Ryder let out a long sigh as she pulled her blanket tightly around her shoulders. She hugged her knees to her chest, wiggling her icy toes.
The fire was nothing more than a pile of glowing coals, and had allowed the chill of winter to creep its way into her room. She made a mental note to find someone in town to fix the drafty window beside her bed.
“I suppose I should get to work,” she said to herself, rubbing her sore eyes with a small sniffle. Before she began her morning duties, though, she’d have to clean herself up. Mother didn’t need to know she’d been up all night crying.
She could only imagine how terrible she looked as she finally forced herself off the bed, her bare feet braving the cold of the smooth wooden flooring. The chill crawled up her legs, raising bumps as she went along, and she shook herself a bit to try to force it away.
She didn’t bother with the mirror. It was still draped in black cloth from the funeral, and she wasn’t ready to take it down just yet. Her own black hair and blue eyes were all she had left to remember her father’s face, and she wasn’t prepared to see them again so soon.
“Ryder?” Mother’s quiet voice carried through the silence of the once-lively house, and Ryder sighed. “Are you coming down today?”
Ryder didn’t like it. It was like every noise was a disturbance lately. Without Father, everything else was just too loud.
“I’ll be down, Mother,” she replied, and the melancholy silence settled in again, like a thick wool blanket over everything in the house. It had been that way since the funeral.
When Ryder finally went downstairs, Mother was at the dining room table, filling bowls of oatmeal and cups of tea.
It was a harsh reality to face each morning… two settings instead of three. Father’s death had hit many people hard throughout their family and the town, but none more than Ryder and her mother. It had caused a terrible distance in their relationship, and they spent most of their days away from each other, simply doing their chores and then retreating to their own spaces to be alone.
“You know you don’t have to make breakfast for me,” Ryder said quietly as she sat, keeping her gaze down at the bowl of oatmeal in front of her. She had to blink a few times to keep back the tears that burned her eyes. She used to get up every morning and make breakfast with Father.
“I don’t do it because I have to,” Mother replied. She placed the sugar bowl in the center of the table before taking her own seat. “I do it because I want to. Besides, it keeps mind off of… other things.”
“Well, thank you.”
Ryder knew what her mother had meant, but she wasn’t going to press the matter. Their relationship had become strained enough without trying to discuss the one person that had once held them all together.
She let out a heavy sigh, brushing her long hair out of her face. Their conversations didn’t last long anymore, and the deep silence fell over them again, broken only by the light clink of glass and silverware.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Mother asked, and Ryder just shrugged, pushing her oatmeal around in circles with her spoon. “Your grandmother wants to see you today. I have to go into town anyway, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
Ryder felt her heart lighten a bit. Spending time with Grandmother was always a sure way to make her feel better, and anything was better than suffocating in that house.
“Are you going to make a fuss if I walk there?” she questioned, and Mother let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. Ryder understood her concern—the last person to walk the Western Woods alone was Ryder’s father.
“Ryder… You know I don’t—”
“I know,” she interrupted, shaking her head at her mother, “but there haven’t been any wolf sighting in weeks. It’s like they all disappeared.”
“Wolves don’t just disappear, Ryder! You might not be able to see them, but they’re out there. If they’ve made the Western Woods their home, they’re not going to give it up when there’s no one to drive them out. I would feel better if you took one of the horses.”
“And then what? I leave it in Grandmother’s yard to be eaten?”
“Ryder…”
“I don’t want to risk it,” she argued. “If I get attacked by wolves, it’d not going to help me—it’ll just be more food for them.”
“All right, fine.” Mother shook her head. “Stubborn, just like Luke. Just be careful, please.”
When they had finished breakfast, Mother cleaned up while Ryder did a few chores around the house and the barn, making sure the animals were taken care of before she left. She felt better than she had in weeks, knowing she’d get to see Grandmother.
“Make sure you were that cloak she gave you,” Mother called up the stairs while Ryder was in her room getting changed. Ryder let out a groan of disdain. “Ryder, please, you know it makes her happy.”
“Fine.” She sighed, digging through her drawers for a glimpse of the bright red material. Folded stacks of clothing tumbled out everywhere as she yanked it free from the drawer. She shook it a bit to get the folds out, then held it up to examine it in the light.
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It wasn’t in terrible condition, save for a few tatters on the bottom, where ancestors shorter than Ryder had probably been tripping over it and snagging it on the ground through the Western Woods for the last hundred years. It was surprisingly sturdy for its age, and did its job well enough to stave off the wind and cold.
Throwing it around her shoulders, Ryder felt oddly better, like a weight was lifted that she hadn’t even known she’d been carrying. It was the only material possession she had that had once belonged to her father—Mother wouldn’t even let her into the old bedroom to look at his things. Letting out a quiet sigh, she tied the small, frayed strings together to keep it secure. She thought she recalled it having some kind of clasp.
“All right.” Ryder’s boots broke the heavy silene on the staircase. Mother was waiting by the front door with a small basket of things for Grandmother, packed tightly to prevent any scents from reaching the noses of any creatures lurking in the Western Woods. “If I get home before you, I’ll start dinner. I’ll try to get back before dark.”
“Ryder…” Mother clung to the basket firmly when Ryder tried to take it. Her furrowed brow and the deep lines around her mouth made her look more aged than usual. “Please… please, be careful.”
