The old woman had been the Grandmother for longer than most. She was there when a sapling had been planted and still there to see that tree tower above her home in the woods. She had been there when there was still a village at the edge of the forest and long after the village had been forgotten.
Anyone who had known her were no more. There was little chance to run across anyone in the forest that moved and listened to whatever whispers you let out. However, it seemed that she had been wrong when there was a knock at her door.
Grandmother looked up from her cutting board and listened. There was a silence that did not belong and she knew she could not ignore whoever knocked at her door. She could not ignore the person that the forest had let reach her. She would be a lesser witch if she did.
When she opened the door it was to the sight of a child. A young girl small and dirty clutching a basket to her chest. A dirty patched brown cloak hung off her trembling shoulders.
When those young eyes met hers suddenly the basket was being thrust forward in a shaky grip and the girl spoke.
“Here’s the tribute they sent me to give you Grandmother.”
The old woman could feel eyes from the trees and roots as she took the basket with one hand. A look of relief flashed in the girl’s face at the action before those eyes slipped closed. It was only after Grandmother caught the girl who had collapsed when the forest was silent no more.
Grandmother didn’t waste time in bringing the child inside.
She had set the ‘tribute’, a basket with a loaf of stale bread and an apple that had gone bad, on the counter before turning all her attention to the child. Quickly Grandmother removed the dirty clothes that had rubbed at the girl’s skin, revealing more dirt and scratches. She brought over a bucket with carved runes filled with water and a washcloth that had been stitched at the beginning of spring and smelled of peppermint before getting to work. Over the course of two hours, the child was clean and dressed in soft clothes. Blistered feet and hands were bandaged along with soothing oil lightly dashed on the child’s face for restful sleep and dreams.
Grandmother took the tribute outside and left it by a pile of rotten wood that was decorated in mushroom and bones of small animals, knowing that it would be gone by the next morning.
Then she began to clean the clothes and cloak the girl had worn.
It turned out that the cloak was red
The young girl woke the next morning as Grandmother had finished baking breakfast for the two of them. Her eyes widened as her head turned and twisted to look at the home Grandmother had in deep in the woods.
“I can show you more after you eat child,” Grandmother said and the young girl blushed.
When they ate it was clear that the girl was hungry as she tried to shove the egg bake in her mouth and swallow it whole. But before the girl could taste it the egg bake was taken out of her hands.
“You must eat slowly child or your stomach will be very upset,” Grandmother said as she cut the egg bake into smaller pieces and put it on the plate along with some berries.
The girl watched with awed eyes before nodding quickly. “Yes, Grandmother.”
And there it was again. A child knowing her and Grandmother thought of the tribute that had not been touched and the girl saying she had been ‘sent’. Grandmother had not been out of the woods for a very long time and never before had a child come to give her tribute.
“Child,” she said and instantly the girl looked at her attentively. “Can you share with me the story of your journey here?”
The girl sat straighter in her seat and held her head high as she responded. “Yes, Grandmother.”
Grandmother did not find the sound of the wind outside comforting at the child’s response. Nor the sound of the Raven at her window as the girl told her story.
It was a story of a town far away that sent children on a journey to deliver tribute to the ‘Grandmother’. A journey that the adults who sent the children off only supplied them with a basket of a tribute that they must not touch and could not return until it was delivered. They were given nothing other than the poorly crafted basket and the name ‘Grandmother’. A journey given to the girl along with a few other children who had gone on the search.
“Have they found you, Grandmother?” The girl asked, eager to know for the other children had been her friends. “It’s been 3 full moons.”
The Raven at her window looked at her and Grandmother shook her head.
The girl frowned. “I’m supposed to go back, Grandmother. Can you tell them that I went back when they find you?”
It was a request that Grandmother could follow but instead she simply said. “Child, you may stay and tell them yourself when they arrive.”
That night as the girl slept peacefully with a clean red cloak hanging on the wall Grandmother took a walk in the forest. Her feet barefoot in the dirt.
She herself had a request to make.
While Grandmother and the girl waited, the older woman taught the child.
The red cloak was fixed and brighter than it had ever been. The blisters healed and the child’s hair was braided everymorning. The forest - Grandmother noticed - was brighter, content for the time being but waiting.
It was two weeks when their waiting was no more and the girl finally got to see her friends once again. Another girl with two different colored eyes, a boy with a limp and one deaf ear, and another boy who spoke with his hands. Three other children sent on a journey that would have taken their souls if it weren’t for the request Grandmother made. A request that was two late to save the other two children who had been sent, news Grandmother delivered when a Raven tapped her window at dawn with two tufts of different colored hair held in its beak.
That evening she told the children that they did not have to return to their town just yet. That night she gave them names that made the rustle of leaves outside sound like whispers of laughter. The four children looked at her with smiles.
Over the years, Grandmother taught them all that she knew.
She taught them how to navigate the moving forest. How to know when something was watching you from the branches and roots. How to understand what the forest said and sounds of the animals that lived within them.
She taught them what runes to carve into their staffs and where to leave the bones of their dinner outside. Grandmother taught them what to write and sing for protection. And what to whisper to attack or curse.
She taught them so many things under the moon and at the beginning of spring. Things that would heal your wounds and things that would haunt your dreams.
Never did the children turn away from her teachings and they played in the forest like they had been born there.
Grandmother even taught them how to make matching red cloaks.
