The Shattered

Chapter 8: Lost in the forest alone at night

I wandered the forest, looking for the village or any other familiar landmark. I didn't even see the big mountain by our home. I was hopelessly lost. Soon after I gave up on looking, the sun began to set, sending out rays of colored light. I watched the sunset in a daze, unsure how I was supposed to survive the night. My thin tank top and jeans weren't going to keep me very warm, and winds were known to get up to withering speeds on our island. I didn't have food or water; I hadn't even found a stream while I was hopelessly wandering. I didn't have my bow or a knife that I could protect myself with, and the best shelter that I could provide for myself on this short notice was to climb a tree.
I sighed, wishing that I could stop blaming Ethan for blaming himself. I thought about what he would think when I didn't return to the village that night. He would blame himself for that, too.
I found a reasonably tall tree and swung myself up onto the bottom branch. My legs were still sore from last night, and my knee was still hurt from my encounter with the snake a week ago. I stood up on the branch, resting a hand on the trunk of the tree and scoping the branches for one that I might want to aim for. I found a place about three quarters of the way up the trunk where two branches jutted out from about the same place, twisting and weaving through each other all the way out to the ends. It would provide a place that I could lay down, without falling out of the tree if I tossed and turned in my sleep. I lifted my arms to the branch above me, swinging gracefully up onto it. I continued my ascent, branch after branch, losing myself in the smell of the pine tree. I finally stopped to rest, my legs shaking with the exertion, my knee throbbing. I was surprised to look down and find my branches right below me. I must have been so preoccupied in the distraction that the tree created, that I hadn't noticed when I had climbed right through them.
I lowered my aching legs onto the branches, testing if they were strong enough to hold me. They held, not even bending as I put my whole weight onto them. Good. At least I had relative safety now. The only thing that could get to me would be a panther or big cat of some kind, and I doubted that they would waste their strength on climbing all the way up the tree to get me. They could get much bigger prey without half of the effort that it would take to get to me.
I rested my feet against the trunk of the tree, and stretched my body all the way along the branches. They were comfier than I had originally assumed, and I soon drifted away into a dream...
I looked around me, only to find snow, endlessly stretching out from the place that I was standing. It was perfect, with out a mark in its unending expanse. I walked a few paces straight ahead, turning around to look back at my footsteps. My eyes widened, and I saw beautiful grass and flowers sprout in the tracks that I had left behind. I took another tentative step backwards, and watched the snow where my foot had just been melt away to reveal the beautiful ground. I laughed out loud and jogged away from the spot twisting to watch the flowers bloom to reveal their petals. I picked up my pace and began to run, thinking of all of the flowers that must have been blooming in my tracks. I raced on, and when I finally pulled to a stop, I was surprised to find that I wasn't tired at all. I turned around, looking at the beautiful emerald path that my footsteps had traced in the snow. As I stared at the grass, I saw a movement ahead of me, and a little to my left, coming at me from the direction that I had just run from. I looked up to find a silver wolf, with red eyes. I stiffened, immediately suspicious. Natasha had told me that all of the different clans had different eyes. This one must be one of her enemies, and by the way that he was looking at me, I was too. I turned back around to run, but all of a sudden, the exhaustion of my run earlier crashed down on me like a bucket of icy water. I tried to move my legs, but they remained planted. My vision began to go blurry, and my body began to shake, uncontrollably. I fell to the ground, unable to control my legs. I couldn't even move my arms to protect my body from hitting the ground. Tears spilled down my face, and I watched the wolf pace closer to me. He didn't seem to be in a hurry, sure that he was going to catch me. I was sure that he would too, because I had no control of my muscles.
I jolted awake, just as the wolf lunged for my neck. I sat up, gasping, and clinging to the tree. I tried to be quiet, but I was so shaken that I couldn't breathe right, so I sat there, sucking in ragged breaths, the cold air stinging my lungs. I felt water drip onto my arm, and I lifted my hand to my face, feeling the tears that clung to my cheeks. I hadn't even realized that I had been crying, and I was shocked. I had cried so much in the past day, that I felt like a baby. Always crying, always needing attention, but never sure what I was actually crying about. It was pitiful.
I looked up at the sky, finding that the moon was straight above my head. I had survived half of the night, and I was determined to survive the other half. I lay back down, resting my head back onto the branch, and tried to fall asleep again.
For the rest of the night, I fell in and out of sleep, restlessly tossing and turning on my branch. Early in the morning, I heard a twig snap close to the base of my tree.I leaned over the edge of my branch to see who or what it was, and I only got a glimpse of the thing before I jerked back to the protection of my branches.
It was big, maybe twice my size, and grey, and my guess was one of the wolves. Why had I seen them so many times in the past two days, and never before that? My gut told me that it wasn't a friendly wolf, and my gut was usually right. I held my breath, hoping that the thing would go away, but true to my luck, it stayed right by the base of my tree. I flipped over onto my stomach, and looked down through the crack in my branches. The wolf was circling my tree and looking up at me. Its eyes glowed red and I realized that this one definitely wasn't friendly. I looked around me for another tree that was close enough to jump to, and to my relief, I found one. It didn't look very sturdy, but I didn't exactly have a choice. The wolf that was pacing around the base of the tree that I was in knew that I was there and wasn't planning on going anywhere until I came down.
