#red-cap

One day, there came a wolf upon the path...

"There was a long winter, some years ago. You'll remember it. When spring came, the people and forest seemed to sigh with relief. There was a such feeling of boldness to be found everywhere.

"Nowhere was this made clearer to me than when I found a wolf trying to take one of my new lambs.

"It wasn't simply a wolf, for no simple wolf has that size, that agility, that shine in his eye. No simple wolf lets itself be frightened off by an old woman.

"Well, of course I couldn't allow wolves to be aquainting themselves with the mutton of my own sheep. So I follow him closely after he runs off, I track him down." At this Granny opened her eyes and gave Annalise a careful stare. "That's what this witch business really is, my girl. It's about following things closely, and doing what you have to. When you put your mind to what you need to, I daresay all the rest of the world right opens up to you."

"I was... Yes, I was following this wolf away from my property. I followed him into the deeps of the woods (where you know you aren't to go, my girl), and I found him. That great beast who ought to have known better."

Annelise tried very hard not to shiver.

"And I do what's right for me to do, and I do what's right for my pets and my forest." Granny pursed her lips. "You needn't pout, girl, you would do the same. You would have to. He threatened first.

"Yes, yes, that's right, I DO kill that beast, that wolf who dared to murder from my flock. I kill him and take him back to my house, so that his comrades don't come looking for him. And of course your own granny doesn't just throw a body out, so I take it and drain it of blood in a special mixture in my dyeing vat here.

Each and every so-often, Little Miss Red-Cap would skip and dance into the woods to deliver her mother's gifts to her grandmother. Frolicking in the flowers was forbidden by her elders, because there were dangerous things that did live in the woods, but Little Miss Red-Cap cared not.

Granny was moving from preserving to dying, when Annalise arrived that autumn day. Granny always sent for Annalise especially when there was work to be done, because she was older and cleverer than her younger brothers (Fritzi and Willem) and sisters (Johanna and Gerta). Because Annalise did not ask impertinent questions or drop things, and she did not sit and toss her hair, but instead listened quietly and watched with large eyes the doings in her Granny's house.

Annalise knocked once, heard a creaky grunt from somewhere in the back, and followed it out to where her Granny was dragging a great wooden tub up the rickety back stairs and into her new-swept workroom. She lent a push here, and a drag there. and soon enough the tub was all nice and snug in the corner of the room. Granny wiped her hands in the folds of her old nightdress and apron and peered closely at Annalise with her shrewd, uncanny eyes. (She always did refuse spectacles.)

"You have a question." It was a statement, as it always was with Granny. She never spent time with maybes and what-ifs, she always went straight to yeses and noes and doings.

Annalise swallowed and fidgeted a bit with the tips of her fingers.

Then she swallowed again. Granny narrowed her eyes.

"Why are you a witch?" It was not, as Annalise reflected, the question she had meant to ask. But she would be glad to know the answer, and she stood her ground and looked right into Granny's face.

"Who told you I was a witch?" Granny said slowly, blinking slowly, turning around slowly (and getting a broom slowly).

"...No one did. I just figured it out," Annalise mumbled, dropping her eyes. (It was hard to stay brave to Granny.)

Granny hemmed, and she hawwed, and she swept out the inside of the dye vat. Annalise went back to fidgeting, wiping down the tub's outside as she did so. When they had finished, Annalise looked sideways at her Granny, fighting anticipation. Granny settled down in her grandmotherly way in a grandmotherly rocking chair beside the only window.

She was known to the folk of the town as Little Miss Red-Cap, because of a peculiarly bright red cloak that she wore and was so fetching in.

Annalise hated wearing her little coat and hood, but her parents insisted that she always don it when it was her turn to take Granny's bread and wine to her at midday. So Annalise would drape that cloak around her shoulders (that awful, awful cloak!) and tie the drawstrings tight, and she pulled the little woollen hood above her mop of dark curls, there wasn't a child in town more sweet and comely.

She would take the basket of bottles and bakings wrapped in checquered cloth, and she would take the grassy path through the woods up to her Granny's house and meadows, surrounded by trees that reached the high noon sun and grasses as tall as herself.  She would take the light-worn path step by careful step, because Granny had told her about many cursed and strange things that then lived in the forest, and Annalise had no wish to meet such things in person.

There once lived a small girl in a small village near a large forest. She was charming and bright and beloved by all her family that knew her.

Annalise always felt strange around her grandmother.

It began when Annalise's mother first took her as a child and put her into her Granny's arms, and she looked up and all she saw was eyes and teeth, so bright and sharp all through, that she shivered violently and would have cried had her tears and mouth not seemed sealed. Annalise always remembered that because of the song that her Granny had told her. Not singing, not whispering, a song that she could never remember the words of nor never forget.

It began when Annalise had just reached seven years and had gone with her father to visit Granny in her house in the woods with the sheep all in the glades and glens around, and Granny had given Annalise her first present. She had refused it, feeling nothing but fear and revulsion towards the old thing, but Granny had insisted. When Annalise was properly tied into her new cloak, Granny drew her close and told her the story of how 'twas made. Annalise always remembered that because of the way Granny smelt up-close, all of dill and thyme and a cloying sweetness that made the young girl want to hold in her breath.

It began when Annalise was five years of age, and her parents had taken her to see a witch be hanged. She had seen her grandmother there, although her parents insisted otherwise, and had watched the old woman very carefully. She saw when Granny spat into her hands and rubbed them before shaking the hand of the judge; she saw Granny smile, all teeth and no gums, when the accused was introduced to the platform; she not only saw Granny cough into her fist, but put her fist on the ground and open it slowly in the direction of the block. She saw Granny clap her hands when the accused girl stumbled on the stool and fell senseless upon the stage and could be woken by no one.

Annalise could not remember what day it was when she decided that her Granny was a witch.

She felt perfectly calm to have realised it, when she did, and her first thought was whether anyone else knew also.

"Mother, did you know that Granny is a witch?"

"Don't spout nonsense with me, Lise, go take this lunch out to your father by the edge of the woods."

"Father, did you know that Granny is a witch?"

"What story-house did you take this away from? Don't leave room for such dangerous thoughts in that pretty little head of yours."

nope!