Copyright 2026 by DJ Rawlings

12:10 AM

The stone slips in my hand.

I catch it against my shirt before it falls, and the wolf jerks forward. I press my knees together. Its front paws stop beyond the nearest root, close enough that I can see dark mud between the toes.

I do not throw.

If I miss, there will be nothing left in my hand.

The animal stares past my raised arm. Its ears move separately, one toward me and the torn one toward the trees. Something darker mats the fur beneath its mouth. I smell wet hide and a heavy, sour odor that makes my stomach tighten.

I try to remember what people say to do around a wolf. Stand up. Look bigger. Do not run. The instructions arrive without the part that explains how to stand when it is already close enough to reach me.

My good foot presses into the mud. I rise an inch against the trunk.

The growl deepens.

I lower again.

Above its shoulder, a pale shape lies beneath a fallen branch. At first I think it is a sack. Then the moon catches a narrow leg bent at the wrong angle and a dark hoof almost buried in leaves.

A deer.

I look away before I see more. The wolf moves when I turn my head, closing part of the distance. Maybe it is not hunting me. Maybe I came too close to what belongs to it. That does not make the teeth smaller. 

I jerk the stone upward. It stops.

My arm begins to ache. I cannot keep it raised much longer. I brace my elbow against the tree, but the change pulls my shirt across the bark with a dry scraping sound.

The wolf's mouth opens farther.

“Go away.”

The words barely leave me. I try again, louder, and my voice breaks on the second word.

It does not go.

A branch snaps uphill.

The wolf turns its head. So do I.

The sound comes again, followed by leaves shifting beneath something heavy. For a moment, relief rushes through me so completely that I almost call out. Someone is coming. Someone with shoes and a coat who can make the animal leave.

A white beam passes between the trees.

My mouth stays open, but no sound comes.

The light moves slowly across the ground. It pauses where I fell, then travels over a broken fern. I see a man's legs behind it. Dark trousers. Boots. A coat hanging open.

He crouches.

The light rests on the mud where my hands landed.

I push my fist against my mouth. The stone cuts into my lip.

The wolf gives a sharp bark. The beam rises at once and catches its face. Its eyes flare white, and it pulls back with its ears flattened.

“Get.”

His voice.

I cannot see his face beyond the light, but my body knows the sound. My shoulders fold inward. My knees draw closer. I am making myself small before I understand that I have moved.

He takes a step toward the animal.

The wolf retreats to the fallen branch. Its legs stiffen, and the growl becomes louder. He stops. It is afraid of him too. Not trained. Not waiting for him. Wild. For a time, the light holds on its face while the two of them remain still.

He has not seen me.

The thought comes so suddenly that I almost move too fast. I catch myself with my palm in the mud and pull my left foot beneath me, keeping the heel raised. The tree blocks the light from reaching my chest.

The wolf barks again.

He stoops, lifts something from the ground, and throws it. Wood strikes the fallen branch. The animal springs backward into the brush, and the flashlight follows it.

I move.

I do not choose a route. I push away from the trunk and stumble around its far side, reaching for another tree that is farther away than it looked. My fingers brush leaves. My shoulder hits bark. I catch the trunk before my knees reach the ground.

Behind me, the wolf makes a harsh sound, and the man shouts at it again.

I take another step.

The stone is still in my hand. I cannot hold the next tree properly with it trapped against my fingers, so I drop it. It lands softly. I leave it there and reach with both hands.

A root lies across my path. I feel it with my toes, lift one foot over, and bring the other through. Pain flares in my heel. I keep my mouth shut until it fades enough to breathe.

The flashlight jerks across the trunk I just left.

I freeze on the wrong side of the next tree. My shoulder is exposed. White light touches the torn cloth, passes, then comes back.

“Hannah.”

I run.

The ground is too dark to cross quickly. I strike a branch with my forearm and push through a curtain of leaves. One of my feet lands in a hole. My body pitches forward, but the brush catches me long enough to get the other foot beneath me.

“Stop.”

I hear him moving now. Branches break with each step. The light jumps ahead of me and makes the space beyond it darker.

I turn away from the beam. A sapling bends across my chest. I duck under it and pull my hair free with one hand, leaving strands in the branches.

The wolf barks somewhere behind him.

He pauses. I hear the change, one missing footstep, and stumble farther downhill before he starts again.

My feet slap mud. Too loud. Everything I do is too loud. I try to slow enough to place them carefully, but his next step sends me forward in a rush.

The light catches my hand on a trunk.

I snatch it away.

“You're going to hurt yourself.”

The words follow me through the trees in the same voice he used when he fastened the restraint around my wrist.

A low limb strikes my stomach. I double over it, choking, and slide sideways until it releases me. The flashlight moves across the leaves above my head.

I see every drop of water on them.

Then I am beneath them, crawling, with his light searching the place where I had been standing. My feet slide through wet leaves. Something sharp opens another place in my heel. 

“I've got your shoes,” he says.