Deliciously Deadly: a Red Riding Hood retelling

Chapter 4

The first few weeks of Lottie's marriage were everything she'd ever dreamed of and more. Part of it might've been that she had never dared to dream of very much, but how could someone like her have thought that she could be with someone like Cain?

As it turned out, he was the "half-breed" new farmer that Willa and Drea had spoken of, who'd just moved into the dilapidated old farm that he had inherited from a distant uncle.

His less-than-humble abode was home to more weeds than grass and wooden fencing with more rotten bits than not, but it was also situated at the edge of the village and the woods. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere away from village activity.

She'd expected the old cottage to be infested with rats and bugs, but it seemed Cain had already put the effort into making it clean and cosy prior to her arrival. With a hearth that built a strong fire, a simple but sturdy table next to the window, and even a bed behind a dividing wall, it was everything she could have asked for. It was perfection.

Given the state of the farmstead, the pair spent many of their first days together working on the land and its fixtures. While she pulled the weeds and planted new patches of flowers and vegetables, he chopped the wood and built new fences, new window shutters, and a new workbench for himself. Once all that was done, he bought a couple of cows and chickens, and she tended to them while he tilled the soil.

From sun-up to sun-down, they worked. Life on a farm was taxing but gratifying. It was perfection.

By noon each day, when the sun glared down, relentless even in autumn, he would invariably get so hot that his sweat would soak through his shirt.

At that point, he would invariably check around him to see if Lottie was nearby. If she was, he would continue as he was in a shirt that clung to the muscles of his back and chest, leaving little to her increasingly rampant imagination. A few too many times, he caught her staring mid-whatever she was doing, but he would respond only with a sweet and indulgent smile that made her feel so warm she would suspect if she'd caught a fever.

Then once she headed back inside, he would invariably pull off his drenched shirt, and she would invariably peek out at him through the shutters, her eyes wide and curious as she examined the perfect specimen of a hardworking man. It was more than perfection.

If you were to ask any resident of Wilkin around this time, they would tell you that Lottie and Cain were very fine, very productive members of their community, who lived a perfectly ordinary life like all the rest of them.

Some of them might also tell you a little more, like the fact that she was ugly because of her scar of stupidity, and he was ugly because he was a brown foreigner, though that was perhaps why they were a match for each other.

No, don't frown when you hear this, because they would most certainly assure you that the villagers of Wilkin were very accepting people and that was why they had not ostracised either of them. "Ma brother's sister's cousin's wife has a friend who knows someone two villages over from Wilkin, ya know, and they would throw ya to the wolves if they found out ye were even a quarter Qeyean. Disloyal t' the kingdom 'n all that. We're a lot more open-minded here, ye see."

I guess the message there is that Wilkinians are relatively good eggs, all things considered. (And should you believe them? Don't ask me. I'm just the narrator.)

But these were the sorts of things that Lottie sometimes heard when she visited her grandmother and the local traders. In the past, such words would have torn her heart to shreds. At the height of her happiness and hopes for the future, their words washed over her like rainwater to gather at her feet in a dirty puddle. She could choose to step into it and let it splash over her favourite red boots, or she could step over it and leave it behind. It was her choice, and she relished the power of having that choice.