Some ways into the woods I realized it was cold, and that I was naked and wet with blood. Quite cold. As the adrenalin drained from me I felt very tired and sore. My knees, palms and left thigh were badly scraped, and there was a cut in my left shoulder which I did not remember getting. My muscles convulsed into shivers as the wind blew hard against me. The wound at my breast festered and pulsed still.
My head ached and my mind was tired, I wanted to fall and die there. To stay in the woods would mean death from exposure. Returning to the cabin would be my best chance. The man might have stayed, might have gone. Even if he had stayed I might kill him. Some odds of survival. I should go back. Bah, my mind was sterile. To weigh this option against that. I missed the taste of flowers in my mouth and the rush of life, of murderous rage or even the ennui of life in that austere box. Would my master care if I died or not? I doubted it, maybe he would rather I lived to suffer more. Did I care? My master's will. I the willless one, but still my master's will seemed bleak, distant and unimportant, as I shivered to death in the woods. He was a thing of men, a thing of filth and evil. He was not a creature of forests or wilds. Fuck him anyway. My blood curdled at the thought but I stumbled forwards. Better to die. Better to die. Fuck him. Fuck his will. Better to be dead, better to be dead.
I was stumbling stumbling, my mind numb from cold and despair. My body shivered and my fingers went from pain to numbness and my body was cold cold. I was stumbling forwards in twilight now, so cold, my arms and legs stung with frostbite, my feet great numb clubs beneath me. I fell into a great fir tree, it's sharp needles cut into my numb flesh but it felt like an embrace. The world was a fuzzy far thing, great iron fingers pinching at a fir's single needle, too small, too small, the numb fingers cannot pinch it, cannot pinch it, and I am falling and then it was dark and I was cold, so cold. I shivered and shivered and could not rise or even feel my limbs, and I was sure I was dead.
I was naked and shivering on a great plane of flat iron that stretched far from me. I was alone, and then my master was above me, a huge black hole blotting out the cold sun. I shivered and was almost dead. My master had only eyes. My master didn't look at me. He moved on and left me to freeze and die.
I was warm and softness pressed all against my skin. I drifted slowly from a dreamless sleep, my mind relaxed, no thoughts, drugged almost. I was warm and that was all. There was a body against mine and its naked skin was soft and radiated heat into and through me. Slowly I became aware of arms and legs firm against mine, a stomach and breasts pressed into my side, a warm breath on my neck. All about me a thousand thin needles, soft as cushions. The leaves of this great fir. They held my thighs and back and face, everywhere that the woman's skin did not warm me, gripped me as firmly as did her arms. They were soft and wonderful and I did not fear them. I snuggled closer to the woman's skin, like nothing I had felt before. How an infant must feel against its mother's breast. I heard myself moan with pleasure as she clasped me and kissed my neck. Our bodies pressed tight together and I drifted back to sleep.
When I woke again she was still there. She held me in her arms and I realized I was not dead. Not dead. Flesh had never felt well against me. Always some savage man, his only aim its own pleasure and my abuse. When I could I would drift in thick gray fog as they would fuck me, and I would float away, as far away as I might. This was different. There was no sex. There was no lust or desire between us then. Not yet. Only warmth. A drugged warmth. A mother's warmth. A cocoon, and I the chrysalis.
“What are you?” The voice a flute, light music that held my ears as she held my body. But what was I? A slave? A disobedient slave? A killer and a monster?
“I don't know,” I said. My voice choked with tears, but they didn't seem to be my tears, they seemed to be someone else's, someone else who cried for me, who cared for me as I did not. The woman moaned and held me, and held my tears to her hair.
“You were freezing and dying and you fell into me, and I held you and held you and now you are warm and warm and I held you, but now I do not know what you are or how to free you? Will you not just freeze again if I let you go?” Her accent was strange and clipped. It was as if she were unused to speech, uncertain how to put the words together or how to pronounce them.
“I don't mind death,” I said through my sobs. I still did not feel grieved. It was my body that cried. “I wished to die,” I murmured softly into her hair and she held me and we wept together for a time. But I was not sad about it. My body cried, not I. It was my will, nascent as it was. I wished to die. In my half-awake stupor this thought fixed itself in my mind. Do not obey, I thought, die. Perhaps I could not have thought it fully awake. Only in that warmth and safeness could my own will form itself. In each other's warmth we slipped into a dreamless and holy sleep.
When I woke again she still held me, but the press of needles had receded and I could see a dim and gentle light filter through the fir above me. A soft blanket of woven leaves covered us. I was more myself now, the thick fog had lifted.
