I worked at the knots until my palms blistered, cutting and tearing until my fingers were raw with sap. The roots clung stubbornly, as though the forest itself had risen against me at his command. By the time I was through, the clearing was strewn with shredded vines, my breath ragged in my throat. My shelter sagged but still stood. My cache was freed. My bedroll lay crumpled and mine again.
But the fury would not loosen its teeth.
He thought to choke me with patience. To wrap my camp in hours of labor and make me waste mine untangling it. To bind me like some cornered doe and watch me claw free while he grinned from the ridge.
No. Not this time.
He wanted grand? I would give him small. He wanted power? I would give him humiliation. Not sweeping gestures of force, but barbsâsharp, hidden, inescapable. Let him see how it felt to be the fool.
I set to work as the sun bled down the treeline, hands steady, every movement precise.
First the firepit. I drove a peg deep between two stones and tied a string to the potâs handle, pulling it taut across the ash. Any hand that sifted there would send the pot flipping, black dust flying, a mouthful of soot as bitter as crowâs feathers.
Then the bucket. I rigged a loop at its handle, snug and subtle, a rabbit snare turned cruel. If he reached again for my water, the cord would cinch around his wrist and leave him tangled in his own arrogance, the bucket upending over his head like a slap.
And lastâthe masterpiece. The latrine.
I disguised the pitâs cover with a neat skin of earth and branches, tamped flat so it looked solid. Let him nose where no wolf should go, smug in his trespass, and he would find himself thigh-deep in filth. No pain. No wound. Only shame. The kind that burned hotter than any lash.
By the time the shadows stretched long and the sky cracked open to stars, my traps were set.
I cleaned my hands on my cloak and crouched at the treeline, bow slung across my knees, heart steady now, a flame cooling into coals. The hollow lay quiet behind me, careless and ordinary as though I had gone about my human clumsy ways. But I knew better.
The game had changed.
I smiled thin and sharp, teeth bared to the dark.
Let him come. Let him creep like he always did, thinking himself clever.
This time, the night itself would laugh at him.
___________________
He came as he always did, slipping silent through the bent grass path. Still angry. Still stung from the lash across his shin, the welt burning hotter in his pride than in his flesh. The girl thought herself clever. Thought her silence was a weapon. Thought it a victory.
He would tear that silence from her throat if he had to.
He crouched at her firepit, claws turning through the ashâ
The pot flipped.
Soot burst like black smoke, exploding into his face, coating his mouth, his eyes, his nostrils. Brannok choked, spitting grit, coughing clouds that stung his lungs raw. His ears rang with the phantom echo of her laughterâthough she gave him none. Not a sound. Only silence.
He ripped the pot aside, teeth bared, soot streaking his face, and stalked toward the water bucket. He would cleanse himself. He would take her precious water and pour it into the dirt just to spite her. He reachedâ
The loop snapped tight.
The snare cinched his wrist and jerked the bucket skyward. Cold water sluiced over him, drenching him to the shoulder, soaking his chest and arms, plastering his hair to his brow. The cord bit into his skin as the bucket clattered aside, mocking him with its empty rattle.
His snarl tore through the clearing, low and savage. Fury coiled through his chest like a living thing, but worse was the stink that followed when he stormed for the treeline and dropped straight into the pit.
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The earth gave way. He plunged to his thighs in filth.
The reek hit him like a blow, gagging, rancid, clinging to his skin, his fur, his pride. He froze there, dripping muck and soot, water streaming down his arms, the shame of it burning deeper than fire.
For a long, murderous moment, Brannok stood trembling. His claws curled, his chest heaved, his vision swam red. Everything in him screamed to storm the clearing, drag her from her hollow, and make her voice his.
And thenâ
He laughed.
Low at first, then louder, until the sound shook the trees. Not mirth, not joy. A dark, feral laugh, sharp with promise.
Fine. If she wanted war, then war she would have.
By dawn, he was working. No roots this time. No buckets or hides or ruined pelts. Bigger. Grander. Maddening.
