Vern sat up with a start. She’d forgotten the poor thing in her fatigue. It was too late now to go back, for only ugliness awaited her there. Ants and flies, odors and graying skin.
It was a neglect most uncivilized to leave that wee one to the beasts, but Vern couldn’t bear to return to find the child was now missing an arm. Or what if its belly had been opened up by scavengers like a jar of jam? Worse, perhaps the fiend had found him and tied a baby bonnet to his head. There were a thousand ways to defile perfection. Tonight she couldn’t handle the whole weight of the nasty universe flooding into her.
“Shh, shh,” she said when Feral started to fuss as he fell back to sleep. Howling was already dozing again. It was late enough that they’d likely sleep through till morning, and for that she was glad. Anxious about the drownt child, sick with fear for her own babes, Vern needed to be in her own body.
When the twins were sleeping soundly, she secured their shelter and went outside. There was no fire this evening to light her way, and she liked it like that. She welcomed the dark. She only wished it was colder, wished it was winter. A harsh wind would sweep her back into this world and away from the world of the strange child she’d failed. His spirit seemed to tug at her. He was lonely.
Vern took off her dirty nightgown, still damp, and slung it over a tree branch to air out and dry. She changed into something fresh, then fed herself from her store of berries. She had no appetite, but the seedy tart flesh wakened her mouth, tongue, and throat. So what if each morsel sat like a stone in her stomach? At least she was reminded she had a stomach. She ate until her body threatened to heave it all back up.
Vern tossed the now-empty berry satchel into a pile of dirty linens then rested in a squat next to a tree. Using a long stick, she drew a protective circle around herself. Fidgety and uneasy, she stabbed the dirt with the stick until it snapped, a piece of it scraping against her palm and breaking skin. With the remainder of the splintered wood, she prodded the wound farther open to see if she could get a look at the blood inside. She picked at it the way a child worried at a scab.
As Vern tossed the stick into the brush, she turned toward a new odor in the air. The scent of burning startled her from her grief. She wiped her eyes, which somewhere in the last several minutes had become watery with tears.
The forest air reeked, and Vern retched. She could tell this was the fiend’s doing by the smell. He’d thrown rancid meat in a fire to fill the woods with the ripe fetor of death.
Vern hid her shelter and the babies inside with extra branches and leaves, hid her pack, and followed the smoke. “I’ll be back soon, babies,” she called, though they were too deep in sleep to hear. She’d be safer staying put with them, but she was too uneasy to sit calmly. She needed to move and feel the mass of her legs and the springs of her feet.
Vern cut a path through the bush and bramble. It was as dark now as it had been the night she’d stumbled away from the howling wolves, but she’d been in the woods a year now. While she still struggled to see clearly, experience made her steps more confident. She kept her gait short and her body steady by crouching. Legs bent, half-squatted, she didn’t trip so easily.
The bonfire still burned when Vern found the fiend’s campsite. It lit the area bright as day. The odor was thick, and Vern bit back a gag. Animal corpses circled the fire, each creature dressed in or arranged with the trappings of infanthood.
As with all summers in the woods, it was a dry night. The bonfire spit flames taller than Vern, and there was a good chance it’d catch and bring the whole woods to ashes. Finally, the fiend had grown tired of his games and had made a plan to burn down Vern’s home, her and her babes along with it. At least it was a true move, a real act, something she could respond to properly.
Vern rushed to the fire, hopping over the animals to clear away the nearby brush. Dried kindling and leaves were all around, no doubt placed perfectly for the purpose of causing the most spread. No sparks had caught yet, but there was a warm wind making its way through the trees. It would carry the embers far.
After clearing the immediate area, Vern headed toward a low-hanging branch stooped over the tall flames. It was thicker than her upper arm and would be impossible to remove by force. Vern removed the knife from her boot and sawed the wood near the base of the branch. Once she’d cut an inch or two deep, she put away the knife and pulled down the branch with all her might.
Vern hung from the branch and pulled down, eyes shut. It cracked under her weight with ease, and in the space of a second Vern was on her feet, the amputated branch in her hands. She tossed it to the side away from the fire. Despite its size and heavy weight, it landed twenty feet away.