“I’m always careful. Don’t worry.”
Out on the porch, Ryder inhaled a deep breath through her nose. The icy air felt good in contrast to the warm, heavy air inside, and she smiled a bit.
She waved as her mother mounted her horse, trotting off down the path towards town. When she was gone, the Western Woods were quiet and still. It was a light, peaceful silence, broken only by the crunch of snow under Ryder’s boots.
“I guess Father Winter has been busy,” she muttered to herself, trudging through about a foot of snow. She laughed a bit, thinking of the stories her grandmother would tell her about the Spirits of the Seasons. Her favorite stories were about Jack Frost, a Winter Guardian with a talent for mischief.
Ryder looked forward to the tales—Grandmother always spoke of Jack Frost as though he was someone she’d regularly have over for tea. Mother had frowned upon the stories, though, telling her not to fill Ryder’s head with nonsense.
Oh, well. What Mother didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
Walking alone down the path through the woods had never been a problem for Ryder, but it was the first time she was taking it since her father had died. She thought she’d be fine with it, but a chill of unease crawled up her spine as she trekked deeper into the forest.
Every small noise made her heart jump, and her gaze darted back and forth, expecting to see wolved closing in on her at any moment. Were they hidden somewhere beyond the trees? She quickened her pace, struggling to climb over freshly fallen trees and sinking into deeper parts of the snow, her breath coming out in small, raspy puffs.
When she reached the clearing, Ryder felt a rush of relief. The snowflake design carved over the front door of the cottage was a beacon of safety. She practically ran up the stairs, rattling the old porch so much that a large clump of snow fell loose from the roof, right onto Ryder’s head.
Brushing the snow from the top of her hood with a loud sigh of frustration, she imagined Jack Frost was having a good laugh at her expense. She let out a long breath of relief when she was finally inside, the front door shut securely behind her.
“Grandmother?” Ryder called out, listening for the shuffling of slipped on the wooden floor. Grandmother poked her head out from the kitchen doorway, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Oh, Ryder! What are you doing here? I thought your mother was coming.”
“She had to go into town,” she explained, stomping the snow off her boots before making her way into the kitchen. She placed the basket from Mother on the small dining table in the center of the room, and she took slow, deliberate breaths to calm herself. She didn’t want Grandmother to worry for no reason. “Besides, you know I don’t mind. I would have gotten here earlier, but there’s a lot of snow out there today.”
“Jack Frost has been having some fun, eh?” Grandmother chuckled, brushing a bit of her silver hair out of her face. “He must like you.”
“You and your fairy tales about Jack Frost.” Ryder shook her head and laughed, but Grandmother didn’t. Her smile faded, and she gave her a hard stare.
“Fairy tales? I thought I taught you better after all these years.” She took some bread and cheese out of the basket and split it between the two of them. “You’ll never get to meet him with that attitude.”
“I think I can live with that,” Ryder replied with a smirk, taking a bite of the bread.
She loved how passionate her grandmother was about the stories, but she took them too seriously sometimes. Ryder wondered if her age was starting to distort Grandmother’s ability to separate fact and fiction. An old fairy tale about a spirit that controlled the snow and brought Winter to the Western Woods was a wonderful, but it was just that—an old fairy tale.
“Even if he was real,” Ryder noted, chewing thoughtfully on the bit of bread and cheese, “you told me that only children can see the Spirits of the Seasons. So, what difference would it make? I’m well over eighteen.”
“All in good time, my dear.”
Before Ryder could ask what she meant, there was a loud knocking on the front door. It made her jump a bit—Ryder was still anxious from her venture through the woods earlier, and Grandmother never got visitors. The cottage was deep in the Western Woods.
“Who could that be? Could you answer it for me, my dear?” Grandmother asked, rubbing her knees. “Your poor granny is getting old, and it’s been getting difficult to get up too much nowadays.”
“Sure.” Brushing her hair out of her face, Ryder got up to answer. She shook her head in disdain when the visitor started knocking again, barely giving anyone a chance to respond. What was the rush?
She yanked the door open with a frustrated sigh, and found herself face-to-face with someone she’d never seen before, leaning against the door frame.
He was a tall, large man with messy brown hair, and he took up most of the doorway. He wore a tight, black leather jacket, which meant he must be fairly wealthy. Real leather was difficult to come by in the local town.
His most prominent feature was the one that disturbed Ryder the most. He had one yellow eye, a strange color that she hadn’t seen on anyone before, but his other one was what bothered her. It was all white and scarred over, like he'd been slashed in the face with a knife. Ryder knew he must be blind in it, but it was looking right at her. She swallowed hard, hoping she didn’t look as uncomfortable as she felt.
“Can I help you?”
“Not particularly,” he shrugged, chewing his fingernails. He looked and sounded bored. “For now, my business is with the old witch.”
“Excuse me?” Ryder’s brow furrowed as she glared up at the man, quickly forgetting about her discomfort in his presence. In fact, she was more annoyed than anything. "That ‘old witch’ happens to be my grandmother, and you’re on her property. Show a bit of respect. Who do you think you are?”
A sinister grin spread across the man’s face, and he started to laugh. Ryder continued to glare at him as he put his arms out in an incredibly cocky pose.
“I’m the Big Bad Wolf.”