by Jean Rabe
I patted my chest and said, “Steve. I’m Steve.” Then mimicked the move, patting the roof of the car. “We’re stuck. Help. Cold. Need fire. Shelter. Warm?” I felt like an absolute moron. I was doing the typical tourist thing, speaking two octaves louder, as if shouting something made it more understandable. What can I say? I like to wear my ignorance on my sleeve.
He backed away from me, disappearing into the deeper snow.
I made to follow, the crisp snow crunching under my shoe. Five feet off the side of the road, it went from being ankle deep to knee deep. The cold bit at the back of my throat. I couldn’t understand how this guy could stand it, but I guess it was something about the body regulating its own temperature, keeping the blood flowing and all that. There’s a reason people call them “crazy Swedes,” after all. These were the guys who spent an hour sweating their butts off in the sauna, then running outside naked, rolling around in the snow and diving naked into icy lakes because it got the heart pumping. Running around a forest naked save for a set of antlers was pretty much par for the course.
Ten steps on and I was lost. The snow was disorienting, and, if anything, the damned stuff was thickening in front of my face. My mind raced with newspaper headlines like Tragic couple found in frozen embrace. Photo caption, “I told you so,” written in the snow. I couldn’t see the car and I couldn’t see the guy. He knew this place; I didn’t. Going after him was stupid. There was stupid, and then there was more stupid. I made a choice and turned back. I wasn’t about to wander off into the middle of forest and get myself lost. Even though I hadn’t gone more than fifteen, twenty yards at most, getting back to the car was a slog. I was sweating by the time I opened the door and sank into the driver’s seat.
My breath fogged in front of my face.
Oh, great.
The temperature had dropped about ten degrees already and the engine had only been dead for what, five minutes? I tried to wrestle the airbag back into the steering column, realizing it was probably the reason for the ignition not working. Some sort of safety feature that was probably going to get us killed. I forced the key back into the ignition and twisted it. The engine turned over, and I thought for a moment it was going to catch, but it didn’t. Two more tries and I was in danger of flooding the engine.
I buried my face in my hands. “Christ,” I said through my fingers. “This is ridiculous.”
She didn’t disagree.
“What are we going to do?” And that was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. What were we going to do? The thing was, I didn’t have a clue. Sit tight and wait for the Saint Bernard to turn up with its brandy keg? Wrap up warm and trek out into the woods and hope to hell we found the village before we froze to death? There wasn’t much of a choice.
“Try and follow the guy’s tracks back to the village?” I offered. It was the closest I had to a good idea.
“We don’t know how far it is,” Mel said. She had put on her Sami coat and didn’t look particularly thrilled with the idea of getting out of the car.
“True, but how many cars have we passed on the road in the last hour?” The magic number wasn’t three. It was barely even a number; technically, the answer was a big fat zero. “We’re in no man’s land here, babe. We could sit here all night without anyone driving past. I figure it’s better we take our fate into our own hands.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Surely we should stay by the car. The road’s been plowed. That must mean people use it fairly regularly, right?” It was sound logic, but who’s to say it wasn’t just a case of a morning-evening commute and there wouldn’t be another car on the road for the best part of ten hours?
“I’m going out; you can stay here if you want.” I tossed her the keys. “Try the engine every fifteen minutes. If it starts, keep it running until I get back. I won’t be long.”
“Famous last words,” Mel said, trying to be funny. But this time I didn’t feel like laughing.
I wanted her to come with me, but I wasn’t about to force her. The fact of the matter was I really didn’t want to go trudging off into God-knows-where by myself. Having her with me would have felt a hell of a lot better. I slammed the door a little harder than I needed to.
I couldn’t make up my mind if the snow was worse. I just put my head down and walked into the blizzard. I found his footprints on the embankment and followed them into the trees. For all that he was taller than I, his feet weren’t that big, if the tracks were anything to go by. I pushed on, moving from tree to tree. I looked up occasionally once I was well and truly under the canopy of branches and the worst of the snow was out of my eyes.
There was a single red blood spot on the unbroken snow, like a blood-red rose on the perfect white. Beside it, the footprints led a crooked path through the trees. I tried to figure out if the guy’s footsteps seemed to drag in places or not. Maybe I’d done more damage to him than I thought. I mean, he’d done enough damage to the car.
The cold was killing me. It hurt to swallow a breath; the air bit at the back of my throat. I pulled the fur lining of the Sami coat’s hood down over my eyes and tried to pull the collar up far enough to cover my mouth and create a funnel of warm air from my own breathing. I couldn’t see for the tears in my eyes, and every third breath I was sniffing back streamers of snot.
It wasn’t my imagination: the tracks were becoming more and more erratic the farther I followed them.
There was more blood, too. One drop became two became a red spatter like something out of one of those crime shows on TV.
I knelt, touching the snow where the blood had sunk through its thin crust.
