Chapter Text
It is autumn when he discovers you.
Before this, he remembers little. The last people he encountered screamed and fled from him, and before that he had run from some men who chased him through the forest with guns. And before that… it is all muddled and shifting, like his own ghastly visage when he looks upon his reflection in the stream that flows through the woods. He could not say how long or how far he has wandered, only that the cradling warmth of summer has surrendered to the savage gusts that chill his bones and bend the trees, raining down a hellfire of blood-red leaves.
So he seeks shelter.
The attic crawlspace that spans the length of your house makes a fine place to hide, and an even better place from which to watch you. He has no trouble hoisting himself up through the small window at the back of the building, and there is room enough for him to sleep comfortably, though he cannot sit upright without his head colliding with the ceiling. There are other creatures taking refuge here too, he finds. Tiny, skittery things—mice, as he comes to learn they are called—that, unlike the people who have seen him, do not fear him. They nestle in his palm and sleep in his coat pockets, and he is glad of their company. They remind him of himself, in some strange way.
He notices something curious about the way you live: your house has two rooms, but you only use the smaller one at the back of the house. The front room remains closed off, the windows shuttered and the outer door locked. He tries to peer down into the space through the gaps in the ceiling slats, but it is pitch black inside and he cannot discern its contents or purpose.
In spite of his massive stature, he learns to move silently about his new home, carefully avoiding the loose, creaking beam that runs along the center of the structure. He sleeps above the unused room, thinking he will be less likely to be detected there, but he often creeps over to the other side and peeks down into your living quarters. From here, he can see you doing all manner of things that puzzle and fascinate him. You seem to work magic with your hands, singing sweetly to yourself as you create intricate, delicate things with nimble fingers and precise flicks of the wrist that he could never hope to replicate, large and clumsy as he is. He watches you tend to the garden behind your house and cook modest meals on your wood stove, which smell so enticing that he worries he will alert you to his presence with his rumbling stomach. You spend a good deal of time doing what he will later find out are called ‘reading’ and ‘writing’, and while he cannot comprehend the purpose of them, he is eager to know the secrets contained in these books that so captivate you.
For indeed, you captivate him. From the first moment he saw you, he was enthralled. You are alone, like he is, but he does not understand why. Of the few people he has seen, you are the cleverest, gentlest, and most beautiful; surely, you should have a wealth of friends and admirers, yet no one ever comes to your door. He wishes he could be the one to ease your loneliness, but he does not dare show himself to you.
He knows next to nothing, but already he understands this: he is not like you. He is not like them. He is something like a person, he thinks, but something is different about him. Something fearsome and wrong. And so, one of the first things he learns is that he must remain unseen, observing yet unobserved.
Sometimes you leave your home and do not come back until dusk, carrying bundles of food, books, and various things that he could not name, but which intrigue him nonetheless. He misses you and worries for you when you are gone, and so one day he follows you on one of your outings. He keeps his distance, staying hidden behind the trees as you traverse the narrow dirt road.
This is how he learns of the village. It frightens him, at first—there are so many people, more than he has ever seen, and they move hurriedly between the densely packed buildings, shoving and shouting over the din of church bells, blacksmith’s hammers, and merchants hawking their wares. There are beasts here, too, different from those he has seen in the forest and larger than deer or wolves, yet the people pay them little mind as they trot down the streets. His fear soon gives way to curiosity, and he is spellbound as he watches the townsfolk go about their day from his vantage point on a wooded hillside above the village.
He loses sight of you in the crowd, and for a moment he is stricken with panic. However, he has seen you return safely home after several of these excursions, and he has faith that you will do so this time. In the meantime, he becomes engrossed in the sight of some villagers constructing yet another house, turning raw timber into uniform planks and erecting a structure not unlike the one you live in. He is surprised to note how many men it takes to accomplish this; he has moved fallen logs on his own with ease, though in fairness, he is larger than any of these men. Perhaps he could build something like this for himself, deep in the forest where they would not find him. He disregards this idea as soon as it has formed, for if he were to do that then he would not see you as often, and you are his favorite subject of study.
He watches men hauling carts and women washing linens in large, steaming tubs. He watches children skip to and fro around the square with no apparent destination. He watches people eat and dance and laugh together, and he wants to experience all of it. He daydreams of walking through the town with you, of buying you the beautiful things displayed in the shop windows, of making you smile and laugh. The thought pains him; it is an almost physical ache, the way he yearns for you, knowing he will never have you.
The sun is setting and the people are beginning to retreat into their houses by the time he emerges from his reverie, and he hastens back through the forest to find you already at home, humming softly and unwrapping your parcels of bread, cloth, and several new books to add to your overflowing shelf.
