FOLKTALE BRAIDS

FOLKTALE BRAIDS

Rhea started her morning with a curse, a stumble, and a threat. The curse was for the grimoire that had deliberately slid under her feet—again. The stumble was over a set of enchanted robes, practising advanced structural engineering with her cauldron. The threat was for her crystal ball, which was flickering to life with a shrill, far-too-chipper voice.

‘Rhea, dear! It’s me!’ the voice crackled with the kind of excitement that usually preceded a small explosion.

Rhea rolled her eyes so hard she nearly sprained them. A call from Grandma Iris was a formal invitation to chaos. She leaned closer to the crystal, which shuddered slightly on its stand.

‘RHEA! CAN YOU HEAR ME?’ Iris’s voice boomed, rattling a nearby jar of pickled newt eyes.

‘Yes, Grandma, I can hear you!’ Rhea shouted back. ‘And so can the mice in the next county!’

‘WHAT? YOUR NICE AUNT IS GRUMPY?’

‘I said, I HEAR YOU!’

‘FEAR GOO? WHY ON EARTH WOULD I FEAR GOO? It’s perfectly harmless unless you’re wearing silk.’

Rhea let out a long, practised sigh that seemed to wilt a nearby fern. ‘What do you need, Grandma?’

‘IT’S THE FULL MOON! TIME FOR THE BRAID!’

‘Wasn’t that tomorrow? Are you sure?’

‘WHAT? BORROW A GIRAFFE? WHY? JUST COME HERE! The moon is high already!’

Rhea surveyed her hut, a battlefield of good intentions. Half-brewed potions gurgled indignantly in their cauldrons, a proud but wobbly stack of spellbooks threatened to unionize, and the faint, sulky smell of burnt toast lingered from a breakfast spell that had gotten ideas above its station. After a brief search, she found the lunar calendar hiding behind a potted mandrake. She shook her head and tried not to laugh. ‘Got it, Grandma. I’ll be right there.’

Rhea finally wrestled the door open, but not before triggering a wayward spell that summoned a swarm of butterflies with a particularly aggressive sense of interior design. As they began trying to re-braid her hair, her eyes fell on her broom, sulking in a wrought-iron cage. She sighed again.

‘It’s not my fault,’ she told the broom, which was rattling its bars in protest. ‘Okay, I agree, I’m still not perfect at parking. But it was our word against the Weeping Willow’s, and of course, they gave the right-of-way to it. Just because it’s a protected landmark.’

The broom bent its handle, as if nodding in bitter agreement.

‘We only tickled him! But we’re banned from flying for three million full moons. A gross miscarriage of justice. Anyway, my dear friend,’ Rhea got closer to the cage, ‘I will find a way to amend this. For now, I have to go before Grandma falls asleep while I’m… walking.’

The moon hung fat and silver overhead, casting a peculiar light that made the shadows dance, and ordinary trees look like they were gossiping.

‘You were going too fast,’ she panted, scolding the absent broom as a particularly smug-looking root snagged her ankle. ‘Next time, use the brakes… Honestly.’ From a high branch, a squirrel chittered what sounded suspiciously like, ‘Should have taken the path, genius.’ Her pointed hat clinked, full of hastily-gathered spell components—most of them probably the wrong ones, knowing her luck.

When she finally climbed the last hill, she saw it — the library. It wasn’t a building so much as something that had bloomed out of the earth by accident and decided to stay. Its base was shaped like the heart of an enormous flower, each petal carved from pale stone and half-open as if waiting for sunlight. From that base rose three towers of woven glass and ivy, spiralling upward like stems caught mid-dance. The towers swayed — not from the wind, but with a slow, steady rhythm, as if the whole place were breathing. Threads of silver light ran through the vines, pulsing gently under the surface, and round windows opened and closed like blinking eyes. In front of it all stood an old woman with a slightly crooked hat, conducting a small cloud of night moths. Her vest shimmered as if someone had stitched starlight into the fabric.

‘Hi, Grandma,’ Rhea called out, a bit too loud.

The moths vanished in a puff of silver dust.

‘Ah. Not a moment too soon,’ Grandma Iris said, adjusting her rounded glasses. ‘I was only one or two… hundred away from my record. You look exhausted.’

‘I walked up here.’

‘A frog’s got a spear? Oh, that explains the noises by the pond last night.’

‘I. WALKED. UP. HERE.’

‘You want a cup of beer? At your age? Bold.’ Grandma Iris shook her head with a wry smile. ‘Anyway, come to the log. We need to start the ritual. The moon is getting impatient.’

