Wolf: And Hell She Would go Through

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, the protagonist of my current work is (and much to my own sorrow) subjected to a gruelling ordeal. Nothing worth doing was ever easy, my Father once said; worth doing or not, nothing would be easy for Elke Wolf, nothing at all.

Below is a passage taken from just after Elke was spirited away from Berges by Izzy the Witch. Trigger warnings for depictions of suicide, grief, loss and death:

Night.
	Karl, the Witch and their fire had been asleep for hours, though it was only now I had decided to come crawling out of the caravan. I hadn’t slept. I was afraid to, afraid, in case I’d have a nightmare and be reminded of what I’d endured. Even so, there was nothing I could do to forget, pretend, imagine that it didn’t happen. Nothing I could do to unsee what my eyes, eye, had saw. To believe that Walter was still out there, somewhere.
	Why should I be the one to live?
	Why was I chosen to survive?
	What was I to do now?
	No answers came to me, only images, reflections of that damned night, flashes of knives and spilling blood and tearing pants and thrusting oafs. No, to be rid of it, rid of it all for good I’d need to be rid of me.
	I needed to end me.
	A particularly tall pine looked wide enough to climb and so I started, working the small branches as leverage to push me higher. About halfway up I stopped climbing and looked – halfway up being more than enough to put me above the roof of the forest.
	Cloudless was the sky and full the moon hanging low in it. The camp below looked tiny, her caravan and two fine horses even smaller. This was enough, so long as I landed on my head. There was a nice gathering of jagged rocks that, if I leapt, I could reach to deal a swift blow. I let one of my hands come loose.
	“I’ve been there,” Karl’s voice floated upwards. He was lying by the edge of the still-smoking fire and I could see the glint of his eyes underneath his hat. “Twice, actually.”
	“I can’t make it stop, Karl.”
	“No,” he replied nonchalantly. “It won’t be easy for a while, but you’ll get there. I did.”
	“I don’t think I can, I don’t think I can get there.”
	“And neither did I at the time.” He was standing now, fixing his hat onto his head. “The first time I tried to kill myself was the hardest and I chickened out; put the gun away and vowed never again. The second was easier, almost too easy, but Izzy, she kept me upright long enough for me to change my mind.”
	“She, she saved you too?”
	“She did,” he pointed to her, still sleeping.
	“Why?”
	He pondered on that for a time. “Because she cared about me, I guess. Because she couldn’t bare the thought of me giving up so easy.”
	“Do, do you regret it?”
	“Regret doing it? No... if I hadn’t I’d never be the man I am today. Do I regret not doing it? Sometimes, yeah. It doesn’t ever leave you.” He kicked something at his boot away. “Though if I had done it I’d never have met you. Those are the kind’a things that keep you ticking, keep you moving forward.”
	“Promise me, Karl. Promise me it’ll go away, that it’ll get easier.”
	“I promise it’ll get easier, if you let it,” he shrugged up at me. “I can’t promise that it’ll ever go away.”
	“What happens if I come down?”
	He smiled. “You’ll keep on living. Living, Elke, if only to spite them, that you were the one that got away. That you were the one strong enough to live to see another day dawn. That you were the one they couldn’t have.”
	“And if I fall?”
	“Then that’s that,” he cleaned one hand off the other. “You’ll be dead, I’ll be sad and Izzy’ll have saved you for nothing. But... you’ll be free of that night for good.”
	Free; the way he’d said it, it sounded nice, like a seat at the hearth of a well-stocked fire. Freedom from it all. It was all I wanted. It would be easy to let go. Easy, like taking a breath was more than a week ago. Easy, that was me all over; that suited me. But, that would be exactly what they wanted and too long I’d been giving them that – as a maid, as a servant, as an offering to be used as meat.
	“Karl?”
	“Yes, Elke?”
	“I’m coming down.” I grabbed the trunk with both hands and pressed myself against it.
	“Right, right,” the relief was apparent in his raised voice. “Just, well, just start working back down, alright?” My left foot slipped on a clump of damp moss and sent the rest of me tumbling and spinning through every branch.
	Luckily, Izzy had intervened at the last moment, taking me into a bundle of blankets in her arms. “I could see that coming a mile away,” she rocked me. I sobbed, I wailed, I screamed into her bosom, letting the frustration, anger, hate and rage flow through me like water through a spout. “Oh, scream, Daughter,” she whispered. “You scream, you howl, you let them hear your call. Let all know that you are alive, that you have lived and that you have fangs once more.” Karl howled then, howling at the gibbous moon and I turned from Izzy and howled with him – crying, howling.
	Roaring.
	Screaming, shrieking, screeching.
	Howling.

I dare not divulge what Elke had gone through before this point. In truth it makes me question my own sanity. As an author speaking to his own work, I did promise her that she’d reach her goal, that she’d take back what was robbed from her, that she’d right the wrong that was committed upon her — in the end, isn’t that what we’d all like if we were in a similar position?

Auf Wiedersehen.