Pulling my cloak tighter about my frame I sped up a little. The branches over head rustled and scraped together like skeletal fingers. A horrid night I found myself out. The snow crunched underfoot as I trudged through it. Shivering and pulling the wool tighter about my frame I felt a bit of snow weasel its way into my boot, instantly chilling the skin and I bent over to lift my skirts, trying to wiggle a cold finger inside the boot to dig out the offending ice.
My hand froze when I saw the tracks. They were mine, from previously, when I had first journeyed to town to pick up a few things. My boot tracks as I trudged through the snow, but the tracks that sometimes pressed over my own, were not human. Tentatively my fingers reached out to touch the impression captured in the snow, to touch the rim and follow the shape, the giant wolf print.
I shivered, I wasn't sure if it was the cold that somehow found a way to sneak past my cloak and into my tunics that I wore or if it was the realization that my tracks had been followed, stalked by something larger than a wolf should be. The hairs on my neck rose as unbidden stories Gram used to tell my brother and me as we huddled around the fire. Stories told in hushed tones and grand gestures about men that were cursed. Men that had somehow been tainted and when the moon rose above the mountains and smiled with it's cold light down upon our valley, it's mere touch of silvery light would cause those men to disintegrate, and from that would rise a creature most unnatural. Something not human but not wolf, a bastard mixture of the two that sometimes walked on two legs, sometimes four. It howled at the moon and lapped at the blood of the poor creatures that were unfortunate enough to be caught in its sights should it be hungry.
These were the creatures that would be summoned up to make sure that my brother and I never strayed far from home, that we always behaved, if we were the least bit unruly this creature would chase us down and devour us as apparently, according to Gram, it craved horrible little children.
Those were the stories that came back to my mind from all these years past. Gram had passed on some years ago now and so had our parents. Only my brother and I were left in the house that had once held so many. The sickness had come and gone like the tide likes to do. When it had ebbed out, it had taken a fair amount of the village with it. My own brother had gotten so ill I thought I'd be left alone and had spent many a night in a fretful sleep before waking to look after him. Where my brother had come back from the icy grip that death had wrapped around his heart, our parents had not and we were left alone. My brother was strong enough that next season that he had taken up where our father had left off:a hunter or trapper of sorts. No one was better than my own brother when it came to using a single arrow to fell a great stag. I was proud of him and because of him we fared well with the hides and meat that we sold to the village. But to even out the balance, his great success also meant that he was gone for days at a time.
This was a stretch of time where my brother Erik was gone, hunting in the deep woods for game to bring back and sell so that we could survive. I had left our cabin and trudged into the village for a few staples we needed, and some new cloth for a dress I was going to make. I had stayed too long with visiting those I hardly get to see and now as I made my way back down the small foot road that led to our homestead, I found that I had been followed. And it was by neither man, nor wolf.
I looked up, the breeze playing with a bit of hair, twisting it and blowing it about my eyes I shifted the basket in my hands in order to pull it free. I scanned the surroundings about me. I was still a good few yards till the start of the woods. From there I judged it to be another 100 yards through the trees to your cottage. I swallowed hard and stood slowly up. Shifting my basket again and wrapping the wool of my cloak bout my thin frame I set forward at a brisk pace. My eyes were always alert, scanning the snow about me that seemed so luminescent. It was so light that I hadn't needed a torch to see my way back and it now occurred why. My eyes drifted up, not wanting to see what I was looking for. A sharp intake of breath marked the dread I felt as my eyes gazed up at the full orb of the moon as it just finished clearing the mountain peaks. It almost seemed so close I could reach out and touch the white surface, to smooth away the craters with my fingertips. I snapped out the momentary pause and looked towards the trees, closer yet so far away my mind seemed to wail. I wanted to be home, sitting in front of the fire with the logs crackling and working on my stitching. But it wasn't so. My feet were suddenly in motion, making for my home in a straight line, trudging over the tracks that had so closely followed mine, in my haste, I cared not.
My breath came in pants, soft puffs of steam that escaped my lips as I hurried through the snow. Snow seeped down into my boots but now I cared very little. I could dig it out when I reached the safety of my own bolted door. I would tell my brother, he would hunt it down and kill it, bringing its hide to the village and it would be all the more gold we would get. This idea cheered me considerably and my pace slowed ever so slightly.
