Red Riding Hood - Chapter 21
While slicing carrots, Cinq picked up a piece she had just cut and examined it closely.
It was very thin and perfectly even.
It had been quite some time since she last drank Vinya’s tea. This was the longest she had gone without it.
At first, she suffered from pounding headaches and dizziness, making it hard to endure. Ylfus had said those were symptoms of the poison leaving her body.
Thankfully, the headaches and dizziness soon subsided, and everything became clearer, as if a thin, translucent veil over her eyes had been lifted.
It wasn’t bad. She could now slice carrots beautifully, and more importantly, Ylfus seemed pleased.
She liked seeing him smile. When he smiled, revealing his white teeth, her own lips couldn’t help but curve upward, and a warm happiness bubbled up in her chest.
She also loved being held in his strong arms. For the first time in her life, she felt completely protected. In his embrace, nothing seemed frightening.
While transferring the thinly sliced carrots into a large wooden bowl, Cinq’s soft smile gradually faded.
‘But soon, I’ll have to go down to the village.’
Ylfus ate very well. Cinq now baked bread every two days instead of once a week. And she baked two loaves at a time, enough to fill the hearth.
They had a decent supply of flour and firewood, along with dried grains and pickled vegetables stored away. There were also the turnips she grew.
But Ylfus, truly living up to his wolfish nature, seemed restless without meat. She would have to go to the village soon to buy some.
‘What should I do then? What if the dogs appear again…’
The memory of the snarling dogs sent a tremor through her body. This was precisely the kind of moment when Vinya’s tea seemed necessary.
But Ylfus had said otherwise. He insisted that her fear and pain were hers to confront, and that she shouldn’t escape with such poison.
Cinq pouted as she thought to herself,
‘But he didn’t say I shouldn’t go to the village. I’ll just have to limit my trips as much as possible.’
Most of her trips to the village had been at Vinya’s behest.
Vinya frequently demanded errands, asking for wine or fish, among other things.
‘Next time I go, I’ll buy plenty of cured meat and ham.’
That way, she could manage with fewer trips to the village.
But it wasn’t just the villagers that frightened and hurt her.
There was also the darkness lurking deep in the forest.
Every night, it would awaken, rushing out with the wind, painting the entire world pitch black.
The darkness and wind were indeed fearsome, but they had never directly harmed her.
Instead, they brought the spirits.
The dead buried in the cemetery rested peacefully, but some did not.
Those became spirits, wandering the forest.
Like Six and Vinya.
These lonely entities lured the living with warm blood into the night forest to steal their warmth.
Cinq reflected.
‘Ylfus called the tea poison, but if not for that tea and the Angel, I wouldn’t have survived here. I might have followed the spirits long ago and become one myself.’
Angel.
Her gaze shifted to a small window above the kitchen counter. Through it, she could see the sunlit front yard.
She had an Angel—pure white, with beautiful wings draped over its back.
The Angel didn’t appear often, only on rare nights.
As a child, Cinq would sometimes wake from sleep, sensing its presence. It appeared at her bedroom window, staring at her through the drawn curtains.
At first, she was startled, but she soon realized it wasn’t a spirit—it was an Angel.
Unlike the spirits, the Angel was stunningly beautiful, with warm eyes.
It was also terribly shy, disappearing the moment their eyes met.
