The Forest Path

Still half-asleep, I rose from the bed and fetched a mug of water but it was tepid and stale tasting. I looked out of my window and the trees of the forest seemed to shimmer in the waning light of the full moon. The thought came into my mind that it would be so much cooler in the forest, in the deep dales where the summer sun can barely reach and the springs flow cold and clean. But, unsure if the thought came from me or from him, I resisted the pull of the moonlight, the call of the trees.

I stood poised there for long minutes, struggling against his lure until seemingly out of nowhere, that snippet of a story I'd tried in vain for so long to remember popped into my head. So much that had puzzled, confused, and even frightened me quite suddenly made perfect sense and I gave into the wild yearnings coursing through me. Wide awake, clad only in my red cloak, I ran here to the forest path.

And so now, standing here on the very spot where I was born, I wait for my fate to claim me at last.

"I expected you long since, Ruadh."

I can see nothing in the shadows but by his voice, he is close. I can feel him, my nerve endings tingling with his nearness. "My command of the Norman tongue is poor, and I have only heard the term once, in a bard's story," I reply. The story had been about a Norman prince held hostage by Gaels, a wolf killed in senseless anger, and a Druid's terrible justice. Lú Garrú, loupe garrou: in the Norman tongue, it means werewolf. "Are you really a prince?"

"I was once, but I am something else now. Does it matter?"

I shake my head. "No. Not at all."

I hear him moving now, slipping deeper into the forest, away from me, and my whole being yearns after him. Then his voice floats out of the darkness again, velvety soft, caressing. I quiver at the sound, pulled by it, aching to run to him yet anchored in place by some remnant of caution. "It must be your choice, Ruadh. You must be sure."

The sound of his passage grows fainter, the need to follow him stronger. It takes me less than another heartbeat to make up my mind. "I am," I say softly to the darkness, letting the cloak fall from my shoulders. "Very sure." It lands in a puddle of dark crimson at my feet, like a pool of birthing blood in the moonlight. A trace of breeze I did not notice before washes over my bare skin, reminding me of the feather soft brush of fur.

Free now of the last tie to what I have been, I place my feet upon the path I was born to walk and follow my wolf into the forest. He waits there for me, and in his embrace, I am consumed.

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The old priestess Brighid looks up at the pale moon, a single tear running down her cheek. "I will miss you little ruadh," she says to the empty night. "Farewell, Deirdre." As if in answer, two wolves howl in the distance. She gathers up the fallen cloak, places it in her basket, and turns away from the forest path, homeward.