Rose received the letter on fall’s first evening, a blue and mysterious time. She dawdled in her study, going through the postman’s deliveries for Aunt Lorette, who sat snoozing in the knitting room. Rose did this whenever the stagnation of classroom lectures on celibacy and chores of the household left her body with the sundown jitters and made sleep an anxious task. She had plenty of privacy from maids and family here at the front of the house. Besides, cousin Samuel and little Fay had gone to market for bread and moonlit hopscotch on the cobblestone square.

Her letter was from grandmother, the witch. Villagers called her The Hag of the Woods, for she lived at the center of the Forest of Frost, where it never snowed or rained, but was always dense with icy mist. Many years ago, she’d been exiled for heresy. With an ability to see the future—something others called a smartness—and having witnessed a horrible ruin made of the village, the witch warned her neighbors of The Governess, a gangly woman of thirty, and her foul political goals—whatever exactly they might be.

Rose was not allowed to see grandmother, and nor was anyone else; the Governess commanded this by law. She ran the village with such a fist of iron that all its inhabitants dared not attempt to so much as question her methods. Rose wouldn’t even suspect trouble on the horizon if it weren’t for her grandmother. They had many secret meetings in the middle of the night, though never when there was school the next day. Rose would skip to the house in the woods to eat cake and practice her letters and numbers, which she wasn’t allowed to do at home. Their relationship was as sweet as the goodies Rose carried in her wicker basket.

            The witch, however, always had a shadow hanging over her, one that Rose could detect more and more as she grew older. It wasn’t until she received this letter, a fortnight into her 13th year, that everything came together.

            It wrote of war. The witch had always been suspicious of The Governess’s political ambitions, yes. But it wasn’t until lately that she’d discovered the actual blueprints to raid the other villages in the valley come All Hallow’s Eve, to plunder their silks and rubies, the precious things that came down the river on ships with wings. The witch would stop the battle no matter what—save if her body lay cold in the dirt.

            Rose could help.

When the witch was banished, she’d left behind some special materials in her bedroom, the one to the left of Rose’s. Only now did she truly know what to do with them. If they were back in her possession, The Governess could be stopped. Rose could learn the rest of the plan in person. First, however, she was to deliver three items in her covered basket: a poisoned apple, never dying, a silver dagger, ever polished, and an old pair of golden spectacles. Bring them to the witch as fast as she could and tell no one her business. It seemed so simple.

            But The Governess had a team of spies, called Howlers. They were wolves in woolen uniform, each a Sir, and they monitored the street corners, constantly sniffing for trouble. Many children had nightmares of them. Even a few parents with guilty consciences.

            One particular wolf, Sir Grimm, had been peeping through street-level windows when Rose was reading her letter. When she’d left the room to relieve herself, Sir Grimm snuck over the bushes and over the sill, and studied the witch’s words through the pane. Infuriated, he made it his personal goal to stop Rose from reaching her grandmother.

            Just as Rose left her cottage the next morning, draping her red riding hood over her shoulders to keep warm and unseen, Sir Grimm went to mansion of The Governess, who was just waking up. He revealed his plan, giving very few details to keep her patience. She gave him permission to act on his will and pursue the case how he saw fit. Sir Grimm wondered if she had any plans of her own to punish the witch.

And so it was that the wolf went into the Forest of Frost in search of Rose. The trees were so shadowy and tall that you couldn’t see a soul if stood more than ten feet away. The morning sky was dour and gray, though the sun wouldn’t have penetrated the branches anyway, and ghostly mist rolled through the air like one great phantom.

            When Rose was nearly a mile into the woods, its lurid wetness crawling beneath her skin, Sir Grimm found her. He tapped the dark red riding hood firmly and said, “Hello, there. I do believe you’ve taken an incorrect route. No one wishes to go anywhere in these woods. It’s far too dangerous. Where are you going?” Rose was bothered by the masculinity of him, compared it to that of the boys her age. The spirit of girls was so much more alluring.

            “To visit my cousins in Fairbrooke, if you have to know my business,” Rose said smoothly, the ripened beauty of her adolescence shining through. “I’ve not broken any laws, have I? Or has The Governess written a few new ones just this morning?”

