> The Little Red Riding Hood's father killed the wolf that had tried to
> eat her. On their way back home, he admonished her. "You are too
> gullible," he said. "You must exercise discretion about whom you
> should trust." She said, "But Daddy, the wolf was hungry." Her father
> replied, "Yes, the wolf was hungry. But that doesn't mean that I'll
> let him eat my daughter. The world is cruel, and we have to survive.
> If it's wolf against you, it better be you."
>
> But the Little Red Riding Hood felt guilty over the death of the wolf.
> She knew in her heart that there had to be a better way to live, and
> she tried to make life better for everyone. She would take birds with
> broken wings in her home and care for them until their wings grew
> together and they could fly away. She picked a squirrel that boys were
> beating and brought her home and made her a pet. She would play with
> geese during the summer and cry when they were slaughtered in autumn.
>
> She had long curly blond hair and giant, sensitive blue eyes. She had
> an elegant manner and beautiful posture. She drew beautiful pictures
> and made beautiful sculptures. She would climb trees and swim in the
> lake for hours, lost in her thoughts.
>
> One day she watched people beating a goat. "What are you doing?" she
> asked. "He's the scapegoat," was the answer. "We beat him when we feel
> angry." "How can you do that?" she shouted. "He is a living being. He
> feels pain just like you do."
>
> When the people left, she hugged the goat and cried. "I am so sorry,"
> she said looking into his big brown eyes, eyes full of pain and
> confusion. She kissed him on the forehead, then all over his face, and
> petted him on his fur. "I know, these people are cruel. But you are
> free now. Be free and enjoy your life." The goat hobbled away.
>
> All the boys in town wanted to be with her. She was emanating warmth,
> tenderness, softness and gentleness - a pink cloud about her that felt
> like cherry blossoms or orchids - and while she knew she could not be
> with everyone, she wanted to share with people the beauty inside her
> so that they too could see what she saw and be kind and joyful like
> her. Her parents said that she needed to toughen herself, so she swam
> in ice-cold river, hiked long distances in the mountains, jumped off
> of cliffs and walked through brambles. And throughout all this she
> remained as she was: Loving, compassionate, soft.
>
> She meditated in a tree, and it came to her that all that the world
> needed was love. She decided to test that idea by going out into the
> forest and finding wolves. At the sight of a person they started
> howling; however she radiated so much warmth from her heart, that the
> wolves came to her and let her pet them. After that she said, "Wolves
> are actually very sweet. I know how to tame them with love."
>
> But people did not believe her, and town people saw all this with
> disturbance. In effect, they saw someone whose very existence - whose
> very nature - was a refutation to their worldview. So they attacked
> her.
>
> She did not know how to answer these people. And although she was
> right - what she was, was right, and what the world needed and had
> long needed - she started to think that there was something wrong with
> her. So that, although every man in town wanted to be with her, she
> left the town and married the hunter in a village far away. He was
> obviously unhappy, and she thought that she could make him happy by
> loving him. That was a bad mistake.
>
> He wanted her for all the wrong reasons. He saw her outer beauty, even
> as he had no value at all for the beauty she had inside. Seeing her
> gentleness, he thought she would be compliant and obedient. However,
> when he tried to make her abort their infant and she refused, he
> turned into a monster. For fifteen years he made it his project to
> completely destroy her and wipe from the world everything for which
> she stood. He brutalized her, tortured her emotionally, attacked
> everything in her and even shouted at her any time she laughed. The
> love that made it possible for her to tame wolves, he saw as a threat
> to his project: To control everything and everyone in his environment
> and make them believe the kind of love and beauty and promise she gave
> to be nonexistent, so that they would acquiesce to a bestial existence
> in which he was in control.
>
> She thought that she was responsible for what he was doing and saying.
> And while she was willing to let him do whatever he was going to do to
> her, she refused to let him destroy their children. So that, when he
> made it his project to do to their children what he had been doing to
> her - and when her children told her that they would rather live in a
> dump than in that hell house - the Riding Hood left her husband and
> set off on her own.
>
> Her father was at first angry at her, but as she explained to him what
> had happened he became more understanding. Her mother said that she
> had been unlucky. After they saw what had happened, they said that she
> had gotten taken advantage of because of her trusting nature - and
> tried to tell her what she needed to do to make sure that people did
> not take advantage of her again.
>
> On her own, she again started painting. Her experience allowed her
> works to have depth that they had not had before, and many people
> found it fascinating to see her new message: Of beauty that passes
> through horror and retains its hope, tenderness and love. And while
> the town women were still grumbling about her, more people were able
> to appreciate her and what she was doing.
>
> One day a troubadour from the Never-Neverland was traveling through
> the village. He sang sad songs about love lost, about injustice in the
> world, about tragic fates of people in his country. She came to talk
> to him, and he fell in love with her instantly. He saw her spirit -
> tender, warm, gentle, caring, and unbelievably beautiful - and he knew
> that he had discovered the most magnificent human being he'd ever
> known. Someone who was loving, spectacular and heroic. Someone who was
> beautiful all the way to the bone and had kept that beauty alive in
> impossible circumstances. Who was in her very being a principle of
> what the world can and should be.
>
> He started writing her songs that celebrated her spirit and
> unbelievable beauty. Songs that put into words the goodness and
> tenderness and kindness she had within. Songs that expressed in words
> what she sought to express in her paintings and what she had in her
> soul. Songs that sought to impart, in writing, the magnificence that
> she was.
>
> She loved him, and he loved her. One day he held her, and as he let go
> she started walking away with a heartbroken look on her face. "No," he
> said, and held her again, and kept holding her until the pain was
> gone. "I want to burn up in my love for you," he told her on another
> morning. They went to the mountains and held each other on the ground
> amid blooming clovers and daisies, as the setting sun in the west sent
> its last rays through the clouds and alit them in pink. They swam in
> the river, and, saying "let me be your ocean," she let him recline
> into her. He placed his soul inside of hers and from it sculpted his
> songs.
>
> Meanwhile the people in town said that there was a scandal. They said
> that the town princess was having a romance with a crazy troubadour.
> Town people - wife-beaters, philanderers, child-molesters, nagging
> wives, people in loveless marriages - looked down on them and said
> they were freaks and claimed their relationship to be sick when it was
> the only loving relationship in town. Her children told her that they
> needed to protect her from the troubadour - the man who loved her
> beyond anything in the world - after having done nothing to protect
> her from her brute of a husband. Her brothers were cruel to her, and
> her parents beseeched her to go back to the town of her birth, where
> they said people were more appreciative and more understanding of her
> and would treat her better.
>
> The troubadour realized that he would be unable to keep the Riding
> Hood, and he let her go back to her parents' town while continuing to
> write songs about her. She had shown him beauty beyond his wildest
> imagination; and as he saw and celebrated this beauty his eyes were
> opened to the sublime in the universe. A whole new dimension of life
> opened up for him - a dimension he had not known before, and that
> contained enough inspiration for a lifetime of songs and a lifetime of
> beauty and joy. And though the troubadour and the Riding Hood were
> apart, she continued inspiring him for years thereafter, and his works
> found appreciative audiences among people in different towns and
> villages all around the land.
>
> Copyright Ilya Shambat 2005
>