There was a village, with a forest behind it, close behind, like a shadow. The village had an inn, and the inn had a doorway, and the doorway had a doorstep, and one winter’s morning there was a parcel on that doorstep.
You can’t leave a parcel on a doorstep for long. Not if it’s alive. So they took it in, the innkeeper and his wife, and they brushed off the frost and unknotted the string, unfolded the shabby brown blanket, and there was a baby.
The innkeeper took a step back in dismay, but his wife unfolded the blanket further, uncovering a baby’s head.
“It must be a girl!” she exclaimed, staring in surprise. “Look at that! Gold earrings! I’ve never seen the like!”
“Nonsense!” scoffed the innkeeper. “Who’d put gold earrings on a baby around here?”
“No one round here,” agreed his wife, “but there they are. See for yourself!”
So the innkeeper came closer and bent and looked, and sure enough, the baby had gold earrings under its wisps of brown hair.
“Someone will be back for it,” said the innkeeper. “One thing to leave a baby on a doorstep. Another to leave gold earrings.”
“I shall say what I think when they come!” said his wife. “Leaving it there for anyone to trip over! Half frozen too.”
The baby’s wide green eyes looked at her. It didn’t cry. They found out later that it hardly ever cried.
They gave it bread and milk, and a warm basket by the stove. No one ever came back for it, and so it stayed, from day to day, and then from week to week, and eventually from year to year. The innkeeper and his wife got paid a little for keeping it instead of sending it away to the orphanage. They called the baby Polly.
“A good plain name,” they said, looking disapprovingly at Polly’s ears. Although they had both tried, they could find no way of taking off the earrings without taking off the baby’s ears too. So the earrings also stayed. Perhaps if they had come off, they would have liked Polly more than they did; but perhaps not, because Polly was different. She was not like any child that had ever been in the village before, nor any grown-up either. For one thing, Polly was not afraid of the forest.
The forest curved around the village like a heavy, green, growing threat. To the villagers it was like living on the borders of a dangerous unknown world. Except for gathering firewood on its borders, they avoided it. Some of the forest dangers were real: falling branches from ancient trees, hidden pits dug in the bad old days for animal traps, the possibility of being lost forever. Some dangers were less certain. The villagers were almost sure there were no bears, but also almost sure there really were wolves. There were probably no witches and certainly no dragons, but there were brambles like trip wires and poisonous mushrooms. The owls were eerie; large bats swept from its borders at night to hunt over the fields, while small, amber-eyed foxes slipped from bone-littered dens and returned with fat chickens clamped in their jaws.
Polly said, “I like foxes better than chickens.”
The village children who heard this were not shocked, as they would have been if one of them had said it themselves. They did not think of Polly as one of them. Even after living all her life in the village, her newness had not worn off. The innkeeper’s wife dressed her exactly like the other village girls, in pale browns, and grays and blues, thick boots for winter, sun hats for summer, but she did not look like the other girls. They were blue-eyed and sunny-haired, with sturdy legs and freckled noses. They played with raggy dolls in homemade dresses, made houses under willow trees, read and reread their few battered storybooks, gathered flowers in floppy bunches, and arranged each other’s hair. Polly could not seem to join in with their games. Her straight brown hair was not interesting to comb, and her doll lay in its wooden cradle for months on end without being disturbed.
Until it died, her favorite companion had been the inn’s ancient ginger cat. She had been lonely for a while after it was gone, until the innkeeper bought a small black pig for the sty at the end of the garden.
“I could look after it!” Polly offered eagerly.
“I don’t think so,” said the innkeeper. “No. You should help in the kitchen.”
Polly did help in the kitchen, as often as she could, which was not very often because the innkeeper’s wife liked things done her own way, by herself. Polly bothered her, with her quickness and her differentness and her golden earrings. Often the innkeeper and his wife thought of the day when they had opened the door and taken the parcel that was Polly inside. They wondered about the orphanage.
“There’s nothing to stop us sending her there yet,” said the innkeeper’s wife.
“Nothing at all,” said the innkeeper. “And you should keep her away from that pig.”
“She slips off,” said his wife.
