katerina
I say the poem to myself as I walk, because it reminds me of the woods, what it looked like before winter set in like a sickness.
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
I say the poem to myself as I walk because, without it, the world is far too silent. Chips of ice silver the branches of the birch trees, and frost hangs in awkward teeth from bent-backed willows, and all across the dead ground a blanket of snow lies webbed by early shadows of leafless maples. In some places I sink farther than I mean to, stumbling into holes badly stopped with ice until it reaches past my ankles and cold crawls up me like vines.
I watch my breath in the air, tumbling all over itself, the cold white of a waterfall.
In what distant deeps or skies
I am not thinking of anything, really. I am trying very hard not to. When I think, it often gets out of control. It often gets away from me. When I think, the thoughts grow teeth; they make my brain hurt; when I think, it requires turning away from the task at hand—that is, the world; that is, acknowledging it really does exist, the bare trees and hard-packed snow, the glitter of sun-on-ice, the curves and ridges—so when I think it’s like I leave this world, and I cannot do that anymore. I can’t.
My hair is cold against my neck, ribbed with thin crystals of ice, and it crackles when I move. I am leaving a distinct trail in the snow, I realize. Moons crushed into the ice. A straight line. Defined steps. If someone were following me, or something, I would be easy to find—
Someone is following me.
Down the streets where the lights are off, around the corners, over hills; no matter where I weave I can feel them following, a soft pattern of hoofsteps on cobblestone, a knowledge that some hard-edged shadow is just behind, and it makes my skin hurt, my teeth itch.
I walk faster.
It follows.
I walk faster. I am about to trip, because the streets are cobblestone, and slicked with rain. Whatever is following me doesn’t seem to care. They do not seem to tire, and they have no problem traversing the places where I am having so much trouble. Maybe I am just afraid. Maybe this is fear, the thing that makes my legs tremble, and not the cold, like I’d thought. Fear, maybe, is what slows me down. My mouth tastes like iron. Now the moon is up, but the lights are still out; I can’t see anything, only feel it, the scraping of my hooves on the stone, steps on solid stone, and then another step, followed by the feeling of falling, falling, falling.
I don’t like to call it “waking up”, because I don’t think I am actually sleeping. But I don’t have any better words to describe it.
Realizing. Emerging. Drifting to consciousness. None of these are quick or panicked enough.
Like ripping a leaf from its stem: this is how I “wake up”.
And I am still in the forest, but not in the place I was when I drifted away. I am deeper now, close to the edge of the river which is half-water and half-ice, broken by floes and dirty slush and the bodies of leaves leftover from the dying fall. It is cold-cold-cold, and the horizon is slashed with criss-crossing branches.
Someone is standing by the bank: a body with an easel. It has a rack of cervine horns and long, dark hair, a pile of paintbrushes, a canvas half-finished. It does not seem to notice me, or if it does, it doesn’t acknowledge my appearance.
But maybe it’s not an appearance. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing here. It could be I’ve had a whole conversation with him and don’t remember any of it, that I’ve said something I can’t take back which has made him turn away from me, or that I am afraid but cannot remember why, or how.
When the stars threw down their spears
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I don’t quite know why. “I—hello.”
