A small log cottage nestled charmingly in the open arms of the lush green forest, mellow and warm; it blended into the forest as if it had grown there. Soothing yellow lights gazed outward from its many small windows, like the eyes of a dozen animals peering out from within the safety of their shelter.
The unusual soft evening songs of the gentle forest were beaten into silence by the cruelty of a grizzly storm. Harsh powerful winds whipped across the forest, lashing the cottage and trees violently with rain, exposing the duality that is Mother Nature at her best, and at the same time, at her worst.
From inside the cosy cocoon of the warm cottage, the noise of the storm seemed to have been enveloped by hot marsh mellow which belied the ferocious temper that the storm unleashed without mercy outside. That is why at first, he had missed the dull rhythmic knocking on the door. Then eventually, when it drifted into his consciousness and bloomed into realisation, his long welcomed isolation overcame his natural need to answer the urgent knocking. It seemed, just has his resolve was ebbing inexorably away, and he felt the need to succumb to his natural instincts by answering the door, the knocking ceased. Momentarily he was alone again and wrapping himself in a blanket of comforting isolation. Alone once more amongst his beloved forest, with its majesty and mystery, its wondrous wildlife and glorious vegetation, but most of all a serene and distant separation from human kind.
A sudden explosion of noise ripped through his skull waking him from his reverence. A strange figure, distorted madly by the mass of water running down over the pane of glass, seemed to shimmer behind the window. Hovering there, in ghostly human form, was a weather beaten shape, which persisted in making a gratuitous noise against his window. The futility of wishing the figure away had passed-by and he indicated with a hand gesture that he would open the front door to this ghostly apparition, this intruder. Quite reluctantly he drew back the bolts that had locked the world away for so long, for that is how he saw it. He wasn't hiding himself away, but more shutting out the cruelties of this man made world, keeping it at arms length, for him, this was the last bastion, a haven of isolation and solitude and no interloper was going to tear it down easily, but what could he do on a night like this.
The heavy door violently swung open as a damp wind gratefully tore through the now exposed and vulnerable interior of the cottage. It seemed to whisk bad temperately around the room testing the weight of objects, almost as if it wanted to pick them up and dash them destructively against something and finding nothing much that it was able to lift, it reluctantly settled for scattering some papers about the room. A small wet bundle of clothes stood drooping in the doorway and had it not been for its ally the storm it would most surely have remained there too. As it was, the overwhelming need to exclude the thuggish wind became the prevalent driving force behind his decision to allow the bundle into the house and close, with some apprehension, the door behind.
He stood as if a momentary paralysis had come upon him; he looked at the invader stood before him. A five foot seven soaking, wind swept blanket and was unable to decide on his next move. The blanket fell away from a head revealing long wet clinging black hair that seemed to stick to the pale smooth skin of a young woman. He remembered those from what seemed like another lifetime ago and he well knew how dangerous they could be to a life that sought simplicity and solitude. He wasn't going to give up hope that this was just going to be a brief visit; he stood by the door ready to open it again, desperate for her swift departure. Then she turned and green eyes looked up into his and she smiled, eyes twinkling with life, just like a wild cat does before its kill, he thought. "1 was lost and I saw your lights."
He felt a rush of relief, it was to be a brief visit, she was lost and in need of directions, then she would be gone and he could revel once more in his solitude, he smiled now. "There is a trail, just one hundred metres south, if you follow that down into the valley, you will come out onto the main road, the town is not too far from there. You will probably get a lift." He was about to turn and open the door in an attempt to encourage her to leave, when from the living room the very distinctive crackle made by burning wood split the silence in a welcome.
"Oh you have a real fire," beamed the sodden woman "Great." She took off after the heat and comfort of an open log fire. Feeling utterly bereft and betrayed by his own appliance he rushed after her.
"You see.... I don't have visitors.... Never... I live alone." He said hoping she would quickly digest his real meaning and just leave. By the time that he had caught her up she was knelt in front of his blazing fire where he observed her closely and saw in her a forlorn helplessness, a look of a lost child. A sudden inexplicable feeling of pity swept over him, a feeling he thought that he might live to regret.
