Red (3 page)

Granny was not better in the morning. She was worse. She burned with fever and shivered with chills. She coughed and coughed and coughed.

“You need your Curious Cure-All,” I said.

“The ingredients are listed on the table,” she said in a raspy voice.

I went to the table. Granny had all her potion and medicine recipes carved directly into the wood, a jumble of words etched on the top and the legs and even underneath. She said she couldn't lose them that way.

I searched the table. There was a recipe for curing baldness (2 scoops of troll droppings and 1 fuzzy caterpillar) and one for rashes and bites (3 sprigs of lavender, 2 drops of frog slime, and 2 spits from a witch, though any spit will suffice).

Finally I found it.

Curious Cure-All

5 prickly chestnuts

1 handful of wild cherries

1 bunch of gnomeswort

So far, these ingredients would be easy to find. I read on.

1 drop of pixie venom (wear gloves)

“Pixie venom!” I shouted. “For medicine?”

“Powerful stuff,” said Granny.

Undoubtedly. One bite from a pixie was as painful as a hundred bee stings.

1 pair of tree-nymph wings

“How am I supposed to tell the nymph wings from leaves?” I asked.

“You have to pluck them right off the tree nymph,” she said. “Otherwise, they don't work.”

“Isn't that a bit cruel?”

“They grow back,” she croaked. “They don't mind.”

Even if I could find a tree nymph, I'd never be able to catch it. I'd tried many times without success, but that seemed a small concern when I saw the last ingredient:

7 wolf hairs

“Can I get some wolf fur from your tail?”

“It's rabbit. Besides, wolf fur is best when it's fresh. Just ask nicely.”

“Ask who?”

“A wolf, of course. Who else?”

I sighed. Sometimes Granny could be exasperating. She said crazy things as though they were completely normal and then made you feel crazy for thinking what she said was crazy. Asking questions only made it worse.

“Is the wolf fur an essential ingredient?” I asked.

“Of course it's essential, otherwise it wouldn't be on the list of ingredients. Now stop asking me silly questions. It's giving me a headache.” I abandoned the Curious Cure-All recipe and instead made lavender honey tea to soothe Granny's cough. I placed the cup to her lips, but she barely drank. I tried pressing cold cloths to her burning forehead, but she tossed and turned and talked nonsensically.

“Snow?” said Granny. “Is that you?” Snow was her sister, who had died long ago.

“Granny, it's me. Red.”

“Red,” said Granny. “I was Red once. Rose Red, they called me. Oh, I was beautiful. Just gorgeous. Everybody said so.”

“You're still gorgeous,” I said.

“Ha.” She began to laugh, but then coughed, and the pain of it seemed to bring her back to awareness. “Oh, Red, it's you,” Granny whispered, as though seeing me for the first time. “Happy birthday.”

“It's not my birthday,” I said.

“Of course it isn't. It's mine.”

Granny's birthday? She had never mentioned it before, not once, but of course she had one. Why had I never considered it? She just seemed timeless somehow, like she always stayed the same age.

“I have a present for you,” said Granny.

“You have a present for me on
your
birthday?”

Granny lifted her arm and pointed to the end of her bed. “Open that chest,” she whispered.

I went to the big wooden chest at the foot of Granny's bed. I had gone through it many times. It was where she kept her treasures, as she called them, mostly from her childhood—crocheted baby bonnets; a patchwork quilt, worn and faded from many picnics; a white glove; dried roses that had once been red, now black and brittle; a miniature painting of Granny in a red cloak and her sister in a white one.

“What am I supposed to find?” I asked.

“Unfold the quilt,” said Granny. “It's inside there.”

I unfolded the quilt and something slid out onto the ground. It was bright red.

When I picked it up, the fabric unraveled like liquid, no wrinkles or folds. It was a cloak. A red cloak with a hood, just like the one Granny wore in the little painting.

“It was mine when I was your age,” said Granny. “Put it on.”

I hesitated.

“Go on. It won't bite you.”

I wasn't so sure. I draped the cloak loosely over my shoulders. Granny motioned for me to come to her, and with trembling hands she fastened the clasp at my chest and pulled the hood over my head.

“Let me look at you,” said Granny. “Ah, you look just like me when I was a girl.”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“It's almost as if I'm young again, seeing you in that old thing. I had suitors coming through the front door before I could shove the last one out the back. My sister, Snow, had a matching white cloak, of course, and we wore them everywhere we went. Everyone called us Snow White and Rose Red.”

