My little short story I am working on. No title yet.
The season of summer was hard on the small village. The days and nights were hot and stifling with heat and sickness. The smell of vinegar and boiled linen always hung heavy in the village infirmary, a sharp scent that did nothing to mask the sour odor of the sweating sickness.
By the bed, the girl’s mother lay perfectly still, her skin the color of skimmed milk. The infirmary was so cluttered with the sick that the girl's mother was not being attended to at all.
"I will bring back the blue-caps from the ridge," the girl whispered, though her mother’s eyes remained closed. "They bloom where the sun hits the stone. The old ladies say they break a fever."
She left the village with a small wicker basket slung over her arm. The dirt path was familiar, a dry ribbon of dust cutting through the low brush, but as she walked deeper, the canopy closed in. The air grew thick and green, smelling of damp earth and rotting birch logs.
"You walk quickly for someone carrying such a light burden," a voice said.
The girl flinched, her boots skidding on the loose gravel.
Sitting on a mossy boulder just three paces from the path was a wolf. He was massive, his coat the color of winter grease, but he sat with his paws neatly tucked, looking less like a wild beast and more like a dog waiting for a scrap from the table. When he spoke, his jaws moved with a heavy, awkward clicking, as if the human words were too large for his throat.
"My mother is waiting," the girl said, her fingers tightening around the handle of her basket. She kept her eyes on the path ahead. "I am not to leave the track."
"A sensible rule," the wolf replied, his voice smooth, like oil poured over water. "On an ordinary day. But today there is a great black boar, or perhaps a bear, by the size of the tracks, tearing through the thicket just ahead. It has the madness in its blood. If you keep to this path, you will walk straight into its jaws."
The girl paused. The silence of the woods suddenly felt heavy, suffocating. "I must get the flowers."
"Of course," the wolf said, tilting his head toward a narrow deer trail that sloped downward into a dark hollow. "The blue-caps grow thicker down by the creek anyway. The canopy is thinner there. I will guide you past the ridge, well clear of the beast. A good daughter wouldn't let a bear tear those flowers apart. A good daughter listens when the woods try to save her."
Doubt pricked at her chest, sharper than any thorn. She looked back toward the village, then down at the narrow, shadowed deer trail. The wolf stood up, his movements fluid and silent, and took three steps down the hollow. He did not look back to see if she was following; he knew the weight of her mother’s sickness would pull her off the path.
She stepped into the brush. The brambles immediately caught at her wool skirt, tearing at the hem with tiny, persistent teeth.
They walked in silence for minutes, the air growing colder as the ground sloped downward. The trees here were old, their bark split and bleeding dark sap. The wolf moved ahead like a grey shadow, never making a sound against the dead leaves.
Then, the wolf stopped dead. His ears flattened against his skull.
A sound broke through the trees, not the careful cracking of a twig, but the wet, heavy thud of a massive weight dropping from a ledge. The air instantly filled with a foul, hot stench like rotten meat and wet fur.
Through the grey birch trunks, a shape emerged. It was a bear, but it was deformed by age and starvation, its coat patchy and scarred, its small, red eyes milky with cataracts. It didn't see them, but it smelled them. It lifted its massive head, a string of thick saliva roping from its black gums, and let out a roar that vibrated through the soles of the girl's boots.
The girl looked to the wolf for direction, expecting him to spring forward or lead her away. But the wolf had stepped back into the shadows of a cedar tree. He wasn't looking at the bear; his golden eyes were fixed entirely on her, his lips pulled back over his teeth in a quiet, dreadful grin.
He hadn't led her around the danger. He had led her into a corner.
The bear lunged, its massive paws tearing up the peat.
Instinct took over. The girl dropped her basket, the few blue-caps she had gathered scattering into the mud, and bolted. She didn't run along the deer trail; she threw herself straight up the steep, briar-choked bank toward the high ridge where the sun was.
Branches whipped across her face, leaving stinging red welts. She could hear the chaotic crash of the bear behind her, the heavy, snapping wood as it plowed through the thicket, and underneath it, the terrifying, silent rhythm of padding paws. The wolf was running too, parallel to her, waiting for the bear to tire her out.
Her lungs burned like swallowed coal. Her breath came in ragged, sobbing gasps. She scrambled on hands and knees up the final embankment, her fingernails tearing in the dirt, until her boots finally struck the hard, dry earth of the main path.
The light of the village edge was visible through the clearing, the pale smoke of the chimneys, the distant barking of the village hounds. Hearing the dogs, the heavy crashing behind her slowed, then stopped.
The girl didn't look back. She ran until she hit the wooden door of the infirmary, throwing her weight against it. She collapsed onto the dirt floor inside, covered in burrs, mud, and her own blood, her chest heaving as she stared at the ceiling.
"Child?" a voice called from the shadows.
The girl raised her head to see a nurse tending to her. Her mother was still breathing, her pale hand twitching on the blanket. The girl looked down at her empty hands, then out the small, square window toward the dark tree line. The forest was silent now, but she knew the truth of it now.