So at breakfast the next day the innkeeper himself told Polly, “Now don’t go getting fond of that pig!”
“Diamond!” said Polly, between spoons of porridge. “I call him Diamond! Diamond Pig!”
“Eh?”
“Because he is precious, like a diamond!”
“You leave him be now, Polly. You play with that doll. Pigs don’t have names.”
“Why not?”
“Pigs are pigs.”
“Of course they are.”
“It’s easier in the end.”
“Easier for what?” asked Polly.
The innkeeper was eating sausages and did not wish to continue the conversation, so he said, “Finish your porridge now, Poll!”
“I have. Why—”
“And no more talk about that pig.”
“Diamond.”
“Is she like this all day?” the innkeeper asked his wife. “Bothersome?”
“Oh,” said Polly. “I didn’t know I was bothersome.”
“Well, now you do,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “Bothersome! Now take a broom and off outside to get the inn yard swept!”
Polly the Bothersome swept the yard, tiptoed down the garden path to give a private hug to Diamond, and then wandered on to the village street, where a group of girls were gathered, pulling petals from a daisy.
“Why’re you doing that?” she asked.
“Seeing who we’ll marry,” they said, friendly enough. “What’ve you been doing, Polly?”
“Sweeping,” said Polly.
“There’s a smell . . . Sniff your dress, Poll! Sniff your hands!”
Polly sniffed and said, “Oh! I know! That’s Diamond!”
“What’s Diamond?”
“The innkeeper’s new little pig,” explained Polly. “I called him Diamond. He’s black. He’s lovely. He lets me hug him!”
The whole group of girls burst into laughter. “Hug him!” they exclaimed. “Hug a pig!”
Polly looked at them. They had fathers and mothers and little brothers and sisters to hug. Dogs and cats and grannies and grandpas. They shouldn’t laugh, just because she had only a pig.
However, they did laugh, and so did the boys when the girls told them. The biggest boy, Tom Piper, the only person in the village who might have understood, laughed most of all. Tom was no blue-eyed, round-faced village boy. Tom’s parents were dead and he lived with his uncle, a rough, tough farmer who made Tom earn his keep. Tom did not have a proper home any more than Polly did. He need not have said, “And did you kiss the pig too, Polly?”
“No she didn’t!” cried several of the girls protectively. “Shut up, Tom!”
“She did; she’s blushing!” said Tom.
“You didn’t, did you, Polly?”
“Only between his ears!” said Polly.
“Polly!” exclaimed the girls.
“Polly!” mocked Tom, his teeth showing in a white grin.
“Shut up!” Polly aimed a kick at his shins. “You’re just like the innkeeper! He doesn’t want me to like Diamond either.”
“Diamond?” asked Tom, grabbing and holding her at arm’s length so she couldn’t kick again. “The innkeeper called his pig Diamond?” he asked, his grin wider than ever.
“I called him Diamond!” said Polly. “The innkeeper said he shouldn’t have a name.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t love him.”
“Oh dear. But do you love him, Poll?”
Polly turned her face from his laughter. The girls pulled his arms and said, “Let her go now, Tom.”
“She’ll kick me.”
“She won’t, will you, Polly?”
“I might,” said Polly. But when Tom let her go, she didn’t. Instead she asked, “Why shouldn’t pigs have names?”
The girls murmured uncomfortably, eyeing Tom, wondering if he would tell.
Tom said, “Show me this pig!”
“No,” said Polly.
“They bite, you know.”
“He never would,” said Polly scornfully.
“How big is he?” asked one of the girls.
Polly held her hands apart to show that Diamond was about as big as the ginger cat had been.
“Plenty of time, then,” said Tom, sauntering away.
“Time for what?”
“Kisses!” called Tom, over his shoulder, and he closed his eyes and made kissing, grunting sounds until all the girls were giggling again.
Polly ran away from them, stumbling in her clumsy boots until she took them off to walk barefoot. At the edge of the forest she pulled them on again. That was not the place for bare feet: not only were there thorns and rough ground, but also the villagers had a habit of dumping their unwanted rubbish at the forest edge. Broken pots, rags, house waste and farm waste, a dead cat now and then.