Granny's sister, Snow, was the one who married the bear—not to be confused with the princess Snow White, who lived with dwarves while hiding from an evil queen. That Snow White had lived over two hundred years ago, but her name was a popular one. Anyone named Snow or Snow White had a destiny that usually involved dwarves or apples or sleeping curses. You never knew what you were going to get.

“We wore our cloaks wherever we went,” said Granny. “We believed they were magic.”

I stiffened. I wanted the cloak off me. “What kind of magic?”

But she didn't answer my question, not directly. “Red is a magical color. Powerful. When you were born, I knew that you were Red. I knew you had powerful magic in you.”

I pulled at the cloak. It felt hot and suffocating.

“Don't take it off,” said Granny. “It's going to get cold soon.”

“It's summer,” I said. “And it's very warm in here.”

She closed her eyes and sniffed. “I can smell the cold coming.”

“Your nose has always been a little off compared to the rest of your senses. It's too small.” I tried to laugh at the joke, but it didn't come out right. Nothing felt right. Not this red cloak. Not this frail and fevered Granny. Not the world.

“Red.” Granny clasped my hand. “Don't be afraid.”

“I'm not afraid,” I lied. “You just need to rest, and you need some medicine. One of your potions should make you better in an instant. Isn't there anything else you can take besides your Curious Cure-All?” I walked to the cupboard and started to rummage again. I found a clay pot full of greenish-brown goop. It smelled ghastly, but those were usually the potions that did the best curing. “How about this one?”

“Troll droppings. That will certainly finish me off,” she said.

I replaced the pot and washed my hands. Granny coughed some more. It got worse each time.

“It's all right, Red,” she croaked. “Sometimes we just need to let nature take its course.”

“And sometimes we need to help it along with a little magic. You always say that.”

“Yes, but magic can't help everything. You always say that.”

“But you're very sick. Don't you want to get better?”

“No one lives forever,” said Granny.

“Stop avoiding the question. Don't you want to get better?”

“Stop avoiding the truth.” Granny grasped me by the arm, and the sudden firmness of her grip startled me more than her recent frailty.

“Everybody dies, Red,” said Granny. “One way or another, everybody dies.”

“I know,” I said, but the words were thick in my mouth. They felt wrong. It wasn't at all like Granny to speak of death. She was magic, full of power and life. She couldn't be dying.

And yet the words echoed in my mind, lashing me with barbed whips.

Everybody dies.

Granny drifted to sleep. Her breathing was labored and raspy. My own breathing grew short and heavy. My throat swelled. My eyes burned. I couldn't stay here. Granny needed her Curious Cure-All, and it was up to me to make it.

I found Granny's sturdy gloves, a vial for the pixie venom, a net for catching nymphs, and a jar to hold the wolf fur. I placed all these things in my basket. Milk bleated at each of my movements, clearly concerned with my rush.

“I'll be back soon,” I said. “Watch after Granny, will you?”

Maaaaaaa.

She said she would.

I took one last look at Granny. She'd get well. I might get bitten by pixies or eaten by a wolf, but Granny would not die.

The best place to find a pixie on The Mountain was the mines where we used to dig for gold.

I walked through the ruins of the village, past abandoned houses, the crumbling mill, the vacant square. All of it used to be full of people, loud and bustling, but not anymore. The only sound was the whisper of the wind scattering dust and leaves. We were alone on The Mountain, which was fine by me. Granny was all I needed.

This mine could hardly be called a mine anymore. Most of the shafts had collapsed, so you couldn't even walk in them. Abandoned carts and rusty pickaxes were strewn about on the ground. Someone had left a hat. It was caked with dust, and moldy from rain.

I saw no pixies, probably because there was no gold. Pixies love gold. They sense it from miles away and go crazy whenever they're near it. These mines used to be crawling with pixies—I used to swat them away like bugs. But now that I wanted to find one, there were none.

I searched along the sluices, where small children used to scoop up mud in pans and search for specks of gold. Most of the sluice boxes were broken and tipped over. I lifted some pieces off the ground, searching, and finally something colorful and sparkly fluttered beneath one of the boxes. A pixie!