Swept along by the mood of the moment he found himself offering to put the kettle on and when she smiled her acceptance he headed off into the depths of the kitchen. When he returned, it was with two hot sweet cups of tea one of which he handed over to her. She took it and held the cup in both hands trying to extract its heat she trembled from the cold, and somehow this aided the thaw that had mysteriously begun within him.
"You're cold." He said, surprised at the empathy he seemed to be developing for her.
"Yes, do you have a bath? I am very cold." She managed to say through chattering teeth. "I got lost you see and I am very cold now." At that moment, all hope of an early exit by the invader had gone and he submitted to the inevitable.
"Yes of course, it's through there, help yourself." He said indicating a door just off the hallway.
"I need dry clothes...so cold." Still shivering, he began to think that maybe she was suffering from the first stages of hypothermia and at that precise moment he knew that he could not refuse any request made by her, he was after all he believed, a humanist.
"There is a connecting door to the bathroom, go through and help yourself to anything you can find. I can't imagine you'll find anything to fit you though, but it will do until your clothes are dry."
She placed the untouched tea down and shakily headed off towards the bathroom. He sat and watched the bright reds and oranges of the fire as the flames danced over the small logs in the grate. Occasional flickers of light blue flame burst into life momentarily before vanishing again. It was a beautiful vision, this cauldron of destruction, this dominion of the devil, yet so much colourful grace seemed to mesmerise the soul. At that moment, he thought that he understood the winged insect that voluntarily flies into the heart of a hot light and to its own death. Flame was the destroyer but also the furnace where life began, something that life was dependent upon and he wondered if life really was forged in such a furnace.
That she had come this night through the storm, to this place, told him that which in his heart he already knew, life had a way of catching you up. No matter where you hid it would eventually find you. How long had it been? Five, no, nearer six years of blissful solitude. He had escaped the rat race or so he had told himself at the time, to rediscover his inner voice, which would enable him to start to write again. Folly, after three initial best sellers he had produced nothing in the last six years, not since the accident that had taken from him that which he held dear and now his peace was to be shattered by this bedraggled creature from out of a storm.
It was more or less an hour later that she re-emerged; she was wearing a large woollen pullover. She meticulously arranged her wet clothing in front of the warming fire. Her paleness had waned slightly now he noticed as he poured her out a brandy; she took it and gulped it down gratefully.
"Better?" He asked.
"Yes thank you, much." She replied. "How long have you lived here?"
"Six years or so." He answered. She noticed a slight hesitancy but decided not to pursue it and suddenly feeling a cold chill run through her she stepped a little closer to the fire.
"1 don't have visitors.... I live alone now." He added in an almost apologetic way.
"Yes, you said." The fire seemed to splutter as a particularly large gust of wind blew across the cottage.
"I must thank you, 1 was so cold and wet. If it hadn't been for the lights I'm sure that I would be out there still. I don't know how much longer I could have gone on." He smiled; his face was warm and friendly now. He stood up and walked down the hall into another room where he began to make up a bed, a bed that hadn't been slept in since the night of the accident. Tomorrow he thought, she must go he needed his peace and solitude to write; yes maybe tomorrow he would start to write again but tonight, whilst this storm raged she must stay here for her safety. Storms can be very dangerous things; it was after all what caused the accident. If they had only told him about how quickly a storm could rise around here, if only he had known of the frequency of them. That was a long time a go now and he stopped himself before he dropped back into one of his moods.
"I have made up a bed for you; this storm will be gone by morning. You will be able to find the trail then." He said on returning.
"Well, haven't you a telephone or something?" She wasn't sure about spending the night with a stranger even though he seemed okay.
"Yes, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. I think the line must be down or something." She looked at him sceptically. He didn't miss the reaction and realised she was nervous. "You can try if you like or if you prefer to leave when your clothes are dry."