When I looked up, I saw him again. He was leaning on a tree trunk. His physique was incredible. Every muscle toned, not an ounce of fat on him at all. Blood dripped from a wound in his side, but it wasn’t until I got closer that I saw a part of the radiator grille punched into his side like a spear. I glanced from the wound to his face and saw the pain there. Before I could say anything, he turned slightly and said something in that impossibly melodic singsong voice of his.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I said.
He said something else; his song ended abruptly as he winced and doubled up, clutching at the wound in his side. When he straightened up, I saw that the wound had opened and bled freely.
“Let me help you,” I said, reaching out for him. I stopped before I touched him. It wasn’t the blood. It wasn’t the look of fear in his eyes. It was the antlers. They were embedded deep into his temples. The skin wrinkled around their roots. They weren’t a headdress.
The horned man said something then and I realized what his voice sounded like: the susurrus of the snow slipping from those high branches overhead. And like the rush of water beneath the frozen surface of a small mountain stream. He was speaking with the tongue of the winter forest.
And then he slumped forward into my arms. I knelt in the snow, cradling him. I didn’t know what else to do. I was half horrified, half morbidly curious. He spoke urgently now. He could have been begging me to save his life or cursing me for ending it. I really couldn’t tell the difference.
The blood soaked into the snow, feeding the roots of the tree the horned man had leaned against before he’d fallen. I looked up at the overhanging branches. Despite the season they were verdant, big thick leaves, green against the blanket of white that was everywhere else. I shivered. For once it wasn’t the cold. I knew, I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but I was damned sure I was right, that the branches had been bare just a few minutes before and that it was the horned man’s blood that had brought the leaves forth.
All around me the rustling grew more intrusive. I looked up to see leaves moving. I imagined maybe I was actually lying buried in the snow, shivering out my last moments with some nice trippy hallucination, the leaves my mind’s way of providing a comforting blanket to snuggle up under. But no. Leaves slithered on vines down the trunk of the tree, reaching out to take the horned man from my arms. I wasn�
�t about to fight them. I gave him up readily, and stumbled back a few half-steps, landing on my ass in the snow as the vines and leaves drew the horned man up against the tree trunk and lashed him to it. The leaves crept across his face, into his mouth and eyes and nose, across his chest and his legs as he drew them up. Blood stained a few of them, only for them to brown and rot and be replaced by more and more fresh leaves.
In a matter of minutes he was buried beneath the vegetation.
And I just sat there and watched it happen.
Leaves rustled and rippled, alive. Something worked its way through them, and I didn’t realize what it was until the broken piece of radiator grille lay on the snow beside the tree.
The forest had reclaimed him.
Or, in other words, I had killed him.
I felt this immense wave of guilt. He’d been trying to tell me something, even as he was dying, and I hadn’t been able to understand his last words. What kind of human being did that make me?
Behind me something moved, causing the branches to rustle. I turned, expecting to see that Mel had changed her mind and followed me from the car. She hadn’t. Instead of the love of my life standing there, I saw a raven-faced woman sculpted from the banks of snow.
Hypothermia.
It had to be.
That was a symptom of hypothermia, wasn’t it? Losing my mind? That made sense, as much as anything did. But that couldn’t be right, could it? When I’d hit the man with the car the heaters had been working just fine. Neither of us were freezing. But I’d thought it was a moose. I hadn’t really believed I’d hit the naked man until I’d been out of the car for a while. Not long enough for the cold to mess with my brain, though, surely.
I didn’t know much about hypothermia, save for the fact that your skin turned blue because all of the surface blood vessels contracted to better keep your vital organs warm.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. That was another symptom, wasn’t it? Convulsions? Poor muscle coordination.
I tried to think, but everything was just so sluggish.
I pushed back the hood of my Sami coat and sat there in the snow, transfixed by the leaves twisted around the thick tree trunk. Then I looked at the snow, at the bulging roots. Blood appeared. I focused on it and scrambled forward, determined to prove to myself that I wasn’t hallucinating, that really blood was there, and by extension, the horned man truly was buried beneath the leaves.
I sweated under the thick lambskin.
Sweat pooled around the nape of my neck and down my back.
I pulled at the Sami coat. And then, without thinking, started to pull it up over my head. I shook myself off and rose unsteadily. My legs weren’t good. I was clumsy. My head spun. I pulled off my shirt and stood, topless. It wasn’t so cold, I realized. Far from it; it was blessedly cool. I unbuckled my belt, undid the zipper of my jeans, and kicked off my shoes. I stood naked in the middle of the forest.
And I felt good.
Potent.
I looked down at my body and smiled. I was filled with the vitality of nature. I was alive with it. I knelt, dipping my fingers into the blood spatter and wiped them down either cheek like tribal paint.
A bone-white antler poked though the leaves. I pulled at it, rooting frantically to untangle it from the foliage. A dead moose’s head looked up at me with glassy eyes. I blinked, trying to understand what I was seeing. A moose? And then I understood. Transubstantiation. The man had been wearing a moose’s head, but when it had been on his head he had become the horned man. He had become the wild spirit, the hunter, god of the beasts of the forest.
And that was what was happening to me.
I spread my arms wide, embracing the sheer thrill of the air on my skin.
