Children go missing all the time.
Sometimes it is faeries who steal them.
Other times, they trust a wolf.
Even in times of war, children are innocent to the true ways of the world. Their mothers are always wiser.
This is because mothers know that the softest people with the biggest hearts are the ones who held the truest magic of them all: purity of this kind could not be bought from the Gods themselves, and it was the greatest target of the devil-souled.
When Little Red Riding Hood went missing, a girl so beloved by her mother that she always told her she could be anything she wanted to be, her mother never ever left the place where she had grown up, hoping against hope that the trees, the woods, would one day return her child.
Every day, she stood at the end of the woods, looking into the dark, hoping to find a wisp of her forest-hearted child somewhere within the leave-strewn wild. Every day, she took a step closer to the darkness, hopelessness making her courage steadfast, stronger.
Grief makes unlikely warriors of us all.
So when she saw the two lamp-like eyes in the dark one day, she was not afraid. Instead she asked, 'Brother wolf, are you the one who has stolen my child from my arms and taken her away?'
'Not I' said the wolf before disappearing.
The next day, she took another step closer to the woods she had once searched every inch of and another pair of eyes glowed through the darkness, red like the colour of her child's cloak.
'Brother wolf, are you the one who pulled my child away from me with just a look?'
'Not I,' said the wolf before turning away.
A wolf began to visit her almost every day. And every day she would ask the same question a different way. She found herself getting closer and closer to the heart of the forest and the wolves never ever attacked her. She began to wonder if what the woodcutter had told her was true, that the wolf had eaten her child for supper.
On the day she reached the heart of the forest, she began to realise that although she had thought she had been here before, this lush, dense part of the wood was a place she had never been. There was something both familiar and unsettling about it, like a place not meant to be seen.
A lair where a thousand lamp-like eyes watched her from the fog and the dark, and even when the fog cleared away and the light came through, she found what she was looking at was enough to make her fall apart. On a throne amongst wolves of all sorts and sizes, a young girl sat. She wore a red wolf's skin on her body and two swords sheathed behind her back.
Slow recognition crept over her face. She ran to the older woman and, after hugging her, finally told her why she had never come home.
'Dear Mother, I am sorry I never ever came home. The evil woodcutter and his friends were trying to destroy this forest world. When I came through the woods, I happened to hear all of their plans. They saw me listening, followed me to grandmother's, killed her and tried to burn her house down with me in it so they could continue their wicked plans. The wolves came to rescue me, and trained me to be one of them. I am now the Alpha and protect them from the woodcutter and his evil friends.
Her mother promised her that she would never tell another soul where Red Riding Hood was. The secrecy was their only weapon against the woodcutter and his horde. Over and over again, Red Riding Hood and the wolves bravely defended the woods and woodland creatures from extinction. They bravely fought and her mother soon came to live with them and aid them in their battle.
So when you tell the story of Red Riding Hood, remember this too:
Her mother told her
she would grow up to be
anything she wanted to be,
so she grew up to become
the strongest of the strong,
the strangest of the strange,
the wildest of the wild,
the wolf leading the wolves.
***
- Nikita Gill; from Fierce Fairy Tales & Other Stories to Stir the Soul.
Artist: Marija Jevtic
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