#sasukexlee

The woods are lovely, dark, damp, and deep. They hold many things and take to your grave the secrets that you keep. The earth beneath their roots have bellyfuls of swollen meat, the crows are circling above, savoring the sweet treat. They dive and soar gliding on a stale breeze, they move effortlessly down through the bough of the trees. And when they are perched upon your shuttering frozen shoulder, the gleam in those witch cauldron specks, wait patiently, sinisterly eyeing you until you draw your last forsaken breath. And when you finally feel all hope drain from your body, your final thoughts are that of you wish to be no creature’s meal, but if only you would have told someone, that you were to wander within the dark wood, but now you still. Paralyzed by regret, as the crows lunch lies beneath his talons, finally dead. It gives a hearty triumphant caw! Snapping its beak into waning warm flesh, the last thing one saw is the spindly arms of the trees, mockingly pointing at another victim that will decay beneath its depths.

The book lay lazily against the tiny frame of a woman lulling beneath a large juniper tree. Here her long lashes fanned over her rosy cheeks as bits of sunlight filtered through the rustling leaves coyly tempting her to wake. It was safe to doze during the day when the world was still being warmed by the suns noon zenith, but as twilight began to ascend the preview of what was to come in the following months reared its ugly head in the teeth of the night’s icy temperatures.

As the woman laid unaware of the time fleeting from her and apex of the day squandering in a threatening gloom of icy fingers, she was blissfully unaware of any of it. But the breeze that bit at the parts of bare skin peeking from her dress, and the flashing dying embers of the sun above the tree shook about to get her attention, all signs went unnoticed with no avail to her waking. The trees watched her as if someone plucked her from one of the tales in her book and gingerly placed her here making sure to fan out her chestnut hair, paint her lips the color of pale roses, and thoughtfully completed the ensemble of the sleeping beauty by giving her the task of falling asleep to a good read and propped the book pages down against the gentle fall and rise of her chest.

But with cold comes the cruel hissing upon the wind which lashed its forked tongue into her ear causing her to bolt upright with a start. The world was far dimmer than when she had set out that afternoon determined to get through these morbid poems for the sake of having something to do other than sew and cook. The light was a lens and she knew that any moment now it would wink and there would be no more light until twelve more hours when morning would creep through her shutters. Urgency got her to her feet. The book protested when the pages met with the ground with an oomph.

She saw the pale thumbnail lazily look upon her at the base of the trees and a smattering of stars was yawning awake in the blue and black sky. She touched the skin upon her bare throat realizing she could no longer afford to leave her house without the protection of a shawl or jacket. Now more than ever she wished to have the heavy fabric in her hands when this afternoon it had been too hot to even think on it. She straightened herself making sure all her bindings upon her corset were secure and hadn’t come lose for she was guilty of being one to toss and turn in sleep. She found it suspicious that she had lied this still as if the trees had weaved a foreboding spell upon her as she dreamt. Then again as she gazed upon the title on the spine of her book she dashed that thought away and knew her silly spell had been all the working of that poem she read before she fell into a nice slumber.

She felt something crunch as she moved and plucked the few leaves that had crumpled into her hair before making for the trail. The summer equinox had been fighting on with every last might it had and Lily was grateful for it. She was dreading the winter. Two winters ago her village had almost starved, it had dragged on miserably and despite the large amount of food they had all stashed away, the brittle cold stayed stubbornly though March and just barely petered out to the middle of May. Normally March was when the snow gave its retreat and they could begin the plowing season or hunting but that year had been so miserable and terrible that hunters who went out in search of game were lost to the cold or buried beneath the squalls of storms.

Since then, she hated winter. The only part of it she liked was during the silent snow falls or when she would wake to the mornings of golden sun allotted to peak through the ribs of the forest showcasing the frozen thatches that clung to the limbs. They glittered and dazzled reminding the forlorn that there was something more other than this chaos. She prayed the meat wouldn’t be too frozen this year to thaw when the scrape of their bellies would be hungriest. The frost was brief to those who worked the ungodly morning when the first rays of light hadn’t yet settled upon the earth and they spread world that the frost had begun. She felt the weight of those rumors now as each thicket of grass crunched beneath her flats with a satisfying crunch like fresh lettuce plucked from the fields.

