Red Riding

Chapter One: The Red Path

The woods had names for her before she had a name for herself. They called her Scarlet-step, Thorn-girl, the one who walks where shadows pool. She called herself Rowan, because that was what her mother had whispered into her ear the night she was born, and because rowan trees were said to ward off evil, and because her mother had a grim sense of humour.

Rowan pulled the red hood tighter against the November wind and followed the path deeper into the Harrowwood. Her grandmother had sent word three days ago—a single sentence scratched onto birch bark and delivered by a crow with one milky eye: Come quickly. The wolf remembers. It was not a metaphor. The wolf had never been a metaphor.

The basket on her arm held bread, cheese, a jar of blackberry preserve, and a hunting knife with a silver edge. The bread was for her grandmother. The knife was for everything else.