Polly picked her way through carefully, following the path. She had been that way before once or twice; it led to a sheltered hollow among the trees, and then on to an old cottage, hardly more than a mile from the last of the village houses, but still too far for most people. In the past, Polly had never been farther than the hollow, but this time she walked on, into the deeper green darkness under the trees.
That was the first time Polly visited the old woman that the village called Granny.
Polly, dressed in faded blue with muddy patches from the pig, did not show up at all among the forest shadows. Granny jumped with shock when she suddenly appeared in her open doorway.
“Goodness, child!” she exclaimed. “Creeping up on me like that!” And she turned quickly to a chest in the corner of the room, but not so quickly that Polly did not see as the lid closed down.
“Oh!” exclaimed Polly.
“Oh, what?” asked Granny crossly, for in the chest were various things that she had acquired throughout her long and exciting life. Surprises from shipwrecks, gifts from grateful smugglers, and a few bright sparkles of pirate treasure, for Granny had once lived by the sea.
Polly did not glance at the brandy flasks or the things that sparkled, but what she did notice was a most beautiful glowing redness, and she cried out as the lid went down, “Oh, please, let me look again!”
“Look at what, my dear?” asked Granny, alarmed.
“The red,” said Polly.
And then Granny laughed and took from the chest a piece of ruby-red, glowing red, gorgeous red, woven cloth. The clearest, brightest, most-singing piece of color that Polly had ever seen.
“That would just make a nice red riding cloak for you!” said Granny, when Polly had rubbed it, and sniffed it, and laid her cheek on it, and adored it.
“For me?”
“Why not?” Granny draped it round her shoulders and stood her in front of an old, speckled mirror.
“But don’t you want it?”
“Not as much as you do,” said Granny. And then and there she sat down with scissors and a sewing basket, and before the morning was over, there it was: a glowing red cloak with a wide hood, and a red bow to fasten it, long enough to cover the dull blue dress, right down to Polly’s knees.
By the time the cloak was finished, Polly and Granny were friends, and Granny had heard all about Diamond and Tom, while Polly had explored the whole one-roomed house, with its bed in the corner and round table by the fireplace, and the rocking chair and the wooden stool and the window at the back where deer came to be fed.
She had also been useful. While Granny sewed, Polly milked her two white goats, pushed the treasure chest back under the bed, carried in logs for the fire, collected three eggs from the four brown chickens that each had names, and boiled two of them for their tea. Then, wearing her red riding cloak, and very happy, she walked with Granny to the edge of the forest because it was nearly dark and time to go back to the village.
Overhead, the sky was dark purple, and stars were caught in the windblown branches.
“Are there wolves?” Polly asked Granny, as they passed under the spangled trees.
“There are and there aren’t,” said Granny.
It was Tom who saw the scarlet cloak first. He bowed low to Polly, sweeping off an imaginary cap. “Oh, Red Riding Hood!” he exclaimed. “You look like you are wearing a sunset!”
Polly sparkled with pleasure.
“Where did it come from?”
“Granny in the forest.”
“Is that where you ran off to? Weren’t you afraid?”
“No.”
“Not of wolves? Bears? Darkness? The pits under the trees? Not of Granny?”
“No.”
“Gold earrings, red cloak, and nothing frightens you!”
“I didn’t say nothing frightened me.”
“Where are you going now, Poll? Back to the inn?”
Polly nodded, her sparkles fading.
“Well, don’t go wasting any more kisses on that pig!”
“Shut up, Tom Piper! Stop laughing! Shut up! You spoil everything!”
“Oh Poll, I don’t! Poll, I’m not laughing! Oh Red Riding Hood! I’m just jealous, that’s all!”
Tom’s name for Polly, Red Riding Hood, stuck. The village took it up, half kindly, half as if to say, You’re not one of us.
Granny’s present caused a sensation. The girls gazed and gazed.
“You can put it on if you like,” Polly offered.
And one or two of them did, nervously sliding it round their shoulders, glancing down with their hands to their mouths, shaking it off as fast as they could, saying, “Oh, it’s pretty, but I never could! I never could wear such a color as that!”
“I should feel such a poppy!” said one.
