old woman, they sent it off with Red Riding Hood and told her to learn what she could. The girl was old enough to go alone, her father said, and they sent the cloaked child off with a basket almost too large for her small arms to carry and enough warnings to make her head spin. Go straight there and back. Don't step off the path. Don't stop to talk to anyone. Don't even look into the woods. Just watch the path and hurry on.
Red Riding Hood wasn't a rebellious child. She never disobeyed simply for the sake of being disobedient or frustrating her parents. She was just wild—too curious and energetic to ever please any of the villagers. She did stay on the path that first trip alone and she never saw anyone to talk to. She even tried her best not to look around. But the woods were too interesting, too full of life, for Red Riding Hood to ignore.
At the small cottage, Red Riding Hood learned how to tend and harvest the plants in the garden. The old woman took her into the woods and showed her where to find the wild herbs that went into the medicines and dyes the village wanted, and how to pick just enough so that the plant would grow back healthy and abundant. As the grandmother grew older, she started going into the woods less and less. Instead, she sent Red Riding Hood out to collect the wild plants that were needed. The more time that the girl spent in the woods, the wilder she grew. Her red cloak still protected itself from tears and dirt, but her other clothes were constantly ripped and dirty and the girl learned to sit still and wield a needle out of sheer necessity. Her hair grew more and more unkempt, prompting complaints from her sisters and mother when she came out of the forest, delivering small bottles of medicine and dye in her overlarge basket. To distract them from her appearance, Red Riding Hood would tell her sisters about the new plants her grandmother had shown her or the new recipes for medicines she had been taught. She told the woodsman's apprentice about other things she learned, such as how to find her way through the pathless forest or how to foretell the weather from the way a flower grew.
Some things, though, she never told anyone, such as how the forest squirrels dropped extra nuts into a jar on the kitchen window. She never told anyone in the village about how her grandmother always asked the deer to show her any new patches of woad that they found. Some early mornings, she would see the dame standing out in the garden, surrounded by the gentle creatures. Something about those times felt sacred to the girl, and she never discussed them with anyone, even her grandmother. She certainly never told anyone at all when the wolf started following her.
It was a young beast, large for its age, but obviously from the last year's litter. She saw it once, a skinny little almost-cub, from across the stream bank as she gathered water chestnuts. They stared at each other until the canine finally dropped his head to drink, then faded back into the woods. For the next fortnight or so, she would see occasionally, always at a distance, always watching her. Eventually she saw all the time when she was alone in the woods.
Everywhere that Red Riding Hood went in the forest, the wolf paced her, staying out of reach and always stopping just out of sight of the village or her grandmother's cottage. Red Riding Hood, with her daring spirit and energetic nature, was happy to accept the wolf as a companion, albeit a shy one, and quick to turn the ritual into a game. The two of them raced through the forest, challenging each other in their mutually claimed territory. The animal was faster than her, but she worked hard to find shortcuts between her usual destinations, places where she could make a sharp turn or cut through a clear meadow that the wolf might be surprised by or wary of.
Every once in a while she saw the pack her wolf must be from, prowling through the forest or lolling near a cave by the stream. She never approached them but would watch them occasionally. Her hair became tangled and matted until one day she took her hunting knife and chopped it off, so that it would stop catching on branches. She continued to race the wolf everywhere, and she became more and more fleet of foot and keen of eye until she was truly able to challenge the four-legged hunter.
As she grew older, Red Riding Hood spent even more time in the forest alone, abandoning even the limited confines of her grandmother's cottage whenever she could. The old woman said little about her granddaughter's excursions, only reprimanding her when she left a brew of dye to overboil and plants on the drying rack to be pecked at by the few birds that ventured near the cottage. The girl even slept outside sometimes, in the shelter of the older trees or one of the few unoccupied caves she had found. On her trips into the village, she would linger at the woodsman cottage, watching him teach his apprentice how to make a snare or use flint to spark a fire. Her parents smiled strangely whenever they found her there, and her sisters whispered and giggled. Red Riding Hood paid no mind to them but concentrated on learning to hunt and cook her own food.
After a few weeks of watching Red Riding Hood cook rabbits and other small game, the wolf crept near the fire to snatch away a spare chunk of meat. Months later, when winter made the game scarce and wiser to traps, the wolf dropped a few bloody chunks of meat in front of the girl as she made her way through the forest. The girl spent fewer nights out in the forest when the winter's snows made shelter more necessary and by the time spring came she was eager to escape.
Running through the woods almost blindly, her wolf by her side panting with joy, Red Riding Hood startled a newborn fawn of hiding. With a leap and a snarl, the wolf brought it down. He buried his teeth in its neck, suffocating the small animal. When he lifted his bloody muzzle towards the girl, she laughed and claimed part of the meat for herself. The two of them perfected their system over that summer, Red Riding Hood flushing out small game and the wolf killing it. With Red Riding Hood's help, the predator caught more food than he would have on his own and received larger portions than if he had hunted with a pack. He grew larger and stronger, until he was bigger than any of the other wolves.
