“Tell me if it’s too tight,” Judith said as she knotted the cloth.
“It’s fine. Thank you,” he said, flexing his fingers.
“Here,” she said, giving him a piece of bread and a slice of cheese. “Eat something.”
“You’re very sweet to share your meal with a liar,” he said.
They sat in front of the fire. He stretched his legs and pulled out a red ribbon from his pocket.
“For you,” he said.
Judith held it between her fingers and looked at him. “I can’t take stolen goods.”
“I didn’t steal it. Anyway, it’s yours, so it can be like in the song.”
“What song?”
“The one you asked about the other day, about the demon that entices a woman to her doom.”
He began humming his tune again. “The maiden was young and fair, she wore a red ribbon in her black hair,” he sang. “Alas, she was not wise, she drowned in the river, it was her demise. Heed the warning and let this song ward you away from evil and wrong.”
Judith wrapped the ribbon around her wrist. Her eyes were fixed on the fire. She thought of Nathaniel. That choking loneliness that sometimes assailed her began to sprout anew. She shook her head, willing it away.
“I can’t give you anything in exchange for it,” she told the man.
“It’s free because I like you. You have your claws in my heart, Judith of the Black Hair. I’ll go away when winter ends, but I’ll return in the fall to see how you’re faring.”
“I won’t be here next fall,” she said, and she thought of the city with its churches, its grand buildings, and its plazas. She stood up and ran a hand through her hair.
His chair creaked as he leaned back in it. She turned her head to look at him. His thin face was contemplative, and he slid a nail against the chair’s arm.
“Are you going to buy a gown of red silk trimmed with gold, and will you dance in the palace of a noble lord?” he asked. “Like in those books that fellow was trying to hand you, with the moral of the tale explained on the last page?”
“I’m certainly not going to live in one of your stories of bog monsters and lycanthropes.”
“Come here,” he said.
He pulled her closer, onto his lap, and a bitter melancholy swept across her body, despite her attempts to push it aside. She thought about Nathaniel again, and how he must hurry home after they dallied together, how there was never enough time for them.
The stranger held her. It was pleasant to feel the warmth of another and sit in silence, without haste, even as she thought of a different man.
“Kiss me truly,” he said at length.
“As opposed to falsely?” she replied. “I’ve kissed you one time already, which is more than you deserve.”
“That was not a lover’s kiss,” he said, pressing his knuckles against her chin and tilting her head so that she might look at him.
“You’re a smug man to think you can ask anything of me,” she said, a little breathless. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a name.”
“Everyone, but not everything. Would you demand of the tree or the raven its name?” he asked, his hand now carefully clutching her face, the thumb sliding against her lower lip to trace the shape of it. “The name doesn’t matter. You know me. I have no silks or gold, but I’d promise to eat your enemy’s heart and tear their lungs out with my claws in exchange for your kiss, dear Judith, which is more than a prince could say.”
She blushed and lowered her gaze. He’d flustered her, but quickly she composed herself. Judith stood up and leaned over his chair and she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “There,” she said. “You need not make silly promises.”
Then she laughed and stepped back, whirling like a dancer. He smiled and did not attempt to persuade her or coax her back onto his lap.
She brushed her hair from her face and motioned to the door. “Come along, out we go, me to the village and you to wherever you came from.”
“From the forest, obviously. You can’t remain longer?”
“My sister’s birthday party is in a few days. I have many preparations to make before that,” Judith said, sighing as she thought of the mound of chores she must tackle.
She opened the door and they stepped out. It was starting to snow, so she wrapped her shawl above her head.
“Don’t starve to death before then and I’ll save a few sweets for you,” she promised, and patted his arm. Then, feeling the thinness of his lanky body, she whispered, seriously, “Do take care of yourself.”
“Will you wear the red ribbon in your hair during the party?” he asked, catching her hands between his own. The bandage he wore tickled her skin.
“Yes.”
He lifted her hand and delicately pressed it to his lips, in a mockery of a gentleman’s courtly kiss.
“I’ll think of you the night of the party, Judith, when I rush through the forest and tear open a stag’s throat with a single bite. I’ll remember how the red of the ribbon matches the red of its blood.”
“You’re a madman,” she said, freeing herself of his grasp and adjusting the shawl. “Go, chase the moon, tell it your lies.”
He smiled and began humming again as he walked away from her.
On a night when the moon was round and surrounded by a frozen halo, Judith’s sister threw herself her birthday party. It was, as usual, a grand happening. Alice wore a new dress, cream colored, while Judith was swathed in gray velvet, the dress she’d worn for three years now during the festivities. Judith had threaded the red ribbon through her black locks, and she stood with a cup of punch between her hands, smiling mildly and mostly staring in the direction of Nathaniel, who was attired in a black suit that she’d carefully pressed that morning.
He hardly glanced at Judith, his smile evading her.
“My darling, how lovely you look, so grown-up,” the baker’s wife told Judith.
“Not nearly that grown-up,” Alice said.
“Nonsense, dear Alice, your sister is soon for marriage—look at her. Peter was remarking on that.”
“I hope not too soon,” Alice replied. “I need Judith’s help around the house for a little while still, especially now that our family will be growing.”
Judith did not quite hear what the baker’s wife said after that, for she was much too busy trying to hold her cup between her hands. She managed to set it down at some point and raised her eyes, only to find Alice now standing by Nathaniel’s side, one hand on his arm.
Alice glanced at her sister with cool, steady eyes.
One of the twins approached Judith and tugged at her skirts, demanding a piece of bread with jam, and Judith shushed the child. Then the boy began to wail.
In the middle of the night, Judith woke up to more wailing. But it was a wolf. A wolf howling in the forest. Judith buried her face in her pillow and wept in unison with the creature.