This is Part One of a three-part short story. If you enjoyed this, check out Part Two and Part Three.
The old willows groaned with the weight of the wind at their backs, their branches creaking and cracking beneath the pressure. Rain lashed down as forks of lightning soared across the sky and thunder shook the sodden ground below. A young couple trudged hurriedly through the forest, their clothes covered in mud, tattered and dishevelled.
‘Run, Ainé!’ said the boy, throwing back his arm for the girl lagging behind.
Ainé held her hand out to grasp it, struggled through the soft earth to reach it and stumbled over a hidden root, falling to the ground. She lay disheartened, her arms slack at her sides, and began to weep.
‘We should never have left! My father would have seen sense! He would have known that I'd not wed another!’ she said. ‘Why now, Calder? Why tonight?’
Calder came to a suddent stop. He turned about and saw the woeful form of Ainé in the mud, her once stunning figure now covered from head to toe in blood, sludge and scratches.
‘Because there can be no other!’ he said. ‘My father has sold me to the pig men. He couldn't pay their tithe! If we didn't run tonight...’
He paused to wipe away the soggy hair that clung to his face and looked around. With the heavens hammering down upon them and the forest stealing all but the faintest of light from the world , Calder was, for all intents and purposes, blind. Only the frequent flashes from the storm overhead allowed some glimpse of his surroundings, yet even then, all the young man could glimpse was tree after tree stretching out across the horizon.
Had he made a mistake in fleeing? Had there been a better way? He knew now that there was no going back. They had ran swiftly into the night, knowing Ainé's father would have the hounds at their heels before too long. He had never planned to go so deep into the forest. Swept up in the burning emotions of their flight however, they paid no heed to any path.
‘If we didn’t run tonight,’ he said ‘then we’d be lost to each other forever.’
Ainé continued to cry, unmoved from the spot where she fell. Her hands splashed into the ground and spattered her once brilliant hair with muck.
‘Bring me home, Calder’ she said. ‘I just want to go home.’
‘I can't.’
Calder had never seen Ainé like this. The loving smile she had always given him was nowhere to be seen. He felt his heart wrench as her sobs grew louder.
‘Why? We can find another way! A safer way! You can hide! I can hide you! We’ll die out here! We'll drown or be eaten by wolves!’ said Ainé between tears, her desperation plain to see.
‘The wolves are gone from this land, Ainé. There’s no reason to be afraid. All we need do is escape this storm. If we go a little further—’
Several barks broke out in the distance, silencing Calder and prompting Ainé to gasp and rise to her feet, hugging her breast tight. Was he wrong? Did wolves still prowl these parts? He steeled himself for Ainé’s sake. It would not do either of them any good if they were both cowed by fear.
‘Ainé, if we go a little further, we'll be free of this place and back on the road. Please. Ainé, just a little further.’
‘Just get me home!’ she said. Her desperation turned to anger and she spat the words at Calder. ‘Get me out of this wretched hell!’
‘I can't!’ screamed Calder. ‘I’ve lost the way. We've been running too long!’
Ainé said nothing and Calder too remained silent, afraid that if he said anything else, that the imperceptible attraction that lay between the two would be broken. They stayed like this for a long time, their eyes locked on one another as the rain and wind soaked and chilled them to the bone. Then barks broke through the dead air that hung between them and they were moved to action. Those were no wolves, Calder realised. Those were the hounds of Ainé's father, locked onto the lover's scent trail.
'Run!' cried Calder, grabbing Ainé harshly by the wrist and forcing her to move with him.
They ran faster than they had before, the threat of the hounds now real at their backs. At times, the cry of the dogs sounded louder, then they would be but a brief utterance in the howling wind and lashing rain. After some time, their baying could no longer be heard and the young couple began to slow. They were unrecognisable now as the tailor's boy and baron's daughter that they had begun the night as. Scratches and bruises covered their arms, legs and faces. Their clothes were barely hanging on by a thread and their hair was a matted, muddy mess.
