I looked down.
She withdrew her hand, the syringe already hidden away.
I said, “No, you can’t do this, you canna do thissss pleassse it’s not—”
The colors of the world around me began to bleed.
Everything slowed down.
I heard words of concern coming from somewhere far, far away.
“Oh now,” the hunter Elijah said in response. “He was jusssst feeling a little sssssick. I’ll help him. I’ll get himmmmmmm—”
It was dark, after.
I DREAMED I was with the wolves.
We ran, and the trees were tall and the moon was bright, and I belonged to them and with them, and I tilted my head back and sang.
But the wolves didn’t sing with me.
No.
They screamed.
I WOKE slowly.
My tongue felt thick in my mouth.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying in the forest.
The canopy above me gave way to the stars in the sky. The moon was fat and full.
I pushed myself up.
My head ached. I could barely think through it.
A whimper off to my left.
I turned.
A large brown wolf was crawling toward me. Its back legs had been broken. Its coat was matted with blood. It was in obvious pain, but still it dragged itself toward me in the dirt and the grass.
I said, “Mark.”
The wolf whined.
I reached for him.
He licked the tips of my fingers before he collapsed, eyes closed.
The fog cleared.
I felt it then. The broken shards within me. As if I’d been shattered into pieces. It wasn’t like when my mother had died. When my father had killed her.
It was more.