The Forest Path

The forest path looks so different at night.

Even in full daylight this forest guards its secrets jealously but by night, with only the dim silvering of moonlight tracing the path, it is a forbidding place indeed. Anything at all might be lurking in the impenetrable shadows just beyond the path's edge: an evil spirit, a brigand, a bear... a wolf.

You would think that a woman alone, unarmed, would be frightened to find herself standing on the forest path in the middle of a sweltering summer's night.

But I'm not afraid. The spirits of the forest have always looked on me with favor and neither brigand nor bear has ever been seen lurking here. As for wolves... Well, there is only one roaming this forest. And it is because of him that I am standing here on the forest path at midnight, waiting. But perhaps I should start at the beginning.

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"Ruadh" is what everyone calls me, although it is not my name. Red: for the hair that led to my disownment even more than the woolen cloak that has become my mark. Red: the color of blood, and anger, and passion. I embraced the name at a young age, preferring it to the one my father had given me in bitterness and scorn; by the time I became a woman few remembered that I'd ever been called differently. Only my father still uses my given name on those rare occasions when he must address me at all, but it has long ceased to have any power to wound me. I give him the courtesy and respect that is his due as the lord of the tuath but beyond that, I feel nothing for him. He has not been my father even though he is unquestionably my sire.

The story of my birth is well known. I was to have been the seventh son of a seventh son, a magical, mystical being. The wise women had all been certain of it, tasting my mother's blood and urine as her pregnancy advanced to divine my sex, reading omens in the entrails of sheep and goats. Six sons my dam had borne before me, each as dark as a moonless night, the very image of their sire. My father had been justifiably proud of his virility but I was to have been his crowning achievement. Seven gotten from seven: blessed of the gods, favored by the denizens of the Unseen World, bearer of good fortune.

The whole village had watched anxiously as my dam's time grew nearer. As summer waned and Samhain approached, the Druids had gathered at the keep, the High Priest of the Horned God himself coming all the way from the Holy Isle to attend the birth. They were welcomed; my lord father secretly keeps to the old ways despite his outward conversion to the White Christ of our Briton and Norman overlords.

But even those with the Sight cannot know everything; as it turned out no ceremonies celebrated my arrival and by the time the fires of Samhain were lit I was already both disgraced and disowned.

The forest that curls along the edge of my lord father's lands is ancient, nameless, and secretive. The people of the village may be grateful of its protection, for no invader has ever emerged from its dense tangles to attack us, but they do not love or trust it. They call it cursed, or haunted, and stay in its outer fringes where the sun still glimmers reassuringly, taking of its bounty of herb and mushroom and root only what is within easy reach. Even the hunters avoid it despite the abundance of stag and hind, taking their game instead from the smaller wood to the south.