"No," she seemed to relax a little. "I'm sorry, it's okay. 1 was just feeling.... You know." She muttered. In fact he didn't, but pretended that he did and answered with a smile. He placed a few more logs on the fire, not that it really needed it because it somehow it seemed not to have burned down at all since she had arrived. She finished the brandy and handed the empty glass back.
"Thanks." She said warmly. "It's late, I'm going to bed now. The room 1 have prepared for you is on the right; mine is further down on the left. Help yourself to anything you need, I will say good night to you." With that he got up and left her alone.
She felt warm now and more her usual self. She found an old photograph on the mantle piece and picked it up and glanced at it. It looked quite old; the picture was of the man, a woman and what looked like a teenage girl, the cottage was in the background and a large old oak tree towered above it to one side, it hadn't changed much since this picture had been taken, she thought. She looked closer and saw his wife and kid, who seemed to be dressed in early seventies gear it confused her a bit because she remembered him saying that he had only been here six years when obviously this picture had been taken thirty years ago. "Wow" the air up here must be really good; he really hasn't changed much she thought.
She felt uneasy again and she tiptoed over to where the telephone was and quietly raised the receiver to her ear, it was dead. The phone too was old and now she thought about it, so was everything else in the room. This guy must have a thing for the seventies she deduced. She yawned and realised just how tired she felt and so she tentatively headed down the dimly lit corridor and entered the room he had prepared for her. She switched on the light and gasped, it was obviously the daughter's room, very seventies furniture and decor, her things were still there to be seen, everywhere, even to the poster of Jimi Hendrix plastered on the wall.
There wasn't a lock on the door, so she propped a chair against the door handle, tightly wedging the door shut and she climbed into the clean sheets on the bed, which still had a slight scent of the type a teenage girl would wear, but it wasn't too unpleasant or over powering. She snuggled down into the soft warm bed and lowered her weary head onto the pillow and within minutes and despite her slight uneasiness, she dropped off into a luxuriously deep sleep.
The next morning the storm had gone. It had hit hard and then as quickly as it arrived it vanished again. The birds began to sing in a concert for the rising of the sun, a sun that decided to put on a fine display of colour for the inhabitants of the battered forest. The forest was now waking into what promised to be a glorious early spring day, the freezing cold winds had past and was only a memory, but it left behind a legacy, a cruel hideous scar where the ice cold wind and rain had killed off many young spring saplings within the forest.
Police Constable Dave Thomas was the first to come across the curled up body of the missing woman. It lay within the debris of an old log cottage, walls, roof, and windows all long since gone and mixed in with the wreckage of wood from the building, was an old thick, heavy branch from an ancient oak tree. Dave Thomas, with his heart thumping hard in his chest, his breath caught, crept up towards the body like he was attempting to catch a small animal without startling it. He had no idea what state the body would be in, was she murdered? Did she die from the terrible cold? Was she badly injured first? Mutilated perhaps? He closed in on her with a grim determination; he was within two feet now, when the body suddenly burst into life, it stretched out; yawned then opened its eyes. P.C. Thomas almost fell over from the shock; she was alive, he felt an anticlimax and to his shame, a slight disappointment. No publicity for this, he thought to himself, no pat on the back for his professionalism. He was also surprised to see that she was bone dry, yet not in shelter. She appeared very puzzled at his presence and extremely disorientated but she seemed unharmed and in remarkably good condition considering the two days and nights that she had been lost in the worst storms since 1972. That was the storm that had destroyed this very cottage, reflected P.C. Thomas. The storm had brought down a huge old oak tree, which crashed through the cottage smashing it like it had been made of matchsticks. The foolish 'tree hugger' and his poor wife and kid had been crushed inside; they had no hope, no chance. It should never have been built so close to that old tree, but the writer fellow had insisted, foolish, very foolish. He shuddered at the thought of what it must have been like to be involved in the recovery of those bodies. He led the disorientated, speechless woman back to the land rover that was parked on the trail, a trail that led down the valley and to the main road that led to town. "Are you okay?" asked P.C. Thomas. "Your guardian angel must have been watching over you miss!"