During the days she spent in the woods, Red Riding Hood and the wolf played. They raced each other and wrestled, and though the wolf usually won, the girl was tricky and clever, and she managed to gain the upper hand over the massive creature more often than anyone would have thought possible.
At night, Red Riding Hood told the wolf stories that she heard, from peddlers or her grandmother. She told the wolf tales about the days she spent in the village, tending her family's shop and fending of the boys who had started to spend more and more time teasing her. In turn, the wolf told her stories of the forest, passed down from wolf mother to cub for generations. He told her about life with a pack, although he had long since been exiled from his own.
Red Riding Hood had never questioned her grandmother's ability to communicate with squirrels and deer and she never questioned her own ability to speak with the wolf. She simply enjoyed it. When they finished talking, Red Riding Hood would curl into the warmth of her furred companion and drift off into sleep.
As she grew older, her parents began to talk about her dowry and possible matches to benefit the family. It wasn't done for a girl to go too long unmarried. More importantly, they hoped a husband would tie their wayward daughter more closely to the village, as her grandfather had once done for his wife. Her parents even went into the forest for the first time in years, to speak with the old woman. She could marry a hunter or a woodsman they said with hopeful smiles, so that her husband could escort her in the woods when she needed wild plants. That way she could have a safe and respectable home in the village instead of needing to live so far from her family. Her grandmother declared that the girl was her apprentice and that she couldn't possibly marry while she still had so much to learn.
Red Riding Hood simply laughed and went back to the forest to spend time with her wolf. She didn't think about husbands or homes and when she dreamed of life outside the forest, it was not the village she imagined. Instead, she dreamed of the strange, wide world that existed in the stories her merchant father and wise grandmother told her.
One day, after spending almost a week in the village, tending the shop while her family concentrating on planning her older sister's wedding and listening to her mother's nagging about her own betrothal, Red Riding Hood told the wolf about her parents' plans and her own dreams. He growled low, shook himself, then disappeared into the trees. She didn't see him again for days. The wolf didn't often leave Red Riding Hood alone in the woods, but it did happen occasionally so she didn't worry too much. She spent the time with her grandmother, drying plants and mixing dyes and medicines.
When the wolf returned, Red Riding Hood started to worry. He was distant and quieter than he had been since those first days before they were comfortable with one another. They ran and hunted together as usual, but he spent much of his time gazing off into the distance. At night, he stopped telling her stories, and in an unusually human need to fill the silence, Red Riding Hood told even more of the ones she knew.
After a winter day of failed hunting, and only slightly more successful gathering of herbs her grandmother needed, as Red Riding Hood rested her head on the wolf's back and stared at the stars, he finally began to talk to her. He had gone back to his old pack, he told her. A large bachelor, it had taken him some time to convince the pack he was not there to challenge the leader. Distrusted and disliked, it had taken him a long, painful time to find the information he wanted.
There was an ancient magic, he said, that only the oldest and wisest wolf in the pack remembered. Red Riding Hood knew, from the wolf's stories and from her grandmother's lessons, that every kind of animal had some powerful magic, a secret known from the beginning of time when animals and humans walked together as brothers and sisters and spirits roamed the land. It was rare for anyone else to learn of those magics though, because they were rarely useful for everyday life. What need would her wolf have for an ancient magic?
It was a magic of transformation and with it, he could become human. Red Riding Hood sat up and gaped at him. In her surprise, she spoke much more loudly than the woods-wise girl ever had. "Why would you want to do that? Humans are clumsy and silly."
The wolf stared steadily at her, his eyes glowing with reflected moonlight. To be with you, he told her. To go where you go and to be your pack.
"You're my pack now! And humans don't pack anyways so then you couldn't be." She gestured wildly about and her hands shook. She tried to imagine what the wolf would look like as a human, but the only image that came to mind was that of the woodsman's apprentice—no longer a boy but a handsome youth.
You said the other humans wanted you to start a pack.
"A pack? What are—you mean that whole husband thing? That's not going to happen. We'll be here forever, just like this. This whole conversation is ridiculous." And with that she lay down and went to sleep. The wolf barked softly and looked out into the night.
Things went back to normal and they didn't speak of the wolf's magic again. Then, on a muggy summer day, Red Riding Hood visited her grandmother's cottage with a basket of goodies gathered from deep inside the forest and found the old woman collapsed in the garden, breathing painfully slow. She carefully moved the dame into the cottage and on to the sagging straw mattress. She ran all the way to the village, her red cloak billowing behind her.