            “Certainly none, I have to admit. But would we consider it…mannerly…to visit such a poor village as Fairbrooke?” He smirked proudly, flashing his pearly canines. “They’ve no gold or ivory or spices to enjoy, and the people who dwell there are stupid and run in the fields all day singing songs about rainbows and buttercream.”

            “I’m not causing any trouble. You’ll have to just let me go on my way.” She hmphed and took a step back.

            This did not sit well with Sir Grimm. “I insist you turn around. The Governess’s orders.”

            Looking around with mock surprise, Rose said, “I don’t see her anyway,” and continued on her trail, leaving the wolf behind.

            “You do not wish to make me take out my claws. Turn around now. Refusal to the crown will result in your immediate—”

            “Alright,” Rose said while stopping, turning around, and putting up a palm. “I’ll turn back.” Sir Grimm smiled coolly and waited for her to move.

Rose started to walk, nearly passing the wolf, until with a flash she jolted around and darted off to the right, leaping into the underbrush and letting out a chortle that surrounded the wolf in its echo and made him dizzy with anger.

            “An awfully silly mistake,” he growled. Jumping onto all fours, Sir Grimm pounced into pursuit.

            Rose heard the thunder of paws behind her, out of sight, and sped her legs. She knew the Forest of Frost well and wouldn’t get lost if she zigzagged, crisscrossed, and ran all about in wild directions to keep herself hidden.

            For the next hour, the two continued on their dizzying paths, many times coming close. Rose was quiet from her years of schooling in modesty and camouflaged by her hood, as the underbrush carried a dim and garish hue. Soon, she spotted the plump and ovular cottage in the distance and made a sprint for it. Before getting there, though, Sir Grimm sprang from the trees beside the front path, where he’d been waiting for the past few minutes, and occupied the dirt between Rose and the great oaken door. He howled and laughed, pacing side to side, his shoulders jutting inward like giant pinchers. “You must obey my orders, little girl.”

            “I’m a young woman now,” she said before scrambling into the thickets behind her, where it was too dark to see anything at all. The wolf jumped into the space with her, but neither could see the other. Rose did not make a sound. Her hands ran nervously over her basket, and she realized that a dagger was inside. She quickly grabbed it and began to swing it around her. Sir Grimm, nicked in the stomach, cried out sharply. If only I could see a bit better through this debris and fur. Hopelessly hanging onto instinct and suspicion, she grabbed the spectacles in her basket and put them on, thinking they’d make her world clearer. They did. Everything took on a different color in grayscale, from pitch dark blacks to soft snow whites. Rose wondered what this new view could mean. Then she saw the shape of the wolf. It was like a ray of blinding light, while the plants and dirt around it where dark. She saw that her palm was dark as well, the dagger within it a shade lighter.

Dodging the wolf, who whimpered for his wound, she made her way out of the thicket and back to the cottage. But just as she lifted her palm to pound on the door, Sir Grimm came galloping toward her. “You’ve gone too far, little one.” She groaned out to exert her panic, swung in a tight semicircle, her arm and the dagger at the end of it extended, and felt a massive body of wool, fur, and firm bones collide into her chest. The wolf howled greatly from above, its blood, a cool gray through the spectacles, spilling all over her face and the hood around it. Then the beast fell to her side, dead.

She stood up and placed the dagger back into her wet basket, everything sticky and warm. “My hood was red to begin with. Makes no difference to me.”

            No one answered her knocks, and she quickly found upon failed entry that the door was unlocked. Grandmother always kept herself safe, and never before had she left the door unbolted. Rose felt uneasy, the adrenaline of her attack sobering against quiet dread. There was nothing to do but walk inside and look around.

Upon entering the witch’s bedroom, she found the shape of a woman cloaked entirely in blankets. “Have you taken ill, grandmother?” Rose asked. “You forgot to lock your door. And didn’t you hear the ruckus outside? I’ve killed a wolf.” In the ensuing silence, Rose noticed something horrible through her spectacles. The outline of the body in the bed was entirely white, a cloudy mass of the unknown. Surely, Rose’s grandmother was not like the wolf—surely she was dark like herself.

            “I am very sick,” a tired voice came from underneath the wool. “I am very cold.” Her voice was not as crackly as it had always been. This was smooth and silky, something like a dry web on a tree branch.

