Out of The Woods Read Online Free Page A

than usual, their individual veins appearing as finely crafted lines; a single bird cried; a musky pine scent permeated the air; even her skin felt more finely tuned.
    Fernando, in contrast, had faded. He seemed to have become subtly porous, as if she could feel the slight breeze pass through the infinitesimal spaces between his cells. He was suddenly less relevant.
    “I won’t follow you. I have to find the baby. I have to save him.”
    He blew out a hard breath. “You’re crazy! There’s no baby – I told you – if it’s anything, it’s a goddamned bird.” His impatience got the better of him; he let the word goddamned draw itself out long and sinewy, and then snapped it at her like a whip.
    But even as he spoke, the keening grew louder, more a wail now than a cry. It couldn’t be ignored; it was like the whine of a manual car stuck between gears. The urge to make it stop was unbearable.
    He stared at her through his suddenly solid black eyes. “It’s the end of the trail. I’m not wasting my time looking for some imaginary baby lost in the woods. I’m going back to the car, Sparrow. You can do what you want.” His eyes dared her.
    He stepped around Halley, and began walking the path back towards the car.

Halley watched the shape of his back as he walked away. She watched, and she forced herself not to follow. It was strange that even at a great distance he still looked tall, like a leader. He turned the corner and the trail’s vast and sudden emptiness made her throat hurt. Oh My God Oh My God Oh My God. The force it took to keep herself from following him made her gasp aloud; it was as if he were pulling her innards out along the trail behind him.
    He hadn’t looked back. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t looked back.
    Time passed. The trail remained empty.
    Looking up at the sky with closed eyes, fighting back tears, she pressed her palms together with fingers interleaved as if in prayer. She tried to breathe. The blood pounded in her clenched fingers and the hollow between her palms grew warm. After a long while, she opened her eyes. She turned around, away from the empty trail where Fernando had been.
    She stood at the end of the long straight trail, staring hard at the trackless wilderness before her, at the close-knit forest. It was a terrible place for the trail to end. She was alone; afraid to move; with no idea of where she should go next. It was a crossroads-without-a-crossroads.
    Shaking slightly, she felt Fernando, felt each step he took away from her pull at her body. She stared straight ahead. Silence; stillness. Even the air hung quiet, the clouds immobile, as if stuck, waiting for her move, her choice.
    She couldn’t go back; she couldn’t follow Fernando any longer. That was not her path. Though the crying had stopped, she knew the baby she had heard was real, that it was alone, that it needed her help. No one else could save it. She didn’t know how she knew; she just did. There was no turning back.
    In her loneliness and desperation, she asked herself pointed questions aloud. “Where do I go next? How do I find this baby by myself? Out here in this wilderness, full of thorny things and sharp teeth. How do I carve a trail, alone?”
    She looked outwards for wisdom. None was forthcoming. To be at the end of a trail, without a crossroads, alone; to discover that she had been heading the wrong way, following the wrong guide, for quite some time; to have an urgent, illogical need to save a baby she heard crying in the woods, and to be unsure how.
    The “next” was unclear, but in the “now”, the storm clouds broke open, and rain began to fall, pricking her exposed skin mercilessly, chilling her in her stasis. Freezing her to the spot.
    “Which way, which way?” she said to herself, urgency in her voice. She willed a leader, other than herself; she willed a hero. A hero would find the way, would take charge, and would save this baby.
    The first step off the trail. She took