The Wolf & The Witch
Out of the Woods

The witch kicked, and flailed, and despised the wolf, and wanted only one thing- to pull him to hell with her. She noticed the stitches running across his face and swiped with her right hand and the stitches snagged under her nails and she yanked her hand free, jerking the black threads out of the gash. His skin split and blood ran down his face.

But the wolf didn’t care about pain, or blood, or stitches- all he wanted was for this witch to die. He squeezed his hand down around her throat.

The witch’s breath left her- she couldn’t inhale; her lips turned blue, and the veins that ran just beneath the skin, near her eyes, throbbed, and bulged, and her vision started eroding- white splotches, then gray, then the witch faded to white, leaving only Claire, dying, with one last thought in her head. “Le… stat. Help… me…”

The wolf heard his name, and then he looked, and saw his hand, and Claire, and he jerked his hand back and caught her. What the hell had he been doing? Why was he so mad at her? “I’m… I’m… are you ok?”

Claire coughed, and hacked, and wheezed. Her vision was blurry, but she looked up- he was bleeding from a deep cut in his shoulder, bleeding from the gash on his face, bleeding from his nose, and she vividly remembered slapping him. She vividly remembered breaking her promise, and she collapsed against him. “I’m… I’m so sorry.” Her voice came out of her throat bruised and crippled, and she fell into him.

“No. I’m the one who’s sorry. I don’t know… Come here.” He picked her up in his arms, and turned, and faced the red forest, and had no idea what to do. He remembered every word he said to her. He remembered choking her. He remembered they had jogged through this damn forest for the last three hours, not getting anywhere. He remembered the ghosts, and what they said, and as he looked out into the forest he saw nothing but ghosts. Standing near the trees, mutilated, gaunt, white. Watching them in the red light. He needed to get her out of this forest.

Claire glanced up at the sun from his arms and realized quickly- that’s not the sun; she wiped tears out of her eyes and choked air into her lungs; she looked around, and there, in the distance- a patch of yellow light. “There,” she croaked, and pointed.

Lestat ran, and as he ran he felt them- the ghosts. He felt them grab his arms, and back, and he heard them in his head, and he looked down at the witch and was mad, very mad, that he was carrying her, that she couldn’t walk on her own, and he started to throw her aside, then stopped his actions, but he couldn’t stop his words- “You… filthy… fucking… witch.” The temperature was dropping- he saw his voice.

Claire felt their cold hands on her arms, and she felt the cold seep into her heart, and she looked up at him. “Put me… down, you… son of a…” She fought it- she fought herself, and her words, and her mouth, and the rage and hate that was welling up in her. She bit her lip, and clamped her eyes shut, and felt cold hands on her face, her arms, her legs- she felt cold fingers on her ears, and lips, and-

They were in the light: a small island in the middle of the stream, with the red forest all around, just big enough to make a small camp, with a small bonfire; just big enough to see the sun at noon. It was noon.

Lestat sat Claire down and pulled her close and hugged her. “I am very sorry,” he said, and squeezed her.

“I’m… I’m very sorry. I… I broke my promise to you, and…and now you won’t trust me, and… and...”

She started crying, and Lestat held her close. Blood ran from his face, from his shoulder, and he held her tight.

“You didn’t break any promises,” he said. “And I trust you.” His lips were in her hair. He opened his eyes and noticed his vision was blurry. He was crying? He blinked tears out of his eyes, and looked into the woods- the dead, white and pale, stood at the trees, blurry, ten feet away, watching, silent. Lestat shut his eyes and wondered- his tears and trust were coming too easily. Why? He liked her, but he didn’t like her that much- not enough to cry on her behalf, not enough to just fling open the doors of his heart and let her in freely. He needed to be more careful with her, and with himself. Trust, kisses, tears- he wasn’t sure he wanted to be that close to her yet.

When they were settled, and calm, Claire cleaned him up: she restitched his forehead, and did the best she could with his shoulder, but the cut was deep, and she wasn’t sure stitches were enough. She bandaged him, and hugged him, then she sat down in the grass beside him, looking down, sad, and wishing they had gone east.

Lestat noticed one of his swords was lost in the woods. Oh well- there was no chance in hell he was returning for it. Then he noticed his cloak was still bundled up and strapped to his side- had he never even given her his cloak? He unfolded their map and studied it- this swath of forest had two small islands marked in it, and he guessed they were on one of them, which meant they had not walked south. It also meant they were in the middle of the forest. It was two miles to the southern edge.

“I… I noticed something,” Claire said, quietly, her head on his shoulder. Her voice was coming back, but was still scratchy.

“I noticed something too.” He held his right hand open.

She put her hand in his, and held tight. “The… trees all lean towards the center of the forest, so… if we run the opposite direction, we should come out one side or another.”

Smart. He brought their cuffed hand up and kissed the back of her hand.

She did the same- she pulled their cuffed hand up and kissed the back of his hand, and sniffled. “What did you notice?”

He sighed. His brain told him to distance himself from her. But his mouth, and lips, did not always take orders from his brain. “I noticed that I like you, a lot,” Lestat said, and kissed the top of her head. “More than I thought I did.” The promises go both ways.

Claire looked up, her lips pinched in, frowning. “I… I like you a lot, too. Lestat, I’m so sorry. I-“

“No more apologies.” He pulled her close, and tightened his arm around her.

And the wolf and the witch held each other in a single beam of yellow noon light, on an island, in the middle of a red forest full of hate, and anger, and contempt- all sides, and as the sun moved across the sky the shadow of the woods crept closer.

