Red

When dawn struck with its beams of sunlight, the woodsman always felt that a new tide of life was brewing. Snow lay unspoilt and untrodden and the sky glowed pink with perfectly whipped clouds. Only the old, familiar throbbing in Matthew’s leg told him that the world was no longer as new as it once was. Misfortune was still entirely capable of befalling him, even in the romantic throng of dawn. No fresh morning would ever reverse his deeply ingrained wrinkles, or his old aching wounds of the past. 

Matthew thought of his wife, Filly, asleep and warm in their bed. She would not wake until the later hours of the morning when she rose to prepare his breakfast. He loved his wife, but the bitter harshness of her life had only spurred on her silent, furious spirit. She was like a corked flask, each hardship firmly bottled and put aside and left to ferment with time. Passion had turned into boredom. Empathy had turned into pity. Happiness had turned into discontentment. There was an air of disquiet around her that had festered like a sickness. Some strange and unsettling bridge had been built between them, the foundations of their marriage worn thin by the weight settled upon their shoulders over the years. Matthew thought of his wife nearly thirty years before - young and ignorant to the misgivings of the world, dancing and dusting in their kitchen and unaware of the darkness that lingered on the precipice of the horizon.

Matthew touched the axe at his side and pressed on carefully through the snow. The winters had grown longer and harsher. Every year his leg germinated new and more painful buds of pain. Matthew numbed himself to it. There was wood to be cut and too many fires to count in the village to be made with it. His calloused hands burnt with their customary blistering as he swung his axe at a fir not too far off of his usual trail. Careful and wise, Matthew hardly ever strayed from the path trodden by the other workers who all swung their axes at the skies before children in their beds had even lifted their heads. This was how he liked his work best; quiet and alone. With only his sole tracks palpable in the snow, a calm and collected warmth settled over the woodsman’s shoulders. It was just himself, his axe and the forest in these still and lazy hours of the morning. 

It was not long into his work that he heard the first cry.

He thought it a whisper of the wind, a trick of the mind disturbing his uncomplicated state of loneliness. But then it came again, a wavering, distant and shrill echo that Matthew could not refute. He hesitated a moment and looked towards the darker patch of the forest where morning had not yet broke. The sound cut through the piercing silence of the forest like a knife. He pictured an animal squirming in pain or terror, trapped in the throes of frostbite or pinned under a fallen tree. It was his duty to the God of the Forest to rescue it. But there were bears. There were hidden ravines and boulders he had never dared to pass. There were wolves. But the sound came once again, desperate and howling. So in the dark vastness of the world, Matthew stepped off the path. 

After a half hour of walking, the trees shifted from identifiable and manageable concerns familiar to the woodsman into dense and tall copses; strangers that sheltered the ground from the welcome breach of the sky and that shadowed the unbeaten track to create a weary and frozen territory. Matthew clutched his lantern and shuddered. The cold here was not the cold he was used to. It chilled to the bone, to the very soul. This was a part of the world where he did not belong. But like a beacon, and closer this time, the cry pierced the dark hollow of the thicket before quietly settling, lighting up Matthew’s path towards the fount of his curiosity. 

In the still shadows of the copses, a dark and lithe form furiously buried its muzzle against the wet mulch of the forest floor. The shrieks and cries were unrelentlessly spewing. These depths of forest were dark and full of low thickset roots, but still the form was hunting, searching. It was hungry. Matthew froze, a cry of shock caught deep within his throat that he swallowed forcibly. A wolf. 

Eyes never leaving the beast he began to take a few short steps, pleading to any God that would listen that he would remain quiet, stealthy; that he would make it back home to his wife in time for breakfast. A twig snapped. Reflexively the wolf stirred and turned. Even in the darkness of the forest Matthew could make out the yellowing gleam of the wolf’s snarl, of the salivation that dripped with soft plinks to the icy crust of the earth, of the fixed focus of its ravenous eyes. Its new target had been found. 

Matthew felt his heart pounding irregularly, near-paralyzing fear bubbling under his skin. Beads of sweat formed at his greying hairline. Tentatively, he began to take steps back. The wolf seemed to grin as it stepped a large paw closer to Matthew. It was so close that Matthew could smell the remains of its latest prey in the hot gusts of its breath. He slowly tried to clamber over the log behind him. Instead he felt his boots slackening on its icy, rotten bark. Buckling, his bad leg gave way underneath him until he was sprawling on the hard floor with a cry of pain. 

He was sure now - he was going to die. He would not see Filly again. But the wolf caught the glint of Matthew’s axe. It hesitated.

