Dark and Deepest Red(33)

At the memory, her skin feels cold as hail. But she walks on. She cannot stop for the night, not yet. And she dares not light a candle so soon, both in case the journey is longer than she expects and in case its flare announces her to brigands roaming the woods.

And the noble sons from nearby estates.

When Lala hears the crunch of footsteps in the undergrowth, it is both of these that she thinks of. The thieves who would lift her skirts to make sure she isn’t hiding anything they might steal. And the young heirs on horseback, hunting both women and stags, who would ignore her pockets but lift her skirts anyway.

“I see something,” a man’s voice says. Not a warning. A hope. A light fills his voice.

He steadies his horse.

Lala’s breath turns to a living thing in her throat, a bird caught in an attic.

“Where?” another man asks, bringing his mount to a stop.

The horses’ hooves quiet.

Lala’s heart grows into a hard knot.

Hunters.

They have the refined, cheerful cadences of highborn men who kill for sport, not food.

She stays still.

But of course they will expect their prey to stay still. A fawn, or yearling bear.

There is no good in announcing herself as a woman. To such men, she would simply become prey of a different kind.

The dark undergrowth seems to move. Forms emerge closer to the ground, sinewy bodies on four legs. The fur at the points of their ears glints silver.

The animals have coats as deep and beautiful as the best ink she has ever made. Their teeth clatter in their jaws, and their eyes glow like alder leaves in full sun.

Their gait sounds in the dark, eyes shining through the trees.

“Wolves,” one of the men says. Fear chases the joy from his voice.

The wolves’ frightening beauty halts Lala’s breath. But the way they come, steady and slow, lets her meet them with the calm of old friends. She is like the old stories Tante has told her about sailors who both love and fear the ocean. These wolves hold the awe and wonder of endless blue waves.

“Go,” the other man says, and they drive on their horses. “There’s a pack of them.”

From the elm and oak darkness, the wolves show themselves, one muscled frame at a time.

And with them, a boy who was born with a map of the woods on his heart, a boy who seemed to appear from the branches of a crab apple tree years ago.





Rosella


Once I heard the click of my parents turning off lamps, I snuck back down to the workroom.

I traced my fingers along the shoes my parents were working on, kept on wooden forms to hold their shapes. A peridot-green set meant for a dance recital. A pair for a wedding, the candlelight satin an exact match to the bride’s gown. A third in royal blue, a cross between a dancing shoe and a vintage heel. Two almost-identical pairs, one deep yellow, one the orange of marigolds, were flecked with bright yellow beads that looked like they were glowing, pairs a mother bought her daughters for Diwali.

And red ones. Always a few pairs of red shoes. Especially this year.

I stood on tiptoes on a chair, feeling around for the seam ripper without taking down the sewing box.

This was how I would end this. Like my grandparents, I would tear apart the work of my own hands.

I went at the red shoes, driving the seam ripper into the veins along the vamp and side quarters. I hooked it into any thread loop I could find along the casing and the wings.

With each pull of the seam ripper, I thought I could feel it, the tearing apart of these shoes mapped onto my own body.

I kept on. I went at them harder. I found every seam I’d made myself, every place I’d sewn the red cloth back together, and I dragged the seam ripper through the stitches.

But with the next pull of the metal hook, a shock of new pain struck me, like I was tearing the seams of my own heart. The inside of me was ripping into shreds.

And within that bloom of pain, the shoes sparked back to life.

They felt like hands beneath my feet, pushing me off the ground, turning me, driving me out of the workroom.

I thought they would throw me into the back door, until the wind’s own hands seemed to swing it open. The air outside howled and tore at the tree branches.

The red shoes drove me out into the night, and the world blurred into the smell of highway and far-off fields.

They dragged me farther away, my heart tight as a knot of thread.

My hair whipped into my face. By the time I cleared it, the far light over my parents’ front steps had disappeared behind me, quiet and quick as a sleight of hand.

The shoes kept going, pulling me over the ground like a child’s doll.

I was that music box ballerina, made for twirling.

I was a falling-star streak of blood red.





Strasbourg, 1518


Alifair adds kindling to the fire.

He still does not speak to her, and has not spoken since he appeared, bringing the wolves with him.

She cannot work out whether they followed him, or he followed them. They walked alongside each other in a way that was both vigilant and familiar.

Lala breaks what they have gathered into pieces. “How did you find me?”

“I could guess where you were going.”

“And why did you come?”

He prods the fire. “Because whatever you may believe, your aunt and I aren’t so stupid as to let you go all the way to Saverne and back on your own.”