Red Hood's Revenge

through the hills. She had pushed back her hood and rolled her sleeves as high as they would go. The red cape was wool, made for a colder land. Combined with the wolfskin, she was afraid Snow White might have been right. She was sweating too much, and her body would dry up like a corpse soon if she wasn’t careful.
    She was tempted to return to her wolf form, which had only a thick coat of fur to worry about. But fur in the desert wasn’t much of an improvement.
    “I thought about it,” Talia said.
    “Zestan owns her, and that spell your witch cast won’t hold forever.”
    “Sometimes there are better choices than killing everyone who gets in your way.”
    “Maybe,” Roudette admitted. “I’ve found that killing is safest, though.”
    “If I killed Rajil, Jhukha would take control until Queen Lakhim named a new raikh.” Talia reached the top of the hill and crouched low. “Rajil has her doubts, even if she refuses to admit them. You could see it in her eyes. Better a human coward in control than one of Zestan’s fairies.”
    “It makes no difference.” Roudette crawled up beside Talia. In the distance, she could make out a small band of men on horseback, following a pair of dogs. Mortal dogs, thankfully. “Humans ran my village, but they worshiped the fairies, just as Rajil does.”
    “Yet the Wild Hunt destroyed them anyway.”
    “The Hunt cares nothing for worship.” Roudette turned away from the approaching band, sitting with her back against the rock. “My father was a patriarch of the fairy church. From birth, my brother and I were raised to follow the Path. Only my grandmother turned away from fairy teachings.”
    She rarely thought about Grandmother these days. Of course, she hadn’t spent this much time around other people since she was a child. “My grandmother had left the Path years before. She spent most of her time away, but one day I spotted smoke rising from her old cabin. I thought maybe she had come back for the festival of midsummer. My parents had warned us away from her, but the church instructed us to save those we love, to try to lead them back to salvation. So I snuck away with a basket of fairy cakes.”
    “Fairy cakes?” asked Talia.
    “Muffins filled with red jam, to represent the blood of the sacrifice. Until I was five, I believed the Savior tasted like strawberries.
    “I called out when I reached Grandmother’s cabin, but there was no answer. I heard noises, so I snuck inside. The sounds were coming from the bedroom.”
    Talia shifted, studying the men below. “The wolf?”
    “I thought it had eaten my grandmother and fallen asleep in the bed. I remember thinking how large her teeth were, bared even in sleep. Blood oozed from a cut in her side. The blankets were soaked. I started to sneak away, but she opened her eyes and looked at me. Her eyes were enormous, and I recognized them as Grandmother’s. I stayed with her until nightfall, when the hunter came.”
    “The hunter from the story,” said Talia. “He was part of the Wild Hunt?”
    “The festival of midsummer was a time of prayer and confession, a time to cleanse ourselves of sin so that the Wild Hunt might look elsewhere for their prey. Grandmother knew better. She had spent years using the wolfskin to fight the Hunt, until at last she fell. She had been stabbed the night before. I don’t know how she found the strength to return to her cabin. The hunter tracked her blood.”
    Roudette stroked the fur of the cape. “Grandmother couldn’t speak, but she roused herself enough to drag me to a closet, hiding me before he entered. He cut the skin from her body while I watched, then pinned the skin to the floor with his spear. Fire exploded from the shaft. He left, expecting the flames to destroy Grandmother and the skin both.”
    She hadn’t planned on telling Talia this, but after the past day, she thought it important for Talia to know, to see what was coming.
    “Grandmother called to me.” Roudette closed her eyes. She could smell the smoke, could see Grandmother’s blood pooling on the floor. “She told me to take the wolfskin and save my family.”
    Talia’s face hardened. “The hunter wasn’t alone.”
    “The Hunt had spared our land for years. I had never heard the howling of their hounds except in stories, never seen their steeds save in pictures in church, but Grandmother knew. She had tracked the Hunt all her life, and when she realized their path would lead them to our village,