Rose took one step back. “I’ve brought you you’re three special tools. The spectacles, which I’m wearing now, the silver dagger in my palm, and the hand-mirror. These are what you asked for, isn’t that right?” Rose was glad the figure was hiding its eyes, or it’d see all the blood.

“Why, yes, dear. My darling Rose. You’re wonderful. Why don’t you set them on the kitchen table for me?”

“Alright.” Rose thought some more, then decided. “You must be starving. I brought all sorts of goodies, like always. How would you like an apple, freshly plucked from the orchards behind the Governess’ mansion? They’re your favorite, ‘cause they taste of sin.”

The shrouded woman was silent for a moment. Then she said, “That’s right! How could I have forgotten? I would love to have an apple. A special gift for me from my darling.” The tips of two fingers and a thumb peeked out of the blanket heap’s side, pinching together as a young heart beats.

Rose smiled slightly and reached into her basket. She took out the fruit, which appeared as a swirling of white and black through her spectacles, and she handed it to the fingers from the bed, which retracted and were met with the wet crack and crunch of a bite.

Rose said, “Where did you get your name from?”

“Hag of the Woods?” the voice came, through slobber and sucking. “You know all about that, dear.”

“Not that name. The Governess, of course. What children could have ever survived under your care?”

Through teeth lodged with fleshy fiber came a muffled gasp. “Rose? Where did you find this apple?” Then there fell a dreadful cough, the sounds of splattering at its end.

“Doesn’t taste like the ones your used to, no?” the girl said.

After another grotesque cough and a mournful pause, The Governess confessed, “I used to love children. They were the light of my life, in fact—until I tried to have some of my own. My body would not let me. Then the Governor left me for a job and a woman in one of the neighboring villages. All I wanted were the domestics of it all. I’ve always been so hungry for it. How every girl feels. How you should feel, the growing girl you are.” Here thundered another incredulous hacking. “I suppose my body won’t let me have anything, now that you’ve poisoned me. And still I must be fed.” Her words were lost to the rabid chomping of fruit, slushed over in juice and skin, gargling and coughing until, finally, all sounds ceased.

A soft hand stained in blood fell through the blankets, hanging limply where it stopped, the mangled apple dropping from it to the floorboards and rolling sluggishly off. Rose snatched the wool from the bed and found the shriveling, bruising body of her village’s leader, face frozen in hunger, smathered in blood and specks of apple. Rose nodded unhappily before a question flooded her stillness.

“Grandmother! Where are you?” She ran frantically about the cottage, looking in all the rooms and under all the furniture. Upon coming to a broom closet, Rose saw a thick liquid seeping out from under the door. She began to weep and opened it. Inside sat the witch, a bullet hole in her chest. Rose tried to slam the door but fled instead. She passed The Governess, fatally poisoned, and Sir Grimm, roughly torn. How had grandmother’s plan fallen so sorrowfully apart?

Rose’s red riding hood trailed in the dirt behind her, staining the path home as a paintbrush would. The cold and sleepy wind swept her into a speedy run.

Back in the safety of the study, she saw that another letter had arrived, one that grandmother must have written before today. Inside, she wrote of how her plan should be completed by now—the glasses and dagger’s utility against the wolf, Rose’s unknowing heroism with the apple. My future may be dark, she wrote, but all things do come well in the end. And while you must be sad to see that things have played out just as I knew they would, believe in me when I say that the village has been saved by you.

Rose felt unfulfilled, yearning for more time together with grandmother. In the coming years, as her body transformed, she’d think of her every time she wore her hood, and at other times as well. Villagers remarked at its vibrancy, the bounce and weight of it. They wondered how it never tore or faded. Rose kept good care of it, washing it only once a month, however much it pained her to scrub and scrub the blood out, however useless it was—for there was always more blood. Sometimes, on long jogs in the hills or after hours of skipping her chores for tutoring the neighbors, her hood would start to drip, even if only a trickle.

Rose knew she’d likely keep the hood into old age. Even if the maintenance of it was a curse, it assured her of what she’d done to save the village. One day, she might even try to lead it, not in the way of a governess, but of something freer.