Red

I.

It was a trip that the young woman had made often enough—though the woods were dense and deep, she whistled merrily in a place where even the rare gloaming puddles of sunlight fell in hushed heaps. She always stood out, that girl draped in red velvet finery over faded calico and muslin. She wasn’t much more than a bare slip of a thing, certainly too small and young to be parading about a forest so dark without a care, without a reason to fear, and absolutely alone to boot. There had been more than enough reasons for a little girl to avoid the forest’s embrace before, but that was becoming all rather long ago, and those thoughts about why were tidily compartmentalized away in her pretty little head—and honestly, she supposed that she was not very much of a little girl now. No, acquaintance with darkness had forced an early metamorphosis. It ruined her, but made her safe in the seeping, subtle, jealous ways of the night. She had been claimed by the shadows and the light both--no one else had ever walked the Forbidden Forest with as little care as she.

In her solitude, she thought that it might be considered her own fault, really, that she could walk openly where no one else would dare. She had never questioned the dark haired stranger who had appeared at the edge of the clearing near the family’s cottage, never asked her parents (or her bevy of siblings) exactly who the man was, or why he was there. He had called himself “friend”, and that was enough for a tender hearted witch at the age of 11. He was a jealously kept secret, this person whose attention she didn’t have to share. And he wormed his way into her sunlit mind, carefully harrowing up her heart and planting the deadly seeds in hopes of bearing dark fruit. Like a strangler fig, he wanted his ideas to take root and grow, grow until she was entombed in their suffocating embrace. But she saw none of that, at least, not until it was too late. To her eyes, he was another lonely soul, a kindred spirit who was more than just a little but lonely—he kept to the shadows and taught her how to survive in them as well.

Her parents were just woodcutters, if magic ones, and they enjoyed living a simple life in their ramshackle cottage overflowing with redheaded children. If one child, even their dear little girl child, was a bit quieter, a bit more inclined to be on her own, well, that was something of a boon, was it not? A little Dark magic was to be expected out here in the barely tamed wilderness, so it really wasn’t all that unusual for there to be a bit of residue here and there—that the Dark magic followed Ginny like iron filings seeking a magnet went unnoticed until it was almost too late. By then, her hair and smile had both grown lank and wan as she began to fade away. Her large brown eyes had been haunted for some time already when her body utterly collapsed and her mind retreated to a fevered abyss. She had lain in the forest in a sleep so deep and terrible that, when she was found, her parents had begun to mourn her and harvest the flowers for her bier. And then, when the silver bearded stranger appeared, they had begun to hope, though he was terrible in his anger and relentless in his quest to drive out the shadows. For he was the first among them to see the man in the shadows as what he was—a parasitic creature feeding off of her magic, her life, his search for dominion seeking a hold within her mind, waiting for his dark ideas were meant to take root and suffocate her.

And so the old man began with fire, burning and purifying the beloved copse of old trees that made up so much of the woodwright, driving out the Dark stranger. He burned with fire, and yet he could not make it pure-- though this let the sunlight shine all the more brightly in the Weasley family clearing, the silver stranger was powerless to do anything about the shadows cast by the greater forest beyond, or the shadows that had already taken root in the girl’s mind. When he had banished the man in the shadows, the girl awoke from her slumber. The silver stranger had framed the girl’s face with his hands and looked deep in her mind, but he could not understand. The shadowed man had no more hold over the girl, but her mind was no longer brightly lit. Instead, sun-dappled shadows populated her head. He could not understand it, for a creature who lives only in the brightness of day can only understand dark as the absence of light. It did not make sense to him that she had survived at all--indeed, he believed that she should have died in the forest. And so he had released her with a sigh, not understanding the deeper magic that ran in the forest, the magic that makes seeds sprout in the dark of the earth, that turns dead things into life-giving loam, the magic that would claim and protect the girl as its own, whether she chose to walk in the light or the dark.

Even the girl did not understand it, not really. She only knew that she had experienced deep and abiding terror before, and this—this walking under the hulking spread of ancient trees—was no part of that. She was embraced, and safer than she had any right to be. And so six years passed, and her family forgot the worst of it as the memories began to be buried deep under new little concerns and thoughts from each passing day. The girl grew into a woman, into her name, Ginevra. And when she reached the age where most of the women in the nearby village began to be courted, to be married, to be swollen with child, she left her parents humble home for a ramshackle little dwelling all her own, just a short morning’s walk away from her childhood home. And yet, it was worlds away, for her little hut was encircled by the forest that everyone else dreaded. She told herself that it didn’t matter, that she didn’t feel the loss of a suitor or the simple life she knew that her parents had planned for her from birth. If she grew a little restless at times, she would firmly tell herself that it was nothing, that it had nothing to do with loneliness.

And yet, the forest knew.

It knew, in the ways of ancient living magic, that this dear little one that lived in its leafy embrace held an aching heart in her breast. The songs that had once spilled from her throat in a joyful chorus with the birds in the canopy had become rare. Her tears watered the ferns around her humble home more frequently now. And though she whistled merrily today, it was a lover’s ballad, and there was no one to whistle the harmony back to her but a few birds on the nest.

