Forsaken by the one person who was supposed to love her unconditionally, Red must brave the magic and monsters of the Wylds to find her true place in the world.
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Plague...
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The hot, stuffy air moulded itself to me like a second skin. It smelled of butter and spices and baked apple, all the colours of which swirled against my closed lids as I tried to open them. But they were so heavy; it was like lifting a great weight, and the air rasped against my eyes when I finally managed to open them, even as it rasped down my bruised and swollen throat.
Cloth smothered every surface in the room, including me. The piling of blankets was so heavy on my chest that I flinched, mistakenly assuming I was still being crushed by magic. It was that same freedom of movement, however, that allowed me to realise it was only layers of quilts weighing me down. Easing up into my elbows, I ran my fingers along one of the embroidered patches, marvelling at the little beads and charms stitched into the surface. Every single one had been carefully and deliberately placed to bring a patchwork scene to life. It was superb craftsmanship.
As is everything else in the room, I had to admit, despite its gaudy extravagance. Great swaths of patterned silk were pinned to the vaulting roof in artfully arranged drapes, and intricately woven tapestries lined the walls, their colours and patterns teasing my imagination. I frowned at the one at the foot of my bed, featuring a phoenix rising from the ashes. Its flaming feathers were rendered in crimson and gold, the hooked beak gleaming like a polished coin as it unleashed a fierce cry. It should have been a proud moment, that mighty creature's triumph over death, and yet...
"There is something infinitely sad about its eyes," someone warbled behind me.
My breath escaped my clenched teeth in a hiss. I whirled around, throwing off the blankets so that I could flee without tripping over them in my haste.
The sight of the old woman sitting in a rocking chair gave me pause, though. She was a hunched and withered thing, with skin as sallow and crumpled as the wax of a guttering candle. But the grey hair scraped back from her face glinted like the honed edge of a steel blade, and what I could see of her eyes beneath those drooping, blood-shot lids was just as sharp. I had the hair-crawling suspicion that those eyes could flay open a mind to unearth the soul beneath, just as a warrior might cleave through flesh to strike bone.
"It looks lonely," I said, when I realised she was waiting for me to respond. "See how the branches in the ashwood nest form a cage around the bird's feet?"
The crone's gnarled hands returned to the embroidery in her lap, but her eyes fixed on my face. "Legend says the ashwood thorns used to cover the entire mountainside. That they sprouted once every thousand years, to keep predators at bay while the phoenix was at its most vulnerable."
Something about her voice, her story, teased an exposed thread in my memory, but I couldn't quite get a pinch on it. "It looks like they kept everything at bay," I said, frowning at the bleak wasteland above the ashwood thorns and the lush woods below, filled with creatures of every ilk and people from every corner of the earth. Some raised gifts over their heads in supplication; some rose spears in anger. None were able to breach the ashwood walls. "Good or bad."