She could see the little chilled bumps of the snow that coated each blade like lace. Her breath plumed around her and her body began shaking. Not from the darkness of the wood. She could hear the last few people working the fields and coming back from a day’s hunt barreling to the village. She couldn’t help but smile thinking of the giant magnetic force that called upon all her people once the night threatened to cast its veil over the hardworking hands seeking sanctuary in their homes. The constant hum of axes breaking wood over and over at all hours of day until now had driven her mad. She knew it was for everyone’s hearth to keep them warm but they had been preparing for this since winter broke in March as expected and now it was almost November. She supposed they wouldn’t stop until the first blanket settled. Her and the other women collected peat to start the fires and she could smell the damp earthy substance stocked in her friends’ homes every time she entered to deliver whatever she was assigned to that day. Lily was known as their main delivery woman. She always had her signature red cape and hood so those who needed her could pick her out and beckon her to their hearth. She was also famous for the large woven basket she practically had fastened to her arm.

She worked just as hard as the others and was always kept busy so it was no surprise to any of them when they saw her slip away to the wood for a bought of peace every once in a while. She was always being hounded over. Deliver this bread here, give this peat to these thirty homes, make sure this list gets to blah blah blah. At least she was getting exercise and tokens for her hard work. She enjoyed the tailor the best. He always fashioned her practical shoes to wear for every occasion. After enough deliveries he generously offered to make her custom shoes of her choice. She had asked him for boots lined with the softest fur from rabbits to keep her feet warm. He had imported the lining of seal skin to decorate the base of her boot to keep from any of the water from seeping into it. The fat from the animal had definitely kept her little feet heated and never once had any slick cold snow saturated into her boot. Her socks and stockings were always humming with warmth.

The flats had a rubbery material that kept her feet comfortable for the hours she had to spend walking and standing but also put a spring in her step. She also had a pair for mud, for deep snow, and even for the summer time. Now he was probably the wealthiest man in her village thanks to her advertising the magic that each pair she wore protected her from the elements during any occasion. His work became advanced. He graduated to tougher hides like cow, moose, and sometimes lining them with parts from animals that had the most fat for winter like bear. It kept ones foot insulated and toasty. So now she was thankful she was gaining ground to get to her home.

She placed the Tales of the Dark Marrow of Mother Marrow into her basket and pulled out a scone one of her earlier deliveries gifted to her. She munched at the buttery texture of the crumbling delicacy and wondered to her home at the outskirts of the town. Unlike its twin to the east her village didn’t have a giant wall to greet her. The torches were lit, candles in windows guttered at the rising spouts of wind trickling through the drafty cracks of windows, and a large glow illuminated her path a stark thirteen feet in a giant halo. Her people welcomed the natural beauty of the land they had built upon and didn’t fear the things with teeth that lurked in the woods like their twin to the east.

There were rumors that drifted to them when friends and family made their way in the summer to trade what our land could not provide and whispers among the people told of a grand story about a wolf or bear dragging off with straggler children who were not within the safe confines of their homes during the night. Since then a giant wall had been commissioned. I remember my neighbor taking a leave of absence to help with its construction, but he brought back another tale about its origin in which someone was said to have seen a giant swooping creature like a witch come down from the bough of the trees and steal away babies in the night to sustain their immortality.

Lily had shuttered at the thought and begged him not to go into any more detail. How could a human being come up with such disgusting and disturbing details? I unlatched the heavy bolt to my door slipping inside and making sure to lock myself inside and lock it. I wasn’t afraid of the things in the wood more than certain people in our village. Though we were peaceful like every large group we had those who still found ways to cause trouble and turmoil within the ranks of our society. I preferred my privacy. But when you delivered things to every nook and cranny of the place you reside in people sometimes hold you captive in order to talk or vent their frustrations. In a way it was nice having all these secrets that I wrote down in a leather bound journal hidden in a small slot on a very high beam of my ceiling. But holding terrible secrets was also dangerous. I was once approached by one of the Bucksy brothers, three in total, the oldest and largest one wishing to sequester information on a black smith. When burning his fingertips over the fire hadn’t worked to loosen his tongue he decided I would be better to squeal. I insisted on my innocence and I was thankful for my neighbors return that day for her kept a suspicious eye on Buck as I shut my door feigning to be tired from the days work.

