The guide

This is a nightmare. The woods are dark and dense. We have been walking for hours, but the path is still lost to us. My adrenaline has waned, making way for panic to crawl up and down my spine. The shadows move slowly, tiptoeing beside us in the night. I imagine a ghost floating silently on the edge of my vision, looking for the perfect time to snatch me. A goblin hides behind the next tree, waiting to bite my toes off for a midnight snack. Spiders and creepy crawlies skitter along the ground as we tread through their home. I brush at my arms constantly; fearful one will get on me. At any moment, a werewolf is bound to jump out and grab us.

We will make it.

We will make it.

We have to.

I try to block out whatever dangers lurk beyond the dark outlines of the trees, focusing on getting us out. We made it this far, only a little bit more. I grip at Brother’s chubby hand, silently asking him for comfort. He squeezes mine back painfully hard. My breath stutters across my cheek in little cloud bursts as the trek through the night becomes more laborious. My bloody, blistered feet beg us to stop and rest. But Brother trudges forward, his breathing becoming heavier with each hour that passes. A twig snaps behind us, and we freeze. No. It cannot be Her. She is dead. She has to be. Brother’s eyes meet mine in a warning. Be. Quiet.

We wait, our backs pressed to a tree, our exhausted breaths held. No other sounds call out into the night. A shrub next to my knees shakes, and I scream out. Brother’s hand clamps over my mouth to silence me. A tiny bunny leaps from the bush and hurries away into the darkness. I try to calm my nerves. The cry of an owl in the distance sets me back on edge, the panic racking through my body.

“We need to keep moving, Sister.” Brother whispers, motioning for me to follow him. I think we already went this way, but I keep my mouth shut, finding the words sticking in my throat. Brother will guide me; he will get us out. He has in the past. My legs are battered by the trees as the woods become thicker. A low fog moves in, clinging to the ground, causing us to stumble along, tripping and skidding over tree roots.

“We should rest for a moment.” My words are dusty, causing me to cough a tiny bit. Brother looks me over and nods, his cheeks ruddy from the cold. He drags me along until he finds a fallen log and collapses beneath it, grunting from the impact. The rotten wood barely covers his bulky body. As a protective arm drapes over my scrawny frame, I draw in tight along his side.

I pat his hand. “Let’s rest for a while. Then we can start again. Papa can’t be far now.” I lay my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. “Just for a minute,” I tell him.

He snorts. “Papa left us to die. I don’t care if we find him. My only concern is for us to be safe.” He yawns. If only we could be safe.

I see Papa. He is sitting alone at the table, clutching a mug of milk. The goat must be giving again. The fire is roaring behind him, the pot above it boiling away happily. He looks good. Strong. The sallow skin of his face has lifted, leaving a healthy glow. He must have enough without us. My chest constricts with the thought. He couldn’t save us all. He had to choose, and the answer was a selfish one. His big hand covers a face full of tears, shoulders sagging so low they almost meet in front of him. He swipes at his eyes with the back of his sleeve and heaves out a sigh.

“I’m coming, Papa!” I scream in his face, pounding my fists on the table. “I’m coming. Don’t cry, Papa. I’m coming home!”

He ignores me and gets up to check the pot on the fire.

I wake with a jolt. I heard something: a cry or a laugh. I strain to listen over Brother’s soft snores. Nothing. The night is deathly still. A frog croak breaks the silence, making me flinch. I try to steady my shaking hands, twisting them behind me. I think back to the words Brother whispered to me during these last few weeks. I whisper them to myself again to ease my thoughts, drumming them in a rapid tempo with fingers pressed to my temples.

We will be safe.

We will be fine.

We will make it.

I let out a long exhale. The thought of these last few weeks makes me shiver. We barely escaped. I had to shove Brother through a window as I strained under his weight. After his feet hit the ground, he reached back in and plucked me out, yanking me through the opening. I was weak from hunger. He was powerful from overeating. She had fattened him up, feeding him plate after plate, pulling him in under her spell. He was heady with the lust for food. More food sat on her table than we had ever seen. She pampered him yet worked me to the bone. I did all the chores and ate scraps of food from the garbage. I was beaten for trying to share a plate with Brother. After that, he left more food on his plate, so I had more to eat out of the bin later. I began to give up, too drained to continue. When I saw a chance to take her life, I didn’t hesitate. I know Brother is proud of me. Grateful for her end. The end of her control on him.

A hoot from an owl interrupts the snores of Brother. He gasps in his sleep and settles back down. I peer out from the cover of the fallen log, trying to discern the shapes in the dark. The fog dances along my feet, licking at my boots. A centipede crawls across my fingers. I stifle a scream and pull my hand away, quickly rubbing it, trying to erase the feeling of the squirmy body. Brother's eyes flick open, and he pulls me in tighter, looking wildly about for danger.

“I’m sorry. A centipede.” I shrug, embarrassed.

Shaking his head, he motions for us to leave, and I nod. He pulls me out from the log into the haunting woods. The trees tower over our hiding spot and cast long skeleton shadows from their bare branches, giving our faces a ghostly appearance. I turn in a full circle, looking for any clue to the direction of the path. This place seems familiar yet foreign. I’m sure we have stumbled upon it before. I turn once more, locking on a pair of yellow, round owl eyes watching me. I freeze.

“Do you remember which way?” He whispers, his attention fixated on the eyes watching us. I shake my head. No. No, I don’t. “Let's try left.”

I nod in agreement. Ok, let’s try it. I know we already tried to go left. I know we tried to go right too. I’m only focused on trying not to cry. This is hopeless. I follow Brother through the trees. The owl swoops from its perch, clipping my left shoulder. I grasp Brother’s hand, crying out at the sudden movement. Brother swats at the owl, but it’s no use. It’s gone before he raises a hand. It settles on a branch before us, staring.