The focus of Matthew’s hunt had still not relented. The piercing wails rose over the canopy of the forest and echoed over snow-clotted bark and earth. It would not be long before some other predator came along. The wolf eyed Matthew’s axe one last time and turned back towards the copse. Matthew watched in horror as it began to shift its muzzle forcibly amongst the leaves, the wailing so loud now, so piercing that he was sure the wolf was going to find its meal for tonight. 

Matthew staggered to his feet, his leg throbbing with pain so sharp he could see spots. He could see the wolf, its head darting in and out into what he could now see was a covered burrow among the dank earth of the forest floor. Matthew clambered to his feet, stumbled and began to hobble towards the wolf, his axe waving in a heavy readiness to strike, until the shriek suddenly crescendoed to a pitch and volume so intense that he lurched with fear and once again collapsed to the floor.

With a strained howl the wolf began to retract itself from the burrow. Wincing and crying the animal dragged its ears, pawed its eyes, stamped its paws and slid its muzzle against the forest floor in contortion of agony. The torture appeared to continue for some minutes, an unrelenting attack against the poor animal. Astonished, Matthew could only watch as with a final cry the wolf cocked its head towards the burrow with a look of great surrender and bounded as fast as it could back into the forest. The wail had finally subsided. With great effort, Matthew began to crawl towards the burrow. 

He found the baby exhausted and blue hidden amidst the frozen knots and roots of an oak tree. Sensing Matthew’s presence the infant began to howl again but with a more piercing and painful effort. The sound was unrecognisable and foreign to Matthew’s inexperienced ears. He himself knew nothing of babies but his wife knew a great deal better than he did. Moments trickled past like the soft song of a stream. They were brief reflections, crippling and ever-present. Filly’s swollen belly; an empty cot; a chest of knitted and unused baby clothes. 

The baby was small and new. It suckled on its tiny hands between each agonising cry as if it could satisfy the ache in its belly. Matthew stared at its face. A wound was bleeding heavily from its left cheek - a claw mark. The wolf had narrowly missed the infant’s eye.

“Gods.” he whispered raggedly

Matthew could hear voices now too, quiet but jeering far off in the distance as villagers stumbled home after a late night in the tavern. With a certain hesitation, the woodsman took the small and wriggling bundle in his arms like a sack of flour. Confused, the baby’s cries hushed into silence at the stranger’s touch. It had no clothes, no socks, no formal swaddling or blankets. Instead it was bundled in what Matthew could tell was once a fine hooded red cloak - a cloak now torn, snagged and dirtied by the earth. Pressing the child against him, Matthew could feel the chill that was already starting to settle within its bones. It was likely that the baby had been there all night. It was a long journey home. It was likely that the infant would not survive.  

An animal scuffled. A twig snapped nearby. Age may have allowed Matthew to diminish in both speed and hearing, but nothing could have escaped him from seeing those two bright yellow eyes in the dark of the clearing. There was no time to dwindle. With his axe at his side and the baby pressed safely to his skin, he hobbled back in the direction of home. His mission was clear - some indescribable force made him sure of it - keep the baby in your arms, keep it alive. Dogs barked in the distance. Birds tittered. 

Somewhere, a wolf howled. 

-----

The child grew unhindered despite Filly’s predictions that the infant would not survive the melting of the first snow. 

Every day Matthew counted each precious finger, watched her form new smiles and burble sweet sounds that warmed the worn cockles of his heart. He watched her feet grow into larger boots, watched her take her first steps in front of the fireplace, watched her hold snow in her hands for the first time. Filly darned socks and resized clothes that the child progressively outgrew; quilted bigger and larger blankets for the child to sleep in. Yet the chest that held the collection of unused baby clothing remained locked, and Matthew knew now that it would remain so forever.

As for Filly, she remained as cold as ever. Stonier, if at all possible. She may have made clothes and knitted socks but she looked after the baby not with the tenderness of a mother, but with the indifference of a wet nurse performing a prescribed task. It was Matthew who woke up to the child’s cry at night, who tended to the child’s sickness and soilage and who would kiss her bruises and console her tantrums. 

It was like an essence of Filly had remained trapped in the past. Matthew frequently caught her staring at the tiny makeshift grave in their garden with a shadowed and vacant expression. He remembered the hard bite of earth as his spade ate into the solid frozen ground; the tiny box so delicately and ritually placed into the space he had opened to the world; the sounds of Filly’s choked weeping as her hands lingered where the swell of her belly had once been.