I switched my basket back to my other hand, blowing into my cupped fingers, breathing a little warmth back into them as I ducked under a low branch and stepped over a mound of snow that I knew disguised a large rock. The thoughts of this creature being hunted filled my mind so that I scarce noticed a snap of a branch off in the dark distance. I stopped short, frozen motionless and even held my breath. Somewhere in the distance I heard an owl ask its timeless question, I heard the soft shuffle of snow as it sloughed from a branch not far from me, falling to the ground and leaving the branch moving gently. My heart beat so loudly in my ears I thought that surely, that's what caused the snow to fall from the branches!
Finally a ragged breath escaped my nose and lips and I puffed as quietly as I good, the steam of my breath forming and then melting away. Another crack of a branch, muffled by the snow sounded. This time, I spun about the opposite way to face the direction of the noise.
Tricks of the mind I chided myself as I hitched up my skirts, moving purposely in the direction of my sanctuary. After one of Grams stories, Erik would creep to my bed as I lay huddled under the blankets quiet, so not to draw attention to us but his soft howl in my ear would frighten me so. I would squeeze my eyes shut and his at him to go away that we'll get a switching if he didn't stop. His howl that I remembered in my mind's memory held nothing in compared to what echoed out from the darkness. Never had I heard a sound so horrible so terrible, and yet so mysterious as what my ears heard now. I knew wolf howls, I knew the song they sang out their stories to the moon. This was not a wolf howl that sang out now. It seemed to echo about me all at once, wrapping me in its dark spell.
The basket slipped from my fingers and tumbled to the snow as my hands flew to my mouth, trying to stifle a cry and suddenly I was running the best I could. I did not bother to hold my cloak closed as I scrabbled over the snowy terrain towards our cottage. My breath sounded loud in my own ears as I ran, I stumbled, slipped and fell in the snow, my cloak tight about my throat as I ran in near panic. Every now and again I could hear another howl, it almost seemed like laughter to me and at one point in my hysteria I laughed as well. I'd turn away from the howls and growls that I heard, turning this way and that but always running. Sometimes my hands warded off the bare fingers of brush and other times they did not.
The last growl was so close I thought as though I could feel the warm breath of my predator upon my cheek. With a strangled cry I broke through a clump of brush and stumbled out into a clearing. The light of the moon shown down upon me and lit the place up almost as its counterpart, the sun would have. My breath ripped through my lungs, it hurt to breath as I sucked in great gasps of the cold night air. My hair was in disarray, pulled loose in places from its braid and now knotted with bits of shrubbery. My cloak hung over one arm, uneven and torn in a few places as was my dresses. My under dress had become damp with sweat as I ran blindly and now it chilled my skin as the night air sank into it. I brought a hand up to my cheek to touch one of many stings and brought my fingertips away with a small smear of blood. The branches I'd run through had not been kind and left their mark upon my skin.
I blinked and then blinked again when it seemed a bit of the inky darkness moved and stepped out into the clearing. The creature was tall and towered over my form with ease. It walked in a crouch almost bent forward with the breath drawing in and out of its open snout as a dark red tongue lolled out. It made a snuffling sound and I took a step back. It's head lowered and sniffed the air, the eyes never leaving mine and I swore to myself right then and there that as long as I lived, I would never have a nights rest where the bright amber eyes would not be staring back at me from my dreams. They, those eyes, held a clarity that I could almost connect with but found it mixed with animal ferocity. The inky black fur glistened in the moonlight, I almost wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the downy pent against my fingers and luxuriate in its richness. The creature that Gram had spoken to us about in her stories now stood in front of me, towering over me and staring at me. I let out a breath of air, I'd not noticed I'd been holding and in that instant something changed.
The creature stood up and let loose with an earsplitting howl, I could see the muscles ripple under the short fine fur of its chest and underside. Hands that were tapered with sharp talons were clenched as it howled. I shrieked in terror, turned and fled toward the far side of the clearing, a rocky over hang. I was almost there when I was jerked back, my cloak, mean to keep me warm was now jerking me off my feet backwards, choking me as I fell to the ground.
The air was knocked from my body and I coughed, trying to ease the pain of being choked with my own cloak before feeling the weight hit me, knocking me forward to my stomach, sprawled in the little bit of snow that was under the overhang. I felt the weight of a huge paw on my back, holding me down and I began to think of the moment when Erik would find my body, what was left of it rather. I sobbed softly so caught up in my own envisioned doom it was a moment before I realized that I could hear the gruffing of the creature holding me down but not feel the teeth tearing the life from me.
