WOLVES DON'T TALK

Chapter 9. RABBITS TRAVEL IN HERDS

The wolf didn't come back that night. Pythia and I huddled together on the cliff's edge. I slept but suspect she didn't. I watched her in my dreams as she sat there clutching the coin and staring off into the blackness with a fixed smile on her granite face. When the night shifted into a foggy and cold morning, she remained right there, sitting and smiling when I awoke. I stared at her for a time, peering at her silent form through my eyelashes so she wouldn't know I'd awakened. I noticed a small oddity in her icy smooth features, some specks on one of her cheeks.

Maybe dirt, I thought even though they looked more like dead scales ready to peel off ... whatever.

Watching her sitting there so silently in the morning fog made me wonder, more than I'd ever bothered to wonder before, about who she was. She was clearly beyond any world I'd ever known and I couldn't even begin to understand what I was doing there with her.

"What's to eat," I asked, abruptly standing up.

My decision had been made a while back. This was not a time to re-think my position, which was to find out as little as possible about the oracle. Knowing would only complicate my real life in the real world, when and if I ever got back to it.

"Food?" Pythia responded, awaking from her trance.

"I need to eat."

She compiled with my request by digging some more of that nauseating bread from her pocket which, of course, I ate because objecting to the fare would not have changed the offering.

The forest started rattling around again as I chewed on the bread. Not as much as the night before when the giant rabbit herd had thumped by us, but still quite a bit. Pythia grabbed my hand just as the trees parted in front of us and drug me behind a big redwood to hide. I crouched gratefully by her side as we both held our breath and waited for whatever it was to pass.

"I bet it's another rabbit," I whispered to Pythia. "You know they travel in herds," I added, thinking about the pack of rabbits I'd watched the day before from my sunny rock in the woods. She grinned at me and nodded.

We both moved ever so slightly from our hiding place to stare into the fog to see if we could make out the source of the sounds but it was a useless effort as the damp mist had thickened, making it hard for us to even see each other.

Something crashed to the ground nearby and crashed again and then stopped. We stared and stared into the fog, anxious to make out any form at all. I reached for Pythia's hand again. I could almost feel the presence of evil nearby. Just a few feet away in the thick mist, the devil had to be waiting for me. The two of us clung together in our hiding place behind the huge tree. I could feel Pythia's heart beating and knew she could feel mine, too. I whispered a desperate prayer.

"Please, Lord," I begged, "I'm just a little girl."

A whining, whistling noise rang out through the fog as if in response to my plea. It rose in pitch and then fell and increased again, sounding like an uncertain horn beeping for attention.

Pythia rushed from our hiding place as soon as she heard the whining. I trailed reluctantly behind her until we both ran smack into another big rabbit. This one sat up on its hind legs not more than 20 feet from our sanctuary. Huge drops of a watery fluid dripped from its eyes, just like water splashing over the rim of a toilet bowl.

"Poor rabbit, are you alright?" Pythia asked sympathetically as soon as she spotted the sobbing beast.

"Good heavens! Isn't anything normal around here?" I gasped when I laid eyes on it.

The creature continued its crying storm.

"It's okay, bunny. We're friends. Don't cry, don't cry," the oracle whispered quietly as she reached out and gently patted the creature's soft furry side.