“Let’s try right,” I whisper, tapping his shoulder nervously. “Please. I don’t want to go that way.”

He grunts an answer and turns his fleshy body towards the right. I glance back into the eyes staring at us, watching us. I remember the first time we entered these woods. A beautiful, soft white bird appeared to guide us, comfort us. She led us to the cabin in the woods that was so warm and welcoming we could have swallowed it whole. That dove was made of sweet sounds and kind eyes. But this owl is cold. All-knowing. All-seeing. Hard and dark.

We travel along, stumbling through the low fog and heavy tree branches. They grab at our clothes and faces. Brother has to stop to untangle my hair from a nest of branches that caught me. My cheeks are wet with tears. I’m not sure when I started crying, but I know it won’t end soon. Brother pulls me along, picking me up by the arm every time I trip. My knees are bleeding fresh over dried, cracked blood. Still, all the while, the cold owl’s eyes watch us, moving silently through the trees with us.

As we wade across a stream, I squeal with the ice water pouring into my boots. Brother huffs out tiny, panicked breaths. We pause on the other side, shaking and stomping our feet, searching the woods for signs of human life. Or the path. We begin again, half-heartedly. The owl swoops in on Brother, clutching his hair and pulling it. He grunts in pain, his eyes squeezing shut for a long minute, fighting back the tears. I tug on his hand, my attention locked on the owl as it lands in a tree near us, watching. Brother yanks me forward, and we stoop low, running further into the trees, bumbling through the underbrush with no direction. We run until we cannot run anymore, and still, we plow ahead. My sides seize in pain as I spasm to breathe. He pushes me under a low tree, stopping to catch our breath.

“You don’t think… It’s not… She’s dead, right? She’s dead?” I wheeze.

“She has to be.” He shakes his head. “Has to be.”

A piercing owl shriek rings out from the tree we are hiding under. I cover my ears, curling my chest to my knees. Brother rubs my back, trying to calm me. He is saying something in my ear. Keep Moving. Keep moving. He repeats over and over, his large hand patting my back. I am frozen, rooted to the hard ground. I want the earth to open up and swallow me down. Why am I fighting so hard? I have nowhere to go. No home. Papa abandoned us, left us to die out here. A nasty old hag held us hostage. What is left? If we find Papa again, who’s to say, he won’t dump us again? I lift my face to my Brother’s. His eyes are pleading. Stay with me. Stay with me. He is desperate for me to come back to him. I nod. Ok. Ok. For you, ok. I have him: my brother, my best friend. We have fought long and hard together. We will survive. I will not leave him as Papa did. His enormous thumbs slide over my cheeks to dry my eyes; then he wipes his own. He nods. Ready? I nod back.

The wind swirls around me as the warm body of the owl grazes the top of my head. I duck, throwing my hands protectively over me. Frantic, we take off like a shot, arms flailing, screams escaping. The owl swoops in again; we turn left in a blind panic. I run as fast as my scrawny legs will take me. The trees rip at our skin as another swoop from the owl sends us right. She clips in close, grabbing at us with her talons, leaving a long scratch down Brother's neck. I flail to get away from her, but I careen into a tree. As I bounce off the rough bark, Brother pulls at my arm to steady me. I stop just long enough for her to grab my hair. She pulls a piece of it from my scalp, and I wail, batting her away with fists. She escapes with her prize, unharmed. Brother pushes me forward. The trees grow tighter together, slowing our movements. I kick a small, soft body in the fog below my feet, sending a squealing rabbit rushing away. I glance back to take in my brother's desperate struggle to move his large frame through the thick trees. His cheeks are wet with tears and blood.

“Hurry, Brother. We must hurry.” I squeeze at his fat fingers. He is puffing now, the excursion leaving him winded. I am gasping alongside him, my body too weak to push forward. We must move on; our choice is life or death. To stop is to die. To turn back is to die. Our only chance, our only hope, is finding help. Finding the path. Finding home.

The owl hoots over our heads, slamming down on us as we scramble through the trees. We splash across the stream, back the way we came, shrieking as our boots fill. The new influx of water feels like thousands of razor blades to my already sloshed and frozen feet. The owl swoops, again and again, pushing our shoulders as if it was guiding us roughly through the stream and into the brush.

Still, we press forward. On and on through the woods, we run and trip, stand and run. After catching my foot on a tree root, I face plant into the ground. I try to lift back up and snap off a fingernail in the hard-packed earth. Brother grabs me under the arms and lifts me, urging me on. We are lost. Desperate to live yet stupid in terror. We need safety, a place to hide from the attack. The owl is tearing at our clothes, our hair. We swat at her but never manage to hit her. A clearing is ahead, candles burning bright through the trees. Is it possible? Yes. Yes! Safety. A chance. We made it. We need to get to the light, and we will finally be safe. The trees fall away, the clearing opens up.

No.

Laughter and Shrieking light up the forest air around us. Dozens of voices. Dozens of eyes are watching us through the trees. Shrieks and hoots fill the air. Soft owl bodies graze the tops of our heads as dozens and dozens circle the tiny hell house we lived in for weeks. They led us back here. They led us back to her.

Her tiny house sits calmly in the clearing, the chimney spilling smoke, candles in the windows. It’s a beautiful little nightmare. The smoke smells of sweet burning flesh. The candles look like finger bones. The front door is standing wide open, beckoning. Brother covers his mouth in agony and slips down to his knees. He has given up. We ran in circles to where it all began. They forced us back to her.