Strangers of The Midst

Her legs were trembling. She couldn’t go any further. She leaned back against a tree trunk and used it as leverage. She eased down to the base of the tree and sat.

A wolf cried out into the night.

She tensed as she heard another wolf cry out; this one closer to her.

She gripped a large stick and held it close to her. Another sharp pain rippled across her lower back and across her hard belly. She clamped her jaw tightly together to prevent a scream. She wanted to cry, to scream; to rage. It couldn’t be happening. She was lost, her daughter was lost and she was going to give birth no matter what.  She prayed that the rain washed out her human scent. She wanted to laugh hysterically at what was happening beyond her control. Where were the strangers Gram had told her about, the ones that would help her, the ones she was to trust?

The wolf cried out again and the other answered with a cry of its own. They were both closer to her now. She looked wildly around. It was too dark too see anything but shadows.

She started to cry, she was so afraid.  Tears filled her eyes and flowed down her pale cheeks mixing with the rain.    

Suddenly the hair on the back of her neck stood up as she heard something approach through the wet leaves. She gripped the thick stick tighter in her hands, her knuckles going white. It was better to die fighting than not at all. She wasn’t going to give in that easily. She was a survivor. Didn’t she travel far from home, across the ocean’s endless dark waters with a stranger for a husband, just to give her baby a name, when deep inside she knew it was the gravest mistake she had ever agreed to in her life? The real father, the man she had gave her soul to, had died.

Her body tensed, and with deliberated calm she turned in the direction where it came from.

Jone gasped when she saw two silver eyes looking at her. She moaned in agony as another pain lanced her middle. The wolf moved and broke through the shadows. Her heart dropped to her belly, freezing the scream lodged in the back of her throat as the biggest wolf she had ever seen broke stopped a few feet from her.