8 – 3

My heart rushes a roaring tumult of blood through my ears and pounds a furious and thundering beat in my throat. Air hisses in short bursts through the flare of my nose and my jaw aches from sealing my mouth into a thin, pale line. I can feel the talons of its vast, eight-fingered hand closing around me, its hide like dead-fallen leaves on the bare skin of my arms. I have to get away, I have to run! It doesn't matter that it's faster, that it's stronger, if I don't run, I am going to die!

I twist and flail to escape its foul clutches, roots tangling in my legs and tripping me up. I fall, landing bad-shoulder down on the cold, hard earth. The canvas of bruises and cuts painted across my body flare into life, colored bursts of pain in the dark of my closed eyes. A voice nearby exclaims, “Whoa!”, and it is those two things together that bring me from the lingering, cobweb-remnants of a nightmare and into the waking world. The voice, with concern now taking surprise's place, asks, “Are you...alright?”

Warm sunlight through a window's glass-and-curtain paints gold across the fading bursts of color. I fall onto my back and open my eyes. The ceiling of the sitting room greets me, with the sofa in one periphery and the dark, cold hearth in the other. Somewhere above my head is one of the armchairs. The other, down by my feet, is occupied. A girl sits in it, curiosity and faint alarm in her bright green eyes. She has her rich, tilled-soil hair in a braid and sits toying with its end. Adelaide in miniature, she asks again, “Well? Are you?”

I breathe in and out a few times, slow and deep, to help calm the rush of my blood. What I, in my dozing terror, had imagined were tripping roots is a blanket, now thoroughly woven amongst my legs. “It was a nightmare,” I say. I swallow the last of my heart's frightened tempo and sit up to scrub my face with the palm of my hand.

The girl takes a moment to think on that before asking, “Was it about what did that to you?” She flicks her fingers in my direction before going back to attending the end of her braid. It's a habit of nerves, I should think. Djan, my younger brother, would do similar with his fingernails, cleaning underneath them even if they were free of dirt.

Tals, my youngest brother, would pick his nose.

I say, “Yes,” and watch a kind of fascination take over her, a glint of wonder at what could have created so much injury in a single person. She's going to ask me. It won't just be once or twice or three times over, but until I have gone hoarse from repeating myself and she could tell the tale as well as I. Djan would. Djan has.

She begins to ask, “What was–?” but is interrupted by the sitting room's door swinging open and Milo hurrying in. There's worry in his bearing, though I can't say who for. Me, his patient, or she, his daughter? He takes us in: me on the floor and her in the armchair. She won't meet his eyes, instead focusing on the end of her braid. It's a habit of guilt as well, it would seem.

For his part, Milo looks less surprised than he does disappointed. He makes to speak several times before finally settling on, “I said –”

His daughter interrupts, guilty and embarrassed and in clear desire for this to be done with already. “I know!” I still don't know her name, but I know what she's feeling.

Milo plows on, undeterred, “I said, 'Let her sleep, she's had a long night.' I said, 'Don't surprise her, Vin, she's been through it.' Did you do that?”

“I didn't wake her up!” Vin protests, “and I told you to call me Lavinia!”

He answers this by saying, “Why should I listen to you if you won't listen to me?” It is, almost to the word, how Father would treat me or Djan in a situation like this. More him than me, in the days before I left. I wonder how he is, him and the rest of my family. I wonder where or if they have stopped, and if it's as beautiful as the clearing I left them in. I wonder if they're safe.

There's no need to wonder if I'm safe. Little Lavinia's voice gains an edge of plea as she once more declares her innocence, “But – Dad, I didn't! Really!” She turns to me, eyes beseeching-bright, “Tell him!” Milo gives me a look of apology, and before he can begin to give it voice, I provide some daughterly solidarity.

“She didn't,” I confirm. “It was a nightmare.” That look of apology turns to one of empathy, made all the stronger by the dark shadows under his eyes. He nods, and seems to find that nothing further is necessary. I agree. The fewer words spoken or heard about it, the better. I hope that, in doing so, it will haunt me less. Milo takes our measure and relents.

“All right,” He says, earning a grin from his vindicated daughter. His love for her shows soft in his dark eyes and the wry twist of his mouth. He points at her and says, “You are too much like your mother, you know that?” Lavinia nods proudly. He shakes his head. “Speaking of, she needs you out back for something. Says to drop by your linens drawer first.”