I told Rika about what had happened, this being my neighbor, and he vowed to be there as much as possible when he wasn’t spirited away to other parts of the village to work. I prepared to cook a nice stew, Rika had left a rabbit hanging on the slot of my roof dangling terrifyingly in my face when I returned home. I set to work on shearing away its poor little limbs and carving it into chunks and cubes letting the meat cook in the fray of bubbling veggies I plucked the night before. Next I chalked my hands with flour letter the sour dough bread rise in the brick over, the small mouth yawning when I opened the door and slid the pudgy jiggling frame against the stone and closing it once more. I gathered my gooseberry jelly readying it with a butter knife and sat to wait for all my food to work in harmony.

I pumped a bath from the little lever in my bathroom and slid into the confines of the hot water after making sure the chimney from the hearth where my fire was baking the soup was open beneath the tub and the flames licked at the belly of it warming it until I killed the vent by switching it off and slid scrubbing away the skin of the earth I collected during my afternoon nap. Rika had helped me construct my home and told me where I could lead little pipelines like arteries to a heart beneath my home in order to make things a little easier for a spinster to work herself. He was my childhood friend, my mentor, as he worked her came home and tutored me in the ways of men. In return I taught him to read and write as we grew up and even traded certain secrets about certain corrupt people here. I trusted him to keep them as much as I trusted my dog at the time of his life, to stay by my side and warn me of intruders of animals prowling the grounds.

We learned behind our doors, keeping silent when we knew the tutelage of converting ours secrets to one another would be viewed as immoral and blasphemy. Women were meant to do the mending, cooking, and washing. Men were meant to do the labor, the hunting, the hard work. But our exchanged advanced our limited scopes and we better understood the boundaries we were forced into.

I enjoyed inventing things the most. In the confines of my home I had learned that a lady could shave the hairs on her legs and underarms by fashioning the tip of a man’s razor blade and carefully filing the tilt of the blade to an angle in order to get closer to the skin. With a steady surgeons hand I stroked up along the grain of the follicles and sighed contently stroking the tips of my fingers over the silk left behind from the razors bite. In the summer I didn’t dare hide the nakedness of my legs like the others did with long skirts, or bulky wool stockings. In fact I was one of the rare few who allowed her skirts to barely brush against the calf of my knee. Men gawked, women scowled, and all the while I was a wonderful liar claiming I had always been less…blessed with hair. I giggled thinking how ridiculous this all sounded but couldn’t help it.

My people were not ignorant as to think women were witches, but the village also being repressed with certain ways of thinking also made it a fine edge to keep in line. I did my duty without complaint, without rumor, and without causing unnecessary drama so therefore any of my other strange habits weren’t brow raising. Rika and I heavily leaned on one another for that. I would claim he got me wood and I paid him in meals or pennies, and in turn his house was cleaned by me scrubbed and organized. But the reality was we both did the domestic duties to our own households. I could hear the angry gurgling of water, the hissing of flame as the tears bubbled from my pot, and I pulled on my slip grateful the shutters were facing away from the neighbors view. It clung to my drenched form as I pulled the lever holding the pot away from the hearth. It fluidly held the pot outside of the fanning flames which angrily simmered back down and the bubbling surface smoothed save the heavy soup and chunks peaking from the top.