“The red sun in the woods keeps shifting; the forest is trying to make us walk west,” Lestat said.

West was not the direction they needed to go- west was where the streams widened, where the water deepened, where the forests thickened. He was right. “What do we do?”

They waited two hours, for the real sun to drop so that they could orient themselves south. Now the trick was running opposite the direction the trees were leaning, as fast as possible. Every second they spent in the woods was another cold hand, and another hate, and another anger, and another second for them to turn on each other. “I have an idea,” Lestat said, and picked Claire up in his arms.

“I’m pretty sure god doesn’t answers my prayers,” she said, looking up at him.

Lestat smiled at that. He was certain god didn’t answer his. “I’m going to hold you in my arms and run. I want you to freeze my hands and arms around you, and freeze my mouth shut, so I can’t speak, and so I can’t sit you down.”

She looked at him. If she did that they would be stuck together, for at least thirty minutes, until the ice melted. She took a deep breath, and pulled the water skin off his side with her right hand. They only had two skins left: this land had grass, and forests, but not water. “I’m not covering your mouth,” she said.

“Then cover your ears.”

“No. We’ve cussed each other enough to-“

“Claire,” he said, and looked down, serious. “Do it, for me.”

She paused a moment, then nodded, and splashed water on his face, and all over herself, and his arms and hands, and she ran magic out of her body and froze the water solid.

Ice wrapped around his mouth and neck, leaving only his nose free to breathe, and ice wrapped around his arms, and hands, and her body, and locked them together. That was a lot of ice, and a lot of magic, and she almost passed out- almost. Lestat took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, through his nose, and looked down at his beautiful little witch, and her bruised throat.

Claire could see it in his eyes- sorrow, and regret. She shook her head. “No- this wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me.” She tried to reach up, to touch his face, and couldn’t- her arms were frozen to him. “Run straight and fast and don’t stop.”

Lestat looked at her a moment longer, then at the forest, at the way the trees were leaning, and took off.

Speed did not matter to ghosts; they clung to him, and flooded him with anger, and he looked down and tried to fling the witch away, and couldn’t. He ran. He cussed her through the ice- fucking nasty whore, but he couldn’t speak the words. He glared down at her.

“Fucking asshole,” the witch growled, struggling against the ice, angry. “Put me the fuck down.”

Trees whipped past; Lestat ducked a branch, and brought his foot down into the body of a young girl- he twisted to avoid her, fell, and went rolling across the forest floor. Another damn ghost. He stood, disoriented, covered in red leaves, and dirt, and glared down at the damn witch in his arms. He strained against the ice and snapped a piece off his arm.

“Fucking stupid wolf- are you not even smart enough to run in a straight line?”

Lestat so badly wanted to cuss her, but if running got her out of his arms sooner, all the better. He took off again, as fast as he could, opposite the direction the trees were leaning.

The wolf and the witch emerged from the forest at a flat run and collapsed to the ground. Claire was still frozen in his arms. She struggled, and fought, and eventually broke her right arm free and reached up and pulled chunks of ice off his face and he took a deep breath. They laid back in the grass, still frozen together. They struggled against the ice and broke themselves free, and Claire snuggled up on his chest, warming herself.

She knew from the kisses that she liked him. That was obvious. She had known that before the kisses. And now she knew, from how bad her heart hurt at breaking a simple little promise, that it might be more than just liking. Another problem to add to the kissing. “I’m still sorry. I will never, never, never break another promise to you. I… I couldn’t stop myself.”

“It’s ok,” he said, holding her. Lestat was surprised at his tears. Tears that he had cussed her, and choked her. Lestat was not a nice man; he knew he was quiet, rude, sometimes aggressive, sometimes violent, if pushed. He preferred to be alone; he didn’t like anyone touching him; he didn’t like noise, or strong smells, or bright lights; he hated crowds, and disliked the majority of the people he met. And yet, apparently, he cared enough about this witch to cry because he injured her. Those were the first tears to have entered, and fallen from, his eyes since he was a boy. “Claire, I did not mean anything I said. Or did. I’m sorry.” He pulled her up in his arms and he leaned over and kissed her neck, and throat- bruises in the shape of his fingers.

And she kissed him- his shoulder, and his face, where new stitches overlapped old stitches, and they held each other in the red grass. “No more apologies. That wasn’t us. Ok?”

He nodded, and agreed. “That wasn’t us.”

They had covered a mere five miles and the sun was dropping into late afternoon. The notion that they could cross the last hundred mile stretch in a couple days was lost. There was no chance. But they still needed to move fast. They didn’t have time to sit in the grass and collect their emotions; they didn’t have time for assurances, and they didn’t have time to put the pieces back in place.

Lestat picked Claire up in his arms and carried her across the red fields. She could walk, but he wanted to carry her, and she was perfectly fine being carried. She snuggled up against him, and put her arm around him, and laid her head on his chest, and shut her eyes, and listened to the soft, steady thump of his heart.

They had come a very far distance since waking together in the cold cell- well over a thousand miles. They had outrun winter. But there were no maps, and no scales; there were no metrics that showed the distance their hearts had traveled. The wolf held the witch in his arms, protecting her, carrying her, across red field after red field, and she reached up and kissed him- a small peck on the lips, and then his chin, then his neck, then she laid her head on his chest, and her open hand on his heart, mile after mile. Lestat looked out across the long fields of blowing red grass, and held her tight in his arms, and carried her south, towards home.

Metrics, and scales, can only measure so many things.

The true measure of the heart is in the distance we carry the ones we love.