Tales of the Big Bad Wolf: The Red Riding Hood Arc (A Fairy Tale)

Chapter Ten: The Hunter and Red Riding Hood

CHAPTER TEN

The Hunter and Red Riding Hood

 “At last I find you, you old sinner!” said
he; “I have been looking for you a long time.” And he made up his
mind that the wolf had swallowed the grandmother whole, and
that she might yet be saved. So he did not fire, but took a pair of
shears and began to slit up the wolfs body.

--Grimm Tales.

 

For several days, the snow fell upon the town of Winchester.  As the white dust settled to the earth, nature redrew her veil across the stage of the northern lands.  Whatever secrets the woods of the Northlands possessed, whatever remnants there had been of the Unthings’ activities, these were wiped away white and clean under several feet of fresh snow.  And yet, for the small handful who had glimpsed something that they should have not, they would not be able to forget what they had seen.

Elanore, now safely ensconced in her grandmother’s house, had completed her duty as her mother’s messenger to her grandmother.  The blizzard should have afforded her a few days of rest and leisure by the warmth of the fireplace. And yet, she paced the front parlor, turning over her mother’s charm in her hands, grieving over what her grandmother had told her about the Guildmaster.  She passed an uneasy time, her mind unsettled as she struggled with her first encounter with the adult world and its half-truths.

Over the years, she had built up a story in her mind about what must have happened long ago. The tales from the book her mother had read to her as a child had shaped a view of the world in which she believed its conflicts were always clearly defined as the clash of values between the good and the wicked. As any child was aught to do, she had designated her mother as good, and the man who had chased her away from Winchester, evil.  The narrative that she had formed for herself was idyllic and romantic, one in which her father must have discovered and rescued her mother from a terrible past.

But the tale she had believed in was wrong. Her mother and the guildmaster had once been schoolmates, and then as they grew older, became friends. Later, as happened often to two young people thrown often together, they fell into an odd courtship that the townspeople quietly condoned.

They were engaged once, her grandmother had admitted.  And then, for reasons that even her grandmother did not know, Evelyn broke off the engagement and left Winchester. And with that admission, Elanore’s carefully constructed view of her own parents’ love fell apart.  It was marred by the realization that there had been someone else for her mother before her father.

For the first time in her young life, she found her beliefs forcefully and painfully readjusted.  It would be a little while longer before Elanore fully understood the circumstances that led to the dissolution of the engagement between her mother and the guildmaster, and even longer yet before she understood how that event was tied to the Wolframs.

But in this moment, Elanore was a young lady who was limited in her power and her ability to shape the flow of events in her world.   There was nothing she could do about the blizzard outside or the past events that had caused her family to live apart.  She could only pace the floor of her grandmother’s home, waiting for Edmund to arrive.  More than ever, she felt a desire to see him – the calm voice of reason, the boy who did not allow himself to be governed by emotions.  She anxiously wished to ask him about the guildmaster-- the hunter her mother had apparently once loved.

But even after the snow stopped, there was no sign or further news of Edmund.  So when the sun reappeared, she left her grandmother in her neighbor’s care and flew out the door towards town.