Little Red, Riding Wood Ch. 01

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.

In fact, Gautier was the one man in town who would never, ever even make it into her journal. Celia couldn't even bear to write his name there, as much out of spite as loathing.

And yet it was so much easier to cowardly tell him that Father had said no.

"It's time I spoke with your father, and asked him myself."

"Go ahead and try, if you wish."

Celia bit her lower lip nervously. Father would say no. She hoped. He always had. She just had to make sure.

* * *

Celia walked among the loggers at the edge of the growing glade they'd created the past months by felling trees. It was littered with tree stumps on which to sit, where they were shaded by the trees and yet the air was more fresh and free than under the stifling canopy of leaves in the denser forest. The woodsmen had gathered for a break, alone with two hunters returning from further into the forest, each with a brace of fine, meaty rabbits.

The entire group reeked of malodorous sweat. Too many of them bathed infrequently, or wore the same shirt several days running. Others just naturally smelled, no matter how freshly they scented themselves. She held her basket open, for some at a long arm's length, letting them each take a loaf if they chose, and if so to drop the proper coins into her open palm, which she quickly transferred to an inner pocket within her red cloak.

"I gave Fleurette some wood yesterday."

That came from behind Celia's back, although no effort was made to keep the rude boast from her young, demure ears.

"You mean 'little' Fleurette? The womanly one who just came of age?"

"Ha. Just of age?" he snorted. "She begged me to lay my log right between those two, full, soft pillows of hers."

Three of the men laughed. The loudest was Gautier. Whenever she handed out bread to them, she kept her hood drawn up over her head and low across her face, no matter how stifling the summer air in the woods might be, in order to hide her face from their intrusive stares, and to hide any blush in her cheeks resulting from their always pathetic, roguish comments. She wore her red cloak always. In the summers, she had a lighter version, one which guarded against scratches from random briars and twigs, and more importantly afforded her some discretion against prying eyes.

"You did not. She's betrothed to D'anton."

"Not yet! Not officially. And I think she feels she needs some tutoring, so that she's properly prepared for him. He'll thank me for it, I'm sure."

They all laughed loudly at that.

"You want to tutor all the girls of age, Marque. You should take the school master's place. Or start your own."

More laughter. Celia moved through the group as inconspicuously as she could, while trying to ignore the vulgar banter as much as or more than their filthy conversation pretended to ignore her own presence. Yet even as they joked and bragged, they incongruously leered at her face and curves, or tried to sneak peeks within her robe at her womanly, young figure as she leaned over to offer them their bread.

"I'd love to give her a feel of my wood, where ever she'd like it most," she heard Ancil rumble to Masson as she passed. The emphasis on the word "her" told Celia that she herself was his love interest, not Fleurette.

Ancil was a particularly brutish pig of a man, with a wide, upturned nose, and small beady eyes, and one whom she would never consider in a thousand summers. The thought disgusted her. The thought of touching any of them disgusted her. Mostly. Worse even than that, the thought of sharing a meal or an evening with any of them bored her.

She ignored the comment, as she did similar comments every repetitive, tedious day. They never tired of their own inanity. They said childishly manly things like this all the time, around all the girls, and she knew it was meant to be overheard, hoping the girls might take them up on their filthy offers. Celia knew, too, that many did.

It made her skin crawl, and sometimes it made her hasten home, fighting the urge to look over her shoulder, but she told herself that it was just the men being men. The other girls said it was harmless, or they giggled embarrassingly at it, or they blushed in fear of discovery, or a mixture of all three.

Celia could take it, and tried to do so unflinchingly. She wouldn't let these logs cow her.

"Your log couldn't satisfy her, you twit. A woman like that needs to have a better post set in her field than yours, and set by a master woodsman who knows how to saw."

"A woman that fine needs a few posts set in her fields, all at one time."

The laughter at the remark was too loud and raucous, even for Celia.

She knew they were still talking about her and for some reason, today, it got to her. The chorus of guffaws for once made Celia blush. She moved to the periphery, turning her back on them all now, purportedly to offer bread to the pair of hunters. The two sat there, grinning at her like two hungry wolves that had pinned their prey between them and the rest of their pack.

Celia felt the blush rising further into a self conscious burn in both of her cheeks. As soon as they had dismissively waved her basket away she took off through the woods, not out of fear, but merely to hide her own discomfort and shame, as the course laughter of the woodsmen first redoubled at her hasty exit, then eventually receded behind her.

That they'd gotten to her irked her. Each had asked in turn over the past six months to marry her, and each had been firmly rebuked, either by her or, if they persisted, by her father at her own pleading.

They were all hurt and insulted, so they tried to get back at her. None of them were worth her time. She had her journal. She had her books. She had her father. The humid, warm summer air beneath the forest canopy rushed through her ears as she hurried home, finally quieting the sounds of the brutish men back at the camp, until she felt comfortable enough to slow her pace, catch her breath, and take some time to think before heading home to prepare the evening meal for her dear father.

* * *

Monsieur Sinclaire Couerduloup exited the school house with his wire framed reading spectacles perched perfectly on the tip of his nose, exactly as he needed and preferred so he could both look down through them to read, as well as over them to see where he was going. He was well aware that the men of the town scoffed and laughed at him for the habit behind his back.