After that day, he returns to the village on several occasions, mainly in the dead of night to avoid being seen. He explores the town while its inhabitants sleep and pilfers anything of use that he can find—a cloak left hanging out to dry, some empty glass bottles, discarded bread crusts and half-eaten apples that he devours ravenously.
When you go on your weekly sojourns into town, he stays behind and takes the opportunity to do things for you, anything that he thinks might please you. He mends the broken fence at the edge of your garden and collects firewood and wild berries, which he leaves on your doorstep. He eagerly watches your reactions to these offerings from his hiding place in the rafters, and he takes great satisfaction in seeing your smiles and huffs of surprised laughter.
To his unexpected delight, you begin to leave gifts for him in return. A woolen blanket, a loaf of fresh bread, a scarf that he watched you knit over the past few days (to think, you had made it just for him!), and a book that he cannot read but treasures nonetheless. There is a sheet of paper tucked inside it with words on it that you wrote yourself, and for that reason he prizes it even more highly than the book. He shares the bread with the mice as he leafs through the tome and traces his finger over the inscrutable symbols on the pages, wishing now more than ever that he could decipher their mysteries.
There are certain times—like now, for instance—when his longing threatens to overwhelm him, and looking at you is inexplicably too much to bear. It is agony, being so near but unable to touch. On nights like this, when the weather is fair and the sky is clear, he climbs to the roof and gazes up at the sky in hopes that the splendor of the heavens will divert his mind from thoughts of you. It does not.
Tonight, however, he finds another distraction, albeit a far less welcome one.
He hears a menacing growl from below. Wolves. He has crossed paths with them in the forest, and he is overcome with fear and some primal, inborn urge to protect, to destroy anything that threatens the only source of light in his wretched existence.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he leaps down from his perch atop the house. He hurls one of the beasts towards the woods, where he hears a sickening crack of bones as it collides with a tree. Two more advance on him and he snaps their necks in quick succession. The last one lunges at him with a vicious snarl that becomes a whimper, then silence as he tears its head clean from its neck. He drops the carcass and looks around at the carnage he has wrought, panting and shaking as he waits for the deafening thunder of his pulse to subside.
He ducks to the ground, then raises his head to peer through your window. He holds his breath, watching and listening for any signs that you were awakened by the commotion. Fortunately, you seem to be undisturbed, and he looks back to the wolf carcasses. He knows that he must get them away from the house, as they will attract other animals and insects, and besides that, he does not want you to see what he has done. He cannot name this feeling that oozes hot and sluggish through his veins. He knows only that he does not like it. He had not wanted to hurt those creatures—indeed, he was unaware that he was capable of such destruction—but they threatened you, and he could not allow them to harm you.
He carries the mangled remains of the beasts to the woods at the furthest edge of the clearing where your home is situated. He does not return to your house that night. Instead, he goes to the stream and scrubs the gore from his hands until his own fingers begin to bleed. The blood looks black beneath the moon’s cold gaze. Perhaps he should remain here; the forest is a better place for such a brute as him, he thinks. For you would fear the wolves, but would you fear the one that can best them even more?
🍂🍁🍂
You open your door one morning to find a trail of blood leading into the woods. Alarmed and perplexed, you follow it. You suspect that a deer—or rather, several deer, judging by the other blood-smeared tracks that converge with this one—must have wandered into your garden before being carried off by wolves.
“How on earth did I manage to sleep through that?” you wonder aloud.
You do not see or hear any sign of the predators now, and you deem it safe to proceed beyond the garden. Always one to indulge your morbid curiosity, you follow the steady stream of gore and make your way beyond the treeline, scuffling over fallen leaves and branches.
Then you come to an abrupt halt, gasping at the sight before you.
Not deer—wolves. Three carcasses, laid neatly side by side. Two of them with broken necks, their heads protruding at unnatural angles, and the third with no head at all.
A frisson of dread shudders through you, for you do not know what to make of this gruesome spectacle. The wolves were not shot or stabbed; they look as though they were killed by some beast even larger and deadlier than themselves. A bear? But that would not explain why they are all lined up in a row, almost fully intact, with no bite marks that you can discern from here. So then, a person must have done this… but how could any human have accomplished such a feat, and without a weapon at that?
And, looking past the ‘how’ of the matter, you wonder why. Why leave the bodies here, like this? They were dragged from your garden, so whoever or whatever did this must not have wanted you to see them. If they hadn’t killed the wolves, the wolves would have killed you. So they were protecting you?
Your heart skips a beat. Whoever did this must be the same one who has been leaving you firewood and mending your fence. Your mind whirls with a thousand questions, the foremost among them being how exactly any man could have killed three wolves with his bare hands. You are grateful to your unseen benefactor—indeed, you owe them your life—but you must admit that you are somewhat unnerved. After all, you are a woman, living alone, and your home is far enough from the village that none would hear you scream. You have never been faced with anything like this in your years living here, and before you moved here from the city you had never even seen a wolf.
