Bahbi

It was a cold winter that year, I was thankful that I was snugly ensconced in a warm fur coat, with a fur muff for my hands. Warm and toasty. Blake was driving me to an event for charity about two hours away from home. He was driving slowly as there was fresh ice on all the roads.

When we were about an hour away from our destination he turned off the hi-way and onto a town road. I could see why, the hi-way looked like a nightmare. I knew this was going to take longer on the country roads, so I let myself slumber and fall asleep - power nap is what I call it.

I woke up with a jerk as the car skidded and turned and finally crashed sideways into a barrier. Blake and I were both screaming but that head-snap when we hit the barrier shut us both up for a few seconds.

"Are you alright?" Blake asked worriedly.

"Yes I think so." I replied. "And you?"

"I need a cigarette." He said.

"I didn't know you smoked. Here have one of mine, I need a cigarette as well." I sighed with relief at the thought of a smoke to calm my nerves. As we were smoking I asked Blake what happened. He said he didn't know, we must have hit ice he didn't see and it spun the car. It could have ended much worse.

Blake tried to start the car but the engine just wouldn't turn over. Eventually he got out in the freezing cold and lifted the hood to see if he could spot the problem. He fiddled with a few things and got back in. I didn't ask what he did, the goings on of a car engine are as mysterious to me as PMS is to men. He shook his head as he got back in and said "Sorry, looks like I killed it."

He took out his cell phone to call for help.

"There's no signal." He said. "Do you have a signal on yours?" He asked.

I took out my cell phone - there was no signal on my phone either. Ten minutes later, Blake was standing on the roof of the car with both cell phones, searching for a signal. When he got back in he told me the bad news.

"Nothing." He said.

The car was as cold as the night outside was by now and I was freezing.

I could see he was thinking about something.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

He shook his head, nevermind.

"When I was on the roof I saw a light over there." He said and pointed to the forest beginning a little way from the barrier.

"I don't think I want to go in there." I said and shivered from goose-flesh.

"I wouldn't make you, but one of us has to. Light means people. Luxton should be about ten miles that way." He pointed behind me, in the direction we were going before the accident.

"How far away do you reckon the light is?" I asked not liking the choices.

"Less than a mile."

Oh, that sounded so tempting, much better than ten miles and it would be stupid to wait in the car, by tomorrow it could be snowed over completely and we'd be dead from lack of oxygen.

"Stay here." Blake said as he took a torch from the cubby-hole.

"No!" I panicked. "Leaving me here alone is worse than me going with you!" I was pleading now because suddenly everything looked scary.

"I'm afraid I can't let you put yourself in any kind of danger -"

"I'm not a bloody doll or a baby!" I was getting desperate and tears were forming in my eyes. "Please don't leave me." I begged him.

"The chances of you getting hurt are big, it's a dark forest and we only have one light. How do you think I'm going to explain how you broke a leg, or worse?"

I know when to stop. He wasn't going to take me with and if I insisted, he'd stay and the chance of getting to a warm farmhouse (I presumed) would be zero. It would be my fault if we died from exposure.

I willed myself to be calm and adult about this.

"I suggest you hurry then Blake, you're already in trouble." I said and calmly pointed at the barrier.

"I'll be back as soon as I can, lock the doors and keep the windows closed." He said and got out. I watched him jump over the barrier and disappear into the forest. The last thing I could see of him was the torchlight, then that was gone as well and I was completely alone.

I sat in terror trying to watch the road in front and behind me for a car and watching the forest to my right and some kind of snow covered meadow to my left. Every horror movie I had ever watched came to life. Yes, I told myself. Keep working yourself up. You'll be a raving lunatic by the time Blake returns. If he returns, my brain corrected me.

I imagined I saw eyes at the edge of the forest. Yellow eyes. I swear to God I'll never watch another horror movie again, I said to myself as I blinked to have another look. There was nothing. I did imagine it.

"Ohhhh..." I said with an audible sigh of relief before berating myself for not having a leash on my imagination. You're scaring yourself, I told myself.