He tore whole trees from the earth, dragging trunks heavy as boulders until his shoulders burned and his hands bled sap. He ripped stones from the ridge and rolled them into place, teeth clenched, sweat steaming off his skin. Hours he labored, the forest ringing with the groan of timber and the thud of rock. He stacked, he heaved, he built.
By nightfall her clearing was no hollow at all but a fortressâringed with walls of trunks piled so high they cut the stars from the sky. Her world caged, her horizon stolen. Every log a taunt, every drop of sweat an insult, every hour of his labor a demand: speak to me.
When she returned, she would find herself penned like a beast, a little fire-girl walled in by his will alone.
Let her try to stay silent then.
_____-__
When I returned, the air hitched in my throat.
The clearing was gone. The stars were gone.
Walls of timber rose around me, trunk on trunk, stacked so high they cut off the sky itself. A fortress. A cage. The earth stank of sap and sweat. He had built it with his hands, with his rage, until my hollow was nothing more than a pit penned in by his will.
I dropped my rabbits at the wall and stood trembling, fury thrumming hot in my veins.
Fine. If he wanted to trap me, then I would make a mockery of his cage.
I set to work before the light failed, swift and silent. Bones from my rabbits, strung together on twine, dangled from the timber in crude little fetishes, their hollow eyes grinning back at him. I laid the stones of my firepit into the shape of a wolfâs head, its jagged snarl aimed toward the ridge where I knew he watched. At the center, I smoothed my bedroll and laid my cloak across it as though in invitationâwaiting, beckoning. But beneath the folds, I scattered nettles and burrs, sharp enough to sting any hand bold enough to touch.
A shrine of mockery. A stage dressed for his pride to bleed on.
Then I sat cross-legged by the fire, bow across my knees, face lifted to the timber wall. I smiled, thin and feral.
Come down, wolf. See how I worship you.
______________
He watched from the ridge, chest heaving, eyes burning gold through the gloom.
Her camp had become a taunt. Bones strung like mock trophies. Stones shaped into a wolfâs head, its teeth pointed at him. Her bedroll laid bare, cloak spread like an invitation, but he could scent the burrs and nettles waiting beneath.
Mockery. Every piece of it. Mockery meant for him.
His jaw cracked with the force of his teeth. His claws dug grooves in the rock. She was clever, yes, sharper than he had expected, but the insult cut deeper because of it. She was laughing at him, silent and smiling, daring him to rage.
Fine. If she wanted to mock his cage, he would build her a tomb.
Brannok dropped from the ridge like thunder. All night he worked, driven mad with fury, tearing the forest apart. He felled a tree so vast it took three times his arms to span it, dragging it whole into the clearing. He ripped a trench around her hollow, gouging the earth into a moat that filled with mud and rainwater until she was marooned on her own island of dirt. He tore boulders from the hillside and rolled them into place like the stones of a grave.
By dawn, he stood slick with sap and mud, the clearing transformed into a monument to his rage. A tree blocking the sky. A trench choking her steps. Stones hemming her in, high and heavy.
He had not just caged her. He had buried her.
Brannok threw back his head and howled, a savage, shattering sound that split the morning.
Let her try to smile at him now. Let her try to hold her tongue.
One way or another, she would break.
_____________
The forest held its breath.
Every night and every dawn, their war reshaped itâlogs dragged from the ridge, roots torn from the earth, stones heaved and stacked, traps sprung and reset. The pines whispered with the sound of their labors, the undergrowth churned beneath their feuding hands, and the air itself grew restless with the scent of rage.
Birds startled from the branches long before sunrise, crows circling wide to keep clear of the clearing. Fox and hare gave it a wide berth, as though sensing that something greater and more terrible than beasts stalked there. Even the wind seemed to avoid it, skirting the cage of trees where wolf and girl fought their silent war.
Neither yielded. Neither broke.
Every move answered with another, every insult sharpened into something new, until the hollow itself became a battlefieldâone of patience, of cunning, of fury writ into stone and wood and bone.
And still the forest watched.
No end in sight.