I couldn’t understand how I had ever suffered the constraints of clothing.
It was a life for a life. That’s what was happening here. I’d killed the horned man, and now the forest was demanding a sacrifice from me. I had to stand in his stead. I had to grow my own antlers. I had to become the next horned man. But how? How could I grow horns? Was that what he had been trying to tell me? Had he been trying to share the secret to transubstantiation? Was there something I could do? A leaf or a seed or something that I could consume that would germinate inside me, linking me forever with the forest I was cursed to protect? Did I even have to grow them? Could I not don the moose’s head and become the horned man? I could. Of course I could.
I reached into the thick foliage, scraping away the frost and snow, and pulled out the moose’s head. I pushed it down onto my head, savoring the sudden thrill of earth magic that flowed through it into me. I was connected to all living things. I was connected to each and every tree, each and every root, thorn, and weed. I felt myself changing. I felt the blood thickening in my veins.
I had to get back to the car. I had to get back to Mel before my transformation was complete.
I had to tell her I loved her. I had to make her understand: a life for a life.
I started to run but I stumbled more and more frequently, my legs betraying me when I wanted them to fly like the wind. I pushed myself back to my feet and stumbled back toward the road. I knew I was getting closer because the snow grew thicker and thicker and more of it filtered through the canopy of leaves. I could hardly see more than a few feet in front of me, but my eyes didn’t sting anymore. And then I started to run, really run, with the grace of the moose, sure footed, fleet. I bounded from tree to tree until I found the car.
I could smell the metal. It was the only unnatural thing in my forest.
She was still there, in the driver’s seat, coat and blanket on. Frost coated the glass. I stood on the edge of the trees, unsure suddenly in my nakedness. Would she see me—would she recognize me—or would she see the horned man?
I moved along the treeline, watching the car. Watching her.
She fired my blood.
After all of the time together, she still fired my blood.
I didn’t know how long I had, minutes, hours, before the transformation was complete. I had to talk to her. I had to say good-bye. But my blood thrilled at the mere proximity of her, and before I realized what I was doing I was running down from the embankment, dragging open the door and dragging Mel out of the freezing car.
“It’s me,” I said. I knew I was babbling. “It’s me. You won’t believe what’s happening to me . . . I’m changing. I’m changing.” She looked at me as if I were speaking an alien language, and I knew I had already changed more than I thought. I was speaking with the tongue of the forest. That didn’t stop me from trying to make her understand me. “I don’t know how long I’ve got. You need to understand. You need to know. I love you. I’ve always loved you, but I killed him. I killed the guardian of the forest, the spirit, and now I’m becoming him. It’s the old ways. I am becoming the horned man. A life for a life.”
She kicked and struggled in my arms, not listening.
“I love you,” I said again, like the whisper of the wind through the leaves. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
She kept on struggling and I kept on telling her I loved her until she stopped struggling and lay still in my arms. She had to understand. She had to know I loved her. But I knew she couldn’t. She saw my horns and she saw a devil. She saw my nakedness and she saw a beast. Could she make the change with me? Would she, if she were capable? She was shivering. It was the damned coat and all of those clothes. I knew that now. I pulled at her Sami coat, trying to get it up over her head. She fought me again. I tried to soothe her, saying over and over, “It’s OK, it’s all right, this is better, trust me. This is better. It’s OK. It’s all right.”
I fumbled with the buttons of her shirt. My fingers wouldn’t do want I wanted them to.
And over and over, “It’s OK. It’s all right,” until the fight left her.
I pulled at her trousers, savoring the warmth our bodies created. She was crying. Tears of joy. They frosted on her cheek. And even as I lost
my seed inside her, I knew it would germinate, that she would forever hold a part of the spirit of the forest within her, and that our love had cheated the life for a life pact. Two of us had been in the car when we hit the horned man, two souls, and two souls would be in the car when she drove away.
I tried to talk to her, but I knew my words had become completely unintelligible now.
I left her there, naked in the snow.
I felt more alive than I had ever felt.
I moved back to the safety of the trees. The cold was an aphrodisiac. But more, I could feel spring coming. I could feel it deep in the earth, working its way up. I could feel the magic of renewal that accompanied it. I could feel life. This was my forest now. We were bound.
I watched as Mel dragged herself back toward the open car door, knowing that this time when she fumbled with the key and turned it, it would catch and the engine would fire up as it turned over. That was the bargain I had made in becoming the horned man. A life for a life.
I had given myself so that she might live. But the needs of the forest were strong, the need to scatter its seeds, for the spirits and the old ways to survive. At the last, we’d been blessed with one last chance to share our love.
I didn’t watch her go. I couldn’t bear the thought of knowing I would never see her again. Instead I had to cherish the thought of my love inside her even now. She was sobbing as she slammed the door.
I turned on my heel and ran, naked, into the forest.
The antlers had already started to take root in my skull. I could feel them burrowing in through the bone. This was my domain. I was the hunter. I was the god of the beasts.
More cars would come, more travelers, more tourists. When I was tired perhaps I would let one hit me, and trade places. A life for a life?
