Pluck (The Woodswalker Novels)

by Emilia S. Morrow

  After walking for so long and running so far she had to stop to regain her composure. Hot fire ran through her lungs and legs. She was never really in shape, but combined with the exhaustion she felt from her long walk she was losing the will to continue fast.

  Yet still, as she stopped to catch her breath she could hear them, closer now than before. She could swear now that they were calling for her. Although she could see no one ahead of her at this point, they were always just beyond the next stretch of trees. It was as if they were making sure not to get too far ahead.

  She did not have much left to give, but she gave it all. She ran at a full sprint towards the direction of the sound. Looking back at the moment in the future, she would swear that she was running on flat ground, as far as the eye could see.

  The cliff she ran off of would disagree with this.

  Briar ran until her feet stopped hitting the ground. It did not truly register until she was in freefall, tumbling through the air for the longest second. She hoped her cousin would not blame herself. She landed straight on her leg, crumbling to the ground like a folded paper fan.

  This Owl Would Eat Her

  And so she laid, gasping for breath at the bottom of a cliff. It was not a remarkably tall cliff, compared to the many drops in the park. In fact it was barely three stories. But looking up at it from the bottom, Briar was afraid.

  Once the blood stopped rushing in her ears she could still hear it, maddeningly off in the distance. The voices were down here with her, and they were laughing. As she laid there helpless the sound grew quieter until it dissipated altogether.

  She attempted to stand to continue her chase, only succeeding in crashing back to the floor. Her right pant leg was bleeding profusely, and just would not support her weight. It was also facing the wrong direction, but her tired brain pretended not to see it at the time. Maybe she was in shock, she thought.

  The pain had not come yet, but she realized it soon would. She laid there, waiting for it to hit her. She could see it as real as the trees, the shroud of darkness looming over her waiting to settle in.

  Regardless of the situation, she thought the cliff she jumped off of had a lovely view. The trees at the bottom were lush and unkempt. A small creek gurgled off to her right somewhere she could not see from her position on the floor. Through the dark mass of leaves she could see the beginnings of the stars peeking out.

  Her leg began to throb, new feeling working its way to her screaming nerves. It came on gradually, until she was in such pain she could not control her body. She twisted and turned on the floor, mixing blood and dirt. She removed her jacket and tied it above the knee as tight as she could. She felt her pulse hot and angry in her leg, but it helped slow the bleeding significantly.

  She was going to die here. She could feel it in her bones like she knew her friend's boyfriend was an asshole. It felt so clear to her in that moment. Just like that asshole Todd. There were bears in these woods. There were coyotes, foxes, bobcats. Any one of them would find her in the dark and drag her away.

  A loud screech cut her out of her panic for a moment. A large owl landed on the tree closest to her. She had never seen one this close before. There was too much going on to care.

  The temperature dropped sharply at this time of evening, setting her teeth chattering. She searched through her bag and found her rain jacket to put on. Better than nothing, when her other jacket was now soaked in blood around her leg.

  With every darkening shadow she could see more creatures moving in them. At least she thought they were. In truth, the shadows were just shadows. Eventually it was dark enough that she could no longer make out every individual movement. She relaxed a little at this. At the very least she would not see them coming. Somehow that made it better.

  She stayed up as long as she could, terrified to close her eyes and not wake up. It had been a long day though, and she barely had a say in the matter. Fireflies began to flit their way amongst the inky forest. Watching the dots of light blink their way across the darkness slowed her panic until she could finally let herself fall asleep.

  They always say not to fall asleep after a great fall. If you fall asleep, you will not know what is wrong, or fall into a coma. Briar cannot get medical care anyway, so there wasn’t much point in avoiding sleep for that reason. She was more worried at this point of the animals picking her off in the night.

  She scarcely dreamed, and this night was no exception.

  ***

  To her shock, she awoke at daybreak. She did not remember falling asleep, but here she was alive the next morning. She still felt the cold in her bones but soon the world would be warming. The worst of her wounds had stopped bleeding in the night. Her pant leg felt gummy against her skin with congealed blood.

  It had now been a full day of hiking without any water. She had searched through her pack but came up with an empty water bottle. She had forgotten to fill it before leaving the campground. She was pissed at herself. She deserved to die for being so stupid.

  She lifted her head as much as she could to see the creek she had been hearing. It wasn’t that far away. She dragged herself over to the root covered ground. Every movement was excruciating, but the slow death of dehydration was probably worse. So she continued.

  When she reached the creek she was shaky and out of breath. The water was slow moving and sparkling in the early sun. She drank deep, at first by the handful and then by dipping her face straight in the rushing water. She filled her empty water bottle for the future and stuffed it back in her pack.

  She should have taken the opportunity to wash off her leg, but she didn’t. Briar didn’t even look at her leg. What leg? She was firmly in the camp of ‘if I don’t think about it, it is not happening.’ This is a pretty bullshit camp to be in her situation, but she assumed she would die soon anyway so she thought it would be no big deal to delay thinking about that.

