This story is based off one of George Macdonald's works.
1
He was tired. The kind of tired that burrowed down deep into his bones, making every step difficult. The kind of tired that only days of endless journeying could construct. The past few days had not been kind to him; icy sheets of rain and battering winds had swept the mountains, leaving him stumbling in soaked clothes while cold penetrated his bones and searched out every crevice of his body with sadistic glee.
Huddling inside a patch of heather, he blew hot breath into his palms; the fingers of his thick gloves had mostly worn away and hung in loose threads. Shivering and hunched, like an old crow, he plucked the threads away from the fraying cloth, mindful of every inch of his freezing body. Not for the first time, he wondered seriously if he could survive the journey.
Thrusting his fingers into the depths of his backpack, he withdrew a small thermos and cupped its warmth against his chest. Fumbling, he poured himself a cupful of coffee he’d warmed up the last time he’d managed a fire. For the last few days, most of the wood he’d scavenged had been damp from rain, so he’d been unable to build a fire to warm himself and his food. As a result, he’d had to scrape up spoonfuls of dry potato and lick cold chicken off his icy fingers, drink freezing water, and spend the nights covering his cloak with dry leaves and pine needles and branches covered in sticky sap.
The sound of his breath, scraping past his teeth and furling into the night air like smoke from a steamship, was almost loud enough to mask the sound of something-a wolf, perhaps, or a bear-making its way towards him. Fear rose up inside him like a tempest, rising in his throat and through his body, cutting out his loud pants abruptly. Clenching his teeth and willing himself to remain sensible, he drew his pistol from his backpack and cocked it with a soft click.
A slender shape was visible in the spaces between the dark conifers, clad in a scrap of tough material that looked like sacking, with lanks of dark brown hair dangling across its shoulders in a trellis. The figure raised her hands helplessly when she saw the light glinting off the muzzle of the pistol.
“Don’t shoot, please,” she said, in a voice that scraped and caught like cotton on thorns. Like a cat’s rusty meow.
Her voice, injected with fear, did not sound like the voice of a savage, or indeed of any of the native mountain people he’d cared to avoid in his travels. The softening of the vowels and the slight upwards tilt of the end of her sentence, spoken in a hoarse yet childlike voice, reminded him of his sisters back home. He lowered the pistol and spoke gently.
“Of course not, mademoiselle,” he said, “Forgive me, but I thought that a danger was upon me.”
Looking down, he noticed that her hands clutched a handful of leafy sprigs, with shriveled brown berries, and a dingy bad hung at her waist, presumably full of the herbs. Her face, blackened with filth and soot, had an upturned nose and sharp cheekbones, presumable worn away by hunger.
“These woods are dangerous,” she said, blue eyes intense. “You should not be here.”
“I do not wish to be, mademoiselle, but I am left with little choice.”
“You have choices you are unwilling to make.” Her eyes shifted away from him, as if she was looking at a bright light, or a wine she was forbidden to taste.
Puzzled, he said, “But mademoiselle, you are here in these very woods you declare unsafe.”
Her smile was a slit in her face: all sharp teeth like pointed needles in her mouth and lips thinning to show surprisingly dark gums. “I have little choice,” she parroted. Then her face cleared and the wary look was back, as her hand flew to her mouth to cover her lips.
