The Owl Killers

agatha

iRAN FROM THE CLEARING, but the brambles were clutching at my skirts, dragging me back. I couldn’t find the path. I didn’t know if I was running towards the village or deeper into the forest. Taranis was here. The demon was here in the forest. I’d felt it. I’d seen the great black shadow of its wings hovering high above the smoke and flames of the burning saint. Now I could feel its foul breath hot on the back of my neck. It was so dark. I tried to run faster, but I kept blundering into trees and stumbling over roots.

Then it came crashing down on me, catching me from behind, slamming my belly against the trunk of a fallen tree, forcing me down. My face was pressed into the dirt. I couldn’t breathe. Rotting leaves filled my mouth. The stench of decay was forced into my nostrils. Its hot naked thighs were grinding my hip bones bloody against the rough bark. My ribs were cracking under the millstone of its chest. I grabbed wildly at earth and air and brambles, not comprehending what I tore, except that it wasn’t its skin, its wings, its eyes.

Wild onion is always in the forest, a sleeping thing, a harmless thing, but now, crushed and bruised, the stench of onions choked the air. A sea wind roared inside my skull. Though every sinew of my body howled and sobbed, my mouth was silent. My mouth was filled, crammed, stuffed to overflowing with the corruption of the forest. My lungs were clawing for breath against my will, because I wanted to die. I wanted to crawl into the dirt and bury myself among the worms. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. My body wasn’t mine anymore.

The monster wrenched my hair violently back as if it reined in a mare. It jerked my head back and forth as if it would snap my neck and make an end of it. But it made no end. Its iron flesh hammered my bones to the tree, again and again and again, until it had pierced me through. And then it was gone and I lay alone in the darkness.