In the village, her parents frowned, and her father went to speak with the priest. Red Riding Hood wandered around her house dazed. Her grandmother was sick and they said that they would have to move her into the village. Red Riding Hood wanted to protest—she knew her grandmother wouldn't want to leave the cottage—but she didn't know how to take care of the old woman.
She went with the men back to the cottage. They peered warily into the shadows of the forest, and muttered unhappily when they found that her grandmother's deer and squirrels had gathered around the cottage. The animals scattered as the humans drew near, but a few still hung around the edges of the trees. The men gently loaded the old woman into a hand-cart that only barely fit on the path. Red Riding Hood walked behind it, watching her grandmother's pale face. Once or twice, she caught sight of the wolf in the corner of her eye, pacing the unusual procession.
She spent the next few hours in the village, helping her mother make the old woman more comfortable. On a trip to the well, she heard snatches of some of the men's conversations.
"Strange beasties…"
"…old witch was always doing spells…"
"Better burn it. We have to keep our families safe."
"The girl's busy with the old woman. Best to do it now."
Peering around the corner of the house, Red Riding Hood saw the group of men head away from the stables. They led the village's few horses to the forest path and mounted. They meant to burn her grandmother's cottage—Red Riding Hood fled into the woods with her bucket.
The wolf soon caught up with her. Where are you going?
"To my grandmother's house."
His tongue lolled out of his open mouth as he ran alongside her. There's a shorter way.
Red Riding Hood, who had discovered all the shortcuts in the woods years ago, stopped and stared at the wolf. In her grief, she hadn't even thought of taking a shortcut. She stood there, panting, with tears running down her cheeks, then turned and raced off.
For the first time, the wolf went up to the cottage with her. Red Riding Hood ducked inside the low door. She looked at the jar of nuts in the kitchen, at the books her grandmother had taught her how to read piled on the table and shelves, at the rack of drying herbs in the corner and the vat of dye on the hearth. The cottage had always been a special place for the girl, comfortable and welcoming. For all of her time in the forest and her dreams of the outside world, part of her had always believed that this cottage would be her home. And yet, without her grandmother the cottage was different, cramped and lonely and dark. It seemed empty and pointless.
Quietly, Red Riding Hood gathered a together a few of her belongings; the scrap of mottled cloth that had been her first attempt at dying, a few hand-written books on herb-craft, the quilt her grandmother had made for her second oldest sister's dowry, and a bundle of dried herbs. She left her grandmother's cottage, knowing for the first time that it would never be hers. Outside, the village men had arrived. They stared at her.
The blacksmith wheeled his horse back and forth, eyeing her suspiciously. "We left her in the village. How'd the gel get here afore us?"
"Mebbe she's a witch too." Another man muttered.
"Then she should burn! Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," shouted a young man new to the village. The others glanced at him nervously and mumbled to themselves. The old woman may have been a witch, but her dyes and medicines had kept the village going. The girl was supposed to take her place—they needed her.
A tall man stepped forward. Red Riding Hood was surprised to see the woodsman's apprentice there. Vaguely, she remembered hearing that the old woodsman had retired a few weeks ago. He was no longer an apprentice of any sort. "Now then," he said, "there are plenty of other ways in the woods shorter than the path. The lass may be a bit wild, but she's no witch." His voice and eyes were kind and gentle.
She looked into the woods and saw her wolf, lurking at the edge of the clearing, having slunk out the back of the cottage. The hunter followed her gaze and started. Slowly, he reached for the bow tied to his horse's saddle. Red Riding Hood leaped forward.
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Stories of that day differ. The great-grandchildren of those villagers say that Red Riding Hood grabbed the woodsman's arm and held on long enough for the wolf to flee. They say she watched silently as the men piled her grandmother's things on a cart, and burned the little cottage.
Those who tell this story say she rode back to the village on the woodsmans's horse. In the spring, she married him, a man who understood her far better than her parents ever had. They built a cottage on the border of the village, edging into the woods, and they spent days at a time away from it. Red Riding Hood made dyes and medicines, and learned how to live with people, though she did escape into the woods occasionally.
She had children, to who she told many stories, and she taught them how to live in the woods. She was happy and the village was prosperous for the rest of her life. So the story says.
But Red Riding Hood was always a wild girl, and there are other tales told. They say that instead of grabbing the woodsman that day, she leapt in front of him, between the woodsman and the wolf. She looked at the woodsman and she looked at her father, and she smiled at them. Then before the men could react, she turned and ran into the woods.
The wolf and Red Riding Hood fled deeper and deeper into the forest, ignoring the shouts of the men behind them. They ran for days, or perhaps only hours, until they reached the distant mountains. The wolf-mothers tell their cubs that there, on the border between the woods and the wide world, Red Riding Hood asked her wolf about the ancient magic.
They say it was two wolves who ventured forth into the mountains, and that one had rich red fur.