Part 4
The walk to the tree line was a slow, agonizing blur. The damp hem of Jenna’s dress slapped against her bare calves, quickly freezing into a stiff, icy crust. The morning fog was thick, settling in the low pockets of the meadow and obscuring the farmhouse behind her. With every step, a dull, heavy fire radiated through her pelvis, and her legs shook so badly she had to lock her knees just to stay upright.
She held the heavy wool bundle tight against her chest. The baby was terrifyingly still. The premature infant didn’t have the strength to fight the cold, and the weak, mewling cries had faded into a shallow, ragged breathing that Jenna could barely feel against her collarbone.
The woods loomed ahead, a towering wall of dark pine and bare oak branches. The forest was waking up. A few crows called out sharply in the freezing air, disturbed by her presence.
Jenna kept walking, pushing deep into the timber, far past the clearing where she usually foraged. She moved blindly, driven by the sheer, paralyzing terror of what would happen if she turned around. If she brought the baby back to the house, Bill would kill them both. The thought of his heavy boots crossing the kitchen floor, the look on his face, pushed her forward through the dense, snow-dusted brush.
Finally, her legs refused to carry her any further. She stopped at the base of a massive, ancient pine tree. Its thick lower branches swept down to the ground, creating a small, sheltered pocket of dry earth and pine needles where the snow hadn’t reached.
Jenna dropped slowly to her knees. Her hands were numb, clumsy blocks of ice. She carefully lowered the wool bundle into the dry hollow beneath the branches.
The infant did not stir.
A violent shiver wracked Jenna’s body, her teeth chattering so hard her jaw ached. She stared at the small bundle for one long, stretching second. Then, she forced herself to stand, turned her back on the pine tree, and began the long walk back toward the meadow.
She focused entirely on placing one foot in front of the other. Keep moving, she told herself. Just keep moving. It’s over.
She made it past the thickest part of the brush. The tree line was thinning, the gray morning light bleeding through the branches, revealing the open expanse of the frost-covered meadow.
Jenna stopped.
She stood frozen in the snow, staring at the empty field. The silence of the woods pressed in on her, heavy and suffocating. A sudden, visceral image flashed in her mind—the tiny, bruised-looking face, the ragged breath, the dark birthmark beneath the jaw.
She wasn’t thinking of Bill anymore. She wasn’t thinking of the leather belt, the screaming, or the disgrace. A fierce, sudden heat flared in her chest, cutting straight through the physical exhaustion and the cold.
She’s mine.
Jenna turned around. She took a step back into the timber, then another. Then she started to run.
Pain tore through her abdomen, a sharp, blinding tearing sensation, but she ignored it. She shoved branches out of the way, thorns catching and tearing the fabric of her coat. She slipped on a patch of icy mud, going down hard on her knees, but scrambled immediately back to her feet, her breath ripping out of her throat in ragged gasps.
“I’m coming,” she wheezed into the empty woods. “I’m coming.”
She recognized the jagged rock outcropping, then the cluster of dead birch trees. She pushed through the last wall of brush and stumbled into the clearing by the massive pine tree.
She dropped to her knees, reaching under the heavy branches.
Her hands found only dry pine needles and loose dirt.
Jenna froze. She blinked, her brain struggling to process the visual information. The hollow was empty.
She crawled forward on her hands and knees, frantically sweeping her raw hands through the dirt, throwing aside dead leaves and broken twigs. She looked behind the trunk. She pushed aside the heavy, snow-laden ferns nearby, her breathing escalating into a rapid, shallow panic.
I just left her here. It hasn’t even been ten minutes.
She scrambled backward, scanning the ground around the tree. That was when she saw the impressions in the lingering patches of crusty snow.
They were large, deep paw prints. The tracks circled the base of the pine tree, disturbing the pine needles where the bundle had been, and then led off in a straight, purposeful line deeper into the dark timber.
Wolves. Or wild dogs.
All the blood drained from Jenna’s face. A cold, absolute horror seized her chest, locking her lungs. She stared at the tracks, her hands hovering uselessly over the disturbed snow.
She stood up, stumbling blindly in the direction the tracks led. She pushed through a dense thicket of briars, not feeling the thorns tearing her hands and face.
“Give her back!” she screamed.
The sound tore out of her throat, raw and deafening, shattering the quiet of the morning woods.
She kept walking, following the tracks until they disappeared onto a stretch of bare, frozen rock. She spun around in a circle, looking frantically into the endless, identical rows of trees.
“Bring her back!” she shrieked, her voice cracking, echoing off the distant ridge. “She’s mine! Bring her back!”
No one answered. The crows had fallen silent. The woods remained perfectly, indifferently still.
Jenna collapsed against the trunk of an oak tree, slowly sliding down the rough bark until she hit the freezing ground. She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t cry. The grief was too massive, too absolute for tears. It felt as though someone had reached into her chest and hollowed her out completely, leaving nothing but cold air.
She sat there as the sun finally crested the ridge, casting thin, pale streams of light through the canopy.
Eventually, the deep, ingrained instinct for survival kicked in. If she didn’t return soon, Bill would come looking for her, and he would see the blood on her clothes.
Jenna forced herself to stand. Her body felt like it belonged to someone else. She walked back to the edge of the woods and stopped at the tree line. She looked back into the dark timber one last time. Slowly, her trembling hand rose, and she made the sign of the cross over her chest.
She turned away from the woods and began the long walk across the meadow, stepping back into the brutal, unrelenting machinery of her life.