The Widow Among the Woods

The Storm

As soon as Christan walked in the cottage, she sensed something was wrong. The quiet stillness and rushing of the wind in and out of the house made an uneasy feeling. The fire place of empty, no fire, no light. Mrs. Hudson's helper, Ava, wasn't there.

Ava was in charge of helping Mrs. Hudson, though the old lady believed she didn't need help at all. The town thought she said that only because Ava had to stay away from her family. Ava was taking an herbalist course from Dr. Ruther. Dr. Ruther was a qualified medical doctor, who took his degree from Tribate University. Dr. Ruther's family had been herbalists since the day they set foot on this planet. The knowledge had been passed down from generation after generation.

Dr. Ruther was on visit. He had come to meet his family. Most of the time the doctor was aboard, away from his family. This year the doctor decided to take a rest and had come to see his family after 13 years. The doctor loved to pass on knowledge to anyone and anywhere. Ava had taken a quick opportunity to study herbs from the doctor. Ava came from a very poor village among the rural areas.

The rural areas were surrounded by the forest The country's rulers weren't keen on disturbing those areas but as the population grew, people moved in the forest and started small villages. The forest provided excellent amount of herbs for any herbalist and Ava thought it would be a good idea to be an herbalist for her village's cause as it was very hard for the people to afford hospitals and the villagers were more keen on nature than science.

The village had rejected any scientific means so they were the ancient time people. Dr. Ruther supported Ava's idea fully. He wanted his family's knowledge to be used and was glad that the art of an herbalist wouldn't die. Ava had always visited the town. As soon as she heard of Mrs. Hudson, she decided to stay and take care for the old lady, mostly because she wanted to use her knowledge to help her and ......... as a subject to practice her skills on.

Ava never left Mrs. Hudson. They had been together for nearly 4 years now. If Ava wasn't here something was defiantly wrong.

"Umm, Mrs. Hudson?"

"Yes? My dear."

"Where is Ava?"

"Oh, she went out somewhere and didn't come back. I think is with old Ruther"

"Your house, ...has an unwanted presence? Why?"

"Something is wrong. Isn't it? You are not telling anyone but something is wrong."

"My love, you know me better than anyone. Yes, something is wrong. But it is nothing to worry about for now. My! what flowers you have brought today! They smell amazing, honey. Where did you get them from? Let me guess, beyond the black line. You go there quite a lot, huh?"

Christan's heart skipped a beat. She knew about it. Someone had told her.

"H...How do you know?"

Christan's voice lost its joy. She had turned pale. This isn't true... she thought. No one had seen her beyond the line. They had only seen her at the edge of the line. Who ever saw this, they shouldn't tell her dad at all.

"My love, my dear, my hope. Why so scared? It is okay. I won't tell anyone about this or him. You can trust your old lady." Mrs. Hudson smiled one of her brightest smiles.

But Christan dropped the glass she was holding as she heard the word him. Her insides started screaming.

"Lupus..." she whispered. Her eyes had gone wide with fear and she had started trembling.

"Ahhh, so he is called Lupus. Isn't that wolf for Latin?"

"How did you know?" Christan's voice was barely audible.

"Abby told me. He is quite an intelligent bird."

Christan looked at her in horror. Abby was Grey parrot. Grey parrots are best-known for their party trick, talking (of course) and mimicking human speech. Abby was unique. Abby came out to be a quiet observant parrot and only spoke up to cause trouble. If he had seen her, then the village must know about it by now.

Abby would give away everything to anyone, especially something secretive. The bird would sense that the human or animal was trying to hide something and do the opposite of keeping a secret and tell the whole town. Like the time, Abby found out about Mrs. Watson's birthday's secret planning and at once told Mrs. Watson. There went the surprise!

Mrs. Hudson chuckled at the as she sensed Christan's horror.

"My dear, I made him promise to keep it a secret and he will. He never gives away any secrets."

Christan looked at Mrs. Hudson with her unique disbelief expression. Her eyes widen and she lifted one corner of her lips up as her jaw dropped open. Mrs. Hudson laughed.

"What! I feel you are looking at me with disbelief. Doesn't mean that I can't see, I don't know what is going on. I feel things. I feel people's emotions, their everything. Also Abby is my eyes for the outside world. AND my parrot is the most honest parrot. He just likes to mess up but when I say no, Abby won't do anything wrong."

Christan smiled.

"I trust you. By The Way, what is the problem then?"

Mrs. Hudson's smile was gone by the time Christan said those words. The old lady's beautiful face was bathing in sadness.

"The forest has been quiet for a very long time. The wind howls like mad."

It was true, the animals beyond the line very behaving very different and the winds had been blowing for a long time. The people had been informed that a very bad storm was on its way. The star readers had been saying the same thing over and over that the stars were too bright.

"My dear, something bad id going to happen, something very bad. It worries me a lot."

Christan stared at Mrs. Hudson, lost in thought. She had no idea what to say.