The Night the Girl Howled
The
night revealed no moon. The rustle of
the wind blew through the tall boughs of trees that hid the stars. And down on the ground a girl sat waiting for
the world to right itself.
For
that was what she did every night, since the day she had been chained to the thickest
trunk of the tallest tree in the forest.
She was in tune to the earth’s turning, and it was what kept the
monotony of her imprisonment at bay. By
keeping tap to the rotating rhythm, she could wait for day, when her chains
would melt, and she was free to do as she wished, until once again, night would
fall, and she would come, bidden by some unknown spell, and let the chains wrap
around her wrists.
How came
she to be chained, she knew not, but concocted a story of some loving parents
who, for want of a fire in their hearth, had felled a young tree to the great
forest’s displeasure. She repeated this
story to herself night after night, until she almost believed that it was true.
The
truth, however, was quite different, for she had no memory of parents, no knowledge
from whence she came. Only that at night
she came to this tree and these chains, and there she stood, until once again
the earth turned upright.
Of late,
she found that she had grown in all directions.
As though she were stretching upward for want of the expanse of the
night sky, and sideways for want of darkness.
And always she was hungry—ever eating and never satisfied. And even the sun brought no solace when her chains
melted away, for she sought to hide herself from its piercing rays that had
begun to hit her flesh like points of knives all the day long.
But then
came the howling nights.
The first began
in darkness, black as pitch—an occasion that came within it’s time. But the girl felt a rightness with it. As though the world being turned had already
found itself aright. She had stopped eating,
placing her bread and meaty bones to the ground, for she was satisfied.
And
then, somewhere in the great forest, a creature howled.
That
was the first night.
But
the next was the same.
And
the night after that, black as pitch, the creature howling.
Until
the night when the girl howled back.
That
was the night her chains snapped, when she broke lose, and ran free, wildness
seeping from her every step as though she oozed with the very substance of it. It was then that the pinpricks of stars fell
like a thousand rain drops, yet still remained aloft. It was then that the moon beamed streaming
light.
And
it was then that she was ready to be a wild thing, free as she was wont to be—her
chains no more than pools of water, small mirrors for the moon’s light, only
found again as water to be sipped from when other sources ran scarce.
Why
was it, then, that the girl was trapped for so long? She had simply been trapped by waiting.