I didn't want to look around anymore, I especially didn't want to look to my right. But that morbid curiosity that makes people slow down at accident scenes for a good look at something they don't want to see also made me obsessed with looking to my right. Eventually I gave up and looked, hoping to see nothing.

I had shut my eyes and now I opened them slowly. Relief washed over me with a wave, nothing - no eyes. I noticed that little tinge of disappointment that I felt, which seemed so contrary. I guess when people expect the worst and the worst doesn't happen we feel a little let down about working ourselves up.

It was a full moon, I hadn't noticed before. Luckily I'm not superstitious, I welcomed the full moon, it was as much light I was going to get. When the wind blew it made the shadows the trees threw look like they were dancing across the snow. I looked at the dancing shadows and then I looked up at the trees that cast the shadows. They were dead still, not a leaf moved. I yelped in fear and scooted over to the other side of the car. Bloody hell! I didn't imagine that, the shadows were still moving and the trees didn't! When I looked back at trees there were many yellow eyes. Many! I screamed but nothing came out.

I swiftly debated about getting out on the left and running, but I knew full well there was nothing to run to. The car was my best protection. I looked on, paralysed with horror as wolves slowly, silently sauntered out of the forest at a leisurely pace. Like predators slowly approaching prey in order not to spook it.

Trust me, the prey was beyond spooked, I was hyper-ventilating. I forced myself to breathe slower or I would faint. Fainting has it's merits - my brain chipped in. There were fourteen wolves, I had breathed slowly fourteen times. With their pace never increasing they had surrounded the car by now. I knew what would happen once they managed to make a hole somewhere. They would tear me limb from limb. That's it. The finality of the end of my life made me calm, strangely. I sat looking down. I didn't want to see them begin tearing at the car to get to me.

It seemed like forever went by but it was only a couple of minutes, when I noticed a distinct lack of tearing on the wolves' part. I snuck a quick peek and saw them sitting down, their eyes on the car. Not moving. It was as if they were waiting. I sent them a mental message - if you're waiting for me to get out, you're going to wait forever. They continued to wait, for what? I thought.

There was a movement ahead of me on my right, a man wearing fur from head to toe was slowly emerging from the forest. His pace and his presence were exactly like the wolves. Slow and menacing. When he got closer I noticed he had yellow eyes, not as bright yellow as the wolves around me but you couldn't miss it in the moon light. It looked like he was wearing animal fur like a skin. That creeped me out. He jumped the barrier like a wolf and came to join the wolves surrounding me. When he was close I saw he wasn't wearing fur, that was his skin! He was something not-human. He had a human head with human hair, wolf eyes but a normal nose and mouth. His shape was human but instead of hair he had fur, he had human hands and human feet, the fur beginning at his wrists and ankles.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing, this kind of wolf-man thing was urban legend and ancient myth. There were no wolf-boys in real life. There were no unicorns either but if one had suddenly appeared right then I don't think I would have batted an eye.

He sat on his haunches next to one of the wolves and looked at it, the wolf looked at him, as if they were silently communicating. He rose and slowly came to the left passenger door, I moved over to the right, slowly, very slowly. I started to pray that he'd never seen a car and didn't know how to get in. My prayers were dashed almost immediately and I cursed myself for not locking the damn door. He opened it and sniffed the air cautiously, he had me pinned with those eyes like a rabbit in a trap. I froze, trying not to breathe.

He looked at my coat and smiled. Oh God, I thought, I'm wearing one of his friends and he's going to make me pay for it. With my life. Wolf-man reached in and took firm hold of my hair behind my neck and began pulling me toward him.

"Ow..." I whimpered, not daring to complain more, even though the tears had returned to my eyes, this time from having my hair pulled. He pulled me out of the car until I was standing next to him. He still had a firm grip on my hair and pushed my head down so that I was looking at the ground.

I heard a wolf growl softly and again thought the end was near, wolf-man growled back, there was something authoritative in the way he growled and at once the wolves moved as pack with us in the middle towards the barrier. The wolves in front of us cleared it easily and waited for us on the other side. The man growled at me and I started climbing the barrier in high heel boots. When I was about to drop off the other side he let go of my hair and I jumped into the snow. He followed and cleared the barrier like the wolves did, he put his hand on my back, urging me forward.

