Mac Rebeli [a fairy tale]

2: Morpho

"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."

-Proverb

The ground hissed beneath my ears, a rapid, rattling fury of dead pine needles and leaf litter. One hand covered my face, protecting it from the brunt of low boughs, while the other desperately sought something, anything, a root, the base of a young sapling, anything at all, to hold onto.

But there was nothing. My fingers slipped off everything I touched, brutally yanked away by the beast that carried my right leg suspended in the air.

So I screamed.

And we stopped. My leg thumped painfully against the ground. My ears rang. When I touched a hand to the back of my head, something wet dripped from my fingertips. I sat up slowly, dizzy as if my heart had leaped from my chest and my body didn't know what to do anymore. Grabbing the nearest trunk for support, I pulled myself onto my feet and scanned the quiet darkness.

In the distance the owl hooted, a haunting echo of my heart.

My attacker, whatever it was, had disappeared. The only noise around me was the faint swish of fern and scrub where I'd been dragged along. With an aching wrist I slid my backpack to the ground and opened the pocket where I kept the bear repellent.

The campers had heard me. They had to have heard me. I'd been so close, so close to safety. I could hold off an animal for two minutes, right?

A hand covered my mouth, a strong arm around my waist lifted me a good two feet off the ground, high enough where delicately pointed fern tips tickled my feet. "Be quiet or they'll hear us. Can you do that?"

Canister in hand -he mustn't have noticed, coming up from behind me- I nodded and let my tense, quivering body go limp in submission. Yeah. Trust a naked man whose pet wolf or bear or something had dragged me into the night.

The moment my feet touched the ground I shouted "Help! Here! Over here!"and lunged toward the path. He grabbed my arm as I expected. I spun, and shot him square in the face with the spray. He let go, coughing, cursing, pawing at his eyes. One sharp inhale and my eyes and throat were burning, too, but I couldn't let that stop me. I ran.

The man let out a wild roar, and I was running, faster than I'd ever run in my life, faster than a rabbit from a wolf's jaws. And I was running blind in this darkness, lashed by bough and branch alike, running until two great paws slammed against my shoulders and my chin smashed hard into the ground. All the air in my lungs rushed out, and I rolled, gasping hollow breaths, staring  teary-eyed at the sky- not the sky, no, the tangled, dark mess of the man's hair.

And his eyes were green, so vividly green and bright, like two tiny specks fallen from the northern lights. His naked chest rose calm above my own, and it was this he used to keep me still when I could breathe normally again. "Scream again and I will not save you."

He pressed a webbed finger to my lips, and we lay where we'd fallen for long minutes. Hoof-beats, deadened by the bed of pine, passed us by. The night air swirled around us, black and cool and listless, until a single torch raced past like a fallen star, not more than ten yards away. The burning light slid off inky ram's horns like oil, illuminated long, hairy ears, and deepened the scowl of a man with high cheekbones and flat nose. His chest was unadorned by any shirt or necklace, and the hair that gathered there fell down his abdomen and completely covered the lower half of his body, a half thickly muscled and shaped like a goat. He stood still a moment, chin aloft, nostrils flared, one hoofed foot raised.

The torch's light could only stretch so far, its weakest flare barely teasing my naked captor's back, and then we were plunged into darkness once more, and the hoofbeats had moved on.