  Right along the shore was a large tree. She decided this would be a good place to rest, so she dragged herself to sit against its bark. After the initial terror of her situation faded she found herself bored. She searched through her bag until she found a book she had kept since her last camping trip.

  It was one of those gritty murder mysteries from the local grocery store. She tended to buy cheap books there whenever she came to town. Usually she went for smutty romance, but this time the murder mystery called to her. She plunged herself headfirst into the readings. This particular book was about the slaying of a small child in a small town and the search for justice. It was pretty decent.

  When she looked up from her book the shadows had lengthened around her. Above the gurgle of the creek she could hear things moving in the forest. She was definitely not alone here. This time, she was not overreacting.

  She looked up in time to see an owl fly to the tree above her. It landed gracefully in the lowest branch, its dark eyes staring down at Briar with interest. She was pretty sure it was the same owl. Maybe she was imagining things.

  This thought unnerved her. From what she remembered of owls (which was barely anything) they spent most of their night flying long distances and spent the day sleeping. And yet this owl was here during the day, in the same place she saw it yesterday. She had heard of vultures waiting for people to die to eat them, do owls do the same?

  No, they don’t. But she does not know that either. With the sounds of the forest around her and the stare of the owl above she could not handle being there anymore. She tried to go back to reading her book, but she could not manage to focus.

  ***

  The following day when she awoke the fog was all around her. If she had not been too busy dying she would have been breathless from the beauty of it all. She longed to get up and run around in the low hanging clouds. She could feel something brewing, the looming shadow of disease within her.

  She was happy to have survived the night, as she was so sure she would not. Either from her injuries or from the animals around her, she thought it was over.

>   “I’m not out of the woods yet,” she whispered to herself. She laughed at her own joke. She was strangely hyper.

  Although it was morning now, the owl had not shifted position in the tree above her. She was now almost entirely certain that this owl would eat her. She got up very slightly on her elbows to take a look around but even that was too much effort in her weakened state. She laid back down with a huff.

  As was the case for most days in these mountains, early morning rain began to fall. Although she was laying under a tree it did not fully protect her from the downpour. She remembered her raincoat, discarded under the cliff. She didn’t think she could make it back over there. As the rain coated her she stared up at the owl above. It was also soaked in the rain, its round eyes pulled into slits by the rain bouncing off of its face.

  She felt herself fading away. She was cold, wet, hungry, and still weak from blood loss. Her mind was loose in her head. Briar feared it would roll away. By the time the rain stopped her breathing had slowed. She tried to pinch herself awake but her eyelids felt so heavy.

  The owls wings stretched out on either side of it. They grew monstrously until they were two startling crescent moons above her. The shape of its flesh beneath its feathers began to quake with the energy of ants rushing out of a broken anthill.

  Briar turned her head as mass amounts of feathers began to shed off of the creature to coat her shaking body. Out of the corner of her eye the shape began to stretch downward until a human man landed on his heels by her side. She craned her neck up at the empty tree above.

  His skin was a deep dark honey, and almost as luminous. His amber eyes held their own light, glowing in the darkening world around them. He lacked muscle definition everywhere but his arms, giving a strange unnatural appearance. Oh, and he was naked.

  She had to be, definitely had to be hallucinating. She was delirious from the cold and the blood loss and the broken leg. She had to be imagining him. Although some part of her did not want to give herself credit for something so ridiculous.

  “No,” she told him, closing her eyes with a shuddered breath. She just did not want to deal with this right now. He was ruining her romantic death scene.

  “If you do not get up, you will die,” he said plainly. His voice was rough from misuse. Which makes sense, she rationalized, because owls do not speak. Laughter bubbled in her throat at the absurdity of it all.

  “Then I guess I will die,” she said. She lifted a shaky arm to gesture at her mangled leg.

  He stared down at her for a few moments, not speaking. Briar hoped the silence meant he was gone, or the hallucination was over. In the silence he let out a quiet sigh. He crouched down and lifted her up into his arms. Her leg was in such pain she saw stars behind her eyelids.

  Briar opened her eyes in surprise. She got a good look at her leg swinging like dead meat. The sight disturbed her so much she puked violently over his arms. She did not have anything but bile and strange chunks left to give.

  “No offense,” she said, absolutely mortified at what happened. He was too handsome to be puked over. If she was not in such a state she would be blushing.

  He carried Briar in his arms as if she was made of paper. A delicate, precious thing. She was still in shock, but she was not sure if it was from her overall condition or the not-man who saved her. Probably the not-man thing if she were being honest. She was pretty okay with dying.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, but at this point as long as it was somewhere not here she was thrilled. She wanted to die in peace, without thoughts of scavengers taking her corpse.

  “My home is nearby,” he said. She could not tell if he meant to stuff her in a hollow tree, or if this owl actually owned property. Either way, the mental image was hilarious to her.

  “You could just put me back on the trail. I was hiking with someone else, she would have other people looking on the trail by now,” she said. He looked down at her with his inhuman glow.

  “We are days walk from any trail. My home is closer, and we need to get your leg cleaned up quickly,” he said. “You aren’t well.”

