RED | A dark retelling of Red Riding Hood | WATTYS 2021 SHORTLIST

Chapter Twenty-Three: Wicked is Wicked

They traveled through the tree at speed which rivaled the moments Marjorie spent on Fenris's back. Where he rushed through the forest with long, graceful strides gentle enough to keep her balanced, everything was thrown off kilter with the witch. When she rode on the Wolf, the air wrapped around her face and arms in a quick, sweeping hello.

This was not the same.

Vivian's movements were harsh, cutting sharply against the wind like a dull knife attempting to move through bone—no matter how hard one pushed, it would never be a clean cut. The witch was not meant to fly, and she did not.

She scaled the Scrub Oak with one nimble hand, the other clutched tightly in Marjorie's hair, forcing her to cling to the taller woman. Her long legs threaded through thick brambles, somehow allowing her feet to find purchase on limbs thick enough to hold and propel their weight upward.

Marjorie clutched the woman's tunic, her knuckles turning a tight white from the desperation in her grasp. It was a long way down to the bottom, and each time she glanced down with wild eyes to shout for help, her voice always died on her lips. Heights did not scare the girl. It was the falling that did.

No ravens came to help. What remained of them were tattered and shaking on a low branch. Their inky gaze caught on Vivian's animal-like quickness before they fluttered off to the red sky. It was as though the villagers knew, just as Marjorie did, that this was the end.

They reached the topmost branch, although it could almost be categorized nothing more than a mere twig. It swayed nervously from their collective weight, allowing Marjorie to feel the sick sway in her stomach that always came with falling.

She peered over the edge, between all the red leaves, to discover the distance to the ground was at least thrice the length of her cliff dive. Below, there was only thistles to catch her plunging body.

This time, falling meant death.

Below, Petyr began his desperate ascending. He would never make it in time.

Marsella, too, was gone. All that remained of where she once stood was a black cloak. Back to the veil. Marjorie blinked away tears at the thought—another wordless goodbye, another too-quick hello. When her mother's words fell across her cheek, the strange temperature confirmed her fears. Marsella was never here to stay. Instead, she was here to complete a journey—lead her stubborn daughter to fate. And fate tasted so bitter this high, closer to the coldness of the moon.

Marjorie finally forced herself to drag her gaze to where Fenris lay, splayed out on the ground— face toward the sky, arms outstretched, and chest shallowly breathing. The distance may be too far to catch his eyes following her, but even from the top of the Scrub Oak, she knew his golden stare remained on her. It always was.

"Shall we test if you can fly like your little beastie?" Vivian asked. Her breath fanned over Marjorie's cheeks like a tingling, icy touch.

The witch yanked her hand from where it nestled tightly against the roots of Marjorie's hair to clutch at the clasped collar of her red cloak. It stung to feel pressure push against her tender neck, but Marjorie did not move away from the pain. Her entire weight strained against the fabric. The single thing holding Marjorie above a one-hundred-foot drop was the strength of a single bone button on her cloak.

A thread ripped at the nape of her neck in a feeble attempt to push back against the natural pull of gravity. Marjorie lunged back an inch, but it was enough to pump fear through her body. Every part of her body buzzed, the natural response to a flight or fight. Or fall.

"You look scared," Vivian's mocking words curled into her ear. "Don't worry, it will not hurt. This is the kindest death anyone could give you."

Marjorie tried to grasp her fingers around the woman's shoulders but Vivian slapped her touch away. She yanked her hands away, skin stinging from the briskness of the hit.

"After you are dead, I think the Wolf will be next," she taunted, the heat of her words a contrast against the chill of her breath. "I will take your little Woodsman, and together, we will drag that axe straight through Fenris's heart." She pushed Marjorie an inch out farther, until just the tips of her toes touched the shaky sureness of a branch. "Do you know how many times I will do that?"

Marjorie remained silent, not trusting her voice to answer.

"Two-hundred and twenty-two times," she revealed. Something desperate reflected in the dark calm of Vivian's eyes, a flicker of amber that was harder and older than the rest of the darkness surrounding her. Something unmistakably different. "Do you know why, little Spark?"

That was it—the strange, broken glimmer in her gaze.

Love.

A sick, twisted kind, that spent the last century rotting.

"He killed your daughter," Marjorie whispered almost breathlessly. "He killed her two-hundred and twenty-two times. You—" she froze suddenly, horrified at her sudden realization. "You took just as many lives."

Vivian's silence confirmed her guilt.

"Raising your daughter is a mistake, Vivian," Marjorie rushed out through the tight grit of her teeth. "I know there is good in you, there has to be," but she whispered the words more to herself. No one clung to love without a seed of goodness. No one could. "You loved her and... and you wanted to save her. I—I do not know who she was before that darkness took her, but Vivian, please understand. She must not exist. She is not meant to exist."

"You are not meant to exist," Vivian said in a harsh hiss, but in all the anger tight in her voice, a shiny glimmer covered her gaze.

"You are right," Marjorie whispered. "I am not. But I understand the guilt. Lives were taken for me. Do you wish for her to live like this? With enough heaviness in her chest to hate herself?"

"I wish for her to live." Vivian jolted forward, pushing her face almost flush against Marjorie's.

Less than a centimeter of her boot remained on the branch, causing Marjorie to teeter softly from side to side, as if she were a babe softly coaxed into sleep.

"I know," she rushed out, desperate for another second where this didn't end up the way it would—with her dead in the thistles below. "I know, Vivian, what is like to lose." She took a deep breath. "I have lost my family, too."

"No, you have not. You have a Woodsman who will die for you, a Wolf who will kill for you," Vivian sneered. "I have nothing. Fenris took my only tether, the only gift I received. But I do not expect a child to understand."

She moved to extend her hand out, to finally let Marjorie plunge, but paused.

"The Wolf has killed for you. There are no sides for you here. Wicked is wicked and good is good. You... you are good, I can tell—I can smell it. I was not always a monster—love made me one. And your Fenris is the same, a Wolf in sheep's clothing."

"And what does that make me?" Marjorie asked, blood pumping to her cheeks.

"A lamb led to slaughter."

"Perhaps you are right," Marjorie whispered, her eyes fixated on anything but the waiting ground below. She settled her gaze on Vivian, and although there was unkindness in her gaze, Marjorie searched between the delicate bubbles of amber for that seedling of love.

Now, she found nothing.

"Perhaps you are right," Marjorie whispered. "There is nothing between wicked and good. Perhaps this is what we are meant to be. Red."

She accepted her fate.

And took Fenris's concealed dagger from her cloak and plunged its sharp, silver tongue into the soft belly of Vivian's stomach. 

AN: 

I'm sorry if I'm breaking your heart but it is thrilling for me.