The fact that it came from Granny in the Forest made them all nervous. Granny visited the village now and then, and although she was old and bent and stiff and wrinkled, there was something about those visits that bothered the villagers.
“I can’t abide whispers,” Granny would say, “and I can’t abide fools, and they might as well know it!”
There were a lot of whispers when Granny came into the village, and a lot of people she thought fools, including the innkeeper and his wife. They did not believe in witches, but they did not believe in taking chances either, so when they saw Polly’s new cloak they did not say, “You’re not going out dressed like that, Young Lady!”
Although they did say:
“First the earrings, now this!”
and
“You’ll scare every horse in the village!”
and
“I suppose it would cut up for dusters.”
and
“Let’s hope it fades!”
Polly took no notice of any of these remarks and she wore the cloak every day. It did not fade or scare the horses or get cut up for dusters, and it seemed to make Polly’s gold earrings shine even brighter than before. The village got used to it, even the innkeeper and his wife. They also got used to the fact that Polly had a new friend. Very often she set off to visit Granny in the forest, and the innkeeper and his wife (so as not to take chances) now and then sent small presents: a little loaf of bread, a cake or two, some butter or some cheese. In return Granny would send back her own presents: honey, blackberry wine, cold roast pheasant and venison pasties.
So the summer passed. Polly was happy. Diamond grew from a small black piglet to a fat friendly little pig. Polly still hugged him first thing in the morning, and she still kissed him between his ears last thing at night. The village girls still said, “Polly! You shouldn’t!”
“What shouldn’t she do?” Tom asked.
“Make such a pet of that pig,” the girls told him.
“He’s not just an ordinary pig,” said Polly. “He’s a very clever pig. He knows all sorts of things. If I say, ‘Speak, Diamond!’ he squeaks back at me. And if I say, ‘Bedtime!’ he lies down quiet! And he can dance! He does twirls! I taught him!”
“How big is he now?” asked Tom.
Polly proudly stretched her arms to show how big Diamond had grown.
Tom whistled and said, “I’ve got to see this pig!”
“One day,” said Polly.
“One day soon,” said Tom.
“All right,” agreed Polly, pleased at such interest in her beloved Diamond, “but it will have to be early, early, early in the morning. That’s when I teach him things. Before the innkeeper wakes up.”
“Well then,” said Tom, “that’s when I’ll be there. Early in the morning tomorrow, so mind you’re awake!”
Polly looked at him in surprise. His voice was suddenly cold, not joking anymore, and his eyes, looking back at her, were watchful and gleaming. Something was wrong, but what it was Polly could not think, and before she could ask questions, he had turned away.
That night she woke feeling uneasy, without knowing why. She wondered if Tom would be there in the morning.
But Tom did come, and he was his usual self again, calling her Red Riding Hood and grinning as he stalked ahead of her through the long frosty grass. It was a fine morning, the beginning of winter. Polly fed Diamond with apples saved from the orchard, and acorns and beechnuts gathered in the forest, and Tom watched them together, heard Diamond squeak on command and saw him lie down quiet when Polly said, “Time for bed!”
“Dance now, Diamond!” whispered Polly.
And Diamond twirled in enchanting, fat black circles. “Oh you brilliant Diamond!” said Polly, and bent and kissed him between his ears. And when she looked up, Tom was gone.
That was the last time Polly saw Diamond in his sty at the end of the innkeeper’s garden, the last time he danced for her in the early morning on his short little sausagey legs. The innkeeper put his pig to bed himself that night, and when Polly ran down the next morning the sty was empty and Diamond was gone.
After one long, horrified stare, Polly turned and ran. Back to the house, up the stairs and then she was hammering on the innkeeper’s bedroom door with both fists and shouting, “Where is he? Where is he? What have you done with Diamond?”
“That girl!” Polly heard the innkeeper’s wife exclaim. And then the door was opened and there they both were, as bewildered and angry as Polly herself, especially after they had pulled on boots and coats and gone down the garden to look at the pigsty. They noticed what Polly had not seen: the little gate splintered and wrenched off its hinges, the scattered straw and overturned water trough, and in the mud by the trough a footprint like a dog’s, but much, much bigger.
An enormous footprint.
