“My nanny.”
Oh, that’s right! Leo breathed with sudden relief as he stepped away from the cave mouth and followed her back through the rocks. This girl made up wild stories. And that’s all this cave was too . . . one of her fantasies, one of his legends. The stuff of Faerie tales and nothing else. There wasn’t really a monster either, just like Foxbrush said. It was a folktale, and right now, Leo thought that was just fine. But he could pretend. The farther he got from that cave, the better this idea sounded. He could pretend to be fierce and brave, pretend there was a monster, and let all those pretends stay in the realm of imagination where they belonged.
The girl took his hand again at the cliff and guided him safely to the lower ground, but only after he made certain he knew the direction of Hill House’s chimneys. “It’s easy enough to find,” she told him, though he did not mention where he was from or where he was going. She seemed to know without being told. “That big old house is hard to miss, and you’ll see the path again soon enough. If you have any trouble, sing out, and I’ll come get you.”
She may have been nothing but an odd child, but somehow this offer comforted Leo more than he would have admitted. He responded with a curt nod and started on his way.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” the girl called after him.
He looked about and saw her standing small again in that manner of hers, huddling into herself as though she could huddle away into nothing.
He shrugged. “I’ll come back.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Leo.”
“Do you want to know my name?”
“I suppose.”
“I’m called Rose Red,” she said. Then she was gone, vanished into the rocks and woods.
Leo descended the mountain, crashing through the underbrush as fast as he could go. Sure enough, he found the path; sure enough, he reached the garden gate not long after the sun set; sure enough, he was late to supper, scolded, and not given any pudding.
4
ROSE RED HAD THREE PEOPLE in her life who loved her: the old man she called father, her pet nanny goat, and her Imaginary Friend.
And of course, there was her Dream. But Rose Red did not like to think of her Dream during waking hours.
She found the boy’s hat as she climbed back down the mountainside. Such an odd contraption, ill fitting and useless in the rain. But she picked it up and smiled. Perhaps he would come back tomorrow. He’d said he would. He would come for his hat at least. She took it with her, plopping it on her own head, over the veils.
Life was lonely in the high country, and Rose Red lived a lonelier life than most. Every morning before dawn, she woke and fixed a lumpy porridge for the man she called father. Just as the sky began to lighten, he would wake, eat what she fed him, and make his way down the narrow, almost nonexistent path from their cottage to Hill House, where he worked until after the sun set. During the time between, Rose Red kept the cottage in repair, tended their meager garden, found food for her nanny goat, and kept to herself.
Away from the main road.
Deep in the forest.
“Why do I have to wear these things?” she had asked her Imaginary Friend once, plucking at her veils.
You don’t, said he. He was a prince, of course. Rose Red, being a romantic child at heart, would hardly imagine anything less. But he always appeared to her in the form of a wood thrush. You never do with me.
“Me dad says I do. If I go out and about, he says I’ve got to wear them.”
Your father loves you. Trust him. Obey him.
“I do, but . . .” Rose Red plucked at the veils again and huffed loudly. “Gets awful hot sometimes!”
Her Imaginary Friend sang gently in his silvery voice. You needn’t wear them with me.
He really was a wonderful friend. But unfortunately he remained imaginary. And sometimes—such as when she dreamed—she couldn’t conjure him up at all.
Rose Red never saw other children. Once in a while she would climb a certain tree that grew high on the mountain slopes, and from its topmost branches she could see the shepherding valleys, where young boys and girls tended the family flocks. She could also see the main road that wound down the mountain to the village of Torfoot far below, and on still days in autumn or winter she could hear the town bells ringing, announcing fetes and feast days, weddings and funerals.
“I wish I could see them up close,” she had told her Imaginary Friend one spring. He sat in a branch by her cheek. “I wish I could dance with the other little girls round the Maypole.”
You will, sang the thrush. In good time.
“But not today?”
No, my child. Not today.
She scowled at the bird through her veils. “I want a real friend,” she told him.
I am a real friend.
“No you ain’t.”