Perhaps the ancient magic of the forest would not have stirred so strongly had it not been spring, the season of lovers and life, but it had a way of coaxing the most reluctant flowers into full bloom. A young girl, with roses in her cheeks and hair the color of ripe strawberries, wouldn’t be all that different, given time and the right circumstances.

II.

For the third time that day, Ginevra—Ginny, to those who loved her best—found herself walking a strange path. She wrinkled her nose absently, throwing back the hood of her velvet cloak and glaring at her surroundings, but most especially at the meandering game trail she found herself treading. This was hardly the way to the little glade with the tiniest, sweetest strawberries she had ever tasted in her life. She had meant to collect them as a special surprise for Charlie, who was visiting their parents. He came closest to understanding Ginny’s choice to live in the wilderness; she always felt she owed him a great debt for that, one that she tried to make up by sharing the treasures of her forest. But this was not the little dell with strawberries run amok. Here were the old apple trees, their gnarled limbs just budding out and filling the air with the sweet promise of fruit come fall. The path was old and loamy beneath her feet—and all wrong for where she thought she had been going. This was a way vaguely familiar, something half-remembered, a fragment of a dream, she thought, as the path turned downwards.

But this was not at all the way that she had meant to come. And yet, it was the third time this day that her feet had turned to this path. Each time, she had gone a little further down the steeply sloping trail before realizing she wasn’t going where she had meant to, until now, when she stood at the mouth of a deep gully, cut into the dark soil by the river. Ahead, the path dove down towards a grassy little clearing, but her vision was limited by the walls of soil that rose up around her on both sides. She strained her ears, but the only sound that she could hear was the mild murmuring of a diminished brook as it spilled over the rocks by her feet. She paused, worrying her lip with her teeth. She could turn back.

She could turn back and go home. It wasn’t that late yet, just barely dusk, and she knew there would be enough of a moon tonight to allow her to pick her way back to her little ramshackle home.

And then not ever find out the why and where and what of this journey; she could fair feel the magic tingling on her skin, feeding her insatiable curiosity.

It would be simpler to turn around. Unsatisfied curiosity she could live with, and hadn’t it already gotten her into full enough trouble already?

But a few more steps wouldn’t—couldn’t—hurt, not here, where the trees stood sentinel over her. Not where the shadows cloaked her like the embrace of an old friend. And a few steps was nothing she wouldn’t undo by turning around and darting back the way she came, like the silver-sided minnows in the stream at her feet.

And in just a few steps, she’d round the bend, anyway, and then she’d turn back. After she’d gotten a very good look around that grassy little clearing.

The magic in the air pulled again, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Just two more steps towards the steeply sloped path leading down into the peaceful little glen. Then one more—her foot landed on the loose gravel and she pitched forward. She threw her hands in front of her to break her fall, the scree slicing her palms to ribbons. Ginny scrabbled desperately for purchase, but her own blood made the rocks slippery and she tumbled down the slope. One, two, three rotations--her cloak and hair flying wildly and her breath escaping from her in a desperate little squeak of fear--before her forehead connected sharply with a smooth slab of limestone. With great effort, she rolled herself on to her back before the dizzy trepidation overwhelmed her and her world faded to black.
Blood trickled slowly from her creamy forehead and mangled palms as the hours passed. Sunset’s warm glow warmed and then passed over her senseless features, deathly pale against the fiery nimbus of her hair and cloak. Dusk fell and the moon rose, painting the little glen in somber blue hues as a chill night wind rose. Its cold fingers picked and pulled restlessly at her hair, her cloak, the grass… and at the long white fur of the wolf that had suddenly appeared at the ridge, silver eyes gleaming with the reflection of a full moon.

The hulking beast paused a moment before he loped down the ridge, so graceful that he might as well have been a ghost gliding down the low slope, except for the slight swish the grass made as it parted for his heavy paws. He lifted his muzzle and inhaled deeply, wet black nose twitching as he sorted through the scents on the breeze. Human, fear, blood… and something else. Something barely remembered, some memory of a scent that was hidden behind a wall of primal instinct. It was something important, he knew, all the way down to his bones. Something to do with the human form that he had put off.

He jogged forward again, sliding from shadows to moonlight effortlessly as he circled towards the bottom of the glen. The vulnerable figure at the heart of the valley’s depression was clear now, her stark white features nearly glowing against the backdrop of the dark grass.

He approached slowly, sinking into a stalking crouch. It never paid to be careless with a human—or any other predator—and yet, despite the primitive part of his brain telling him to turn away, he felt himself drawn to the supine form.

He slunk closer. Now he could see the shallow rise and fall of her chest, like the slow rhythm of the ocean tide. Closer, and he could make out the spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and forehead, marred by the rivulets of dried blood.

Closer, and he was near enough to close his jaws around her tender white throat. He lowered his muzzle to her face, his great fearsome fangs so close to her tender flesh as he breathed in her scent.

And then her eyes fluttered open.