A wolf.
It was the first of many footprints found around the village that day. They appeared outside henhouses and barns and sheds and even cottages. A huge wolf had prowled the village that night, and people were afraid. All day the air echoed with the noise of sawing and hammering as doors and walls were patched and strengthened. Meanwhile people went off in little groups, following the path to the edge of the forest. They found pad marks there as well, and they came back hurrying, looking over their shoulders. That evening the village street was quiet and there were no children playing on the green. People were all inside, with shutters closed and locks turned. Polly was inside too, up in her little room, staring out of the window at the great shadowy forest on the edge of the village.
Somewhere in the forest was Diamond.
The world looked very blurry to Polly, thinking that. She had to swallow and rub her eyes, over and over. So it was some time before she noticed the fir cone.
There was a fir cone on her windowsill.
That was an odd place to find a fir cone. The strangeness of it woke Polly up a little, enough to let her go downstairs. Half the village had gathered at the inn, beer was flowing, and the frightening old stories about the forest were being dusted off and polished up and told like they were new.
“What about Granny?” asked Polly, clutching her fir cone as she came forward into the lamplight. “Did anyone go and see if Granny was safe?”
“Old Granny can look after herself,” said the innkeeper. “Proper old witch, she is. She’ll take no harm.”
“She is NOT an old witch!” exclaimed Polly indignantly. “She is my friend! She is the kindest person I know!”
“Now then, now then,” said an old man reprovingly. “Talking like that, when the folk here have taken such care of you! That’s not nice, is it? And after they just lost that lovely pig!”
“He was lovely,” agreed Polly, grateful for such kind words about Diamond.
“Ham,” said the old man, nodding, “and bacon. Pork and crackling too, I daresay.”
“Sausage,” added the innkeeper.
“Black pudding,” sighed his wife.
Then at last Polly understood what the girls had not told her, and what Tom had not mentioned, and also why it was not a good idea to give a name to a pig. Back in her room, looking out toward the forest, she thought, I’m glad the wolf came. Perhaps Diamond escaped.
He wouldn’t have escaped the innkeeper, but perhaps he escaped the wolf.
In the morning there was more news, and worse. Tom’s uncle, the red-faced farmer, was going from farm to farm and cottage to cottage asking, “Has anybody seen young Tom?”
Tom had vanished, and nobody knew where or when. The innkeeper thought he knew. He told Tom’s uncle, “I caught sight of him hanging around here. I’ll have the price of that pig from you!”
“The price of the pig!” roared Tom’s uncle. “The price of the pig! Were there not wolf prints all around your pigsty? And weren’t you the first to cry Wolf! My guess is he went missing in the forest searching for that pig, and I’ll have the price of his labor from you!”
The boys Tom’s age had another idea. It was that Tom had had enough of working for his uncle and had simply run away. The surprise, the boys said, was that he hadn’t done it sooner.
The girls said, “Poor Tom!” and dabbed their eyes and hunted for frostbitten flowers to make into a wreath. They left it by the oak tree on the green where Tom had often collected acorns for catapult bullets, or climbed in search of caterpillars to drop down their necks, or simply stood boasting with his hands in his pockets. “We’re making it a memorial tree,” they told Polly. “Aren’t you going to help?”
“How can I help?” asked Polly.
“We’re each going to tie a hair ribbon to show we’ll never forget him.”
“What if he comes back and sees them?” asked Polly. “He’d never stop laughing. He’d be awful.”
The girls looked at her with reproachful blue eyes, and thought she was hard-hearted.
Most people in the village agreed with Tom’s uncle, that Tom had gone too far into the forest. After much talk, they collected men and dogs for a search party, but they didn’t get far.
“They only did it to make themselves feel better,” Polly told Granny. “Like the girls with their tree.”
“You didn’t tie a ribbon, then?” asked Granny.
“No,” said Polly, holding her fir cone. “I think he’ll come back.”
Tom didn’t come back, and the village changed. Now no one doubted that there were wolves in the forest. Bears too, almost certainly bears, and who knew what besides? A message was sent to the King, far away: “Send a huntsman!”