Already on edge, you jump when you hear a sudden snap somewhere in the distance. You scan the area, squinting into the dark, dense underbrush, but you see no sign of life, human or otherwise.
“Hello?” you call out. There is no answer. You sigh, feeling foolish and a little disappointed, and take a final glance into the woods before shaking your head and turning back towards your home and place of work. You don’t have the time to investigate further; the winter school term begins next week, and you have much to prepare.
With no money, no family left, and no desire to marry, you’d exercised what little autonomy you had by taking up a vocation. Teaching suits you well, you think. You were always a voracious reader, and you have found that you have a natural aptitude for working with children. Nothing brings you more pride or satisfaction than seeing a student’s eyes brighten with understanding when they master a new skill.
When you were offered this position you leapt at the opportunity; you had grown weary of the bustling city and longed for something new. Perhaps living alone in a remote mountain cottage would sound to most people like folly, but to you it sounded terribly romantic. It sounded like freedom and adventure. In reality, it has been… not dull, exactly, but not particularly exciting, either. Until now, that is.
Besides furnishing you with your humble living quarters attached to the schoolhouse, the state pays you a modest salary that you supplement with some knitting and embroidery, which you sell during the months when school is not in session. You also have your vegetable garden, which flourishes more and more each year, and your pupils frequently bring you gifts like bread, wool, and kindling for the stove. All in all, you live a comfortable life here.
The only visitors to your home are the schoolchildren, a revolving cast of a dozen or so students from the village who attend sporadically during the summer and winter terms. When the schoolhouse was built, it was meant to serve the nearby town as well as another one, approximately equidistant from the school but in the opposite direction. There was a fire, a few years before you moved here, that devastated much of the village, and its surviving inhabitants all moved to the other one, a few miles west of the schoolhouse. As such, your home is the last semblance of civilization at the edge of a vast wilderness.
For the first year or so living here, the solitude was a welcome change of pace. After a while, however, the isolation takes its toll. You attend church every Sunday, more out of social obligation than piety, and you tried to befriend the local women there when you arrived. They are an insular and parochial bunch, though, and they regard you with a discomfiting mixture of pity, contempt, and envy for being unmarried and childless at your age. More than one eligible bachelor from the town has sought your hand, but you have gently declined all offers, and over time their interest has waned as you approach the status of ‘old maid.’ If you were to marry, you would have to give up your profession and the small slice of freedom you have carved for yourself. So the loneliness is worth it, you tell yourself.
You have felt a bit less alone as of late, though, ever since your mysterious helper arrived. You probably ought to be worried—especially after this morning’s display—but whoever they are, all evidence points to them being benevolent. You have developed a sense for danger, living out here on your own, and aside from the momentary fright of finding the wolves, nothing about this situation has set alarm bells ringing.
If only this stranger would show their face, so you could thank them properly for their kindness. You have searched the nearby woods and called out for them, but you’ve never seen hide nor hair of anyone. As they evidently do not wish to be seen, you began leaving tokens of gratitude for them on your doorstep. Perhaps unwisely, you included a note inviting them to join you for supper sometime, assuming they would appreciate a hot meal but only half-expecting them to take you up on the offer. And they never have, much to your disappointment. You are beginning to suspect that all of this is some sort of practical joke that your students have been playing on you. That does not account for the carcasses in the woods, but you don’t have a satisfactory explanation for that either. Superstitious folk in town speak of the ‘spirit of the forest,’ and while you don’t believe in such old wives’ tales, you nevertheless leave a bountiful offering of bread, some wildflowers you picked, and a rather expensive jar of marmalade. It never hurts to be cautious.
Over the following week, you continue with your daily gift exchange but try to put this conundrum out of your mind as you busy yourself with preparations for the upcoming school term. You devise lesson plans and ready the classroom, sweeping away cobwebs and opening the windows to air it out. You sniff the musty air when you enter the space for the first time in months, noting a peculiar, animal smell that’s never been present before. You wonder if something died in the attic—and you sincerely hope that’s not the case, as the floorboards are unsteady and you dread climbing up into the dim, stifling crawlspace—but it doesn’t have that distinctive odor of death. It’s woodsy and musky and not altogether unpleasant, actually. For some reason, the scent draws you once more to thoughts of your enigmatic patron, and for a brief moment you allow yourself to envision him (for it must be a him, you think) as a handsome, rugged man who sweeps you off your feet and—
“Foolish!” you hiss to yourself, shaking your head and sweeping a pile of dust out the door more aggressively than is strictly necessary, as if you could scour the daydreams from your mind in the process.
Perhaps this life of seclusion is finally driving you mad. Or perhaps you have been reading too many romance novels. At least your work and the children will distract you from this nonsense, you think with a sigh. The first day of school cannot come soon enough.