Nice Girls Walk with Wolves: A Haunting Red Hood Retelling

Granny always said the wolves weren’t the real danger.

“When I was your age,” she’d begin, voice sharp as pine needles, “I wasn’t afraid to stray. You shouldn’t be either. A little detour never did anyone harm.”

She’d tug on my cloak with disdain. “Why do you hide under this heavy thing? That hood hides your face, and you’ve got a figure worth showing. No one notices a girl trying to vanish.”

Still, I visited her often. Mother insisted, sending me through the forest with baskets of sweet cakes and wine. Not out of love—more out of obligation. It wouldn’t do to let the village gossip say we’d left Granny to rot alone out there, in that crooked little cottage buried deep among whispering trees.

Our village was neat and bright. Roads straight as truth. But Granny’s house… it was different. Quiet. Distant. Like it had been the first house ever thought of, long before humans had paths to follow.

“One day,” Mother would mutter as she packed the basket, “that cottage will be yours.” Granny said the same, but her tone hinted at guilt and baited for gratitude. I never took the bait. That only earned me her disapproving squint.

“Funny little thing,” she’d mutter. “No fire in you.”

I thought perhaps that’s why she sent the wolves.

They didn’t jump out from the shadows or growl behind bushes. No, they lingered in the periphery—silent, watchful. I’d spot them pretending to admire a bird’s flight or listening to a babbling stream. Then, always, their yellow eyes would meet mine.

“Well, well. Off to Granny’s? Just my path too. Mind a little detour?” one might ask, with a grin that curled just a little too wide.

Out of politeness, I’d walk beside them briefly. I never strayed, never deviated. I always returned to the path. When I arrived at Granny’s, I’d see her watching from the window, pretending to dry dishes, disappointment heavy on her face.

“Didn’t meet anyone interesting today?”

She never had to say what she meant: Your eyes are always forward. Your cloak drawn tight. The forest and its secrets are wasted on you.

I began to feel guilty. Like I was failing some test she’d set. I tried to be more engaging. I learned to chat with the wolves—light conversation about prey, weather, moon cycles. I even began to enjoy it. The dance, the testing.

Then she sent the worst of them.

This one was different—gaunt, grey, and twisted with age or malice. Eyes yellowed like spoiled milk. His teeth matched. A shadow of a wolf who had lived too long and chewed too much.

“Your Granny said I might find you here,” he said, his breath a cloud of rot.

He walked beside me no matter how fast I tried to outpace him. When I broke into a run, he didn’t chase—just lengthened his stride and smiled.

“The forest belongs to wolves,” Granny once told me. “You either give them something, or they take it. The loss is the same—but giving feels less shameful.”

That day, her words thundered in my ears like the sound of paws on snow.

When I reached the cottage, I tried to slam the door, but the edge of my cloak caught. He tugged it, and the door swung open like a jaw. Inside, he seemed enormous. The wooden chair legs looked like matchsticks beneath him.

Granny stood near the fire, pretending this was normal. “Pick up your cloak, dear,” she said. “We have a guest.”

“Make him leave,” I tried to shout, but my breath came in ragged gasps.

“I’ve only just arrived,” the wolf cooed, tracing a claw along my throat like a mock caress.

That broke her. The false cheer melted. “I think you should let my granddaughter be,” she said firmly.

His grin widened.

What he didn’t expect was the knife—small, sharp, silent—gripped tightly in Granny’s veined hand.

He never saw it coming.

We buried him by the tree line, just where the forest began to claim the land. Granny helped, and neither of us spoke much. She only said, “I’m sorry,” and I whispered, “Well… you got me out of it.”

After that, every time I visited, I carried a stone and added it to his grave. Just in case. “What comforts you,” Granny once said, “can’t be foolish.”

Before she passed, she cupped my cheek in her frail palm. “I didn’t want to leave you alone out here…”

“Without a guard dog?” I said.

Her laugh—weak but bright—filled the room. “You could put it that way.”

“I don’t want one,” I said. “I just want peace.”

She sighed. “You’d be wiser if you were otherwise.”

“But you don’t have a wolf anymore, do you?”

The sadness in her eyes then… I’ll never understand it fully. Not now.

I buried her next to a nameless mound in the garden. I never asked whose grave it was before. I just knew it wasn’t Grandpa’s—he was buried under the church bell in town.

I still believe she was wrong. But she acted on what she knew.

In her day, girls walked with wolves and learned to bite back. If they bled, they didn’t cry. They proved their flesh was just as tough, their spirits just as sharp.

She feared what might happen if I never learned to bite.

She looked at me and saw the girl she used to be—young, sweet, with the scent of wildflowers and naivety that drew wolves like smoke draws fire. I looked at her and saw what I might become: quiet, alone, and long forgotten.

Now, I stand at the threshold she once guarded, and I feel the same weight of a thousand yellow eyes pressing from the woods. But I’m not her. Not yet.

And they don’t know all the paths.

Not yet.

🌟 Moral of the Story:

There’s danger in innocence, but also strength in stillness. Not every girl needs to play with wolves to prove her worth—and sometimes the bravest thing is refusing to stray.