Now to wait for it to cool. I scooped a hearty portion out as well as turning the vent off over the burning coals of the brick oven and letting the bread stiffen out before settling into my chair Rika had gifted to me for my name day five years ago. He had plumped up the frame with goose feathers which now were formed to the shape of my rump and my legs rested on the ottoman as I flipped through the book of poems I had stashed in my basket. My large red cape was resting on the peg by the fire. The poor worn thing needed a bath of its own that morning before I departed to the hairline of the woods

I never was one for being scared but I had taken an interest in fashioning my own poems, so I studied the only book we had at the library. Mister Driskell had pleaded for an educated woman like me to quit the foot traffic business and work in his shop. There were a handful of educated women here aside the ones determined to forsake their education to open bakeries, and shops. Forever destined to live a life of powdered palms and greased elbows. I preferred the freedom of lazily being beckoned to the dregs of the wilderness. Even here in my sanctuary most of what was outside was here inside. I had found a few tools used by the Indians of the north, scattered at the heart of the forest. I found rocks with unique surfaces, crystals, shells, antler bones the felt still clinging to the abandoned skulls of the deer.

I found my favorite poem of all. Not the one about the poor little bird sitting upon a branch minding her own business eating berries when a cat sneaks up and eats the full little bird, the one about the yellow eyes in the wood. I found wolves to be beautiful when they weren’t in packs and starving. She caught glimpses of strays or forsaken rogues as they roved the floor of the forest. Their stark coats contrasting against the earthy tones, others defied the colors of nature itself. Some seemed to be sculpted from the clay of the roots beneath them barely keeping them visible until they blinked or moved. They were curious about her as she was about them. She sketched them and gave them names. Her favorite she called yellow eyes. He had dark black fur the color of the sky at midnight, but those blazing gold orbs that pierced through her drew her in. She wondered what instinct he followed. Where he’d been. He liked to visit her during the spring and winter. She was expecting him to be here soon. When the snow would cling to his contrasted soft coat and gingerly lay upon his black lashes of tar.

She found the poem in her book symbolized him perfectly and that was what she called him. Upon closer inspection of her getting up early one morning and waiting to watch and put to paper anything more on this particular subject, she was drawn to the large paws. Most of her kind would claim them to be large paws of a killer but she was drawn to the faint tuft of white curving along one of the pockets of his toes. His large onyx claws protruding from the white like a black sleet mountain against a December morning. But she needn’t look to that to know it was her wolf. She could just tell by the understanding stare they now came to share whenever he was passing through. Usually he was on the scent of a moose from the night before, but in the wee hours of the morning when she’d open the hatch to her shutter and peer out at him three tree links in, he would pause and look at her. Nose slightly twitching as if he caught her scent on the wind suddenly. His ears would perk, his mane along his throat shook as he let the tangle of rain mist away and he continued on with his prowling. She watched the gentle sweep of his tail scrape against the forest floor and giggle when a leaf would drag along with it.

She spoke aloud:

“ Be wary when you walk into the wood, for you might not like what you find, be careful what you see in the wood, for you might not like what you catch in between the trees. Be wary of the large things with teeth, the larger the berth the quieter its feet, beware of the ancient things born from roots, it doesn’t matter the soft tread of your boots. Be cautious of the hearing of the wind itself, for your fear carries upon its shelf, beware beware oh do please take great care to have a pointed object of your own, because the hunger that aches in the ancient things is unshakable and it lives within its skin, it creeps and quivers to the bone. It acts on instinct, it does not rationalize with logic, oh dear little stranger be wary not to wander, because while your thoughts are jumbled with the things you must ponder, the thing with teeth it sees you always and it knows how to creep. Watch your step the forest is against you, one wrong move and a snap of a twig and you’ll be dead before you can even rationalize it. Watch oh watch and when you have to squint, remember the things that tear you apart don’t have to think, they don’t strain to see, they come upon you with vengeful need. Oh watch oh watch where you go because if you get lost, it doesn’t need to know, if you can’t find the direction of your home, the thing following you merely continues to roam. “

The title appropriately named Yellow Eyes. And that was the name she had given her wolf.

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The spinning of stars and the rise of the moon pulled like the tides at the aching chest of the beast that sat panting beneath the juniper tree. His muzzle was pressed to the ground which was still pressed by the weight of one of the animals that lived in the large huts outside his home. He knew that scent. It was made of the same things he was made of. But the animal smelt like the wildflowers he ran through during the hot days. He enjoyed the shade they offered and the scent wasn’t too bad either. Even if it was arduous and potent and hurt his nose a little, he knew the other enemies that could creep up on him would find it just as distractingly annoying and move on. So when his matted self, collapsed beneath the sweeping petals and leaves of the flowers he found it easy to sleep.

