70. The Cucullata

It was sunset when we emerged from the forest.

                    

“He ate her up! I tell you he ate her up!” screeched Alpin. He was shaking as if he were in grave shock, and it took all I could do to keep him from falling to the ground in convulsions.  

Alpin was not speaking to me. He was speaking to Artemius, who had come out of the forest too, after hearing Alpin’s screams. Approaching us three were Nauta and Michael, who quickly asked what was going on.

                

“These kids have been rioting in the woods again. And now this blasted kid says he has seen Little Red Riding Hood’s ghost. Whoever that is.”

                       

“Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale character,” explained Michael to the Roman king of the woods. “A little girl in a red cloak who is threatened by a wolf.”

“Yes,” insisted Alpin, “and she’s gotten herself eaten by a wolf and now her ghost wanders about the forest floating in the air and terrorizing poor lost children like us in a pathetic attempt to warn them to beware of predators.”

“That’s a lie! It has to be!” shouted Artemius angrily, taking Alpin’s words as an attack to his person. “I have the wolves under control! I feed them during the winter so they won’t come out of the forest searching for food! If that had happened I would know. I know ghosts when I see them. And there’s no ghost of a little girl in a red hood in there! It takes one to know one!”

“I tell you I saw her! Arley says maybe her intentions were good, but if they were, she doesn’t know how to do things. She’s terrorized us with her little cloak and hood, all red so you won’t notice how soaked it is in blood that springs from the many places where the wolf has bitten her. Her cloak is dark and hollow inside, with no one in it. Well, with her ghost in it, I surmise.”

“What do you have to say about this, Arley?” said Michael turning to me as he always does when he is skeptical about Alpin’s version of an incident.

                    

“I...I saw her too,” I stammered. “But... she had a very sweet voice and she offered us an apple out of a basket.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” cried Artemius. “That was no storybook character. That was the doorkeeper of the Cucullati.”

Only Nauta knew what he was talking about.

                          

“There are hooded geniuses in Minced Forest?” the Roman sailor asked.

Artemius said that yes, there was a colony of Cucullati in the depths of the forest. “And they don’t cause any trouble!” he was quick to add.

Nauta explained that the Genii Cucullati were magical beings that were never seen without their hoods and cloaks. They lived well hidden in forests and were not sociable, usually minding their own business, whatever that might be.

“They don’t like to have to deal with ordinary people and they leave food and drink in the surroundings of their bunker in the forest for those who are lost so no one will approach them to ask for it. Lately, they also leave maps and compasses and even first aid kits,” added Artemius. “The only one who ever approaches strangers seems to be a female in a red cloak with a hood. She only speaks to offer one of her magic apples. If you eat one, you are sure to be in good health for at least a year. But she has nothing more to say and vanishes as soon as you accept it. If you don’t, she sometimes wails as she disappears, but all this happens very quickly. I call her the doorkeeper of the Cucullati because she is the only one that at least sometimes has been known to answer when you knock at their door.”

And as I heard Artemius say all that...something strange and wonderful happened.