Beneath the wint’ry weight of graying skies, quick‑howling winds, and frozen, groaning trees, in boots grown thick with mud and slick with leaves, a youngster through the dark’ning forest trudged to see her grandmother. She was a darling in an otherwise drab scene.

Despite the cold, her eyes—a radiant blue—shone with the smile that played upon her lips. Her smile seldom faded, though the frigid wind erased it once or twice.

Unearthly screams will do that to a girl of twelve, you know, when she cannot explain their source or pitch and has never known such fright before.

Her smile returned each time, of course: The wind was only the wind and nothing more although it howled as if it were alive and often seemed a Thing not borne of air at all.

She reached to close her cloak more tightly then, and huddled beneath it even as she walked. Her hooded cloak, though spattered here and there with mud and fallen, flipped‑up leaves, was a brilliant, fiery, velvet red. It bouyed her spirits and kept the cold at bay. “I’ve come this way before.” Her voice quivered. “But never on a night as cursed as this.”

Then she recalled the cakes of special grain—near magical, her mother always said—that filled the wicker basket by her side. The cakes would mend Grandmother’s soul and rest her troubled mind.

With that, she smiled again. No harm could come to one with magic cakes! Her trip that day, a lengthy one in snow—six miles that would be nothing in the spring—was one of love and mercy.

*

Grandmother, grown too weak to build a warming fire, lay ill in bed, snowed‑in and circled ‘round with demons: evil spirits of the sort that gather in the fevers of the ill and visit only in the worst of times but never seem to fade.

In fitful sleep she dreamed of peering through a window pane into an endless darkness filled with eyes and wicked, hungry laughter. In her mind the howling wind despaired of formless fear. And there, before her eyes, the form began to gel and grow into the thing she feared the most of all the creatures of the wild: the wolf!

Transfixed, she watched as from the very air there grew a form with claws and heinous teeth, large pointy ears, and eyes as red as coals. She shivered when it turned those eyes on her and shattered Heaven’s blessings with a howl. It froze her blood and stood her nerves on end—

Before it moved away around the wall to seek an entrance to a soft repast.

Though gone from sight, the wolf was never gone, but circling, searching. She sensed him there, muttering epithets and gurgling growls that spat through every crevice, crack, and flue, and threatened a fate far worse than death.

He scratched and clawed the windows and the doors until, aided by a twisted, fallen branch, he worked the latch and—

Screamed into the room!

Grandmother’s feverish head twitched hard, then twitched again, harder, just before her heart of hearts succumbed to mysteries and dreams and final thoughts.

The wolf dined well and climbed into the bed.

*

The foul wind battered through the aching trees much harder than before. It filled Red’s cloak. It stung her face, now a crimson white, and pinched her nose and ears as Little Red struggled through the thickets of the wood.

The trees, so green and friendly in the spring, in desperation tried to foul her course: The branches grasped roughly at her arms. The roots conspired to trip her, slow her pace.

Once‑friendly, singing streams of summer rain had turned to icy floes of treachery, and having fallen on the one before, she ventured across the final one with care. She tried the ice, but slipped. She tried again, then fell and slid across the frigid thing and finally embarked upon the trail that crossed the wooded hill to Grandmother’s.

As Little Red stepped from the hateful wood and looked at her grandmother’s house below, she sensed an eerie calming in the storm, as if the worst was over. Firelight glinted on the window pane.

Grandmother’s house! So peaceful, warm, and loving! She shivered—with the promise of the hearth or with unease?—as fledgling doubts began to build: It all appeared too peaceful, too serene.

She took a wary step, then paused again. Although the frigid wind had ceased to howl, a cold unease still caressed her skin.

She whispered to her nerves, “Grandmother is all right; of that I’m sure.” But still she hesitated, and finally moved—lightly—through the snow lest she should cause alarm.

“There’s nothing there save Grandmother,” she mumbled quietly, “who’s waiting for these magic cakes and me.” She strode across the yard, then up the steps, across the wooden porch and raised her hand to lift the latch—

But stopped.

She pressed her ear against the frozen door. No sound emerged. Thinking Grandmother might lay asleep—or worse, and wishing not to find her gone—she lightly tapped, waited for a reply, then turned away to leave.

“Come in, My Dear!” The voice sounded grizzled, less than sweet, and breathless, as if carried on the wind.

Red faced the door again, set her smile, then raised the wooden latch and pushed the door.

