Hou Yi rose to siphon water—she paced back and forth in the heavy dew and then wrung out the sopping hem of her cloak into a waterskin she’d had hooked to her belt. While she worked, Rosa finished eating and broke camp, kicking dirt over the fire and shouldering her rifle. Hou Yi took up her bow and quiver, and they set out at a steady pace, one that would put ground behind them without scraping them dry of energy.
They didn’t speak much. The sun climbed overhead, and the rolling hills began to be dotted with groves and thickets. Rosa let Hou Yi lead, but she noted the same signs the other woman followed: a trampled line in the grass, a boot print in the dirt, a broken twig by a stream. Either Feng Meng was not very good at hiding his tracks, or he wanted them to follow.
Rosa was betting on the latter.
But as the day drew on, Hou Yi seemed to curve into herself. At every new sign her mouth would flatten more, her eyes narrow, her brow tighten. By the time they paused for a late meal, her jaw might well have been carved from stone.
“She wasn’t my wife,” Rosa said suddenly, over the fire. A much larger hare this time, felled by one of Hou Yi’s arrows, an arrow she had then carefully retrieved and cleaned.
Hou Yi looked up from tending the flames.
“We never called each other that,” Rosa continued. “But we were, to each other—I don’t know if that would be thought ill of here.”
“For some,” Hou Yi said, and Rosa noticed her jaw had been distracted into relaxing slightly. “For some, anything different from them is scandal. If you love her, that is all that matters.”
“I love her,” Rosa said.
“She left?”
“I did.” Rosa fixed her eyes on the crackling meat. “I left her and—our daughter. More than two years ago.”
Hou Yi waited.
“I had to.” The words sounded like a lie, even though they were probably the truest ones Rosa had ever said. “What I had done—it came back to destroy them. When they found out … they told me to go, but I’m not sure if they would have rather I…” She saw the coldness in Xiao Hong’s face again, heard the angry demands that she turn herself in, before the girl had thrust a rifle into her hands and said run.
“It might have brought them more closure if I had stayed to face the consequences of my crimes,” she murmured. “Maybe that would have been best.”
Maybe that would have made her at least a shadow of the woman they had thought her, instead of a monster who was also a coward.
“I became a tyrant,” Hou Yi said. She wasn’t looking at Rosa either, focused instead on where her hand turned the spit. “I turned from hero to villain, when my wife left. I doubt you could have done worse.”
“I’m not sure these things can be compared,” Rosa said. “I was a murderer. Where does that rank?”
Hou Yi digested that for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I thought it might be something like that. Your ‘grundwirgen.’”
“I told myself I was doing good. I don’t know when I lost my way.”
Or maybe she did. The bears. And Goldie.
Or maybe it had been still earlier than that, the very first time, with the wolf. It was the one time she could not truly blame herself, not that time—but maybe there had been no coming back from such a thing, no matter how it happened.
* * *
Her grandmother had made the red cloak for her. Well, her grandmother had made her a red cloak, back when she was three or four … or perhaps it had been before that; perhaps Abuelita had been experimenting with the crimson dye even when Rosa was in swaddling clothes. But Rosa remembered the first hooded cloak her grandmother had enveloped her in, the bright, bright scarlet shouting her presence across the kingdom, and Rosa had taken to it so much like a second skin that she’d thrown temper tantrums when her mother tried to make her take it off.
Now Abuelita gave her a new cloak every birthday—for growing girls, she had said—and Rosa never stopped wearing them. She felt protected when she did—safe in the embrace of her grandmother. Without one of her red cloaks she was exposed, vulnerable, an eight-year-old girl like everyone else.
With one, she was invincible.
Even from her mother.
Her mother came up behind where she sat at the breakfast table and began stroking her hair. Rosa tensed. Her ear still rang from the night before, deep in her head where she almost couldn’t hear it.
“Sweetheart. I’m going to give you some bread and meats to take with you when you go to your grandmother’s today. She’s old—she shouldn’t live alone like she does. I keep telling her to move in with us.”
Rosa didn’t know if she liked that idea or not. On the one side, her grandmother would live with them, embracing and protecting her all day like a living version of her red cloak. On the other, she wouldn’t have her grandmother’s house to escape to.
She hunched into herself.
“Don’t frown, Rosa. It’s not becoming.”
“I don’t care what’s becoming.”
Her mother sighed. “You will. Someday you’ll need to start seeking a husband, and men don’t like young ladies who frown.”
“Well, I don’t like men.”
“Now you’re just being contrary,” said her mother. “Someday you will grow up. Here. I’m packing up some cheese, too. I don’t know how to talk to your grandmother, honestly. She’s over there, old and sick and worrying us all to death—”
“She’s not sick,” said Rosa.
“Then why does she need that walking stick, hmm? When you’re that age you’re always sick. She’s too stubborn, that woman. Stubborn and rude. Always has been. Do you know what she said to me back when your father first introduced me?”
“No,” said Rosa.
“The very first afternoon we met, she got right in my face about politics. No manners, that woman. I told her—I was just making small talk—and all I said was that if a man chooses to become a rat then why isn’t that a sure sign of his guilt? And she got all contrary about me judging rats. Rats! Like anyone abides vermin if they don’t have to.”
Rosa didn’t answer.
“Here’s the basket. Now, don’t leave the path, don’t talk to anyone—are you sure you can get there alone?”
Rosa didn’t point out that she’d been running away to her grandmother’s since she was four. Her mother insisted on pretending it didn’t happen, and if Rosa reminded her then she’d also be reminded of the night before, and Rosa didn’t want to disturb a Good Mood. Good Moods meant Rosa didn’t get hit.
“Remember, don’t speak to anyone. Don’t go anywhere else. Only to your grandmother’s. You promise?”
“I promise,” Rosa said, and took the basket. Abuelita’s bread and cured meats were tastier than her mother’s, but she didn’t point it out.
The woods were muted and still tonight, no wind rustling the branches. Rosa trundled down the well-worn path, the route she could have followed in her sleep. Twilight crept through the trees, graying the colors into shadow and light. Rosa was three-quarters of the way to her grandmother’s when a quiet padding rustled the leaves behind her.