Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  Robyne, I think. And suddenly I realise, in a clarity that is almost like the turning, I have to tell him how I feel. He is too decent, too good, a soul, for me to leave in this limbo. It is not fair. Not when, in my blood, I know that I love him. But I also know I am not ready.

  “What you asked me,” I whisper. “We are so young, Guy.”

  I stand on my toes. I place my forehead on his. He lets me – for a moment. Then he pulls back. I see before me the boy I met so many years ago in the greenwood. Only now he is crestfallen. Instead of coming to catch me, he moves a step away.

  “Goodnight, Brya.”

  “Guy.”

  But he leaves my room. I could go after him. I could try to explain. But I tell myself there will be time for that. For us to talk, and for us to listen, and for us to be together one day: for I know that Guy loves me and will love me. He will protect me. He will do everything in his power to make me happy. Keep me safe in this life.

  But as I am standing there alone in the shadows of my bedroom, a cold kind of heat stirs in my neck. It sinks into my flesh. I shiver because my skin, for a moment, appears mottled. Dotted all over with darkish marks.

  Transformation.

  I blink twice. They are gone, like a flash of fever. I can almost tell myself they were a dream, a trick of my tiredness. Almost.

  A sound reaches me from beyond the window: the sibilant whisper of wind through trees. As if yoked to an unseen thread, I am born to the opening, its gateway to the night. The darkest is past – for now. But it will come again. It always does.

  A crescent moon hovers like a strange blade far off across the greenwood. The forest, to me, looks like the fur of a beast: vast and monstrous and alive. For a long time I stand there and stare out upon it. I wonder what lies beneath.