A glance around the room told a tale: the blazing fire, fueled by a large supply of wood, so precious to arthritic bones; the odor of the place—Hmm, the musty smell of leaves and trees and other forest things that would have been shut out by one so ill—and Grandmother herself, who looked the same:

Except inside through her bedeviled eyes.

Red smiled. “Oh Grandmother! I’ve brought some cakes from Mother, but you seem much better than we feared. Your voice is strong... so strong that I admit surprise at finding you in bed. Come sit with me and share these cakes; they’re good as Heaven’s light!”

She reached into the basket for a cake and quickly ate it, relishing the strength that surged through every fiber of her soul. She reached again.

The wolf smiled through Granny’s lips: “I do not wish for cakes, My Dear,” he said. “I only wish to have you here. Come and sit here with me on the bed. We’ll talk awhile. You must be weary from your trip. Come rest. Come sit with Grandma, Dear. I’ve room for you.”

But Red stayed where she was. “Oh Grandmother, I long to see your silver hair! May I remove your cap and wash your brow?” She smiled. “I promise to be gentle as before. Then we could share these lovely cakes I’ve brought before I have to leave. Could I adjust your pillows? Are your quilts pulled up too high?” She stood. “Here, let me fix them for you,” and she stepped toward the bed.

“No! No! The quilts are fine, as are the pillows as I have them now! But come.” The wolf gestured. “Come sit with me a little while. Then you can brush my hair if you desire.”

Red ate another cake, and the fire of strength and magic flowed through her veins. She reached for one more cake. “Grandmother Dear?” She bit into the cake, then bit again and felt it surging, strengthening her resolve. “Would you be angry if I spoke my mind? I never would upset you, as you know, but never have I seen a lazier one than you, all cuddled up beneath your quilts, not sick, but simply lazy, and more than well fed too, judging by that bulge. Get out of bed! Please? Come have a cake, and then I have to go!”

She took another bite and was transformed, but seemed no different to the wolfen eyes that glowed as coals before he spoke again: “You’ll go nowhere, my wretched Dear, whose tongue is thick with foolishness!”

He threw the quilts aside and sprang onto the floor, then stood and howled the same blood‑curdling howl that he had heard as Grandmother before. “You’ll go nowhere except to Hell with me!” He howled again.

Red shook her head. “Oh, this won’t do at all, Grandmother Dear!” She took another bite of magic cake, then stopped him with a glare. “It’s obvious the fever’s spent your will and turned your gentle mind from love to hate and light to dark, but we can break the spell. Before the sun appears again this fever will be gone!” She raised her arms and gestured. “Now sit!”

The wolf collapsed on the bed in a heap. He stared at her, unable to rise.

More quickly than she’d ever moved before, Red crossed the distance to Grandmother’s bed and laid her hands upon the wolfen eyes. She spoke without reserve and without fear: “These are the portals to the universe of which you are the center, Grandmother. And just as you control what you let in by opening and closing these eyes, so can you expel this one that’s come to fell your spirit and your soul.”

Red moved away. She locked the wolf in her own steady gaze, raised her hands and spoke again, empowered, free of care:

“To cast his shadow in the dead of night, there came upon the wind this evil one, in which there is no mercy and no light. Let all that he has wrought here be undone! And to this woman, pure of heart and soul, grant strength that she may live another day and peace that she may once again be whole and free of grievance. Keep her from the grave!”

The spell was cast, and as the final word fell from her mouth, our Little Red collapsed.

*

The sun rose, set, and rose again before Grandmother heard the tapping on the door. “I must have slept a week!” she said. “Come in! Come in! Is that you, Little Red?”

“Oh, Grandmother!” the little darling said. “It’s wonderful to see you feeling well! I’ve brought some cakes from Mother, but you seem much better than we feared! Your voice is strong! And are you well?”

Grandmother looked around and shook her head, as if to clear the cobweb of a sigh. “I’ve had a dream—an awful dream with wolves and demons and the like, you know—but everything is fine, or seems to be. Come sit with me! We’ll share your mother’s cakes and you can brush my hair. I’m glad you’ve come; it’s been so very long! Come now! Let’s sit and talk!”

Red joined her on the bed and brushed her hair, the silver of which seemed more vibrant than it had been for a long time. And as she brushed, they shared the cakes and spoke at length of flowers and the rest.

But they never spoke of mysteries and dread for lack of knowing what the other knew.

********

Author Note: There is also a poem version of this tale written predominantly in unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse). I originally wrote this one to turn in as an assignment in college. See all of my fiction at my online discount store.