Eventually the children who had grown told Grandmother that they needed to return to their town.
“We are not leaving forever Grandmother. But we must see for ourselves what has happened,” they said. Of course though, they fiddled with their fingers and looked nervously around their home. The sight made Grandmother smile.
“My children,” - because they will always be her children - “there is no need to worry. I have lived alone longer than any of you have been alive. I will wait like I did before and you will be welcomed all the same.”
She got tight hugs and tearful smiled before they set off.
Then Grandmother watched four red cloaks disappear into the forest.
The town the children had left all those years had grown in their absence. But yet, the buildings they had lived in were still the same. Dilapidated, covered in darkness, and with trash left there. In fact, there were even some new buildings along with new children that hid and lived among them.
Their red cloaks stood out among the grit and grime. But there was no hesitation as the ones who wore them walked into the heart of town. Walked into the gathering of those in clean pristine clothes and skin that had never known the touch of dirt or a basket that scratched their palms.
The man who shined the brightest in his garish clothes and had the biggest belly sneered at them. His voice loud and grating at the ears as he demanded to know the reason for their presence.
“We are the children of Grandmother,” said the woman who had been the first to enter the forest before her friends.
“We are the ones who delivered the tribute you placed into our hands,” said the woman with two different colored eyes.
“We are the ones who found someone you all knew never existed when you sent us away,” said the man with a limp and one deaf ear.
At their words there was murmurs in the crowd before the man who sneered at them began to laugh. His face turned a bright red as he guffawed and slammed his hand on the table filled with food that would have been better tribute than a simple loaf of bread.
“You lot survived, that’s a first! Found an old woman did you? The likes of you are cockroaches, disgusting useless little things. Sending those disgusting children to find some mystical woman was the best thing we’ve ever done. Look at us now” - the man spread his hands out toward the feast and beautiful clothes everyone wore - “look at what we have if the riff raff is taken care of. And look at you, with those shabby little red riding hoods.”
The murmurs turned into chuckles and giggles.
It was cut off by a scream when the man who spoke with his hands sent a knife flying into the wood of the chair the man who mocked them sat in. It made its mark by his head, the blade dripping red having nicked the ear.
Everyone froze as they watched the man who threw the knife move his hands.
The man with the bleeding ear and eyes wary of more knives yelled, “What the hell is the bastard doing!?”
“He says he wants you to help the children.”
At the response, Grandmother’s children clad in their red cloaks were cursed and screamed at. They listened to protests come from everyone in their fancy clothes. They listened to their complaints of the children they used to be and the new children who were like them in the town. They listened to all the hate and vetrol that told them, these people would not change.
Amongst the chaos, the two men and woman in red disappeared.
Only to be seen at midnight at the North, West, East, and South ends of the town. Whispers flowing from their mouths that were carried by the wind into the homes of all those who spoke hateful words.
The next day the women who wore bright clothes with pride, woke up to brittle hair and nails. Their voices no longer soft or elegant. Their skin no long smooth and supple. The men woke up with groans of pain as their muscles screamed at them. Their bones creaked dangerously like old trees in a storm. The gluttonous spit out their food having tasted sewage. Hunger clawed at their stomach that could not be satisfied. No sleep was restful and no dreams did not have them wake up in a cold sweat. The abusive could not inflict pain without suffering wounds that would never heal properly if they dared to raise a hand.
Then the children who were orphaned, sick, disabled, unwanted, left alone and to search for someone who never existed…they were not found when the adults searched for them with hate and rage in their ugly weak bodies.
Nothing they did made their pain go away, afterall Grandmother had taught her children well.
However that did not stop the townspeople from using whatever valuable things they had for hiring a Hunter.
Grandmother had been outside watching her children play with the younger children they had come back with. She knew what they had done and it brought a simple smile to her face.
However, she knew she had to look away when she heard the silence.
Following the path that consisted of fallen leaves and shadows, Grandmother found herself standing infront of a Hunter. An intimidating man with a black fur cloak and an array of weapons on his person all within reach. By his side stood a wolf, something that the townspeople had described as a vicious thing that snarled on command.
Grandmother did not move when the Hunter pointed his crossbow at her.
Grandmother did not move when he shot the arrow.
Grandmother did not move as the roots of the trees moved underneath her feet.
Grandmother did not move as the Hunter tried to use his many weapons to free himself.
Grandmother did not move when the Hunter called for his wolf to attack.
Grandmother did not move as that Wolf snarled at her, showing teeth that could easily rip into her skin and paint the leaves underneath her feet red.
She simply looked into the Wolf’s eyes. Letting the Wolf look into her eyes, at her hands. Letting the Wolf hear the wind that whirled around them and trees that creaked.
Grandmother did not move when the Hunter’s commands turned into screams of horror as the Wolf had no love for the Hunter. As the Wolf had easily turned its teeth on him.
The children greeted Grandmother when she came back, having finished their games. Their smiles and laughter did not cease at the sight of the Wolf dripping red around their maw beside Grandmother.
Instead the child that had first found Grandmother all those years ago simply smiled and stepped forward. She took the Wolf’s head into her hands, petting it softly. Uncaring of the slick blood that coated her fingers or how she spread it in the Wolf’s fur as she continued to pet it.
Years later in other towns all over, the unwanted children told stories of the Grandmother in the woods who would send out Little Red Riding Hood and their Wolf to take them to a place they could call home.
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