Pursuit
The woods do not sleep soundly tonight; the deadened echo of some animal’s shriek flings itself against the trunks of the pallorous pines. Maria’s hand is in mine, so small that my sweat turns it slick, and her fingers so limp from her terror that they seem to have no bones. The pines have dropped their needles all at once, the sickness turning them a dead and dusky brown, and with each barefooted step I imagine their poison lancing through my blood. The fog rises; it sifts through the needles like steam from a boiling pot, or as if just beneath lies a coil of entrails from some beast recent slain. Maria stumbles on something unseen, and I crouch beside her to huddle amongst bulging roots as the fog consumes us, dissipates, consumes us once more. The light from the pursuer’s lamp pulses in the mist.
