A Trip to Grandmother's House 
By: Carly Schweier

Crunch…crunch…crunchcrunchcruncrunchcrunch…crunch…crunch. The little girl, keenly aware of her footsteps because of the booming silence of the forest, tentatively made her way down the snowy path. She ran from one tree to the next, pausing each time, trying to temporize the run to the next tree. Each time she stopped, she took a second to look at her surroundings.

            The sky, a dull, gun-barrel gray, was cloudless, and growing darker with each passing minute. What little sun had been visible during the day was fading into obscurity. The path upon which the young girl was traveling was covered in a blanket of snow, sparkling like a thousand tiny diamonds in the last rays of daylight. The trees, tall and foreboding, were also draped in sheaths of white. However, with each bone-chilling, breath-taking rush of cold air, a good portion of the snow was blown off the evergreens and into the air, dancing in a wild and haphazard fashion, like tiny fairies cavorting in the wind.  The trees lined the path on each side, like a gauntlet of soldiers, stern and unmoving in their duty to guard the inner forest.  Just one look at the woods beyond the trees, murky and shadowy in its mystery, sent the girl running off to the next tree for shelter.

            The trip to her grandmother’s house was never easy, and it was made even more difficult by the snow and diminishing light. The girl did not even have the moon or the stars for comfort; instead, all she had was a wide ceiling of gray.  Another gust of cool air came rushing by, carrying with it the scent of pine needles, wet wood, and the indefinable but completely undeniable smell of winter. The girl, numb of all feeling, heard a chattering noise. CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK…. It took her awhile to realize that the noise was her teeth knocking together. She tightened the knot of her red cape, and made sure her hood was covering her ears, in the vain hope that she might become less frozen. She took off her mittens and vigorously rubbed her  hands together, before putting them up to her lantern. At this point, she thought of the lantern as a close companion on her journey, one that offered her warmth and comfort at a time when she so desperately needed it.  With a long and regretful sigh, the girl rose from her crouched position on the ground, and, with her extremely luminous and infallible lantern cutting through the gloomy dark, she once again made the fear-inducing trip to another tree. Even though she would have preferred to travel on the main path, away from hidden ditches, sticky trees, and animal droppings, she knew that in order to protect her life, she must stay within the tree line of the forest. As she closed in on the next tree, she felt her foot catch on a buried tree root. In the split second between being upright and being horizontal, the little girl had barely enough time to let out a small shriek, just loud enough to break through the barrier of silence in which the forest was enclosed, before she was face down in the cold, wet snow. Her face stung, partly from the sheer iciness of the snow, but also from the cluster of little rocks on which she had landed. Her nostrils were filled with snow, giving her an extremely unpleasant feeling, and she sneezed violently.  As she sat up and rubbed her forehead, her face tingling from the new numbness provided by the snow, she heard ragged breathing, which broke the calm silence even more than she had, behind her. Knowing that her attempts at being covert were in vain, she turned slowly to meet her fate. Staring back at her, with eyes as yellow as a lemon, and equally sour, was the wolf she had worked so hard to avoid.

            “Well, well, well. It certainly took you long enough to get here. I’m so sorry about that pesky little tree root, it always seems to give people so much…trouble” the wolf said.

            Then, his face split into the most terrifying smile the little girl had ever seen, and, with a sardonic look in his eyes, the wolf leaned in close.

            With his muzzle just inches from her face, and his breath smelling of rotted animal, the wolf whispered, “What’s in the basket?”