white is not a practical colour (1,154 words)
She burns at night, fire consuming her soul so that the sheets stick to her skin. Dreams she does not understand, does not want to understand, visions of men with embers in their eyes and darkness in their hearts.
That was the nature of men, she had been taught, for power corrupted even the best of them. She has seen that, lived that, and did not need for dreams to tell her what she thought she already knew.
She is water and ice; fire does not rest well within her body like the cold does. The sisters tell her she needs more meditation, more coldness, but she needs more heat, for her body starts to crave for the thing that hurts most.
Her nails rip red rivers into her skin.
The sisters bind her hands in wool.
They think of her as an orphan until the day an old woman sends for her- my granddaughter, yes, send her to the woods.
When her parents left her at the abbey, she was too young to understand that they did not want her, only that they left cold kisses on her brow before fading into memory. Now she knew, and it made her angry, but she did not want her parents if they did not want her.
Grandmothers, as she understood, were different.
The sisters send her out, white cloak of the order hooding her face and the painful fire in her heart. Stay on the path of the woods, for it is magicked.
She obeys, because that is what she has always done, but a rose creeps the edge of the path, and the thorn stabs deep into her thumb when she tries to pick it. The blood wells quickly, and she absentmindedly wipes the stain into her hood, where it turns to a line of rust like the scars upon her arm.
Her grandmother’s cottage, broken down and rotted through, is nothing like the abbey, but it could be a home, and she has never had a home- abbey’s belonged to everyone and no-one, and do not care who rests within its walls.
Welcome, granddaughter.
The old woman smells of pine and smoke.
Grandmother.
Her hands are callused, nails cut short. They smooth down the fabric, pressing the wool into the girl’s cheeks.
White is not a practical colour, child, but the sisters do make such good things. Do you have a favourite colour?
Her dreams come back to her, warmth running down her arms and under her nails and visions of embers.
Red.
The old woman smiles, squeezes the girl’s shoulders and lets go.
Then we shall make it red.
It is a hard life, but simple, and as winter came to the forest, she wore her red-dyed hood more often. Her grandmother called her Red, then, as a jest, but she felt red, red and terrible in her dreams still.
She sticks her hand into the fire once, and it does not burn; Red knows she is no longer fully ice, and the dreams come to be a comfort.
She does not rip rivers into her skin anymore.
Grandmother does not need to bind her hands in wool.
But her grandmother sees, and waits, and Red embroiders her hood in the winter firelight. The bloodstain is still there, faintly showing through the dye.
The man comes on a spring morning, pelt on his shoulders and ax strapped to his back. Wolf-hunter who needs a den for the night, he says, and at the words the fire in Red’s heart flares ever higher.
Grandmother agrees, but locks Red in her room. She would sulk over such treatment, and lays on the bed with her cloak wrapped around her, for the spring nights had not given away to summer’s breath just yet. Scratching on the shutters wakes her from sleep, and she leans into the cool air to grin at the wolf-man.
You’re just a pretty thing in a wooden cage.
It might be pity in his voice, but his eyes appreciate the pretty thing. She can see the flash of hunger in them.
And you’re just a wild thing, Mr. Wolf.
I am not a wolf.
She leans out more, challenging.
The pelt says differently.
He leans forward so that their noses brush, and she is reminded of dogs in the movement- and maybe dogs were like wolves enough.
But there is a man under this pelt.
The fire drives her to nip at his nose, and she can feel it building and burning through her body like madness.
I should like to see.
He climbs in the window, and she sits on the edge of the bed, red hood pooled like blood in the darkness as he unties the laces that hold his pelt upon his shoulders and sheds the shirt underneath. Indeed, he was no wolf, but man.
Years in the forest left his body dark and muscled, scars running over his collarbone. Red stands up and walks over, stepping on the balls of her toes so she may reach his eye level.
What scars you have.
He laughs, low and quiet, as not to wake her grandmother.
All the better to tell stories with. Would you like to hear them?
Yes.
The word is husky and breathless, and his hands move the cloak off her shoulders, but do not untie it like he does the dress under it.
I’ve always loved red. Beauty is red blood on wolf fur, if you have ever seen it.
Rough fingers skim the delicate skin of her shoulder, and the fire spreads. She could burn up, like the men of her dreams.
But these scars are from a wolf. He chewed me up and spit me out and left a tooth in me. We were bound together after that, pretty Red.
His lips are smooth, and she bites them, out of inexperience and longing, drawing a drop of blood from the soft pink inside. The tang hits her tongue and the fires that have been burning her for months finally consume her.
In that moment, she understands the men of her dreams are not consumed by power, but bloodlust, and she gives herself to the fire, eating up the man like the wolf almost did.
Red, however, followed through, and did not spit him out.
Her grandmother finds her the next morning, naked under her cloak, smears of blood across her mouth as she breathed easily on the bed.
Child, do you remember what you did?
Red sat up, rubbed her eyes and saw the colour across her hands that smeared with the sweat.
I ate the man up like a wolf.
Did you taste his blood?
Yes.
The old woman sighed, than smiled, her teeth dangerous and eyes alight, almost like embers rested within.
You are the only evidence. That is good. Come, child, wash the blood off and the proof.