The Woods

They were shaped like humans, humans with rat-tail hair or weeping willow spines or long hungry feet, and they danced around her, carried on her fearful imagination. She could taste their wicked delight and she cried, paralysed as they fed upon the chilled currents of winter walks. The little wolves spun up her ankles and took on her thighs; nothing left unexplored for them or her, a vicious loving in the trees. She met the thick loam with her knees and stayed upright, her hollowed body becoming the only memory anyone might ever have of her.

These are the woods where the children come to die. These are the shadows where grey-faced sleep waits, never speaking, never turning.  The children fall into the grim peace and no one can follow their red toes into the shroud.