The Wood

Part 2, Entry 3

It had been a bad idea to stay by the water because I was not the only living thing that wanted a drink. I woke up to the growl of a she-bear. Feeling more than a little disoriented, I frantically pulled myself away, rolling as she took a swipe at me. I'd have been a meal if her cub hadn't taken her attention by splashing in the water upstream. I didn't stop, though. I crawled through the dark until I was too tired to move and resigned myself to the possibility of becoming prey if the she-bear came hunting for me. I didn't rest that night. Every sound had me jumping and turning my head even though  I couldn't see anything in the darkness. This close to the water, the trees and their leaves were thicker and held back more of the moon's light. I thought about getting up but when the sun rose and the air warmed, I slipped into sleep.

When I woke, I was immediately aware of two things: the sun had changed positions to the other side of the horizon , and I was surrounded by a pack of wolves.

"So, they have sent us another child," a voice said, and in my delirium, I was certain it was a member of the pack who had spoken to me even though they didn't move their mouths except to pant and loll their tongues. As I lay there, trying to parse out the meaning of the words and decide which wolf it was that spoke to me, the pack parted and a face, weathered by sun and brown by birth, came into my vision. "Do you have a name, little witch?"

"I'm not a witch," I denied, as if that was an important thing to reassure a stranger who commanded wolves. He laughed hysterically as if I had told a joke and patted one of his wolves on the head.

"If you are not a witch, then I am not a witch, but I know myself to be one because that is how I came to be here. And if we are both here in the woods, it stands to reason that we must both be witches."

"Boys can't be witches," I argued, as if that mattered to my predicament.

The man laughed again. "I assure you," he said, "a man like me can be accused of witchcraft just as easily as a girl like you."

"I don't curse people," I said, even as I recalled cursing Jacob wilder in my anger. "There was a mistake. I made a mistake."

"I'd say there must have been a great many mistakes made, then," the man said, "because I know a fair few witches and none of them cast a curse either." We spent a long moment eyeing each other until he said, "Come. The sun is setting, and I think you are in need of a warm fire, nourishing food, and a place to sleep, in that order."

I didn't have much choice but to show him the way I had learned to move without using my hands or feet, but he didn't seem anywhere near as bothered by it as the aunts and uncles had been. Instead, he asked if I'd ever used a rolling chair or any other device to help me get around.

"My grandpa fashioned a pair of splints for me," I told him, "But the uncles broke them into pieces when they brought me into the wood."

I could almost swear I heard him cursing the uncles under his breath, strangely enough. There are a lot of strange things to find in this wood.