There was no reply. Winter closed in. People locked and barred their doors at night, and huddled close to their winter fires. The fields that lay nearest to the forest were left empty. The trees seemed to move closer.
Only Polly, in her red hood and cloak, dared go along the path under the darkness of the ancient branches. She went once a week to visit Granny, and nothing the innkeeper or his wife or anyone else in the village could say would stop her.
“Keep to the path!” the innkeeper’s wife warned.
“I do,” said Polly.
“Don’t stop to pick flowers, nor nothing like that.”
“There aren’t any flowers in winter.”
“Don’t go, Polly!” said the girls. “It’s not safe! They say there are bears.”
“Granny says there aren’t.”
“Does she say there aren’t wolves?”
“I should love to see a wolf!” said Polly.
But all that winter she saw nothing but frosted ferns and black forest tracks and old Granny waving from her cottage door, calling, “I saw you from away down the path!”
When the first snow fell there was a wonder waiting for Polly at the little house in the forest.
“He come marching up to the door like he’d lived here all his life!” said Granny.
And there was Diamond. Diamond, fat with beechnuts and acorns, and lately with Granny’s porridge. Polly got down on her knees to hug the little pig, and her tears of thankfulness rolled down so fast they caused him to snort and sneeze.
“Now what we will do,” said Granny, when the happy reunion had become slightly less damp, “is build him a little pen round the back of the house where it won’t show from the path.”
“Do you mind?” asked Polly anxiously. “Did you want a pig, Granny?”
“I can’t say I did,” said Granny, “but it seems that I have one. I daresay he will come in useful!”
“And he will be safe,” said Polly thankfully, and she asked again, “Are there wolves, Granny?”
But Granny’s answer was the same as before. “There are and there aren’t,” she replied.
“One day,” said the villagers, “that Red Riding Hood will set off into the forest and not come back.”
The villagers said wolves had been heard, howling under a full moon on the edge of the fields. Once again they sent a message to the King.
Polly told Granny, “The village has sent for a huntsman. That’s twice now.”
“Fools,” said Granny.
“Do you hear the howling at night, Granny?”
“I do not,” said Granny. “I hear owls. What’s that in your hand?”
“A white stone,” said Polly, showing her.
“Where did you find it?”
“On a bank of green moss,” said Polly.
“That’s a mystery,” said Granny.
“Mmm,” said Polly.
She put the white stone with the fir cone.
Time passed. Late in the spring there was a molehill with a jay’s blue wing feather sticking out the top. One summer morning Polly saw a red rose in the duck pond. On the oak tree on the village green, half a dozen faded hair ribbons fluttered under the leaves. When the leaves fell, they were still there. Whole months passed when no one mentioned Tom’s name. Polly grew tall, and was now too old to be sent back to the orphanage.
“What were we thinking of?” asked the innkeeper’s wife, meaning, What were we thinking of, taking her in. That cold morning. Gold earrings. We might have known! She looked crossly toward Polly, who pushed her hair behind her ears so her earrings showed. Polly half fascinated and half alarmed the customers at the inn. She had a way of slamming glasses down that made them jump. It was a rather slamming autumn, what with glasses and doors and Polly’s replies to some customers’ remarks.
Winter came again, with bitter winds. The cold and the neglected fields made the forest seem more menacing than ever. For the third time, the villagers sent for a huntsman, and this time their message was answered. A huntsman came, a silent fellow in greens and browns and soft leather boots. He carried a gun. The innkeeper admired it very much.
“Double-barreled,” he said with satisfaction. “Bang, bang! About time!”
“The poor wolves!” said Polly.
“Wolves are outlaws,” said the innkeeper.
“Outlaws are wolves,” said the huntsman, winking horribly at Polly. “Got yourself a boyfriend yet?”
“No, have you?” asked Polly, shutting him up.
It seemed a long time since the rose in the pond. The ribbons on the oak tree were shredded to thread, and the path to the pigsty was overgrown with weeds. Polly looked at the huntsman’s gun again and, at the first chance she got, she put on her red riding hood cloak and went to see Granny.
“That cloak has got short on you,” said Granny. “More like a cape.”
“Granny, what’s beyond the forest?”
