Red. Red is for blood. Red is for death. So many ways the story can go.
Like this. Grandmother gave me a red cloak. I wore it proudly, until a bad man saw me and wanted me and took me.
No. Not a man. A wolf. That’s it. A wolf. Because lone wolves who take the place of grandmothers are common.
My, what big teeth you have.
No. Wait. That’s not right.
You see, I know wolves. They are shy, skittish creatures that hide from humans. They live in packs of family groups, and they howl at the moon—that howl is often all you hear of them.
Wolves don’t invade homes
My, what big eyes you have.
Wolves don’t pretend to be what they aren’t.
My, what big ears you have.
Wolves don’t play guessing games.
Humans do.
No one wants to hear how it happened. You do? All right. I can tell this in a more straightforward way.
Perhaps you could unchain me?
No?
It’s a sad story. I tell it better when I can use my hands. Truly.
You don’t trust me. How can I trust you with my story—with my truth—if you won’t reciprocate?
Fine, at least turn up the light. It’s so dark in here.
The better to see you with.
Grandmother took me in when the villagers rescued me—their words, not mine—from the wolves who’d become my home when my parents were murdered on the road for nothing more than their belongings. I got away. My mother told me to run far and fast, and I did.
I ran even farther and faster with the pack. As a wolf sister, I played with the pups and was treated like the other youngsters. I was six when the wolves found me; I was fourteen when the villagers took me away from them.
Their pelts hang on the walls of the town hall. The villagers thought the pack killed my parents. And I had no words to tell them the truth, not after eight years speaking wolf. I couldn’t say it wasn’t a beast that butchered my parents, but a man.
I didn’t know to protect my pack.
I didn’t know how quickly a howl could be silenced.
The better to hear you with.
Grandmother took me in—actually, Grandmother locked me in. Wooden floors under my feet, the sky hidden away by walls and ceilings. I howled for a week before I finally understood that my old life was gone.
I bit her. Poor old woman. She lost her only son and then to have me thrust upon her? I heard her crying more than once.
In the pack, when a member was troubled, we nuzzled. We rolled and tumbled and cajoled the member out of the funk.
I was bigger than Grandmother. I didn’t know how strong I was. I was only trying to make her happy.
The better to hold you with.
She broke her hip when she fell. It’s why she was in bed when he came looking for me.
I never saw his face. I was running, far and fast, and I never saw his face. He could tell that I didn’t remember him. He saw that I was…pretty.
Pretty and wise to the ways of the forest. He was a woodsman. That would be useful to him. In a wife.
Grandmother was glad to see me go. I had hurt her, and she didn’t understand that I never meant it to be that way.
He smelled bad, and he had eyes like those of the male badgers drunk on mating. The pack steered clear of them during their ruts.
Why did I stay with him? You think I didn’t run? I did. He called me back with the yelp of a wolf pup—one of my pack mates, somehow saved when the rest of the pack was killed. I heard my little brother cry out his terror and loneliness.
I went back. He put the pup down, put a rope around his neck, the end of it tied to his belt. I followed him to his house, shivering as I tried to comfort the pup.
Did I wear the red cloak when Grandmother gave me to him? No, it was my mother’s. It was in her trunks, in the wagon, taken by the woodsman when he killed her and my father.
A fact I realized when I entered my new home. I recognized their things. The faint smell of my mother lingered on this cloak, the odor of my father on the fine leather slippers that were too small for the woodsman but sat in his closet anyway like trophies.
They were not the only shoes in the closet. The smells of those other owners were unfamiliar but varied.
In the pack, bad behavior is dealt with in prescribed ways. But a crime such as this—murder—wasn’t known. I had to make my own punishment.
The villagers think I turned on him, a savage creature, the same way they think the pack killed my parents.
I wasn’t frenzied when I did it; his axe worked as well in my hand as it ever did in his.
The better to kill you with.
I tried to show them the shoes. I tried to get them to smell them.
They killed the wolf pup. They hate wolves and they hate me.
And that’s why I am chained here, Magistrate. That’s why they want to hang me. I stopped a killer. He would have killed the pup once he started to grow; he would have killed me the same way he hacked my parents to death.
There are no shoes in his closet? Only his boots?
The villagers must have stolen them. They were, as I said, fine shoes.
Are you sure you couldn’t unchain me? I really can tell this story so much better with my hands.
[* Tearing the Hood is a reprint. It has first appeared in Triangulation:Beneath the Surface, Parsec Ink, 2016]