Everything for the Hunt

Chapter Five

"Before Emery, before the town and people began to mould themselves between the breaks in trees, there was just one - one woman, who had taken to the forest to walk alone. She searched for miles upon miles, looking for what she thought would be out there, what she thought would be lurking in the shadows, buried deep under the soil and high up in in the quaking leaves in the trees. She searched for answers. The woman with hair black as coal had suffered from an affliction she feared cursed no one else.

So she set off for 30 years to roam the forest, looking for someone who may be able to shed some light on what has happened to her, and for 30 years she found no one - not a single soul who had crossed her path. The forest had claimed most of her life, and for that she had become bitter and resentful of it. She no longer walked with desire to find, but with furious footings to shake the earth beneath her. Her bare feet sliced into ribbons from the serrated rocks. As she walked she thought of her family, of all the people in her village whom she'd left behind, and she began to weep. Large tear drops streaked to the ground, they dropped and they tumbled and flooded, forming the rivers and lakes which encompass Emery. She cried for the entire day, she cried for weeks, she cried for months.

Her tears built this town, and are the reason that after 30 years of wandering alone, she finally came across another living person. The trees were tall and slim, but she summoned the strength from deep within her to climb them anyway, her fingers bled into the cracks of the tree bark. She kept going. From the top branches she watched as a man with fair skin and arms thick from labouring stumbled over the tree roots. Exhaustion plagued him and he clung to the trunk of the largest Willow. 30 years had made her fearful but curious, under her watchful eyes the man crawled towards the water - pulling along his fatigued legs until his hands reached for the river. He began to drink, and as he drank the woman climbed a little further so to see the man more clearly. He appeared to have kind eyes but the woman felt she was wiser to the ways of men and so kept her distance. While propped up against the tree trunk the man called out in pain
"Help" he called, his voice bouncing from the trees. As the woman moved her hands quickly forward across the branch to look closer at the man, the sound of her brown dress rustling behind her caught his attention.

"Who's there?" quivering to his feet, the man looked to the trees in panic - his eyes darting from each branch as the wind lifted the leaves, rubbing them together and alerting him to a potential threat. The woman's eyes still watched him as he stumbled his way closer to her tree. All she had wanted with each step she took was to no longer be alone, to be able to walk side by side with a companion, to have more than her own thoughts for comfort. Now, in the face of all she had wanted, her thoughts told her to run. All the years the forest alone had made her distrustful.

The slight movement of her body closer to the trunk was enough to catch the eye of the weary man. He saw the black of her hair cutting through the olive leaves and his heart began to race. What if this was someone who could rescue him from running circles in the wood? Each tree looked just as identical as the last, it was enough to dazzle and confuse the man who had been trying to find his way out for several days now.
"Please, I will not hurt you" moving ever so slightly closer to the woman in the tree.
"How will I know?" The woman finally plucked up the courage to ask - knowing she may never come across another soul again.
"I just need directions out of this forest" he lifted his hands in front of his body, showing the woman he had nothing that may harm her. Hearing the desperation in the man's voice, the woman grasped the splintered wood of the tree branch she sat upon and swung down, jumping to the ground.
"If I had directions I wouldn't sitting in this tree, would I?" long black hair covered one eye as if it were her only shield from the potential threat this man held.
"How long have you been lost?" his soft voice did not match the tough exterior he exhibited "I am not lost"
"I thought you had no directions?"