Howling and Growling, Prancing and Prowling

I halted abruptly. I had heard a rustling in the straw behind me, and yet the air was preternaturally still. Hesitantly, I raised my head and stood on my tiptoes to see over the high heads of wheat, but I didn’t see any pursuing brewers, bottlers, or bartenders behind me. I didn’t see anyone walking through the field, and it would have been difficult for any average-sized person to creep unseen through the stalks.

Yet as I watched nervously, the stalks of wheat began to part, far away from me, as something moved through the field, swiftly and surely approaching me.

I wasn’t about to wait around to meet it, whatever it was. I turned and ran.

I threw away any remaining caution, thrashing through the field with abandon. The wheat made a curious chorus, breaking and parting before me, crushing beneath my feet, rustling behind me as my pursuer made chase. To these noises, the beast behind me contributed snarls and snaps, growls and grunts, huffing and puffing.

Stiff strands of wheat slapped my face and stabbed at my eyes as I raced away from my unidentified hunter. I had no idea where I was running any more, or even which general direction, nor did I know what I was running from; I only knew that I had to get away from it.

Without being able to see any of the surrounding landmarks through the tall stalks, I had no means of getting my bearing or running with an intelligent purpose. I glanced at the night sky, hoping that the position of the moon would give me an indication of my direction, and noticed how large and bright it seemed this night.

A full moon. I pondered the significance of that fact for just a brief moment.

The wheat in front of me suddenly gave way and I found myself out in the open, crossing a short 20-yard gap of hard-packed dirt, and then I plunged into a forest. The trees of this forest were sparse as I entered, but quickly grew more densely together as I rushed deeper inside, too afraid to look back.

The thick canopy of evergreen branches over my head soon choked out most of the bright moonlight and my eyes quickly adjusted to my murky surroundings. The trees above me blocked not only the light, but much of the snowfall also, sheltering the undergrowth. I quickly found that the ground was no longer hard and frozen, but soft and spongy, yet also more restrictive and forbidding. Fallen logs impeded my sprint, and I had to slow down to hurdle each one or duck underneath trees that had fallen against one another. Low hanging branches brushed against my hat and would shower me with their captured snow. Bushes and brambles blocked me at almost every turn, entangling my legs.

A large, wide tree appeared in front of me, and I jumped behind it, pressing my back against it while I tried to quietly calm my aching lungs and thumping heart. Rough bark pressed back against me, and I smelled the sweet scent of sticky pine sap as I breathed deeply and determinedly through my nose. As my heartbeat descended from allegro to allegretto to moderato, I cautiously peered around the tree trunk, first on the left side, and then on the right side, to catch a glimpse of my pursuer.

The abrupt change in terrain and illumination had apparently caused it some minor hesitation as well. I heard, rather than saw, its heavy, padded footsteps hesitantly approaching my general direction, no more than ten yards away. The footsteps then paused, and their sound was replaced with the snuffling and sniffing of a predator searching for my scent.

And at that moment, he must have found it, because he lifted his head and gazed right at me. The meager moonlight glinted off of his golden eyes, glowing in the darkness. I stood, petrified, not daring to move, for I knew that once I started, this beast would give chase. His dark silhouette seemed abnormally large to my night eyes--his shoulders were nearly at the same elevation as my own, and only my vertically-aligned neck and head made me taller than him. Although I had that small advantage in height, his legs were longer than mine, and he had four of them upon which to run. Watching his paws twitch in nervous excitement, I knew that he was faster than me, stronger than me, hungrier than me.

I would have to be more clever.

The beast crouched, preparing to pounce.

I inched my leg out to the right, from behind the tree, preparing for a mad dash.

The beast sank lower, baring his teeth in a silent growl and flexing his hind legs.

I shifted my weight imperceptibly, and reached outward, exposing my right arm in the open night air.

The beast pounced, and I snapped my arm back and leapt to the left as he crashed past the right side of the tree. I sprinted away, dodging from side-to-side, trying to keep trees between us every time I passed a wide trunk or fallen log.

I didn’t have an endgame planned out for this scenario. I was unarmed--even missing my cane, which was the only weaponizable item in my usual ensemble.

I instinctively lunged at a slender tree trunk, gripped it tightly with my injured right hand, and my momentum carried me around in a sharp and painful 90° turn. I felt a furious, snarling mass of fur and teeth barely miss me as it leapt past. I landed and kept running, while the beast behind me skid through the pine straw littering the forest floor.

A tree had long ago fallen in the dark forest, about twenty yards in front of me. It lay at a low angle, propped up on one end by the stump that had once borne it, and forming a narrow gap with the ground. I hurdled the log and huddled behind the stump, and surely enough, the dark-haired monster jumped over the log and landed in front of me. Using my feet and hands, I scrambled backwards, crablike, through the restrictive space under the log. Protruding branches scraped at me, but my face was relatively protected because I was moving backwards, not watching where I was going, and my leather coat guarded my back and arms as I pushed my small body through the crevice.

A fierce, lupine face snapped at my short legs, and I kicked back in the darkness, occasionally making contact with my beastly pursuer. The branches that had assailed my back now assailed his face, blinding him temporarily as he scraped and crawled through the gap after me. But here, my small size was to my advantage, for I easily slipped through to the other side while the beast before me seemed stuck, at least momentarily.

I observed with a mixture of terror and fascination, for a short second, as this monster struggled to escape the sharp branches and tight space, but my survival instinct overcame my curiosity and I turned again to run.

Faintly, in the distance, I could see the flickering, shimmering glow of a campfire in the night air, and I ran in that direction.

Without warning, the trees cleared and I skidded to a halt at the sharp edge of a ravine, the campfire glowing far below me. Trapped, and panicking, I spun around and kicked out with my heavy-booted foot. I was rewarded with a satisfying thunk, but the impact knocked me backwards and I slipped over the edge of the ravine, sliding down the steep, pine needle-strewn slope on the back of my leather trench coat. I made no effort to arrest my descent, and slid all the way to the bottom, where I came to a halt in a relatively soft patch of heather.

Far above me, I heard a mournful howl, of a predator thwarted of his prey, a hunter unwilling or unable to continue his hunt, before I passed out from delirious exhaustion.