Red Riding Hood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Red sits in the waiting room outside the council chamber, hands folded in her lap. They've called her to testify about the incident in the woods. The official version has protected her for years now. Everyone knows the story: wolf, woodsman, happy ending. But the magistrate wants details this time. Red watches the door and thinks about her grandmother, who never spoke a word about what really happened. Silence kept them all safe. The truth would implicate everyone, herself included. The door opens. A clerk beckons her forward. Red follows him through the chamber and out the back door, blinking in the sudden daylight. They haven't brought her to the council hall at all. Instead, she stands before her grandmother's cottage, the thatched roof golden in the afternoon sun. A small crowd has gathered. The clerk gestures toward the stone well in the yard, positioned directly in front of the cottage door. She's meant to stand there. To speak from the very place it happened. Red moves to the well. Her hands find the cool stone rim. Someone has placed her old basket on the well's edge, the red cloth still draped across it like a flag. She recognizes it immediately. They've kept it all these years as evidence. The basket she carried that day, now displayed like proof of the story everyone agreed to tell. The clerk unfolds a document. He begins reading the official account aloud. Wolf. Grandmother. Woodsman. Each word a brick in the wall that has surrounded the truth. Red's grandmother appears in the cottage doorway. Their eyes meet. The old woman's face shows nothing, but her hand rests on the door frame. Waiting. The clerk finishes reading. He looks at Red. Everyone looks at Red. The question comes: does she confirm this account? Red opens her mouth. She thinks of her grandmother's silence, all these years of protection. She thinks of what really happened in those woods. Then she closes her mouth and shakes her head once, very slowly. The grandmother's hand falls from the door frame. Something has broken.