I took off to the right, stopping to scan the horizon, frowning at the dark mist that covered everything. Trees and mist as far as the eye could see, keeping me from seeing the Paladin lands or anything else.
Stupid haunted Dark Woods.
Inhaling through my nose, I took the path, skimming my fingers along the mountain wall to the left of me. I pressed in as I passed, looking for indents, or hidden handles, or anything suspicious. This path wound around the mountain all the way to the very top, where a single tree trunk stood with its branches shorn completely off. On the trunk were a bunch of names carved in deeply with a knife.
Red. Run. Midnight. Buffalo. East. Wind. I remembered them all by heart. I’d started adding my name and then stopped. I decided I would add it the day I found the cave instead. Leaning into the mountain wall, I inhaled. I was smelling for magic, those hot wires that I always smelled when I was near it. If the cave was full of magic, then surely it would smell of it, no?
“Your dad is going to be so excited when I tell him I’m pregnant.” I spoke to my baby a lot. I had to or I feared I would go crazy. I didn’t know it was a “her” of course, but calling my baby “it” felt weird. “Like he seriously will run out and buy fifty onesies the second I break the news.” I grinned and rubbed my belly, which popped out slightly over the suede skirt I wore. “And obviously we’ll have to get you some custom t-shirts to match mine.” I pressed my fingers into the mountain, sniffing and even getting low in some parts in case it was a crawl-in entrance.
“‘If poopy, get Daddy.’” I chuckled. “Ohh ‘werewolf in training.’ No. ‘Alpha in training!’” I told her, and then stopped as the hairs on my arms stood.
Nothing had happened, I mean not really, but … something felt different here. I spun around, sniffing the air and looking all over, trying to identify what had caused me to perk up. Was it … colder in this spot? I hadn’t noticed before because it was winter, but … maybe it was the cool-ish breeze that had made me stop and given me chills. Leaning forward, I dug my fingers into the mountain, pulling away at ferns and soil, doing so wildly as I had many times before when I had a hunch I’d found something. Rocks and clumps of dirt rained down on my legs as I ripped at the ground like a maniac, feeling my sanity crawling on a knife’s edge.
“Come on!” I screamed, desperate to find the cave and leave this place, to go back to Sawyer and tell him I carried his child. My desperation was so strong I couldn’t help the sob that left my throat. “Please! Help me!” I yelled at the mountain.
The creaking below got louder and I froze, turning and looking down. There, in the thinnest parts of the mist, the trees … moved. Like possessed chess pieces, they ripped across the ground slowly, churning up soil. I closed my eyes, facing the mountain once more. I couldn’t look at them moving. It unhinged me with fear.
We are one with this land, don’t forget that. When you feel frustration, so do the woods, one of the letters had said. I had memorized them all.
I inhaled deeply through my nose, and then exhaled slowly.
I sang a song my mother used to sing when I was a child to get me to sleep or calm me down: “Hush a bye, don’t you cry, goooo to sleep, little baaaaby.”
The trees stopped rustling and I opened my eyes, looking at the hole I’d dug in the side of the mountain like a lunatic. My fingernails were packed with dirt and there was no cave entrance.
Nothing.
I’d had some dark thoughts in my three months here all alone. But none so dark as the one I was having now:What if I just stopped looking for the cave, if I just lived in that little hut and raised my baby in the woods, alone forever?
The act of searching for the cave each day and not finding it, of trying to search for a way back to the Paladin lands and not finding it,thatwas what caused me so much stress. But what if I decided to stay? What if I let go of the idea of beingstuckhere and just made it home?
I whimpered.
No.
Too many people were counting on me. I shook myself, smacking my face lightly to snap myself out of it.
“Come on, Demi, pull it together. Be strong.”
Ironically, thinking of Rab yelling at me and being disappointed in me spurred me on.
Shaking off those feelings, I trudged forward, working my feet into the well-worn footpaths, walking the same trail I walked every day. Some days I scaled up the side, but I had to stop once I realized I was pregnant.
One bad fall and…
Besides, one of the notes from Buffalo said…
I found it! It’s right off the well-worn path. Plain as day once you trust.
“Plain as day once youtrust.” What in the fuck did that mean? I didn’t know but I thought about it every night before I went to bed. It looped around my mind until I drifted off.
Plain as day once you trust.
Trust what! My wolf? The land? The Paladins? God? I mean, I’d racked my damn mind for days on that.
‘Find anything?’I checked in with my wolf and pressed on, winding higher and higher up the mountain until I reached the wooden tree stub at the top.
‘Nothing.’
