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Don’t Wear Red by Stacey Lehane
A queer Little Red Riding Hood retelling
The forest is magnificent. Giant yew trees reach for the sky, their leaves sending dappled sunlight down toward the moss-covered floor like a parting gift. Even Shiloh can’t deny the majesty of the place, as much as she might have preferred the wood around her a little more dead, with four legs, and holding up a tankard of beer.
But alas, good things apparently come to those who wait. And wait. Shiloh sighs, pulling her pelt more securely around her as she shifts into a warmer patch of sunlight.
“Are you almost finished?” she asks. “It’s nearing dusk, my love.”
The nearest tree is a monster. As thick around as three broad men standing in a circle, arms outstretched, fingertip to fingertip. It hides Shiloh’s wife from view. Just.
When Kae rounds the trunk of the tree, she makes it look a fraction of its years just by virtue of the contrast.
“Almost,” Kae says, broad hands smoothing over the bark like she’s soothing a spooked horse. “The bairn is sick with heart rot, the poor thing. I need to shore her up before it gets worse.”
Shiloh can’t find it in herself to be annoyed. Kae’s described heart rot enough for her to have some sympathy for the poor tree. And it doesn’t hurt that seeing her wife full of care makes a puddle out of her.
“It’s a good thing I enjoy watching you work,” Shiloh says, unable to help her soft smile. “Because it’s all you do.”
Kae looks to her, sharing the smile for a moment before her eyes snap suddenly back to her charge.
Shiloh tenses on instinct. “What?”
Kae’s alert, but not reaching for her axe. Shiloh relaxes her hold on her pelt but keeps it in hand for swift action anyway.
“There’s a girl in the forest,” Kae says. “Small. Alone. The… the trees are agitated.”
“Over a girl?” Shiloh says, confusion reflected in the look Kae sends her. “That’s a new one.”
Kae turns her attention back to her patient. “I’m almost finished here, then we can-”
“I’ll go on ahead,” Shiloh says, stretching her back out as she stands. “I’ve been sitting too long anyway, I’m going to grow moss.”
Kae doesn’t pick up the thread of the joke, looking as agitated as the trees around her must be. “I don’t…”
“I’ll be okay,” Shiloh says, stepping forward to clasp her wife’s hand between hers. “I have my pelt. I’ll even take my wrap-”
“No,” Kae says quickly, stopping Shiloh with a hand on her wrist as she reaches for their pack. “Don’t wear red.”
Shiloh raises an eyebrow. “That’s not what you said the other night, my love.”
And oh yes, now who’s wearing red? Shiloh grins as she uses her grip to pull Kae within reach, pecking her on one rosey cheek.
“It’s the trees,” Kae says, brushing a strand of Shiloh’s dark hair from her face. “They’re saying, don’t wear red.”
“How judgemental of them,” Shiloh says, but leaves her red wrap safely in their pack anyway.
- - -
Tracking the girl isn’t difficult. She smells of hay and woodsmoke, a combination that is as much out of place as her humanity this far into the woods. Shiloh hangs back, employing more caution than she would have otherwise, her wife’s worried frown at the fore of her mind.
The girl is indeed alone. Shiloh closes the distance between them until she can spy the girl’s back through the trees. Her hooded cloak is flapping around her ankles as she walks.
Her hooded red cloak.
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Merry Holidays! Have another queer twisted fairytale!
Thanks, as always and forever, to my lovely patrons who make these forays into fiction possible. You’re the wind beneath my sporadically posting wings <3
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