Little Red Riding Hood

This is the whole tale, the same ten pages it runs in Pillowbook on the phone. Not a word is cut, and nothing asks you to sign up. The first three pages carry the paintings they were given; the rest of the plates are in the app, where the book is read one page to a screen.

Reading time is about five minutes at an unhurried pace, one page every thirty seconds or so. The wolf is a wolf and the woods are dark, but nothing here is written to frighten. The ending is safe.

The wolf was sitting on a fallen trunk with his paws tucked behind his back and a green neckerchief knotted at his throat. He said good morning. He asked, very politely, where she was going. She told him, because there was no reason not to — to her grandmother's, with a cake and some butter. "How kind," said the wolf, and he meant it in his own way.

"And which house is that?" he asked, as though he were only making conversation. "The last one, past the birches, with the blue shutters." The wolf nodded slowly. Then he looked off to one side and remarked that the flowers along the edge of the wood were far better than the ones on the path — bigger, and more of them, and nobody ever picked them. The girl thought about that and agreed.

So she stepped off the path to gather a bunch for her grandmother, and it took longer than she meant, because every time she had enough there was a better one a little further in. And while she was choosing, the wolf went the other way — the short way, over the stile and along the ditch — and got to the cottage first.

He knocked. He was extremely charming about it. When the door opened he came in, apologised twice, said it would only be for a very short while, and shut the pantry door gently behind her grandmother. Then he looked around the room, found the spare cardigan hanging on the back of the chair, put it on, and got into the bed.

The girl arrived a little later with flowers in one hand and the basket in the other, and called out from the doorstep, and a voice said come in. Somebody was lying in the bed with the quilt pulled right up to the nose. The room was dim, because the curtains were still shut, and it smelled the way it always did — of soap and dried apples.

"Grandmother," she said, coming closer, "what big ears you have today." "All the better to hear you with," said a voice that was not quite the right voice. "Grandmother — what grey paws you have." There was a pause, and it went on slightly too long. Then the wolf sat straight up in the bed, because he had run out of answers and knew it. And three firm knocks came from behind the pantry door.

The woodsman heard the knocking from the track outside and put his head round the door. He opened the pantry. Her grandmother came out, straightened her spectacles, and looked at the wolf sitting in her bed in her own cardigan — a long, long look, without one word. He folded the cardigan onto the chair and went out through the window. Then they ate the cake with the lamp lit, all three of them, and nobody was in any hurry to go anywhere.

The end.