Confusion first traces across her face, followed by deep-red bands of mortified understanding. Without another word, she's up and out, racing down the hall on leaden feet. He shakes his head, wry smile broadening into fondness. There's still some traces of it when he turns his attention to me, still tangled in a blanket on the floor of his sitting room. “Found something you should see,” he says, “and I'm gonna tell you now, you're not gonna like it.”

- - -

It is a bright and beautiful noontime that I follow Milo into, with nary a cloud to mar the rich blue of the open sky. The air is still and holds no threat of later rain. A flagstone path leads from the stairs down the gentle slope to a gap in the treeline, where there begins a path of hard-stomped dirt. Must have missed that, somehow. As we grow closer, the cast shadows of trunk and canopy seem to darken and deepen. The further I look into the wood, the more haunted a place it becomes. In a tangled nest of limb and leaf I see its eyes, pitiless pits of remorseless shadow. In a lightning-strike fork of an old oak, I see the tips of its talons. My back aches and itches, and my pace slows to a halt.

It's not there.

It's not.

It can't be. I would know. I would feel it. Milo stops a step after I do, and turns. I don't know what feeling holds me still and makes it hard to breathe. It's not any shade of fear, with which I am now more than passing familiar. Sweat dots the back of my neck and stings on sore bruises and bandaged wounds. My hands are shaking, and my body feels weak and useless. I need to be ready to run! If it comes while I'm like this, I will die!

I don't know what this is, but Milo does. He stands within an arm's reach and says, as if it's simple, “Breathe.” I've no air to tell him that I'm trying, that it's suddenly the most difficult thing I've ever done! Standing becomes too much effort, and I sort of fold upon myself to hand-and-knee. “Zira,” he says, kneeling with me. He's calm and he knows and it's infuriating. Why does he get to be like that, when I have to be like this?! “Zira, you're going to pass out, you have to breathe. One breath, just one. Come on, you can do it. Now, hold it and count to three. Let it out, count to three. Do it again. Good, that's good. Keep going, you're doing great. In, count to three. Out, count to three. In...”

With each breath held and each count of three, this feeling's hold on me weakens. It was so strong and encompassing at first that it defied description. Now, I know that it is heat beneath my skin and sweat above. I know that it's iron bands around my chest and weakness in arm and leg. I know that it is a betrayal of body and mind, and that Milo has felt this way before. Another breath and three count passes before I feel I've enough to speak without dying. I ask, “What...what was that?”

“Panic,” Milo tells me. I see sorrow in his dark, knowing eyes.

I shake my head. “No...no, it can't be. I know what that feels like, and it's not...” I flap my hand in the air. “that.” I finish uselessly.

He shrugs. “What would you call it, then?”

I swallow dryly and fail to find an answer. I shake my head again and heave a great, gusting sigh. It feels so good I do it again. I think I can stand, now. My knees wobble a bit as I do, and Milo watches me with ready hands to catch a fall, but I'm upright. Upright, and embarrassed. “Sorry,” I say to the ground.

“I get them too,” Milo says, instead of accepting my apology or moving on. “over the dumbest shit, sometimes.” The sound he makes is like a laugh, only absent all humor. “The kettle, once. Oversleeping, a few times. Adelaide chopping firewood. Vin screaming at bugs.”

“Why?” It's all I can think to ask. Why those things? Why you? Why me?

He thinks for a moment, mulling over his answer. I wait, my eyes flicking from him, to the forest, and back. Carefully, he says, “When something bad happens to you, it sticks around. Like a...ghost, or something. It's not bad enough that it happens, right? Gotta give you nightmares, make you afraid to sleep, make you – make you different than you were before.”

“Does it ever stop?” I need to know. I need there to be a day where I am haunted no longer, even if it's weeks in the coming.

He offers, with a sort of hesitant cheer, “I can drink tea now. Make it myself, even.” My lips twitch. It's not all that funny. After what I just went through, it needn't be. He mirrors my slight smile and grasps my shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “You'll be alright.” he promises, and I think I believe him.

That belief lasts until I'm shown what he wanted me to see: the remains of a fallen tree spread across the hard-stomped trail. It has been gouged and broken with terrible, rending force, into a familiar shape.

A ram's curling horns, framing a long, narrow head.