She was nestled in a nest woven of grass and twigs and flecked with gold. I pulled on my leather gloves and poked at her. She squeaked and flew up to the sky, out of reach. I picked up a bit of her gold. She shrieked and darted back to bite my glove, digging her fangs into the leather. I dropped the gold, and the pixie snatched it and flew away again, this time out of sight. She had left behind a sizable drop of pixie venom. If she had bitten my bare hand, my finger would be as big as a sausage by now. I took the little vial from my apron pocket and squeezed the venom over the rim.

There! That wasn't so difficult. One ingredient found. Two to go.

I walked along my path toward my honey hive, searching for a good nymph tree. Tree nymphs are like pixies, but with twigs for bodies and leaf-wings that change with the seasons—green in the spring and summer, red and orange in the fall, brittle brown in the winter. They're so well disguised that few know of their existence. Some people swear that trees can speak, but they're really just hearing the tree nymphs trying to tell them something they forgot. Granny says when we forget something, the tree nymphs sweep up our memories and take care of them until we remember. I must not have forgotten anything important, because I've never understood a thing from the tree nymphs. They sound like rustling leaves to me.

The trick to spotting tree nymphs is to watch the movement of the leaves when a wind comes. When the wind rushes, all the leaves move, of course, but the nymphs will detach from their branches and flutter to other limbs or trees. Through this method I found some nymphs in an enormous beech tree with low-hanging limbs. I shook some of the branches until the nymphs floated down. I swished the net, but they evaded me, and all I caught was regular leaves. I tried again and again, swishing the net as fast as I could, but the nymphs swirled over my head, higher and higher in the tree.

I wasn't going to let that stop me. I put the net between my teeth and swung myself up into the tree, snagging my skirt in the process. Cursed skirt! I yanked it free, and it tore all the way to my knee. The leaves rustled. I could have sworn the nymphs were laughing at me.

I reached for the branch above me and shook it vigorously, waving my net as the nymphs detached.

“Ha! Gotcha!” And then I lost my balance and dropped the net. It clattered through the branches and fell to the ground while my hair got caught in a clump of beechnut burs.

“Aaaargh!” I growled. I tried to get free, twisting this way and that, but only managed to get more tangled. And, of course, all my thrashing frightened the nymphs, so they flew farther up the tree, snickering in their secret language, while I remained hopelessly stuck.

This was not going as smoothly as I had planned.

A squirrel passed by, collecting nuts.

“
Pssst!
Squirrel! Some help?” I asked, pointing to my hair. “There are some very tasty nuts beneath all this mess, if you can help me out.”

The squirrel regarded me for a moment, then chattered a lecture about how I had gotten myself into this fix, so I could get myself out.

Squirrels are selfish creatures, if you ask me. No help at all.

I went to work on my hair, ripping my tangles loose from the spiny burs, which pricked and scratched my hands. If I'd had some scissors, I'd have cut all my hair off right then. It's not as though I was trying to look special for anyone.

With a final yank, I was free.

I was also falling.

I plummeted headfirst to the ground. I hit branch after branch, until the hood of my cloak caught on one, saving me just in time. Blessed cloak!

I flipped over and hopped to the ground, miraculously in one piece but without a nymph. Perhaps tree climbing was not the best method for catching tree nymphs.

A wind picked up, and I shivered a little. The trees whispered, or the nymphs, and then my stomach grumbled, shouting at me for food. I'd been searching for nymphs and pixies all morning. I knew exactly where I'd go for lunch.

My honey hive.

My path immediately stretched in a new direction. This one curved and wound in and out of the trees and brush, which got thicker and thicker, until it all opened up to a small clearing. A gentle humming grew with each step, until it was a full buzzing chorus of a thousand bees. Music to my ears.

This was my honey hive. This was my place to think and be alone.

Except I wasn't alone.

Snap!

There was something near the hive. A brown figure moving around just outside the swarm of bees.
Bear,
I thought. Bears like honey, but they don't necessarily like little girls. I waited by a tree, listening for the bear to leave.

“Oh! Ouch! Ah! Get awayayayaaaah!”

Bears don't talk in squeaky little-girl voices, either. I peered around the tree, squinting to get a better view. Indeed, there was no bear, but a girl. She had covered herself in a brown shawl to serve as a shield from the bees.

Curses. I'd much rather face a bear.