Rhea nodded and, after a quick hug, instinctively headed toward the library door. But before she could touch it, a thicket of brambles shot out from the ground, weaving themselves into a thorny, disapproving wall.

A dry, rustling whisper seemed to emanate from the vines themselves. ‘You are not witch enough.’

‘Really?’ Rhea’s voice cracked with indignation. Her pointed hat flopped over her eyes. ‘First the broom, then the wand, and now I’m barred from the library? What’s next? Is my cauldron going to demand better working hours?’ She kicked a loose stone. ‘I’ll chop that whole tree down! We’ll see how it likes being a bookshelf!’

‘Next time, you’ll stop for tea? Good.’ Grandma Iris took her by the arm. ‘Bring biscuits. Mine taste of bark.’

The two moved behind the hut. Rhea sat on a log at the very edge of a ravine, her legs dangling over the open air. The sheer drop breathed a cool sigh of pine and night-blooming jasmine from the valley below.

Rhea took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She felt the familiar, grounding weight of her grandmother’s hands in her long hair, the gentle tug of the comb as it began its work. It was a ritual older than both, a warmth of magic that smelled of ozone and chamomile.

‘Dear Rhea,’ Grandma Iris whispered, ‘you will have access to the Midnight Moon’s Library again. Fear not. For now, I brought a book to tell you a folktale…’

‘I’m sixteen…’

‘A folktale called Little Red Riding Hood…’

Rhea opened her eyes and rolled them.

‘…and the Last Wolf.’

‘Red Riding Hood and the Last Wolf?’ Rhea repeated, her curiosity piqued despite herself. ‘That’s not how it goes.’

‘It has always been like this,’ Grandma Iris said, and in the silver moonlight, Rhea could see a mischievous grin that promised trouble and wisdom in equal measure. ‘Now listen close…’

PART 1 red riding hood I

Rhea remembered being eleven, sitting on this very log while Grandma Iris braided her hair. It was a ritual, Iris had explained, to infuse her with nature’s magic. And it worked; year by year, Rhea’s own power grew. She learned spells for practicalities, like making tea water boil with a flicker of her fingers or convincing the cat’s smelly messes to politely teleport themselves to a dimension of lost socks. On the literature side, however, she grew increasingly frustrated with the alarmingly straightforward fairy tales she was forced to endure.

But for the past few months, nothing could be taken for granted. Her broom was locked up in the front yard, and her wand had been confiscated for a ‘foamy misuse of common sense’ against a cauldron. The only witchy thing she had left was her pointed hat, which still rattled with the ghosts of regrettable, half-forgotten experiments. Rhea wasn’t sure how long it would be before they took that, too.

‘…and that feeling of, oh, what is it… viscosity…’

Rhea tilted her head.

‘Anyway, Little Red Riding Hood, with the fur on her shoulder well embroidered—’

‘A fur? On Red Riding Hood?’ Rhea twisted around so fast the half-finished braid whacked her in the face. ‘That’s not how it goes. The real story is simple, Grandma: a girl in a red hood visits you, a wolf tricks her and swallows you whole, then a hunter swoops in, cuts you out, and fills the wolf with stones. The end. It’s a classic cautionary tale, neat and tidy, with zero wolves wearing shoulder decor.’

Grandma Iris laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering. ‘Oh, if you put the same energy into magic as you do into correcting bedtime stories, you’d be the brightest witch in the kingdom. And I’m not just saying that because you’re my favourite niece. Yes, yes, the only one, but favourite all the same. Now hush and look at the moon. I haven’t finished the braid.’

The silver light created a halo around her glasses, and her voice dropped into a softer, spell-laden murmur as her fingers traced a faint, glowing rune in the air.

‘Once,’ Iris said, carefully separating a strand of Rhea’s hair, ’there were many wolves. But with every turning of the moon, another was lost, until only one remained—the Last Wolf. He did not swallow grandmothers. He walked in shadows as if he wore them for a cloak, and he whispered to the girl in red: ‘Do not fear the woods, for the trees are your protectors.’ And she listened, silly child. She learned to run among the branches faster than any hunter, faster than any arrow, faster than truth itself. Did the hunter cut open the wolf? Ah, maybe. But when they say he filled him with stones—perhaps they mistook them for stars.’ As she spoke, a tiny constellation in the sky above seemed to flicker and go out for a moment. ‘Perhaps the wolf swallowed a piece of the sky, and no one noticed when the night lost a corner.’

Rhea frowned. ‘Are you making this up as you go along?’

‘It has always been this way,’ Iris said smoothly, tugging at the braid’s final lock. ‘Only clever ears hear it right.’

