It starts like I know it will. A sudden, sharp cry from the Boy with the Red Scarf—not of fear, but of gleeful accusation. "Thief!" he yells, pointing a mittened hand at nothing, and then he's running, a flash of red against the endless white. Big Mouth doesn't hesitate. His brain is a simple engine: see friends run, therefore run. He bellows a laugh that cracks in the cold air and charges after him, his boots throwing up clouds of powder. I follow, not because I want to, but because the momentum of their stupidity is a current too strong to resist. My own movement feels slow, dreamlike, a pantomime of play. They lead us away from the houses, toward the edge of the village where the world begins to fray into the wild. The trees of the great forest loom, their dark branches heavy and silent under their own weight of snow. The laughter of the boys echoes, a sound too bright for this dim, hungry place. We are maybe fifty yards into the tree line when the smell hits me. It's not the clean, iron scent of cold. It's something else. Something warm and wrong. Metallic, but spoiled. Like old coins left in meat. The boys have stopped running ahead of me. They are still, two statues in the snow. The Red Scarf Boy's laughter is gone. Big Mouth is silent. I catch up to them, my breath coming in sharp plumes, and I see what they see. The world narrows. The soft hush of the snow seems to swallow all sound, leaving only this brutal, silent fact in the clearing. It is a dog. Maybe. What is left of it is a thing of madness. It lies on its side in a spray of crimson that melts the snow around it into a pink, slushy gruel. The belly is not just torn open; it is unmade. Guts, blue and glistening, are pulled out not like something eaten, but like something arranged. They are strewn over the snow like foul garlands. The ribs are snapped outward, a cage breaking from the inside. The head is a ruin. The skull is crushed—not by a simple blow, but with a force that seems both immense and precise.
Brain matter, grey and streaked with blood, is forced from the ears, the nostrils, one empty eye socket. The other eye is gone. But the worst of it… the worst of it is the nonsense of the violence. It looks like a bear fights it… but then a snake constricts it… and then a man, or something with the mind of a man, takes a stone and methodically smashes its head in. The patterns are all wrong, the logic of a predator written in a language of pure hate. Nails—too big for any dog—rake its flanks, but there are also punctures, deep and precise, like from immense fangs. No one moves. The only sound is the drip of melt. Then, a wet, choked sound. Big Mouth is crying. Not his usual loud, performative bawl. This is a silent, shaking horror, tears cutting clean paths through his pink cheeks. The Boy with the Red Scarf is clutching his own stomach, his face the colour of old milk. He looks at me, his eyes wide, not with wonder anymore, but with a question that has no answer. From behind us, voices. Others come, drawn by the silence or the smell. A woman screams. The sound is sharp, a needle pulled through the fabric of the afternoon. Soon, there is a crowd, a semi-circle of us standing around the thing in the snow, held together by a shared, silent revulsion. They are all afraid. I can see it in the way they hold themselves, how they won't look directly at it for too long. They mutter about wolves, about a bear from the deep wood, gone mad. But I look. I look closer. This is no animal. An animal kills to eat. This is killed to be seen. This is a message. And the only thing it can possibly mean is that the forest is no longer just watching. It is speaking. And its language is blood and madness. For a second I try to make sense of it — a bear with a human face, a snake for a mouth — and the image only makes me feel stupid and small. I can't stand here any longer. I don't feel pity. I feel something colder: pure, nauseating disgust. Too horrible. Too obscene. I never imagined this. My body freezes like an old corpse; my face won't move. Is it fear? Panic? I don't know. The smell and the sight are hell. I can't look at it anymore. My legs give way and my stomach betrays me—I retch. Disgust. Where are the dumb duo? Big Mouth stands with his mouth agape, as if his heart has stopped. The Boy with the Red Scarf is already passed out. Did I collapse? Where am I — a local, filthy local hospital? No. Then where? The smell wakes me before my eyes do: incense, oil, something sweet and sour stuck to fabric. A temple. Of course. Foolish villagers. They carried me here instead of a doctor. I stare at the ceiling and think how little I understand humans and their ways. Their solution to horror is more ritual. More words whispered to silence.
I lie there and consider the three goddesses they pray to: One with a head too large for her body,but no eyes to see. One with a tongue forever poised to speak,but no ears to hear. One with a belly swollen and full,but no mouth to give voice to what grows inside.
They worship a thought that cannot perceive, a judgment that cannot listen, and a creation that cannot be expressed. And they call this faith.
That thing in the forest… it wasn't just killed. It was unmade. The forest isn't just watching us anymore. It's speaking. And its first word was a scream.
Footsteps at the door. "Are you awake, son? How are you?" The priest is there before I turn— calm, syrup-sweet, eyes practiced to please. His face is feminine but beautiful. He stands tall with his hands folded, smile in place.
I answer because it's useful. "Thank you. I am honored to rest here. My mother will be glad." The words are soft, precise — coins dropped where they buy relief.
He steps closer. For a second his hand hovers above my shoulder — a blessing or an assessment; I can't tell. His fingers twitch toward the inner pocket of his robe, an absent motion that reads neither wholly kind nor wholly innocent.
He says, "Don't call me lord, my son. I am only a priest," and withdraws as if he's finished an inspection.
Before I can invent another small lie, hurried footsteps slam down the corridor. Heart in my throat for a second — then relief: my mother and sister, breathless and bright with cold, pressing into the doorway like they own the place.
"It's mine," I think, and for once the thought is true: they are mine.