The bones rattled against the woven framework of the basket. It clattered a comforting rhythm that matched the girl’s pace as she moved further into the woods. The road was long and dark before her but it was not endless. Everything was finite, just as the previous holders of these noisy fragments proved. She too was finite. And that was fine. She wasn’t going to die tonight anyway. She had a delivery to make and her consumer did not like to be kept waiting.
The soft satin of her shoes sunk slightly in the damp bracken, making a wet sticking sound whenever she lifted a foot. She’d be scolded for sure when she returned, for wearing expensive shoes out on a job. They had glimmered at her, soft and vibrant and inviting with their long ribbons carelessly arranged over the edge of their box and she just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them behind. They wanted to be worn just like Rouge half-wanted some incident to happen on her journey so it would last all the longer.
Night-time air always did make her restless and she risked a glance up through the red cap of her hair and caught the moon staring back at her. Hastily, she dropped her gaze, keeping her eyes firmly locked on the path ahead again. Mother had always warned her not to do that. She’d disobeyed once or twice when she’d been younger and rebellious and didn’t know any better. She knew now.
Moon fever was more than just speculation – in her at least, it tended to produce severe hallucinations and other nasty side effects such as hearing voices where there were none to be found and a strange sinister desire for something dark and earthy and not-quite-alive.
Rouge didn’t fear much, but she knew better than to invite danger to court her – impulsive she might be, but she had no death wish. She did not look up again and thankfully the deeper into the trees she traversed, the more that glowing orb above was blocked. She felt its light dim like a physical presence; a faint bristling of the hairs on the back of her neck that slowly ceased. Perhaps she should have waited until morning to make the delivery, but she didn’t see why the night should be closed to her simply because of a few dangers.
The hand holding the basket had grown stiff and rigid from the cold air and clumsily she switched hands. A single bone, long and thin like that of a femur, escaped the wickerwork and rolled away off the path. She glared at it for a second, as if willing it to hop back to her through thought alone. Then, she sighed and rested the laden basket gently beside her on the path. Lifting up her skirts, Rouge then did the one thing she had always promised her mother not to do.
She left the path.
It was darker here somehow, as if without having that clear route laid out before her, everything remaining was obscured and uneven. She blinked, hoping her eyes would readjust. The bone she could see though, a faint chalky shape in the blackness, and she headed for that. It had rolled further away than she must have realised. Rouge bit her lip and looked back to where she’d left the basket – and couldn’t see it.
Where’s the path? It was right there. Only, it quite clearly wasn’t. She shivered then, feeling the sudden chill and unfriendliness of the forest around her. It was deathly quiet and though she was used to silence, she couldn’t help but wish for some noise now just to confirm that the world was still moving on around her. A bird or an insect buzzing by her ear, or even the faraway sound of a woodcutter plying his trade.
And then, faintly, and only because she was listening so very hard for it, she could make out a rushing sound as of something moving fast. Yet, by the consistency of the noise she sensed this was not just an animal blundering along after having dropped off the path too. The sound became louder when she moved tentatively closer towards the lost bone.
Here the sound was a roar of motion that fairly rippled through the air in front of her. The air here smelt fresh and vaguely… weed-like? She bent down quickly to grasp at the bone, the sooner to be away again. Her fingers however passed straight through it and she pulled them back swiftly from the sudden icy sensation. They were wet.
She frowned and patted her hand dry on her shirt. The bone had dissipated at her touch and now, as she stared at the darker blackness there, the glow reappeared. The shape was altered this time though, not long and fragile but more rounded. I didn’t know a river ran through this forest, Rouge thought.
She shrugged and turned to go, knowing the bone was likely lost to the watery depths by now and she’d be better off returning to her remaining load. The path couldn’t be that far away – she had surely just not seen it at first. Then, she stopped, her curiosity caught by the glowing shape in the water, which was if anything stronger than ever. She leant in closer, eyes narrowed to try and determine what it was. She must have been staring at it for about a minute, incomprehensible, before she realised with a horrible jolt it was reflecting the moon.
Rouge cursed and stumbled back, her too-soft shoes giving way at last under the mud and pulling her down in an ungainly pile. Her eyes were wide, unblinking. She tried to look away, but remained frozen, locked onto the ghastly lunar image. Her lips formed a small sound of protest and then, she was lost to it. Lost to the destruction, the claws and the hot panting breath as she sucked in the stenches of the forest around her. To the tearing and rending of flesh as it fell so effortlessly to her endless, biting hunger. Lost to the manic, unbounded glee of it all.
Lost to it… or should she say, gave in to it. For this too was Rouge, wasn’t it? She thought through the fever. More Rouge perhaps than the Rouge who was afraid to step off the path, to disobey her mother, to be late with her deliveries. Fear seemed no more than a distant memory now, a conjured illusion in the corner of her mind.
When she came to again in her sodden shoes and mud-streaked skirts, she could still taste the redness on her lips and delicately, she licked it away. There, unstained for the most – the clothes could be replaced, but her face should show no sign of the escapade.
It was morning now and pleasantly she found the path again quite easily. She felt happier than she had when she’d set out the night before and cheerfully kicked off the remains of her expensive shoes. Her bare feet stepped sure-footedly forward as she picked up the basket. Then, with a sudden remembrance, she dug a hand into the pocket of her apron and withdrew a ragged handful of bones, dripping still with tendrils of meat. Dropping them into the basket to join the musical banter of their cousins, she smiled.
She had a delivery to make still, and surely she would be all the more rewarded for bringing extra rather than the requested amount.
This short story by Michaela is not in the Restless Minds anthology. Check out Michaela’s bio here.
Restless Minds 