I sat up, facing the tree trunk. I glanced down again, and I saw that the wolf had sat down and was grooming himself. Yep, he was planning on staying. I climbed over to the next branch, making sure to knock a few good sized sticks and pieces of bark down onto the animal, just to make a point. I didn't like its presence and I was determined to make sure that it knew that. There was no way that I was going to come down and face that thing. I shifted my weight onto the next branch slowly, just to make sure that it was going to hold my weight. It creaked but held me. I did that three more times, and found myself on the target branch. I looked down to find the wolf on its feet and looking up at me. It was clearly suspicious of what I was trying to do. I shuffled down towards the end of the branch, holding onto another branch that ran along right above my head. The wolf growled at my sudden movement, and I almost lost my balance, my shifting feet sending a shower of bark down on him. I heard a yelp, and looked down, finding him wiping his paw along his eyes. Satisfied, I continued along the branch. I got to the point where the branch was bowing from my weight, and I decided not to try to go any further. I looked over at the branch that I was aiming for, and assessed my jump.
Finally, I leapt. At the last second, my feet slipped, and I found myself plummeting towards the ground. Branches whipped at my face, and I grasped for anything to keep me from hitting the ground, and at the last minute, I managed to grab hold of a branch. I swung around violently, and the branch bowed under my weight, and I was afraid that I was going to fall again. I moved hand over hand towards the trunk of the tree, and the branch that I was clinging to seemed to get less and less strained holding up my weight.
When I finally reached the trunk, the branch seemed almost able to hold my weight without any strain at all, but I was still weary after my fall. I reached up for the next branch, and the one that I was standing on creaked. Fabulous. I was going to make it away from a giant snake attack, a fight between two packs of giant wolves, and manage to avoid being caught by my mom, only to be killed by falling out of a tree.
My hair fell into my face, and I brushed it back impatiently. I shuffled over to the next branch, and reached up from there. I kept pulling myself upward, and there kept being branches that would hold my weight. When I looked up after ten minutes worth of climbing, I found still more tree. I climbed for another five minutes, and the branches finally began to thin out. I went a few levels higher, and sat tight. I watched the wolf pace around on the ground below me, unhappy that I had moved. He was obviously confused by my sudden movements. I continued to watch him while thinking about my next move. I found my mind beginning to wander, and I made no effort to reign it in. If my life continued to spiral downwards, there was no way that I was going to be alive come morning. I might as well think about the happy times while I still could.
I thought back to the first cold winter that we all had to endure. My mother had been so steadfast throughout that time. We had lost so many people to sickness and cold, yet she never seemed to lose her fight. When summer finally came, she seemed even more stressed than she had during winter. I remember feeling confused by that, and being unhappy seeing her strained face day after day. After a few weeks, it slipped away and she was the same carefree person that she had been before the crash. That's what she had managed to convince Anna and me, anyways. One night, I couldn't sleep and so I got out of bed to get a glass of water. We had just gotten our new house, the one that we have now, and I was still really small. I was stretching up on my tippy toes to get a glass for my water. While I'm stretching, I hear soft sniffling coming from behind me. I promptly forgot the glass and snuck over to my mom's door where the sniffling was coming from. I peeked through the crack in the door, and in the dim twilight, I saw my mom's form hunched over on the bed. She was shaking from silent sobbing, and she was clutching a picture in her right hand, while she shoved the other against her face. I remember the picture tilting towards the doorway, just enough for me to catch a glimpse of my father's smile before it turned back towards my mother. When I turned back around, my quest for a glass of water was forgotten and I snuck back to my own room. I didn't sleep at all for the rest of the night, and so I was up when my mom got up for work. She didn't look like she had been crying at all, and she had her usual cheery demeanor on, but just below the surface, I could now spot the tension. I had considered telling Anna, but it seemed like I should keep it a secret from her. I had never told anyone, and my mom still didn't know that I had seen her crying over my dad.
I look up, over to the next tree. The wolf has finally settled into one spot down below me, and I feel comfortable moving again. I shuffled slowly out onto the branch, and the wolf looked up at me, alert. I glared back down at it, and it grunted, showing me his teeth. I smiled innocently down at it, infuriating it further. Despite my dangerous situation, I was enjoying myself. I pushed myself out to the very end of the branch, and closed my eyes, imagining myself safe on my target branch. I crouched, took a deep breath, and jumped.
