I held the hand that had touched her to my chest.
It had been nothing, but that sliver of contact lit a flame in me that burned for hours after.
b
When the storm finally passed, I did as I always had done when I felt alone and sinking: I walked. The forest might be strange and ancient and unwelcoming, but to walk amongst the trees, feel my thighs and lungs burn, my cheeks redden from wind and my feet blister, I felt at home in some small way. I had lost my early caution the longer I spent completely alone. I was no longer afraid for my safety, as I set little store by it. I had more to fear in the Witch than I did from the trees and wildlife.
The forest in winter was beautiful. Bare branches wove and swayed together as brittle as hay and heavy as stone. The ice groaned and cracked under its ancient weight, and sharp, flinty air sliced my throat. Dim light fell fractal, a half-world between the death of winter and the waiting spring seeded within it.
I left early one morning, lunch packed in a knapsack and a block of sugar cake in my pocket, and started walking. While the clear weather held I wanted to scale far enough up the mountain to get a view of the castle in its setting. The horizon had been confined to walls and ceilings for too long; I need an ocean of sky above me.
The weather turned halfway there. I had begun to lose my grip upon the passage of time, but I thought we must be where November slipped into December, and Winter truly claimed us. Clouds rolled up the valley, grey and heavy with snow. Frustration bit. Finally, I had felt the stretch in my limbs, the weight of loneliness lifting off me – but it was not to be. I turned for home, but soon enough I lost my way. The sky grew darker, a mind-slowing cold began to build and I became clumsy as my toes numbed in my boots. I walked and walked but still the castle did not appear. Had I gone too far? I didn’t know the landmarks of this forest yet and it would be all too easy for me not to recognise home.
The first few flakes of snow fell lightly, but its gentleness didn’t last. Soon great handfuls shuddered down between the bare treetops, no canopy to stop them. I picked up speed – and regretted it a moment later when my foot caught on a root and I plunged into the leaf mulch. The shock made me lose myself for a moment, then come back in spikes of pain – barked shins and palms, root-bruised rib. My ankle flared so bright I thought I would throw up. A sprain, and a nasty one at that. I had fallen enough times before to have twisted my ankle more than once.
But never like this. And never so far from help.
Using the trunk of a springy young elm, I tried to stand, but my ankle was a white-hot point of agony with even the slightest weight. I found a stout stick to help me hobble into the lee of an oak.
My mother had often been afraid when I went walking in the snow. She told me stories of woodcutters who had frozen to death minutes from their warm hearth, lost in the fury of a blizzard. She had been too afraid to go with me. Too afraid to leave her bedroom half the days, snow or sun. Turned inwards, wrapped in a shawl amongst ripe sheets and scattered books, she had been so easily overwhelmed by the world, and so unable to escape her own sadness.
I thought of her now, her heart-shaped face and glittering blue eyes as she told me of frostbite, of falling asleep to be buried alive in snow.
The snow came down harder and harder, making my fingers clumsy as I pulled my cloak closer. Threat gathered all around, in the snow and the dark, and the pain.
This was a mistake I would not survive.
The snow settled and the cold came biting. I tried to keep moving as best I could to maintain body heat, hobbling from tree to tree. But I knew it was pointless. I was too far from the castle; already the light was fading as the short winter day lapsed into night. I found another tree to shelter under and dug myself into its roots, packing leaf mulch and snow around me. Anything to keep warm.
At least the cold had numbed the pain in my ankle.
I couldn’t sleep, not if I ever wanted to wake up again. The twilight forest provided more than enough distraction in snuffling rodents and flitting moths, boughs groaning under their weight, and all around me the deathly fall of snow. I ate the crumbs of the sugar cake and let a little ice melt in my mouth.
Then, the soft crunch of footfall, muffled.
My breath caught.
There – it came again – the sound of something moving closer.
I held perfectly still.
A bear? Rare, but possible. A wolf? Most likely, but it wouldn’t come alone.
No option heralded a pleasant future.
Wolves didn’t hunt people, I reminded myself, that was a fairy tale. They were far more interested in deer and rabbits and other easy prey.
But too many myths had come true for me. I lived with the Witch in a castle where magic was real.
And right now I was easy prey.
A shape separated itself from the trees and I screwed my eyes shut.I am small and quiet and nothing, I am not here, you will not see me.
The crunch of footfall so close, I could feel the snow shifting. Warm breath on my cheek.
‘You are terrible at hiding.’
My eyes flew open.