Matthew regularly cast his mind back to that morning in the woods. He had not told a soul what had occurred in the depths of those deep trees. But the truth was, Matthew was not entirely sure what had happened himself. Some form of hazy mist had been cast over the events in a way that made it uncertain whether or not certain details had been dreamt or misinterpreted. 

He remembered the agonising strain of his crippled leg, the desperate and unbroken cries of a babe that cut through the ragged silence of the night. But he also remembered the wolf’s retreat; a retreat that in the heart of winter the wolf should not have been at liberty to refuse. 

Matthew had nightmares. He woke to the hot scent of a wolf’s breath upon his face; to the sensation of a shaggy and flea-bitten coat sitting heavily upon his chest. And in his dreams he heard an incessant shriek of pain that felt so palpable he woke drenched in sweat whilst his wife slept soundlessly beside him. The nightmares felt so real that Matthew spent most of his nights sleeping beside the child’s crib, his axe cold and ready by his side. But what terrified Matthew most of all was how certain he was that the wolf was destined to return and try its luck again. 

It did.

One spring day in the third year of the child’s life, Matthew and the girl were playing in the growths of the garden. That morning, like all mornings, Matthew had been cutting wood. He had felled a fir so large that it had taken five other woodsmen to carry it back to the cottage. The other woodsmen had been up since the early dawn, exhausted and anxious with the knowledge that hungry mouths were waiting for them back home. Matthew insisted he could continue to split the logs alone. The other woodsmen hesitated at first. They were young and strong; he was old and crippled.

But all arguments had been stifled at the child’s arrival as she tottered into the garden and clutched at Matthew’s leg. 

First they were surprised - everyone knew in the village that Matthew and his wife were reclusive and barren - then they were horrified. They grimaced at the sight of the long and fleshy scar that besmeared the child’s lovely face. The villagers were a superstitious lot, alotting the circumstances of their lives to the decisions of Gods and spirits. They posed a threat to the child.

Matthew knew this - he soon put their questions to rest.

“My sister’s” he lied. “Her mother recently passed. No orphanage would take her. We are now her guardians,” he paused for a moment before adding. “Her name is Red.”

Red was an unusual name but it suited the girl well: from the cloak she had been swaddled in to the quickness of her temper. Filly mended the cloak with the intention of selling the fine cloth but Matthew had quickly stopped her efforts. It would make a fine gift for the girl one day.

The woodsmen looked at one another in surprise, but with their doubts settled they soon set off for home.

And so Matthew was left to cut firewood into the afternoon. He was so intent on the arduous strain of his work that he did not see the yellow eyes that bore out of the darkness of the wood and lingered on the small form of the child.

But the child did. 

The grass whispered around her feet and tickled her ankles in warning, but Red did not notice. She did not notice that she was heading further and further away from the safety of the cottage borders. She did not notice she was headed towards the jaws of a wolf.

From the cottage kitchen, Filly’s gaze wavered on the fresh blossoms she had laid on her children’s grave. Her eyes began to well with tears. But then there was a small flicker of movement, a flash of dark fur and the short bobbing red head of a girl as she emerged from the tower of tall grass and walked towards the barriers of the dark wood…

Michael heard Filly’s screams of horror as she beckoned to him from the back door and stopped only in time to see a large mass of fur stir from the shadows. Red stopped and hesitated at the giant paws of the towering wolf. Matthew saw the gleam of yellowed eyes, the glint of snarling hungry teeth. At long last, it had come.

Matthew did not register his movements; did not register Filly screaming and shrieking with horror as she fell to her knees at the kitchen door; did not register his axe swinging blindly and heavily over his head as he pressed himself to Red’s aid; did not register the blinding pain as his injured leg throbbed with pain. He could only watch as the wolf leapt, growled and descended ravenously upon the little girl’s form. She didn’t even have time to cry.

And yet still Matthew ran, shrieking a familiar battle cry. He was too late, he was too late again…

But then, how could it be? A giggle? A laugh?

Matthew stopped, gasped, and fell to his knees. His axe fell useless to the ground.

There under the large mass of wolf fur lay Red, smiling and giggling happily up at the wolf as she clutched and pulled at its fur. Red beamed at the beast, clambering to her feet as she touched her small hand to the scars of her face and then the warm cheek of the wolf. 

The wolf’s eyes glowed in recognition. It began to almost purr. Matthew watched in amazement as the child smiled up at the wolf and then raised her hand as if to say goodbye. The wolf finally looked up, glancing at Filly frozen with shock at the kitchen door and then finally at Matthew, at the axe that lay at his side.

And with that, the wolf turned and headed back into the forest.

Matthew saw Filly run towards him; saw Red reach out her arms for him before Matthew fainted and the whole world went black again.