Before Death

Chapter 3: Going Back

I was confined to my room for a long time. At first, I was restless and took to pacing around but eventually I learned to bide my time. I could not wait to see the wolves again. By this time, it did not even occur to me that there was any danger in going to the woods.

I had escaped from their clutches without harm the last time, and the lesson to fear them had not been painful enough to stick in my head.

Every night I was locked in my room. I slept seldom, as the idea of the proud wolves was occupying my mind fully. I spent every waking moment overcome with lonelyness and longing to be free again, like when I ran in the woods. I wanted to experience the magic again.

I would go back.

So, when I was outside, wading through the soft banks of snow, I sat down upruptly. We had a fence of widely spaced wooden poles with wire spun in between. It marked off our 'yard', I suppose you could say.

I started twisting at a poles until I had wrenched it out of the snow. Then I unhooked a piece of wire from the pole and planted it back. I pulled at the wire, hoping it would snap, but no such luck. I started bending it, first one way and then the other. It was extremely time consuming, but eventually the wire had weakened enough for me to break it off. I continued the process about a metre away and soon I had my wire. I folded it up, stuck it under my fur coat and strolled inside as if nothing had happened.

Back in the safety of my room, I waited restlessly for the peace of night to decend on the world. I got into bed and mother came to tuck me in. I cannot remember what she said, but whatever it was, it was the last words she ever spoke to me.

When she left and closed the door behind her, I sprung up and quickly stuck my handmade wire contraption into the lock before my mother could insert the key. She tried to insert the key but could only insert it halfway and the key would not turn. I heard her make and exclamation of frustration and her footsteps receded. She had probably gone to fetch my father.

Flinging the door open, I ran out into the wild. I was barefoot but I had put on my warmest fur coat over my nightdress.

I ran up the slope to the forest. In the distance I saw a candle flicker in my room  and heard angry voices calling out.

I did not heed them and increased my pace to leave my home behind. Out of breath, I reached the forest. All of a sudden, the ever-watching trees seemed menacing and dangerous. Nevertheless, I steeled myself and took the last two steps into the woods.

The cold was now biting at my feet but I still kept putting one foot in front of the other. There was a foreboding silence that covered the forest like a blanket. The rustle and crunch of snow and pine leaves under my feet seemed painfully loud in the eerie quiet.

I did not hear howling, or even see pawprints. Nothing to suggest that I had not just imagined the wolves last time.

I started to doubt my motives for returning to the dangers of the pine forest. Doubtlessly, I would be much safer tucked into bed than cold and scared here. But then again, there was no turning back now. This was the choice I had made; now I would have to bear the consequences.

Just when my warrior spirit started to waver, I heard a bark in the distance. I froze, amd tried to make out the direction the bark was from. Then I continued with my uphill trek. After a while my sharpened sences picked out a set of footsteps almost perfectly synchronised with mine. Almost.