Moon Bitten by Angharad Thompson Rees

Author:Angharad Thompson Rees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little Whimsey Press

11

A loaded silence. The ticking of time stops, hovers. The world holds its breath.

Outside, a dark cloud tracks over the sun, devouring the morning light and replacing it with shadows. Shadows of doubt. Shadows of suspicion. The gloom creeps along the snow from the open door, consuming the once glinting light. Its shadow prowls over the threshold, moving along the floorboards towards the tip of my toes. I cannot bear to look at the faces I know are staring at me.

“Red?” Doctor Revel asks quietly, as if I were a wild animal that may attack at any moment. “I need to ask you something…” He hesitates for so long I am forced to look at him, to read his face, his terrified and horrified face. “Are you quite sure a wolf killed your grandmother?”

His words, his accusation slams into my chest, gripping my bruised and assaulted heart. I stagger backwards as the unspoken words spell themselves out in the chilling air.

“You think I made it up? You think I murdered my––”

“Doctor!” Blaxton yells, cutting me off. In three rushed strides, he is at my side. “You can’t possibly be accusing her of…”

An unspeakable accusation.

Blaxton pulls me to him, wrapping me entirely into his protective embrace. The doctor raises one eyebrow and turns to the crimson-stained snow outside. To the bulk of a dead body and my knife.

Woolsey glares, his nostrils flare. He says not a word but his venom is palpable even from the other side of the room, splitting through the gaps between Blaxton and myself; penetrating, menacing, but nowhere as near as dangerous as my own thoughts.

Was it a wolf I killed last night?

Was it a wolf that killed Grandma?

There is no wound.

She is losing her mind.

Grief.

Denial…

No. Their accusations are ludicrous. It can’t possible be. I know the facts. I was there, so I should know. Nobody else stood witness.

Nobody else stood witness…

Nobody can back up my claims.

Kaya is dead, and my knife will be found next to her body.

But I have my wounds to prove the wolf’s attack on Grandma. The wounds the doctor cannot see. The wounds his wife cannot see.

“Blaxton,” I whisper. “My arm, please tell me you can see the wounds on my arm?” My voice quivers because I am not mad, despite what they think, yet I can find no way to prove my sanity.

Blaxton’s embrace unravels. He looks to the doctor to my arm and back to the doctor again. His lips pull into the tight line, an attempted smile resembling nothing of the sort. My mind whirls. I am so sure. I see the wounds, moving, coalescing, shooting stars and expanding skies. And somehow, the wound no longer pains me, as if it has become me, but nobody else can see it.

“You can’t see it either?” I sob, backing away.

Blaxton pinches the bridge of his nose.

I shoot a sudden glare at Woolsey. He saw it, I know he did. It was he who grabbed at my arm after the funeral causing me to pass out.

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