Member-only story
A Prayer to the Wild Spirits
Where do you go when no one else will hear you?
Giana thought she would die tomorrow, so she was not afraid when she delved into the woods where devil-children were said to roam around the midnight hour.
Witches, goblins, gods of shadow and fury — she would take any help she could get.
Her bare feet slapped against the damp soil as she ran past trees that had grown triple her height in the years she had known them. If she had squinted, she probably could have seen the ribbons she had tied on some of the branches. And, if she had peered into the darkness, she might have seen the feral grins smiling back at her for her patronage.
When she reached the creek — where she had spent many a summer day before her mother scolded her for muddying her skirts and forbade her from adventures so far out — she knelt down, her knees leaving imprints in the dirt. With a needle she had brought with her, she pricked her thumb and let a drop of blood well up before she put her hand to the edge of the creek bed.
“Please,” she found herself saying, “please save me from my fate.”
The one thing Giana had never learned was how to form the proper words for a prayer to the wild things of the earth and wind. If she had, she would have known not to be vague — the…