My hands caught hold of the branch, and my feet swung wildly below me, sending a shower of loose bark down on the wolf. I heard a satisfying yelp and I broke out into a wide grin. This was too much fun. I pulled myself up onto the branch that I had caught hold of, and made my way to the trunk. I sat down and looked down at the wolf. It was glaring up at me, clearly angry that I was getting its coat dirty. I took a closer look, and found that it's coat was sleek and shiny underneath the fresh dirt that I had gifted it with. This wolf must have cleaned up before it came to sit under my tree. Why would it want to do that? I clearly wasn't very valuable if they had just now taken action to get to me. I had been here for years, and there were many nights that Ethan and I had snuck out. We would have been easy prey when we were younger.
All if the thinking that I was doing was making my head hurt. I stood up, still a little bit winded but feeling ready to do another jump. The wolf had moved warily back to the old tree, probably thinking that from there it could keep an eye on me and stay clean and bark free. I maneuvered around to another branch around the trunk of the tree that I was in and shuffled out to the end of it. I calculated my jump, and leapt, this time landing perfectly on my feet in the other tree. I walked along the branch towards the trunk, stretching my arms out to keep my balance. This tree was more sparse, and the branches that it did have at this height were mostly flimsy and didn't look ready to hold my weight. I looked down in time to see the wolf moving over to my current tree. It looked unhappy about my move, just as it had looked unhappy about my first two moves. I smiled tauntingly down at him, and he snarled loud enough for me to hear him. I pulled my attention back to my tree and searched for a branch to move around to. None of them seemed strong enough to hold my weight. I tested my weight on a smaller one by me, and it snapped off before I could even put any real weight on it. I quickly shifted my weight back onto a branch by me, and slid down the trunk to a sitting position. What now? I could go back to the other tree, but the wolf was sitting below that one now, and I was afraid that I would make him mad enough to come up the tree to get to me. Second, the thought of going any closer to him made me shake, and there was no way that I was going to make it to the other tree if I was quivering all over.
I sighed, and stood back up, trying to quell my shivers. It wasn't a bad night to be out; it was warming and not too humid. It would have been perfect weather for Ethan and me to go out hunting. We wouldn't have come out two nights in a row, though, so it was all useless anyways. At least I wasn't going to die of frostbite since I was stuck out here anyways. I began to pace the short distance of the branch, thinking about the village. Why weren't we allowed out after dark? It wasn't any more dangerous than daytime. Ethan and I had been able to survive out here even back when we were only little kids, and had just been learning how to use weapons. Why, then?
Suddenly a movement from the wolf below me caught me off guard, and one of my feet slipped. For a second, I tried to regain my balance on the branch. Time slowed, and I felt myself begin to fall. As my body succombed to gravity, I fought it with all of my will power. I knew that it was useless and futile, but it was just natural instinct. My limp body hit a branch during its descent, sending it spiraling and tumbling into more of them. I knew somewhere in my mind that it hurt, and that I should be feeling pain right now, but my mind was numb. I tried to move my arms out to protect myself from the smaller sticks that were whipping at my face and bare skin, but my arms refused to move. As I struggled to regain control of my limbs, I suddenly managed to remember that I was plummeting towards the ground. A bloodcurdling shriek ripped from my throat. I no longer cared about animals knowing where I was. I was going to die if I hit the ground at this rate, and, even if I didn't I was pretty sure that that wolf hated me enough to finish me off himself. My scream died in my throat, and my body hit another branch, flipping me over to show the ground rapidly rising up to greet me. I somehow managed to smack straight into the lowest branch of the tree. Feeling returned to me, and I screamed again. The branch had slowed my descent slightly, so I wasn't going to hit the ground at light speed.
I had a second to think, and then I hit the ground. Pain exploded in my lower back, and I screamed as loud as I could. My head felt like it was going to explode, and I couldn't feel my arms. My throat was raw now, but I screamed again, hoping to scare the wolf away to give me enough time to escape. It seemed to be working, but then again, I couldn't feel half of my body at all. I attempted to move my arms, and they obeyed, but slowly. I pushed myself up to a sitting position in a desperate move towards freedom, but the sudden movement caused me to get a head rush. I felt something wet on my forehead, and reached up to touch it. My fingers came away red, and it took me a second to figure out what happened. Even though my head was bleeding, it didn't hurt at all.
I desperately attempted to stand up so that I could run, but my legs refused to cooperate. I tried to scream again, but my throat wouldn't cooperate. My lungs felt like they were collapsing in my chest, and my head was pounding along with the beat of my heart. The only positive thing about this whole ordeal was that my heart was still beating. I managed to smirk at the thought, and continued to struggle with my legs. They were refusing to do anything but imitate jelly. I finally managed to get myself half an inch off the ground, and that's when I began to see the black spots. It was a wonder that the wolf hadn't ventured near me up to that point, but all at the same time, I collapsed, I saw a flash of gray fur, and an ear splitting yell came out of the forest behind me. The grey flash of fur had taken shape and shown that it was the wolf that had pursuing me all night. It was cowering right in front of me, staring at something right above my head. I tried to turn my head to see what it was, but my neck refused to listen and my head exploded, causing the black specks to return to my field of vision with a vengeance. I tried to stay awake, but my vision swirled and my body crashed into unconsciousness.