  Days away from any trail? Confusion clouded her mind but she did not argue further. She could have sworn the forest had changed on her too quickly for how far she walked. Maybe she was just delirious, wandering around for longer than she had thought. Maybe she was crazy.

  She looked up at the new man’s startling eyes. She was definitely crazy.

  Blood and Bones and Cotton

  As he walked her through the forest the trees were growing more ancient, larger. She could feel the history here, but it was not human history. The small trail they walked across was not of hikers, but of deer.

  They were walking for hours as far as she could tell. She did not feel right in her own skin. With how thick the canopy was it was hard to figure out just how much time had passed. All the while, he did not say a word. She attempted to start some conversation, but each attempt was met with silence.

  “What is your name?”

  “Have you always been an owl?”

  “Why didn’t you swoop in earlier, asshole?”

  “How many animals are actually naked people?”

  “Are you going to eat me?”

  But each time, nothing. She grew more disturbed with each passing silence.

  As the sun went down the forest opened up unexpectedly. Dense groves gave way to a perfect circle of trees. Inside the circle there were no plants growing. She was reminded of the devil’s stomping grounds of legend. Her stomach turned again. In the middle of the clearing was a cabin. She was relieved she was not going to be recovering in a tree, at least.

  From here she could see holes in the walls, rotting wood. She had seen cabins like this throughout the park over the years, but all of the others were off of maintained trails with clear signage and reinforced floors. This cabin was truly wild, no signs saying it’s history, no “Bob was here” carved in its sides.

  The porch wood made a deep creak as he stepped onto it. She was worried it would not hold them. He carefully balanced her so he could open the door. She noticed it was more modern than the rest of the cabin. Why invest in a door when there were large holes in the sides?

  All over the cabin were items of uncertain value. Various tree stumps, broken camping lanterns, single shoes of different types, piles of windbreakers, small wood carvings, scraps of sketches and unfinished watercolors, small clusters of crystals, old toys. Most seemed to be items campers would leave behind, or lose while here.

  Or he was a kleptomaniac, who knows.

  “You’d think you were a magpie,” she quipped, but by the look on his face in the gloom he didn’t understand.

  In one corner of the room was a large pile of furs of all kinds. Bears, foxes, bobcats, and some that she just could not identify. He shuffled around his piles of treasures to lay her down on it. She feverishly thought of all the lives she was laying on. He attempted to pull her damp pant leg up to expose her broken leg but the pain was so great she screamed

  “We have to look,” he said in a voice that was almost gentle, but that seemed to be out of his vocal range.

  She shook her head feverishly, even though she knew he was right. He sighed. He turns on one of the apparently functional lanterns and placed it by her. It felt more to her benefit than his, as he comfortably moved around the cabin in the dark.

  He stood to rummage through his things. She noticed he placed everything back where it was exactly after, as if their position was important to him. He pulled out a large hunting knife. The sight of it made her panic.

  He placed the knife under her cuff and slowly cut the fabric of her jeans up past her knee. Briar mourned the loss of her favorite dark wash pair of flare jeans. It took her so long to find a pair that fit her short legs. When he parted her pant leg he gasped to himself. She didn’t want to look. He nudged her softly. She shook her head, a stubborn child refusing to go to school.

  “Hey,” he said, slightly more soothin
gly this time.

  She shook her head again.

  “You have to look,” he said.

  She could barely keep the bile in her stomach just seeing it dangling, she could not imagine what it was like without her pants covering all the gory details. But she looked anyway.

  Thankfully she did not have anything left in her stomach. She dry heaved.

  Her leg seemed to be dislocated, bending almost entirely the other way. There was a large gash just under her knee where bone was visible. It was much whiter than she had imagined. Already the surrounding tissue seemed to be off in color. Before she had time to process he grabbed her leg and pulled.

  Her vision blurred at the ends, like the static on a tv that pulsed with her heartbeat. He must have said something, but she could not hear him over the roar in her ear. The static took over her whole vision, until it was gone altogether.

  Everything was not black, it was simply gone.

  When she came back into focus her leg had been cleaned and wrapped tightly in cloth. The cloth was all sorts of different colors and thicknesses. Her savior or captor was back to being an owl, roosting on one of the nearby stumps. She still could not tell which was his original form. It made her uncomfortable to think about it.

  Briar had a flimsy hold of her life. She could feel a fever coursing through her with every heartbeat. She was not sure how long she had been unconscious.

  Seeing she was awake, the owl flew through one of the holes in the wall. He was gone, and Briar was once again alone. She wanted to stay up, to wait for the owl to come home. She had so many questions. But after what felt like a few hours of laying in bed he had not come back. For all she knew, he would never come back.

  The furs were so soft, and she was so tired. She leaned over to turn off the lantern, and slept.

  ***

  For a moment when she awoke she thought she was back home. The pile of furs under her were warm and just soft enough to keep her on the edge of slumber. Then the pain found its way back and she remembered. She was in the home of a man, who had once been an owl.