We entered the forest, there was no path to follow and it was pitch black, I couldn't see where I was going. I stopped. I saw dozens of yellow eyes around me, something growled. I saw one pair of eyes higher than me and blindly stretched out my hand towards it. I touched fur and took another step towards the yellow eyes.

"I can't see, it's too dark." I whispered, it just didn't seem right to make a noise in the dark. I felt what felt like an arm, and searched for his hand. A few agonising seconds later I felt his hand and put my hand in his. He seemed to understand this meant I couldn't see very well. He held my hand firmly and pulled me along as he slowly walked forward.

We must have gone twenty slow paces when he had enough. Before I could object, I was thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. A very light sack, because he carried me easily. I was left facing the wolves behind us. I closed my eyes, I didn't want to see anymore.

He must have carried me for the better part of an hour, my stomach was sore, I had a headache from hanging upside down, my nose and hands were frozen stiff. He went up and down hills around boulders, jumped a stream all while inside a forest. He did everything but swing from a branch like Tarzan. We walked into something even darker than the forest; as he went in deeper I realised it was a cave. A big one.

He bent forward suddenly and I felt the ground beneath my feet. He walked past me and I turned to follow. I could see nothing of course.

"Meh." He said. He could speak! He had a voice! My hopes of not being eaten increased slightly, until I remembered I was wearing fur.

I heard a match striking and saw a little yellow light ahead of us, the light lit something that looked like a fire. As the flame took and grew I saw it was a fire. There was a wizened little old lady on the far side. Could that be me seventy years from now if I lived that long?

I shuddered, not from the cold. Wolf-man sat next to the growing fire with his back to me. I could feel the wolves behind me staring holes into me but I resisted turning around. I approached the fire step by slow step.

"May I?" I asked the old woman gesturing at the ground near the fire. She nodded and I sat down.

"Do you understand me?" I was hoping she could explain to him I didn't kill the animal I was wearing. I also swore right then and there never to wear fur again if in the unlikely event I should survive this.

She looked at me with a puzzled face, her eyes concentrating to see something inside me, I thought.

"Ingleesh." She said at last. My heart skipped a beat.

"Yes, english." I said enthusiastically.

"You." I pointed at her. "Speak." I pointed at my mouth. "English?" I enquired.

"Mah." She said. No, you don't, I thought sadly.

"Mah." She said again and pointed to herself. I pointed at her and repeated "Mah." She smiled at me pleased with herself.

Okay, maybe I did storm in and expect coherent speech. My bad. I pointed at myself. "Coll."

She repeated me "Khall." Close enough, I thought and gave her a winning smile, Khall, yes that was me.

She pointed at wolf-man who was skinning a rabbit but had stopped to watch us speak. He was looking at us intently.

"Bahbi." The old woman said.

"Bahbi." I repeated looking at Bahbi.

He nodded, this was the word that identified him.

Then the penny dropped. I looked at the old lady.

"Bahbi." I said and craddled an imaginary baby.

Yes, she nodded, baby.

Shit.

No, she must be deluded, it's not genetically possible. Or I'm in a different dimension where the impossible becomes not only possible, but probable.

The old lady was offering me a bulging leather bag. I hesitated, it didn't look very healthy.

"Deek." She urged me on, offering the bag once more. I eyed the bag like a bad pot of rice and then took it. I sniffed it, it smelled disgusting. Bahbi was watching me. He sighed then stood and came over to me hunching down next to me. He took the bag.

"Deek." He said and demonstrated by drinking from the bag.

"Water?" I asked and when he offered the bag.

I sipped a tiny sip, water, very lovely sweet tasting water. Water from an untouched stream. I drank until my thirst was quenched, with everything that had happened tonight I didn't realise how thirsty I was.

"Thank you." I said and smiled at him, he smiled back. Now that I could see him better I quickly realised that he was quite handsome. He was also very muscular, I could see his muscles moving under his fur. I watched him as he put the rabbit on a spit over the fire. At least they didn't eat it raw I thought.