My memories don't add up.
I had been ten years since I was sent alone to my grandmother's house in the woods by my mother. I had long since exchanged my red riding hood for a cloak of the same color. It just seemed more practical, and did much better at keeping me warm. And it wasn't given to me by my grandmother: for some reason that was important too.
People from the village had been going missing recently: the baker, a traveling merchant, a few children. Everyone has been saying that it's exactly like what happened a decade ago, but I don't remember people ever disappearing. Maybe I cut it out of my memories, maybe it was too traumatic.
I mentioned to my mother that perhaps someone should check on grandmother, since the people who were gone were all seen last going near the woods. I even volunteered to go myself, since it seemed like the right thing to do, even though I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of visiting her. She refused, and said that she was probably long-dead. She lived alone, and no one in my family had visited her since I was almost killed by a wolf trying to deliver baked goods to her. There was no way of knowing whether she was alive or not.
This only made me wonder how it had never occured to me that I hadn't visited grandmother in so long. And I felt strangely comforted by the thought of her being dead already - at least she wasn't suffering alone or at risk of being killed by whatever was making people disappear.
After some time and another disappearance (this time one of my close friends, the butcher's son), I decided to disobey my mother's wishes. I felt drawn to return to grandmother's house, and I was much cleverer, much faster, and much stronger than I had been before. I even decided to bring a knife, in case of emergency. I wasn't afraid of wolves.
But maybe it wasn't the wolves I should have been afraid of.
Taking that first step into the woods was almost impossible. I knew I was in no danger, and I knew that I would be safe. But the childhood fear I had of these same woods came back. I felt ten years younger, just as I had been the last time I had been there. I shook my head to clear it before charging forward, and was relieved that nothing bad immediately happened.
The woods felt heavy, somehow, like something was trying to stop me from moving on. I was on that same path that I'd taken before, but it was more overgrown than I remember it. The beautiful flowers that I had stopped to pick were just thorns. I felt a ringing in my ears as I tried to remember which flowers I had picked. I don't think they'd been roses, I only remember friendly flowers, like daisies and tulips. Certainly not flowers that would've had thorns.
But now that I was thinking about it, maybe there were never flowers there. I seemed to have two memories of my trip into the woods: one with flowers and one without. One with a clear path and one overgrown. But I know that I only ventured into the woods one time to visit my grandmother.
As I was contemplating the flowers and the path, I realized that this was also where the wolf spoke to me, tricking me into leaving the path. The wolf had been so pleasant, talking of the flowers and the birds, and the beautiful sunshine. But wolves can't talk.
Suddenly there was a flash in my memories of the huntsman, the one who had saved me and my grandmother from the wolf, the one I hadn't seen since. It wasn't the wolf who was talking to me on the path, it was him. And there was no talk of flowers or bird, just an urgent request to wait. For some reason he was intent on delaying my trip. Did he somehow know the wolf would be there waiting for me? Did he not want me, in my young age, to see him kill a wolf, that looked so similar to the dog I'd been taking care of?
But wait, how had I forgotten about my dog? It had been years since I thought of her, and I couldn't even remember her name or what had happened to her. Thinking about it so much later, I was certain that my dog had been with me on my journey to the woods. I remembered sitting on the path with her, waiting for the huntsman to give me the signal that it was safe to continue to my grandmother's house. And I remember waiting so long that I decided that I should just keep going, and that I must have missed the signal, or the huntsman had forgotten me.
