The Wolf's Song

The Red Riding Hood And Her Protector Wolf

Diana

A small pang of pain went through my head the next morning as I opened my eyes and began to wake up. The memory of what happened added to all the conversations, and especially the looks of Michael, whose eyes had followed me through my dreams, somehow protecting me from the nightmares that threatened to return whenever I fell asleep.

My hair this morning was a mess from the thousand tossings and turning I had done in bed, but what a remedy. I got up, getting out of the initial confusion of waking up in the small room that Martha, my grandmother, had set aside for me, going straight to the bathroom, while thinking about how strange it was to miss Michael’s sheets, soft and impregnated with his scent.

I brushed my teeth and cleaned myself up a bit, then went downstairs, with my thoughts scrambled and at the same time smelling the aroma of breakfast wafting through the air.

“Good morning, darling, would you like something to eat?” Martha, my grandmother said.

I still thought of her by her first name, though aloud I addressed her as my grandmother.

I nodded as I sat down at the table. She placed a steaming cup in front of me and I drank, grateful for the brew. Martha was a tea fanatic, and somehow it always helped soothe my troubles, no matter what they were as if she could guess what was troubling me just by reading my face.

She began to hum as breakfast was served. She placed a bowl of oatmeal before me and allowed me to take a bite or two in silence before sitting down next to me and asking the obvious.”So, how are you feeling after what happened?”

I wanted to say a thousand and one things, but I really didn’t know how to answer.”Well, I guess. Everything is... overwhelming.”

“It’s a lot to process,” she agreed, patting my hand empathetically.”A lot to take in. The world you live in has become, somehow bigger.”

“So you say,” I agreed in a whisper, thinking in my inner self of all the events of the past few days.

Martha smiled sweetly at me and then her gaze changed. She reached a hand to my neck, caressing with a finger the pendant she had given me when I was just a little girl, which bore a small violet flower resting inside the resin.

“It’s lucky you didn’t take off the pendant,” Martha said as I looked at it myself. The chain was silver. The truth was that I had never stopped to think about the reason for the flower and its meaning. When I was little, I thought it was just a nice detail from my grandmother, but now I thought it had another purpose.

“It’s an aconite flower,” I said, and she nodded. “Why did you give me an aconite flower on a silver chain, Grandma?” With a raised eyebrow, I looked at her, expectantly. Martha smiled, with her always enigmatic gestures.

“Because I know better than you the dangers that dwell in the night,” she answered with mystery.

“Werewolves,” I said.

“You mean shapeshifters, my dear. Werewolves are a different thing altogether.”

She stood up then, taking the empty cup of infusion with her. I couldn’t help but look at her with deep curiosity.

“And you know all this because...?” I asked in the most innocent way possible. Most grandmothers know how to knit or bake cookies, but not many of them talk about flowers that are poisonous to wolves.

“Because knowing is the only way to keep you protected,” She replied. I frowned. Martha never answered my questions directly.

“Anyway, I guess I should start carrying garlic cloves in my pockets. You know, for protection,” I replied. She laughed loudly. She walked over to me and looked at me gently.

“I doubt vampires should be your concern now, but shapeshifters are something else. You’ll discover as time goes on that many of the stories you’ve heard are more real than you realize. That’s why I need you to never take this pendant off. It will protect you even in the worst of times.”

I stared at her, frustrated inside, but understanding the essential truth of her words: What I had seen in the forest was real. Not a bear, but something else… something that belongs to the legends.

“You’re not going to tell me what I want to know, are you?” I breathed in, slightly frustrated.

“Not today,” Grandmother answered, and I couldn’t help but sigh in return.

“In that case, I’m leaving for a while. I guess I’ll go do a little research.” I chided.

She waved goodbye as I walked out the front door. Part of me thought I saw a certain satisfaction in her looks as if she liked to fill my head with doubts, but she couldn’t be that cruel, could she?

I then started walking around town, trying to decide what to do and thinking that the best thing would be to go to the library, which would surely have a whole section dedicated only to shifter myths; the problem was that I didn’t know where the heck it was located.

So I started to wander while looking at the phone Michael had given me to keep in touch. I smiled, wondering whether I should write to him or not, and as I wondered, a voice caught me off guard.

“Excuse me, miss, are you lost?”

I turned around, following the direction of the voice, and found a tall man, about thirty years old, handsome and with dark hazel hair, wearing glasses and a scarf around his neck.

“Eh... I think so,” I declared. In truth, I had been wandering without putting a fixed direction to my steps.

“I can help you if you like,” the man said in response, smiling and switching to English when he noticed my accent. “Where do you want to go?”

“To the library,” I smiled in response, and he began to guide me as he walked with me. It was not usual for me to trust a stranger at first, but this man gave me a certain feeling of security.

“Are you here on vacation?” he asked kindly.

“Yes. I went for a while to visit my grandmother.” I looked away then, noticing my cell phone ringing. It’s a text message from Michael asking how my morning was going. I smiled and hurried to answer.

“Be careful then not to get lost in the woods, Little Red Riding Hood. There are many wolves in the area,” said the stranger. I smiled at the precise mention.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I answered.

“By the way, the library is just around that corner,” he stated.

“Thank you so much for guiding me...” I paused. I had no idea of his name.

“Francis,” he answered, by way of introduction. He held out a hand in a friendly manner and I shook it.

“Diana, it’s a pleasure,” I affirmed, and he started to turn around, leaving me in the corner.

“The pleasure is mine. I’ll see you again,” he said, a safe assumption considering Bamberg was a small town.

I then approached the public library but found it closed. Something else caught my eye: the edge of the forest was literally across the street. It was just a matter of jumping over a small fence that reached below my waist to enter the thicket.

“Did you make it to the library?” Michael asked in one of his messages, referring to my previous message.

I found myself about to reply, but my gaze was lost in the forest. Only now did I remember that this path was the same one we had taken before going deeper into the forest the night of the attack.

“Diana...?” Michael asked in his next message.

“The library is closed, but I guess there are other places I can go,” I replied as I crossed the street to go deeper into the forest.

“Where will you go?” he asked, but I put my cell phone away, knowing that if I answered what I was thinking, “To the place where it all started,” it probably isn’t a good idea.

But Michael didn’t have to know. No one had to, only me since this was my business. The nightmares had been following me from the moment I crossed my path with the forest, so I planned to lead those ghosts back to the place where I had found them.