She has been walking for a very long time now. Longer than there is time in the world, it seems, and yet the stony pathway is no shorter ahead or longer behind, and the trees clutch the blackened skies all around and her feet hurt.
Don't stray, she'd been told. Never stray.
There are Things in the woods, and they're drawn to the light pouring out of your eyes like spiders are to corners.
So she walks, and her feet begin to bleed.
She has heard scuttling and rustling for a while now, and when the scuttle and the rustle meet a whisper in the night, she falters to a stop for a moment. Only a moment, and then she steps on, small smudges of red fading to a muddy brown on the stony path behind her..
And all unwilling, like sulky children, the trees begin to part for her. She stumbles, so relieved is she, and so when the long, greasy-skinned, jagged-nailed hand falls on her shoulder she is unprepared, and begins to cry.
But she has kept to the stony pathway, and walked through the woods, and no Thing can keep her now, to lick with sharp tongue the light from her eyes or gnaw with broken teeth the red of her belly.
And so the hand strokes her hair a single time, and is gone.
She looks past the years and the last resentful trees to a field, dappled in sunlight, and wonders: when was it that the sun rose?
And forgetting her poor cut, and blistered feet, she runs into the day, while the woods that she has left behind squabble sourly over her footprints as they dry on the stony pathway.
Comments