He paid them no mind. He thought less of them than they of him.

They could toil and struggle in the depths of the forest, wrestling day by day with nature. They had no understanding of or appreciation for the intense labors of the mind. It completely escaped them, making them pitiable to Sinclaire, rather than intimidating. They were not models that he ever had or would seek to emulate, no matter how derisive their whispered comments might be.

And for all of their manly labors in the forest, Sinclaire had seen and faced adventures and dangers in his life that they were too timid to ever even attempt to pursue. Unlike them, he'd been beyond this small village, living for a while in the wider, amazing world beyond the forest and the river, before feeling compelled here to finish out his days in the boredom of this small, isolated world.

He smiled happily as the school children filed past him, some politely offering their parting greetings while others, mostly boys, bolted screaming out into the sunshine the very moment their foot touched the bare earth just past the threshold.

"Your numbers, Sebastien. Recite your numbers tonight!" he yelled after the fast receding wind that burst away masquerading as a little boy. He smiled in happy resignation, knowing that no such thing would be done. If he reached one in twenty children here, he'd be pleased, but really it was of little consequence. Monsiuer Couerduloup was often surprised that the town even bothered to pay him, or otherwise support the school. They'd do as well to let the children run free in the forest, until the day came when they were large enough to chop wood or to breed.

Within a few years, the older boys would come of working age and leave behind their school days, probably never again to read or count. The next day they'd be in the forests, hunting or cutting wood, while the older girls would in their good time be betrothed, wed and pregnant, with a gaggle of little ones clamoring behind them, as they baked and cleaned and kept house for the return of their men.

And so their lives would continue, each and every day, until they were old and sipping their mush from a copper ladle.

Sinclaire had higher hopes for his beautiful, brilliant daughter Celia, although he couldn't see how such hopes could ever come to fruition. Here he lived, and here he was trapped, and here she was trapped, unless he uprooted her to take her to a life style she'd never known in the dirty, dangerous, and disease ridden big city that had taken her mother from them both when she was only two.

He had no other children. If he had one, great regret in life it was in not having a son. Celia was enough, he told himself, a perfect daughter, and more intelligent, he felt, than he was himself. But it would have been wonderful to have a son, as well.

Instead, he had one and only one daughter, trapped here with him a world in which she didn't fit, with no real future to speak of. Try as he might, he could think of no way out, and no other place to go. The city was too dangerous, especially for an innocent girl like Celia who had almost never if her lifetime even seen another village. Yet to stay here was to endure a living death.

There had to be a way to give the girl what she wanted, needed and deserved, just as his own mother had found a way to do so for him.

He could worry about it another day. He always put it off until another day while guiltily telling himself that he mustn't delay forever. It was too important to ignore, and too daunting a problem to address. He shook his head to clear it of the thoughts.

For today, the children were now gone, and Celia he was sure sat awaiting him at home with a hot meal and her warm, comforting smile, the brightest spot in his days.

* * *

Celia halted in a particularly dense patch of wood. In her distracted haste and anger she'd randomly, she told herself, but really quite deliberately taken the wrong path. She'd wandered now too far along that wrong track, lost in her thoughts and anger, into the denser woods south of town, rather than straight back home.

It was getting late, too late, but she still didn't want to head home quite yet. The air felt different here. It always did. It was still fresh and hot and oppressive, but it was oppressive in an odd way. This was an older, untouched, unkempt part of the forest, belonging to itself rather than to men. It was thicker, more defiantly still and more humid. It had a certain feel to it that Celia couldn't name, but had always tempted her dangerously in to explore.

She'd recovered her composure. Her feelings now dwelled on the simmering anger at having allowed them to get the better of her. They were so low in her eyes that to have them elicit any response from her made her feel lower than them. What hurt most of all, though, was that they were right.

Or partly right.

Her body had come alive in the past few years. She had feelings and desires and sensations that were new, and had caught her completely unawares. She'd never understood what it was to be a woman, until she'd become one. The feelings were also not only new and unexpected, but unusually intense. She felt different from the other girls, even from that slut Fleurette. She felt driven, against her better judgment and other wishes, in an unsavory but so tempting direction.

She lay awake too many nights, tossing and turning, and thinking of... logs. Not just logs. She thought about lips, and broad shoulders, and strong, scruffy jaw lines. She thought about pressing herself against sweaty, muscular chests, while being held tightly there by barrel-shaped, oak-hard arms. She thought about lips irresistibly pressing lips, with the soft scratch of a beard and mustache tickling her chin and cheeks and nose.

She thought about struggling and resisting, but always half heartedly, always for show more than effect.

She thought about offering herself to a man, to give him all of the pleasure that he could take from her body, and by doing so to feel like she became an actual part of him.

Celia slumped against a tree trunk, sliding down in exhausted frustration to sit with her back against it on the damp, cool, moss covered ground. A meager ray of dappled sunlight made its way onto her face through the broken roof of green leaves above. Her heart still raced from her run and from her fierce reaction to the men.