The man spoke soft words in the darkness. A heavy blanket was draped around her stiff, hunched shoulders.
Strange pains throbbed in her bones. The cold did not help, but she couldn't muster the will to care.
He talked of bringing her away from the forest. She could never find her voice to answer anything he said.
Only once did he attempt to gather her forcefully in his arms, to pick her up and carry her away. A scratch and a bruise to his cheek dissuaded him.
She had forgotten what days were. A sense of time stirred once again when the man began to visit her spot at dawn and dusk. She discovered that she would look expectantly towards the path through the trees when dawn made the forest grey, and when the sun dropped behind the horizon.
It was hard to know where the food came from. She forgot the man when he was away. For an hour, she stared at the loaf of bread wrapped in cloth, and her skull ached with striving to recall.
He would light a fire for her, and put the blanket back around her. She did not know how to keep the fire going, and it would go out in the coldest hour of the night.
One evening, the man arrived with another person. They stood afar and talked between themselves, but she felt their eyes boring into her. Like a cornered fox, she watched, her limbs tight and ready to spring. But they went away again after nodding and giving each other pats on the back.
Night fell again, and she forgot.
The silence is a spell, and if it break,
What things, that now lie sleeping, will awake?
~The Lost Path by Elinor Wylie
