Nothing Human
Dawn breaks with its usual chorus of birdsong, but today it is accompanied by the pitiful weeping of a mother. A girl was seen stumbling into the Withering Wood not far from the village the previous evening. The tracks are still there in the snow, plain for all to see.
The priest goes to the edge of the wood with the blacksmith and the old carpenter, just to be sure. They return with sombre faces.
“Was it her?” asks the mother when they pass her in the street. “Did you see? Was it her?”
The men do not reply. They walk on to the gathering place between the two standing stones around which the village was built. Snow lies thick in the streets, but not a single flake mars those stones. Nor will any settle on the ground between them.
There, the men of the village talk in low voices of what is to be done. To speak loudly of the doomed is indecent. Grim expressions pass from face to weathered face. A few of the womenfolk join them and cast their voices into the mix. They are listened to – only a fool scorns the words of his wife.
All the while, the mother is kept outside the stones. She is told to go home – to spare herself the agony – but she cannot leave. She wrings her hands, presses curled fingers to her scalp, and weeps.
“Did you see her? Are you sure?”
The gathered folk touch their thumbs to their throats when their words come to an end. What is done is done. They walk their separate ways with plans for a few to meet again when the sun descends.
The mother reaches out shaking hands to those who pass. She clutches at their sleeves. Her eyes are red.
“It wasn’t her. You can’t know. Did you see her? My daughter – where is she?”
Most are too kind to shake her off, but they prise her fingers gently from their arms and avoid her eyes, thankful they are not where she stands now. That it was not their child who heard the pipe music and followed it between the trees.
The day passes in painful silence. No one dares speak. Snow muffles everything. All that can be heard outside is the steady beating of the blacksmith’s hammer against the anvil in his forge. The booming marks the passing of time, the approach of the end, like some kind of ominous clock. Even the rooks have fled.
The light begins to fade. The men gather on the edge of the village, torches and weapons in hand. They find the mother pacing along the edge of the Withering Wood. She will not pass between those trees, but neither can she abandon her child.
“Please!” she cries, falling at the feet of the blacksmith who leads the group. “She’ll be back. Please wait and you will see. She only went in the wood a short way. When she returns, she will be fine. Please!”
The blacksmith squeezes shut his eyes. He feels her pain. Already he has lost his youngest son to the Wood King’s enchanting pipe music. “Nothing human ever comes out of the Withering Wood,” he says.
The carpenter hands his torch to another and lifts the mother to her feet. She is carried, unwilling, back to the village where the wives will tie her to a chair so she cannot return to the wood. Her screams echo in the night.
Something growls from inside the thicket. The men raise their spears. A girl crawls out of the forest on all fours. Twigs and leaves have caught in her hair. She rises to her feet, one arm held at an odd angle. Blood is smeared down her chin. A limp hare drops from her grasp. Her once brown, human eyes are now a bright blue. They glow in the dark like a witch’s fire.
There is nothing to be done for her. She is already lost.