RED RIDING HOOD’S CHILD
N.K. JEMISIN
If Anrin had not needed to finish the hoeing, all might have gone differently. The blacksmith was a strong man and the walls of the smithy were thick. Not that the smith would have killed him—except perhaps accidentally, if he’d put up too much of a fight—but his future would have been set in the eyes of the villagers. Blood told, and they’d been waiting for Anrin’s to tell since his birth. This was what happened instead.
“Come here, boy,” said the smith. “I’ve something special to give you.”
Anrin stopped hoeing the tailor’s garden and obediently crossed the road to the smithy. “More work, sir?”
“No work,” said the smith, turning from the doorway to reach for something out of sight. He returned with a big wooden bowl, which he held out to Anrin. “See.”
And Anrin caught his breath, for the bowl held half a dozen straw-berries.
“Lovely, aren’t they? Got them from a nobleman traveler as payment. Came from the king’s own hothouses, he swore. Have one.”
They were the most beautiful strawberries Anrin had ever seen: plump, damp from washing, redder than blood. Entranced, he selected a berry—making sure it was small so that he would not seem greedy—and took a careful bite from its tip. To make it last he rolled it about on his tongue and savored the tart-sweet coolness.
“Lovely,” the smith said again, and Anrin looked up into his wide smile. “If you come inside, you can have more. I have sugar, and even a bit of cream.”
“No, thank you,” Anrin said. He gazed wistfully at the strawberries, but then pointed toward the half-hoed garden. “Master Tailor will be angry if I don’t finish.”
“Ah,” said the smith. “A pity. Well, you’d better get on, then.”
Anrin bobbed his head in thanks and trotted back across the road to the garden. He’d finished the hoeing before it occurred to him to wonder why the smith, who had never been kind to him before, had suddenly offered him such a delicacy.
No matter, he told himself. The strawberry had been ever so sweet.
Once upon a time in a tiny woodland village there lived an orphan boy. As his mother had been less than proper in her ways—she died unwed, known well to several men—the villagers were not kindly disposed toward the tiny burden she left behind. They were not heartless, however. They reared young Anrin with as much tenderness as a child of low breeding could expect, and they taught him the value of honest labor so that he might repay their kindness before his mother’s ways took root.
By the cusp of manhood—that age when worthier lads began to consider a trade and marriage—Anrin had become a youth of fortitude and peculiar innocence. The villagers kept him at arms’ length from their homes and their hearts, so he chose instead to dwell within an eccentric world of his own making. The horses and pigs snorted greetings when he came to feed them, and he offered solemn, courtly bows in response. When the villagers sent him unarmed into the forest to fetch wood, he went eagerly. Alone amid the dappled shadows he felt less lonely than usual, and the trees’ whispers were never cruel.
Indeed, Anrin’s fascination with the forest was a source of great anxiety to the old woodcutter’s widow who boarded him at nights. She warned him of the dangers: poison mushrooms and hidden pitfalls and choking, stinging ivies. And wolves, of course; always the wolves. “Stay on the path, and stay close to the village,” she cautioned. “The smell of men keeps predators away . . . most of the time.”
Old Baba had never lied to Anrin, so he obeyed—but in the evenings after his work was done, he sat atop the small hill near the old widow’s cottage. There he could gaze out at the dark, whispering forest until she called him down to bed.
On one of those nights, with a late winter chill making the air brittle and thin, he heard a howl.
The next day began the same as always. At dawn he rose to do chores for Baba, and then he went from house to house within the town to see what needed doing.
But as Anrin came to the smithy, he noticed an odd flutter in his belly. His first thought was that he might’ve eaten something bad, or perhaps pulled a muscle. After a moment he realized that the sensation was not illness or injury, but dread. So startled was he by this—for he had never feared the villagers; they were too predictable to be dangerous—that he was still there, his hand upraised to knock, when the door opened. The smith’s apprentice Duncas stood beyond, escorting another village man who held a new riding-harness. Both of them stopped at the sight of him, their expressions shifting to annoyance.
“Well?” Duncas asked.
“I came to see what chores the smith has,” Anrin replied.
“He’s busy.” Beyond Duncas, Anrin saw the smith talking over a table with another customer.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, then.” Nodding politely to Duncas and the goodman, Anrin turned away to leave and in that moment felt another strange sensation: relief.
But he had other houses to visit and other work to do, and by sunset he had forgotten all about the moment at the smithy.
That evening Anrin again sat on the hilltop and looked out over the dark expanse of trees. This time he heard nothing but the usual sounds of night, though he found himself listening for the mournful cadence of wolfsong. He heard none—but as the waxing moon rose he thought he saw something move in the distance. He narrowed his eyes and made out a fleet dark form running low to the ground against the tree line.
“Come down, boy,” Old Baba called up, and with a sigh Anrin gave up his darkgazing for the night.
Old Baba did not greet Anrin as she usually did when he reached the foot of the hill. Instead she gazed at him long and hard until he began to worry that he had done something to upset her.
“The gossips in the village are all a-whisper, Anrin,” she said. “They say the smith offers you gifts.”
Unnerved by her stare and the statement, Anrin said, “A strawberry, Baba. I would never have taken it if he hadn’t offered.”
“Did he ask anything in return?”
“No, Baba. He said I might have more if I came into the smithy, but I had other work. What’s wrong? Are you angry with me?”
She sighed. “Not with you, child.” After another moment’s scrutiny, she took hold of his chin. “You are not quite a boy anymore.”
The gesture surprised Anrin, for Baba had never been particularly affectionate with him, though she was never unkind either. He did not resist as she turned his face from side to side. “Such thick dark hair, such deep eyes . . . so like your mother. You’ve grown beautiful, Anrin, did you know that?”
Anrin shook his head. “The moon is beautiful, Baba. The forest is beautiful. I am neither.”
“No, you’re the same,” she said. “Just as wild, and just as strange—but innocent, at least for now.” She sighed almost to herself. “So many things out there would devour that innocence if they could.”
“Things . . . in the forest, Baba?” Anrin frowned.
She smiled a little sadly and let him go. “Yes, child. In the forest. Now get to bed.”
All through the next day, Anrin pondered the conversation with Old Baba. Should he have refused the smith’s gift? Baba had denied being angry with him, but if not him then whom? The smith, perhaps . . . but why?
He had come to no conclusion by the time he finished bringing water to fill the leatherman’s curing-cistern, and climbing trees to gather winter nuts for the trapper’s wife. At sunset he wandered back to Baba’s, intending to climb the hill again. But when the old woman’s cottage came into view, the door was open with a familiar man’s silhouette blocking the light from within. Voices drifted to him, sharp and angry on the chilly wind.