“Hills,” said Granny, “purple and blue.”
“That’s far away, Polly love.”
“Too far to ever come back?”
“Let’s hope not,” said Granny.
“There is a huntsman in the forest now,” Polly told her. “He stopped at the inn, and I saw him. He was sent by the King. He has a gun. The innkeeper says wolves are outlaws.”
“He always was a fool,” said Granny robustly.
“And the huntsman says outlaws are wolves.”
“Shows he knows nothing, then,” said Granny. “I knew many a fine outlaw, back in the days! Stop your worrying, Poll, and go round the back and have a word with Diamond. He’ll cheer you up!”
“Has he come in useful yet?” asked Polly.
“Anytime now!” said Gran.
Anytime now! thought Polly, as she trudged back to the inn that afternoon, and the words made her feel lighter. She remembered them often, as she worked through the days, or shivered herself to sleep at night.
Everyone was cold that winter. Granny tucked up her four hens in together with the two white goats. Diamond, as long as his feet were clean, was allowed into the house to sleep. He slept most of the day, as well as all night, on an old quilt at the end of Granny’s bed.
“He’d be in the bed, if I gave him the chance,” said Granny. “And he snores. But then, so do I. Polly, that fella’s about.”
“The huntsman?”
“I’ve spoken to him. He hangs around here. He says this is the place any wolf would come, with the goats and the hens.”
“And Diamond,” said Polly.
“Well, he never saw the pig. The pig was indoors. Diamond’s safe, Polly, but you be careful. He fires that gun at a shadow. You make sure you wear your red cloak. You’ll not take him by surprise in that. Or . . .” Granny paused.
“Or what?”
“You could stay safe home.”
“No thank you!” said Polly.
Some nights the frost was so bitter it froze the branches on the trees. They split with sounds louder than gunfire and dropped without warning.
“You want to keep out of that forest, Poll!” warned the innkeeper.
“No I don’t,” said Polly.
One morning, toward the end of winter, Polly found a handful of frost feathers in the middle of the forest path. They must have only been there a moment. They were so light a breath of wind would blow them away. Polly stooped and gathered them into her hand and waited as they melted on her mitten.
It was very quiet.
Polly became aware of being watched. Of the way ahead blocked. Of breath, not her own, smoking in the frosty air.
She looked up, and there at last was the wolf.
“And where are you going, Red Riding Hood?” asked the wolf.
Bang, bang, bang, went Polly’s heart.
The wolf grinned. White teeth. “Don’t worry. I won’t eat you,” he said.
“No you won’t!” said Polly, and she tucked her hands under her cloak so that their shaking was hidden, and looked boldly at the wolf. She had never imagined he would be so big. His eyes were the yellow gold of bracken in autumn. He leaned on a tall carved staff. Polly noticed that when he moved it, it left behind the mark of a huge wolf pad. Had this wolf once tried to carry away a little black pig?
“All alone, Red Riding Hood,” the wolf said mockingly. “Aren’t you frightened?”
“No I’m not,” said Polly, “but you should be.”
“Why should I be?”
“There’s a huntsman in the forest,” Polly said. “He says wolves are outlaws, and outlaws are wolves. He has a gun. He hangs around Granny’s house, watching out for you. You should go away! You should go far away, over the hills!”
“I’d rather come with you,” said the wolf.
“Well, you can’t,” said Polly, and pushed past him and ran, bright in her red cloak, calling, “Granny! Granny! Granny!” so that the huntsman stepped back into the shadows.
Granny’s door was open, despite the cold. “Come in, Polly!” she called. “I knew you’d be along. I’m in bed.”
“In bed?” repeated Polly, astonished.
“I had a tumble. I’m resting my foot,” explained Granny, as Polly came panting into the cottage. “I should never have tried to climb on the roof . . .”
“On the roof!”
“That’s no matter just now. Are you all right, Polly? You look bothered. Come close!”
“Granny . . .”
Granny raised a finger to her lips and nodded toward the door. “That hunter’s about!” she whispered. “Did you see him?”
“No! Where?”
“Around in the shadows. Listening, I daresay. Talk natural!”
Polly nodded.