He pawed it the ground raking over the earth to find more of her smell buried beneath but it faded with the turn of his paw. He ground his nose until the dirt clung to the wet perspiration of his nose, which he sneezed away in a fit of ten snotty exhalations. His head was spinning, like the strong winds that he felt would be coming very soon. Their shrieks assaulted his ears and when it was deafening to hunt outside he saddled himself inside an abandoned cave or overturned roots of a tree. The depression allowing his body to fold into a lump circle as his tail fanned over his face. He enjoyed the laziness of his day today and was excited when the familiar smell drew him to this very spot. She was here. He knew she was female but still was unsure what kind of animal she was. She walked like a feline yet didn’t have hair like one…she wasn’t bulbous like a bear, or grumpy like a moose. Her kind were always smelling, looking, and sounding different. Some were angry at his presence, others fearful, but hers was at ease. Maybe she was like him. He also knew she was female based off her pheromone trail.

Today he could tell she had bathed in the dirt like he sometimes enjoyed rolling in, sometimes the patches could be stinky but those days were for when his enemies wanted to hurt him, but for some reason she stayed a long time rolling in this dirt bath. He wondered why…there were no other hairless animals that followed her, no dangerous smells, but her scent was very strong here which meant she had been here for more than one arch of the sun in the sky. But why…? He followed the odd smell of her feet that had strange hooves on them, sometimes they were furry like a bears…but this one was stinky like the animals in the large wood stacks had made them. He watched her slip into her stack of tree trunks and limbs and waited for her to open the square part that showed her face but she never came. He could see in the cracks of the wood illuminate and knew she was in there but dared not go closer. That man with the large sharp thing was outside by her log pile breaking down more saplings.

He didn’t like the things that glint. Perhaps they plucked large teeth from creatures that were taller than the trees in his home and fastened them to sticks? During a close call when he was a pup one almost bit him. He wondered why the animal didn’t use his teeth after he bared them but instead swung the giant tooth that was curved and a pale silver bit into his side. The pain it brought made him forever cautious. His mother had warned him of such things. ‘your snooping will get you into trouble. Just stay away from the hairless squirrels’. But on his own observation they were not small like the little creatures he could catch and kill. These things were bigger, meaner, and brandished monster teeth. He least liked the long sticks that made noise like thunder and was followed by a terrible bite that ripped through muscle and bone. But nothing had been by him and yet white hot pain ripped through his shoulder blade forever causing a small niche over the curved wing. But she did not have any of those things. She did not yell at him to move on, did not have monster teeth or long sticks made of thunder. She watched him as he had once watched ‘the giant squirrels’ as a pup. And he loved her distinct scent.

When the glow had dimmed and the homes went quiet, he dared to approach and sniff at the border of her stick home. As he arched his head to the sky he could smell the faint remains of something that was dead. The little string that fluttered in the wind still holding strong smells as it whipped in the wind. Whatever was there was probably eaten. There were logs piled along the outside wall which he wondered why one would hoard logs? Sure squirrels hoarded nuts, and owls mice, and bears fat for the winter, but why would she want all this? He wondered if it was surrounding something in its center and gingerly poked his nose against the hard edge of one of the rings. One log toppled from above his head threatening to crush his skull but he was quicker and darted from it. Don’t disturb them he thought as he continued his perimeter search.

He smelt the last place she was at and put both pads on the door butting his nose to one of the slits in the large flat log taking in deep breaths. She was definitely in there. He wanted in. He wanted to smell her, to relish in the feel of her fur. Maybe…he could roll on her to capture some of her pheromones. He could also in turn rub off his and let the other males that surrounded her know he was in his care. But he didn’t understand the magic they used and couldn’t make the flat wood budge. There was a distant soft song calling him on the wind. His ears perked. He recognized that scrape, those little thumps. Rabbit. Just like what was hanging on that string. Now he was hungry for that, his stomach rumbled and he knew it was time to fill it so he stalked off once more into the wood vowing to come back before the winds would hold him up somewhere warm until it was safe to hunt once more.