The braid shimmered in the moonlight, sealing the ritual with a low hum of dormant power that tickled the back of Rhea’s neck.

‘Grandma,’ Rhea began the moment Iris tied the final knot, ‘about my wand…’

‘A BARD IN YOUR HAND? Well, tell him to stop singing in my ear. He’s dreadfully off-key.’

‘I’m the only sixteen-year-old witch without magic,’ Rhea said, her voice tightening with frustration and a hint of embarrassment. She stared at her hands, then glanced up at her grandmother. ‘All this full-moon power—what am I supposed to do with it if I can’t even use it?’

‘Behave.’ Iris lifted her palm, and a parchment shot from it, unfurling with a series of sharp cracks until it stretched from the hut to the log like a magical runway. ‘Do you know what this is?’

Rhea glanced at it. A pre-certified list of charges for her next mistake. The sheer bureaucratic genius of pre-punishment was almost impressive. She turned to glare at a nearby cricket that had unfolded a spyglass larger than its body. The cricket paused its surveillance only to polish its lens with a scrap of leaf. ‘Stop judging me,’ she muttered.

‘This,’ Iris declared, tapping the glowing document, ‘is a formal warning. The consequence for your next infraction: your cat will be confiscated.’

‘NO!’ Rhea jumped onto the papyrus, which bucked slightly beneath her. ‘Gorbaclaventichun cannot be taken away!’

Grandma Iris stood in silence. ‘A good witch works with her heart, not her toys. But fine—be positive. On the day they come for Gorbaclaventichun, they will probably misspell his name on the seizure forms.’ She cackled softly. ‘What a name, by my cauldron. Sounds like a sneeze that gets stuck halfway.’

Rhea gave her a grudging hug—quick and fierce, nearly knocking the wind out of the old woman. ‘Thanks for the folktale, Grandma.’

‘I like you when you smile.’

‘Try not to let them confiscate my teeth before the next full moon.’

Rhea watched her grandmother shuffle back towards the library, chuckling to herself before disappearing inside. The papyrus rolled itself up and vanished with a pop. Defeated, Rhea slumped back onto the log. That’s when she saw it, abandoned where Iris had been sitting: the ancient storybook. Red Riding Hood and the Last Wolf. So it was real. The tome vibrated with residual magic, its leather cover shifting like dark water. It seemed to preen under her attention.

‘Weird,’ Rhea whispered, approaching cautiously. The book seemed to sense her, its pages fluttering in a soft sigh of anticipation.

Then she noticed the window above—a small, round opening on an upper level of the library, forgotten and ajar, casting a rectangle of warm, golden light into the night.

An idea, terrible and brilliant, sparked in her mind. She couldn’t use the front door, but the library was practically leaving a key under the mat. And she just had to return the book, didn’t she? It was the polite thing to do.

Clutching the heavy tome, she tiptoed to the library wall, her heart thumping. The cricket with the spyglass was still there, now joined by two others consulting what appeared to be a tiny, hand-drawn star chart.

‘Hsst! Trespasser!’ a thorny voice whispered. The brambles rustled like conspirators. ‘Not witch enough, remember?’

‘I’m just returning a book,’ Rhea whispered back, pressing herself against the cool stone. She found a foothold and began to climb.

‘Likely story,’ a different, thornier vine rasped. ‘We know your type. Always forgetting’ things inside.’

‘And if you betray me, I’ll braid you next full moon,’ Rhea hissed.

‘Braiding a bramble? Outrageous! …But tempting. Carry on, intruder.’ The leaves rustled again, pulling aside to reveal a perfect foothold.

Rhea ignored them and pulled herself up. The stone was slippery with moss that felt vaguely judgmental under her fingers. Below, the crickets had upgraded to a full-blown observatory lens, tracking her clumsy ascent. She glanced down, wobbled, and a loose vial clattered out of her hat, landing on the grass with a puff of purple smoke that smelled faintly of regret and burnt toast.

Finally, her fingers brushed the stone windowsill. With one desperate heave, she pulled herself up. She’d made it. She peered into the moonlit, dusty library, a grin spreading across her face. But her victory was short-lived. Her other foot, still searching for purchase, slipped on a patch of slick, treacherous moss.

Her hands flew from the sill. For a heart-stopping moment, she hung in the air. The book tumbled from her grasp. As it fell, its wolf-head clasp snapped open, as if taking a sudden, sharp breath. The pages fluttered wide.

Rhea landed not on the hard ground, but on the open storybook. The world dissolved into a swirl of ink and parchment, the smell of old paper and ozone filling her senses as she fell, with a soft thump, right through.