Page 89 of Little Red Riding Hood
Her expression shifted again, joy crumbling into something raw and wounded. Tears spilled down her wrinkled cheeks as grief crashed over her features. Her hands trembled against the fabric.
“All this time…” she whispered, her voice breaking between elation and accusation. “My son!”
Red’s legs gave out. The rough floorboards rushed up to meet him as his knees buckled. The cottage walls spun, and black spots danced at the edges of his vision.
This wasn’t real.
This must be the fault of the spores of those poisonous toadstools they’d seen earlier in the Dark Forest. This was nothing but a fever dream—some twisted hallucination where a witch claimed to be his mother.
His mother.
The same mother who’d abandoned him on the palace steps. The same mother… he’d been sent to kill?
Red’s chest constricted. Each breath came shorter than the last, his lungs refusing to expand properly. His vision tunnelled until all he could see was Old Oma’s face, those mismatched eyes—hishazelnut eye—staring down at him.
Strong hands gripped his shoulders. Wim’s face swam into view as he kneeled in front of Red, blocking out the witch.
“Red, eyes on me. Listen to my voice.” Wim’s hands moved to cup Red’s face. “Match my breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Red tried to follow Wim’s exaggerated breathing, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. His heart hammered against his ribs as if trying to escape.
“That’s it. One more.” Wim pressed their foreheads together. “Just like that. Keep going.”
“Let’s go, Wim. Now!” Red cried. “Get me out of here!”
Because he’d waited all his life to meet his mother, and he refused to let it be this mad old witch.
He’d prefer to stay orphaned.
Red’s vision continued to swim as his brain fought to process what was happening. Wim’s solid presence beside him was the only thing keeping him from completely losing his grip on reality.
“Explain, now!” Wim barked.
Old Oma backed away, her earlier manic energy fading into something softer as she gazed at Red. “Red. Is that your name? I can’t believe you’ve come back to me!”
“He was sent to kill you,” Wim’s voice cut through the air. “By the Queen. With that arrow. The Queen said you were the one causing the famine, and that if Red killed you, he’d fix everything.”
A bitter laugh escaped Old Oma’s lips, sharp and cold as winter frost. “What a brilliant tale. All lies, I’m afraid.” Her eyes—one white, one creepily familiar—narrowed. “She always did enjoy her games. But this one… keeping my son alive for twenty-four winters, just so she could send him to kill me?”
Red’s mouth went dry. The words scraped past his lips: “You… know Queen Schön?”
“Knowher?” Old Oma’s face twisted into something ugly. “She’s my sister!”
Red tried to breathe, he really did, but his efforts were futile. The sweet-rot smell of the cottage pressed in around him, and the firelight from the massive hearth seemed to spin, casting wild shadows.
“No.” The word came out small, his usual cutting tone failing him. “You’re lying.”
“My son!” She reached towards him with one bony hand.
“Don’t!” Red’s hand flew up, warding her off. His fingers caught the edge of his red riding hood—his mother’s hood, the one thing she’d supposedly left him with—and he yanked it closer, as if it could shield him from this truth. “She sent me to… She wanted me to…”
Old Oma took another step towards him. “My boy—”
“I’m not your boy!” The words tore from his throat, raw and ragged. They echoed off the cottage walls, bouncing back at him from between the hanging dried herbs and grotesque jars. “I was abandoned. Left on the palace steps like—like rubbish!” But even as he said it, twenty-four winters of confusion started sliding into horrible clarity. The Queen’s particular brand of cruelty. The way she’d always looked at him with such calculating eyes. How she’d nurtured his hatred of imperfection, of his own eyes, while keeping him close enough to use.
My whole quest was a lie. My whole life was a lie.
“She knew,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the crackling hearth. “This whole time, she knew.”
