They say the worst part of being the prey is the moment just before the teeth sink in. The anticipation of the bite is much worse than the bite itself could ever be. The sting, the glow of ache, the nagging stab, so much can be pushed to the side once it’s been faced, but how do you suppress what hasn’t found you yet? The apprehension of the strike is always there, but it’s at its worst the moment before it’s consummated: when it’s no longer a possibility, when it becomes a certainty. The anxiety of hope vanishes, and leaves just the fatalism of suffering. They say that that awareness is what really kills; that if it could just be believed that it could be survived, truly believed, death would not take its victim. Giving up hope for survival, giving up the need to live, is the worst part of all. Some say, it’s the true moment of death.
Little Red floated through a viscous darkness in a dream world of cold, pressing nothing. Moments passed, and, as she observed them with a dull, emotionless gaze, they crystallized before her mind’s eye. An instant slowed, began to arrange itself into the regular lattice of a second; great shards jutted from it in the geometric patterns of a minute before the spaces between the blades filled with fractal designs making it a snowflake of an hour, and - speeding in pace as it grew - compounded its configuration, rapidly swelling until she lost days, weeks, months, years, eternities to the intricacies.
She laughed, an infant swaddled in her mother’s arms on a cool autumn afternoon. The trees swayed in the rough winds, their scarlet leaves fluttering insanely. Her mother looked at the growing shadows between the tree trunks and clutched Little Red closer to herself.
A few years old, she played in the shallow trickle from melting snows on a warm spring day, splashing and giggling at the crystal droplets caught for an instant to glitter against the bright morning sunlight. Her mother and aunt glanced up from where they were washing clothes in the stream and made a sign of protection as they looked at her. No, not at her, past her. Past her to the woods.
A willful child, yearning to be treated as an adult, she is admonished for playing at the forest’s edge. It’s too dangerous. Those woods are not a place for little girls. It’s not a place for anyone. She’ll understand when she’s older.
When she’s older. When she’s older! She’s been hearing that phrase incessantly as long as she can remember! She can help at market when she’s older. She’ll understand why the old women laugh and wink when Tommy, the little boy from the farm downstream, steals her hair brush, when she’s older. She’ll get wine with her dinner, when she’s older. She can drive the cart, when she’s older. She’ll know why washing her hair, listening to her grandmother’s stories, leaving out an offering on the solstice is important, when she’s older, when she’s older, when she’s older! She’s lived ten winters (always counted by winters, never by summers); she knows more than anyone gives her credit! She doesn’t hide when it’s time to wash up anymore, she eats the vegetables as well as the meat, she barely touches her dolls. It’s like her grandmother says, she’s becoming a young lady. Why does she catch her parents sharing an anxious glance when grandma says that?
The woods fascinate her. The other children were afraid when the wind suddenly came gusting out from between the shadowed trunks, cold and biting in the late summer afternoon. The groaning sound frightened them, and they ran, not with the high-pitched squeals of children having fun scaring themselves, but wide-eyed and panting, desperate to get away, not sure if they would. Little Red just stood and stared, her head cocked to one side, listening. It was soothing, the cool on her skin after the blazing heat of a long day. The sound, low and quiet, pulsed through her; she felt it in her belly like the big drums at the temple, except not so jarring. She felt it with her whole skin, the little hairs on her arms rising as gooseflesh and catching the harmony. It made her head feel like when dad went over the bumpy road in the cart, the vibration quieting her thoughts, quieting the world. It was so lovely to feel everything pushed away, even just for a moment, to not have the constant murmur of the outdoors, the twittering notes of birdsong, the thoughts constantly streaming through her mind. She put her hand on the smooth trunk of a tall, young birch tree that grew curving over the path, making a primal doorway dividing the sunlit grass and the almost sacred hush of the forest dimness, and abruptly the wind died, the tone went out. She had walked from the stream almost without remembering, but once the sound went away, so did her urge to enter.
But the sound never really went away. Even then, some part of her could still feel it, was still lured by its call. She blinked, listened. It wasn’t in her ears, maybe, but deep down, it found her. It was with her, always with her, beneath everything else. The shadow behind her universe. Constant, ever-present, and always following just a pace behind. Its presence made her skin tingle, her thoughts stop.
Her mother woke her, concern burning in her eyes. She shivered, and looked down to see what was making her feet so cold that they ached. It was too jarring to process when she saw she was outside, barefoot on frosty snow, her nightgown clinging to skin damp with sweat. Confusion blundered through her, but the words wouldn’t come, so, instead, she just looked, pleadingly, into her mother’s worried eyes. She had found her, here, outside, dancing under the crescent moon. What was she doing? Little Red had no answers, could only stare dumbly about her, her faculties having fled. She found herself searching the shadows between the trees, scanning desperately in the wan light emanating from the sliver of moon, and finding nothing of comfort. The pillars of trunks stood out bluish-gray against the impenetrable darkness beyond, giving the woods the feel of a multitude of unblinking eyes in the night, peering at her. She became aware that her heart was racing, its rhythm throbbing in her ears. Her throat was sore, and she ran icy fingers down it, perplexed. Mother told her it was Little Red’s laughing that had woken her.