How many who wish to die are thwarted so? Saved by this improbability, then that? And how many must curse in futile rage against their coming death? Should I go back, back to the cabin and drive a slain man's sword through me? I felt despair certainly. An unending chain of catastrophe and suffering lay before and behind me. My flesh was used and ravaged by a thousand uncaring strangers. But despair did not drive me to suicide. It was a familiar despair, a long companion. It was logic that stood suicide on all roads before me. To live was to suffer. To die was to end suffering. I would forsake myself, my purpose and history, betray my master in the damage I could cause his property. And at once I would put myself beyond his reach.
A joy welled up in me, giddy and unbalanced. I hardly knew the feeling. Oh what joy! Suicide! So simple, I laughed, so simple. My joyous cackling must have sound insane but I did not care. As the tears had not been mine, now the laugh was not mine. I threw off that blanket of leaves and sprang to a crouch. The strange woman woke and looked at me in some alarm.
“Suicide!” I cried at her with glee, “Suicide!” I was not mad, quite rational. “Suicide! It is the best way, the best! I shall simply run a length of steel through my body and I shall die!”
“Lady, you are mad!” She cried, throwing her arms around me, “Please lady, I have only found you now! Do not!” She held me and wept but I threw her aside. Yes, suicide was the answer! I rolled the word about my tongue and laughed. I shoved the branches of the fur aside and blundered into the cold world. It was bright and crisp day, a wonderful day! Four soldier's bodies lay dead about the three, and all of them had sword.! I laughed at my luck and pulled a sword free of it's scabbard at a belt.
“Lady please!” shrieked the woman! She was nude still, stark white hairless skin with a flowing wreath of fir needles cascading from her head. She rushed towards me.
“You shall not deny me lady!” I cried at her, smiling and laughing, “This is my suicide, my joy!” I swung the sword at her and struck her arm. The sword reverberated as if I had struck a sturdy trunk, and the sound of an ax on wood rang through the forest. Her arm was barely scratched, and a bit of sticky dark sap oozed from the wound.
“Lady I would love you!” she cried in desperation, throwing herself at me again. I jumped back and swung again, a huge and reckless swing that didn't come close to her at all. She bound for me again but I jumped back again and she fell before me feet crying and pleading.
“Please, I have seen your heart, I have slain for you, I would love you! Your heart is pure, it beats pure blood and pure and pure and pure, you are pure please, please I am so lonely, I am so lonely, please I would love you I would love you, and make you happy and keep the nasty men away from you!” I laughed again as she groveled before me. I stood out beyond the roots of the fir now and she writhed prostrate at their limit and wept big and bitter tears. I turned my back to her, quickly and unthinking.
The sword was actually quite long, not the shorter sword the men in the cabin had carried. I could not reach my arms long enough to plunge the tip into my chest. I could perhaps pull it across my throat, but it seemed an uncertain way to be about it. More likely I would rend myself mute but not die. I considered slashing my wrists on the edge but it was a clumsy business, and I wondered if it would really bleed enough for me to die. I finally decided to wedge the handle between some roots, the roots of a different tree so that the odd white woman could not interfere. Heroes killed themselves this way, did they not? I was no hero. But I would die, die, tee hee, I would die!
The sword secured between some roots and stones, I threw myself at it. The white woman screamed as I did, but did not need to. My aim was poor and I succeeded only in toppling the sword down and scraping a nasty gash just above my hip. It bled and stung in the cold but was easily enough ignored. I shoved the sword deeper into the ground and threw myself upon it again. This time I succeeded. It passed clean through my stomach and my insides wrenched in shock. Shock, not pain. I knew there was pain there, but could not really feel it. Rather the body felt it, but I was not that body anymore, I was letting down the threads that held me to it. I was dying! Dying! I laughed and sputtered blood. I wasn't cold then, I was warm as my insides spilled out of me and warmed me, and I was free! I felt the world slipping away.
And the white woman was shrieking and screaming in unintelligible despair, sobbing and shrieking as if she were the one who was slain. And the sword stuck through me and I could not turn or roll, and there was an intense pressure where the hilt pressed into my stomach. Was it odd that I could feel that, but not the blade through me? Or was it all hallucination? The world spun about me and I felt it was hallucination. It was the logical conclusion. I was almost free, almost free. It had been one last act of defiance, to slay myself, not to wait for my master to but to act.
And there were hoof beats echoing around me, I could barely discern them. It was as if I was deep in a cave and they echoed down to me from the surface. Were they real or imagined? I laughed but spit blood instead, but still my mirth welled up inside me as I grew feint.
And the woman was screaming “bring her to me bring her I can save her!” and I thought no no, please, but had no voice anymore to speak, and then there were strong hands on me pulling me, but the sword was very long, and then the sword was free from the ground and I was carried, sword and all, and I thought I saw Argyl, hands still bound in chains that dragged him down, but he struggled and fought to hold me and stumbled forwards with shackled feet, then back back back into darkness, into darkness I fell from consciousness and hoped that I was dead.