The following excerpt is taken from my second novel, Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams, which is a book about women and magic and the ways that, with kindness towards ourselves and one another, we can learn to shape the endings to our own stories.
Maadar-Bozorg turned the page. Grace squirmed on her lap.
‘Go back, Granmamma. You missed a bit.’
‘I did?’ Maadar-Bozorg pushed her glasses up her nose. Goodness knows why the child was so attached to this story. Well, in fact, she did know. Or, at least, she could guess. It was the kind of story loved by three-year-olds the world over. A little girl in a red dress. A cottage in the middle of the woods. A grandmother who was not quite what she seemed. Lots of repetition, as in all the most popular folktales. Grandmother, what big eyes you have! Grandmother, what big ears you have! Grandmother, what big teeth you have! And so on.
Add in a sprinkling of magic and just the right amount of scary and you had a potent recipe for enchantment.
But really, Maadar-Bozorg thought, as she flipped the page back again, she was getting a little weary of this Red Riding Hood character. She didn’t seem to have much backbone. A lot of these stories were like that, she’d noticed. Little girls doing what they were told. All very obedient.
Here was Little Red Riding Hood, standing at the end of her Grandmother’s bed, just before the Wolf threw off the bedclothes and tried to eat her up. The illustrator had drawn her with her hood pushed back and an expression of wide-eyed innocence on her face. Maadar-Bozorg found it rather irritating.
‘Look, Grace!’ She pointed at the little girl in the picture. ‘Little Red Riding Hood jumps on the bed, puts her hands on her hips like this.’ Maadar-Bozorg demonstrated. ‘And she shouts, as loud as she can, “YOU DON’T FRIGHTEN ME, WOLF!” Can you hear her?’
Grace craned her neck to get a better look at Maadar-Bozorg’s face. Her eyes clouded with confusion. Then she giggled and shook her head.
‘Oh. So you don’t believe me?’ Maadar-Bozorg smiled. ‘Watch this …’ She turned the page again. ‘Look, here’s the Wolf leaping from the bed. R-ROAAARRR! He tries to scare Red Riding Hood but she holds on to the bedpost and tickles the Wolf under his big, hairy nose like this.’
Maadar-Bozorg tickled Grace, experimentally.
‘And after a few more weary attempts to make Red Riding Hood afraid, the Wolf finally gives up.
“Oh, OK then,” he says. And he pulls off his big furry wolf skin … Ooof, oof … Just like this…’
Maadar-Bozorg pretended to pull a mask from her face.
Grace stared at her. Her eyes went very round.
‘And then Little Red Riding Hood sees that the wolf isn’t a real wolf after all but actually … Can you guess? He is her own grandmother!’
Grace frowned. Her tiny hand batted at the page.
‘And then Little Red Riding Hood asks her Wolf-Grandmother to teach her everything she knows about the woods: how to squint her eyes to see into even the darkest places; how to run faster than the wind; how to sniff out any danger at one hundred wolf-paw paces; in fact, everything that a girl needs to know in order to live an exciting life.’
Grace swung her legs and sighed indulgently. ‘That’s not the ending, Gran-mamma.’
‘Oh, isn’t it?’ Maadar-Bozorg smiled. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Grace, nodding. ‘That’s not how Daddy reads it to me.’
‘Ah, but didn’t you know, Grace, that we can change stories in any way we choose? We can make them end in any way we want to. And this is the ending that I prefer.’
Published in: Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams by Sophie Nicholls. 2016. Bonnier Zaffre.