Little Red paused to rest on a lichen covered log, having ducked around and behind a miniature forest of thick undergrowth within the woods themselves. She listened to the distant sounds of the grunting, slamming, and cutting exertions of the woodsmen felling another load of trees to send to market. The distance and the foliage put her well out of sight of the laboring woodsmen. Even so shielded, she gave a wary, furtive, well-practiced glance over each shoulder to confirm that she was, at least for now, in complete privacy. It simply wouldn't do were anyone to know.
She drew that most treasured of objects, her personal journal, from beneath the cloth wrapped loaves of fresh baked bread in her wicker basket. After rummaging blindly around the weave at the bottom with her hand, she next grasped hold of and pulled forth the writing stylus, that clever creation of paper wrapped around a small, straight stick of black, burnt wood that her father had learned to construct when laboring at his old job as a book smith in the big city. The city must have so many marvels, Red thought, that she must go there some day, she simply must.
After opening the book, she turned the crinkled, uneven pages quickly ahead to the point from which she could continue, a fresh blank sheet for today's thoughts and observances and occurrences and fancies.
Red looked up at the leafy treetops masking the sky. The forest was the lifeblood, body and soul of their tiny village. They survived by foresting, trapping, and hunting. The town folk lived a simple, common, physical existence, in harmony and balance with nature around them, both as its master and at its mercy. The men sweated and worked in the forest, while the women cooked and cleaned at home, waiting to service and be serviced by their men in the dark of night. The people mostly liked their simple lives that way, all except for Little Red and her father.
Little Red's name was Celia. Everyone called her Red from the day she first grew hair on her head as a babe, because unlike anyone in that part of the world she had scarlet red hair that fell in wide, springing curls onto her shoulders and below. It wasn't the blondish red or orange red of some. Her hair was deep red, the color of a shallow glass of red wine held up to the dying light of an evening sky.
She had few freckles on the pale skin of her round face and cheeks to go with those midnight-rose-red curls. Crystal water-blue eyes shimmered out from that face beneath the hair. They would have been striking in and of themselves, in their clarity and intelligence, if everyone had not so focused on her colored, curling locks.
She was petite at the youngest age, and so they called her little, back then. But like the other hardy forest folk, from the hulking, muscled men to the soft and shapely but hardworking women, in time she grew, not so large as most of them, but certainly into a healthy, mature and rounded woman.
Yet even after she had grown, she still remained Little Red to everyone in the village, which was everyone in the world, as far as Celia's experience allowed.
Today was her half-birthday, and an important half birthday at that. She was now six months past the ripe and important age of double twos, that magical branch in forest life where a man or woman is said to have crossed into adult hood, and also a point by which any woman who still sported all four limbs and all of her teeth should already have been married for several years, and probably pregnant with one child while pulling another about in tow.
Such a fate held no interest for Celia. She wanted adventure. She wanted to see the city. She wanted to use her brain. And she wanted to write. Today, six months past her full double-twos birthday, unlike all of the other girls of her own age, she remained unmarried and intended to stay that way. Happily unmarried, she felt. She wrote as much in her journal.
* * *
"What's that you've got there, Red?"
Celia spun around in surprise, letting her red cloak whip about to surreptitiously but quickly cover the top of her basket. She'd fortunately just been tucking the book and stylus back into the bottom, but as usual she'd been so lost in her own thoughts and writing that she'd lost track of time and ther things around her, and apparently dangerously so.
"Bread for the workers, of course, the same as every day. Would you like to buy one, Gautier? I have some rye left."
He gave her an odd look, as if he weren't completely sure what he had seen, but knew it wasn't bread.
He didn't answer. Instead he moved to her. Not so much to her, in fact, but at her. Celia felt stalked, and cornered, like prey before a predator. She unconsciously took a half step back, when she realized that there was a large tree there. Gautier moved forward, filling the space in front of her with his massive bulk.
All of the woodsmen were large and muscled, with broad shoulders and protruding, barrel chests. Gautier was the largest of all. He dominated every scene, every job, every conversation, and every laughing, riotous, drunken gathering. Gautier was a force that could not be dissuaded, dodged or dislodged, and everyone knew it.
Everyone except Celia.
The girls all adored Gautier. His rough, commandingly handsome looks and imposing bulk implied a manly sexual prowess that set the girls twittering and giggling whenever he was near, and often when he wasn't.
Everyone except Celia.
"Have you thought on my proposal, Celia?"
"I already told you that I have, Gautier, and the answer is the same, and always will be the same."
"And that answer is?"
If he thought that acting stupid and dense was charming, he was mistaken. Celia bestowed on him a glare generally reserved for rats found scampering through a kitchen, or a roach spotted scurrying from the light. Despite her outward display of resistance and courage, inside she felt frightened. The abrasive bark of the tree trunk dug into her back as she tried to retreat further, almost as if she were trying to merge and become one with the tree itself, to hide within it or use it as a shield.
He stopped with his own body bare inches from hers, so her face was pressed almost into his neck. She could smell the sweat on him from his day's labor, and the day was only three quarters finished. He towered over her, looking down like one more tree in the forest blocking the sun. To call him as smart as one, Celia thought, was to insult the other trees.
"The answer is no, Gautier. I already told you. I asked Father, and he said no."
She hated herself for feeling and acting weak, by implying that the burden of the decision rested with her father, even if it were common practice in their village. She had said no, and in her mind, that was what mattered, not what Father said. This oak-headed ox could rot in the woods, even if Father had agreed, which he certainly had not. Father would always surrender to his daughter's wishes, and Celia wasn't marrying Gautier, or any other dumb, ignorant log in this town, no matter what anyone else said. She had her own mind, with her own ideas for her future.
