November Challenge - Into the woods

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

Madelaine leant over the cot, milky ribbons of moonlight flowing through her hair and dancing over her little girl’s face as she gurgled happily and snatched at the tousled locks. She looked down at that beautiful, tiny face with nothing but love and warmth, as she softly, very softly, sang a hushed lullaby in the silent stillness of the room. By the second verse her little flower was fast asleep, and Madelaine unwound a strand of her long raven hair from around the tiny plump fingers and gently tugged the blanket a fraction higher. As she crossed past the window, something caught her eye in the darkness outside: a heavy, prowling figure just beyond the gate. A beast.

Something compelled her. She had seen it before. A dream. Perhaps a memory. Her feet carried her down the stairs and toward the kitchen door, belting a coat over her night dress. Leaving the house was dangerous; whatever stood outside was not safe. But it was beautiful; dark and deadly and beautiful.

Outside the air was crisp and cold, a light frost replacing the moisture of her skin in an instant, breath a fine mist. Two o’clock, moon high, feet bare. Madelaine’s hands trembled as she pulled the coat closer about her, peering into the black. The beast peered back. Then, it turned and padded into the shadows, running into the woods. At the tree-line, it stopped and glanced back, and she didn’t even pause to consider whether she should not follow.

The ground was hard underfoot and rough; thorns and brambles catching at her flesh, as she stumbled on through the undergrowth deeper into the darkening night, the trees, spindly skeletons of their former selves, shivering in the biting wind.

Something was wrong. Something was coming for her, something she couldn’t take back, a threshold that once crossed, couldn’t be crossed back over. She was inviting it. She knew it. She could have turned around then, but she didn’t.

As she drew into a dark clearing by a high, moss-ravaged, old-stone wall, she realised belatedly she had lost sight of her quarry. A studded wooden gate stood ajar in the wall, and as she approached it, the sight beyond stopped her dead in her tracks. What should, she was sure, have been the gardens of an old manor house, appeared instead to be a thickening tangle of rusted barbs; a forest of an altogether different sort: coppery brown and wicked and vicious looking, an animal track weaving into the mist; a thoroughly unwelcoming sight. But in the dense fog, a little light glowed softly, dancing, beckoning, and without knowing why, Madelaine took a step forward, and put her hand on the gate.

“Don’t!” said a gruff voice, barely a whisper behind her.

She dropped her hand and span around with a soft cry, to find a man standing barely a hair’s breadth from her shoulder, a savage, predatory air about him, familiar and dark.

“They’ve been watching you for weeks,” he growled. “Why?”

“I – I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered. “I – Wh – Who are you? Who are they?”

He snatched her arm, his grip like iron, nails like claws digging into her flesh through the fabric of her coat. “What is it about you that they’re interested in?” His head twitched across her, almost as if he were taking in her scent.

She shook her head, trembling. “I – I don’t understand. I don’t know! I – I’m no one…”

His eyes scanned her over, hungry and cold. Yellow eyes. And as they locked with hers she felt her mind opening up like a valley under a gaping sky. “Yes…” he echoed, in a softer snarl. “You’re no one.”

And she believed him, utterly, compulsively, knowing at once, without a doubt, that he was right.

“No one, yet.” He smiled a wolfish smile, razor-sharp, stark white fangs glinting over the edge of his lower lip.

Her breath caught in her throat as he tore into it, and as the warmth gushed out of her body into his and a blissful torment gripped her mind, she heard the gate swing shut behind her as the world grew dark.