“I knew you’d be worried, finding me in bed,” said Granny, in a loud, clear voice. “Polly, what big eyes you’ve got!”
“All the better for watching where I’m going,” said Polly. “There were frost feathers on the path, Granny!”
Polly gazed at Granny, willing her to understand.
“Were there now?” said Granny. “After all this time! I should like to have seen them. Nearby?”
Polly nodded, looking at the open door.
“Dear, dear,” said Granny, briskly. “Cold enough for frost feathers and the fire out and that poor soul outside under the eaves looking out for wolves and whatever . . .”
“Outlaws!” growled the huntsman’s voice, sounding terribly, terribly close.
“Wonderful hearing these huntsmen do have!” said Granny, glancing at Polly from under the large lace nightcap she wore. “Never misses a word! Tell him to come in out of the wind, Polly love!”
Polly went out with the message, but the huntsman would not come in. Nor would he let Polly leave again. “You stay with the old woman!” he ordered. “There’s something about!”
“I came through the forest,” said Polly, speaking much more loudly than she needed to do. “You don’t need your GUN! I didn’t see anything to worry about!”
“You keep your voice down, miss, and get inside!” said the huntsman.
“Why? What are you frightened of?” demanded Polly, twirling around in her red cloak, as if trying to see. “What made you think THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT?”
“I’ll not stand for this!” exploded the huntsman, and he actually marched Polly back to the house and sat her down in the rocking chair. “There!” he said. “So long as I hear that chair rock and those bedsprings creak, I shall know where you are!” And he stormed back outside.
“Oh Granny!” exclaimed Polly, frightened and furious. “Whatever . . .” Just in time she remembered the open door. “Whatever were you doing on the roof?”
“That chimney pot is loose,” said Granny. “And I hopped up to try to fix it before it came down all together. Slipped off and twisted my ankle, which is why I’m here in bed. ’Tis dangerous, a loose chimney pot.”
Polly’s eyes became suddenly bright.
“It might slip and roll down on anyone,” said Granny.
Polly didn’t reply. She was thinking so hard that she was perfectly still, and she jumped when the huntsman poked his head round the door.
“Gone quiet!” he said, glancing at Granny under her lace cap, and Polly’s red cloak. “Just checking!”
“Stay for a bit and get warm,” said Granny, but he was gone again in a moment. Diamond, dozing, stirred in his sleep, and suddenly Polly knew what to do. There was the window beside Granny’s bed, with the pen they had built for Diamond outside. If she climbed on the pen she could reach the roof. From the top of the roof she could see down the path . . .
Polly rocked the rocking chair, bump, rock, bump, with her eyes on Granny’s. Granny turned and creaked in bed, her eyes on Polly’s. Polly looked down at Diamond, and began undoing the ribbons of her cloak. “I hope your foot doesn’t hurt too much when you move,” she said politely and clearly to Granny, and she did not forget to rock.
“I daresay I will manage,” replied Granny, and she did not forget to creak.
“I suppose it is nearly TIME FOR BED,” said Polly, and she lifted the sleeping Diamond, who had learned those words long before, when he was a slim black piglet in the garden of the inn.
Often Granny had said that Diamond would one day come in useful. Now the time had come at last. The next time the huntsman looked into the door, there was someone in the bed, wriggling and creaking, with their lace nightcap pulled down to their nose. And there was someone in a red cloak, rocking in the rocking chair.
But Polly was on the roof.
Creak! went Granny’s bed. Polly could hear it in the room beneath.
Bump! went the rocking chair.
Grunt, grunt, grunt! went the person in the nightcap. And Granny said, clear and bright, “Oh Polly, what a shocking cold you’ve got. I never heard such a cough!”
Polly had a clear view of the forest path. Beside her was the chimney pot. She could watch for the wolf, and if the worst came to the worst, the huntsman was standing under the eaves, and the chimney pot was loose . . .
“You need to rub your chest with rum and oil!” continued Granny, rocking. Diamond gave a sudden startled squeal and Granny told him not to be foolish. Polly could not see the huntsman, but looking over the ridgepole, she could see his shadow on the frosty grass. Then, far down the forest path among the frosty flickering shadows, she saw a movement.
