BESIEGED BY WOLVES

(Fragment of my novel "The Curse of the Raven")

When I returned to my room, it was already four in the afternoon. I went back to look out the window to see the outside area. The day had grown more grey and misty. The tree branches were bearded by ice; its pale milky shapes were cast throughout the hallucinatory whiteness of the snow. The cloudy sky turned the distant mountain peaks to vague orange glows. I was letting under its mysterious influence and a nebulous delirium came in my mind. It was like a lightning, and I knew not if it was reality or fantasy. Nevertheless, I saw a hooded man figure walking on endless leagues of desert lined with monoliths. The man walked with footsteps of blind. He was the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. No, he could not be Borges. Borges died many years ago; Borges was, in fact, a character created by me in my novel. I shook my head, I rubbed my eyes, and, stunned, I looked back to the snowy forest. The man has been already a shadow that was fading among the trees.

Maybe he was not Borges, but someone who was lost in the immense woods of Greystone. The man would soon die under that sharp and relentless cold. I would have to help him as soon as possible. I dressed in thick breeches and a jacket made to withstand the coldest winters. I wrapped a red wool scarf round the lower part of my face and put on a protective hood on my head. Then I left the house looking for that ghostly shadow that I thought was Borges. My feet sank in the snow, I was advancing awkwardly, I entered the forest, and then I could no longer see that wander man. The timberland was too silent. I saw no birds upon the branches; no fox had run in the snow, I never knew no deader forest than this. Nevertheless, I was determined to look for Borges in the forest. Was Borges that living shadow? I was just keeping a track of ghost that sprouted from my nightmares.

The twilight had already been about me. The mist rose again from the distant hollows. I felt an almost unbearable cold. Nevertheless, I saw an old bridge despite the dim light. The old structure crossed down a creek almost frozen. The branches bent over the weak wooden beams and filtered a very faint light. I swept into the darkness of the pass trembling. As I looked back, I saw the steam from invisible crevices rising up. As this faded into the darkness I felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling come over me. However, I went at a hard pace straight along, and then I made a complete turn and went along another straight road. It seemed to me that I was simply going over and over the same snowy ground again. I walked along so scared and frequently I wanted back the house.

I did not it. By and by, however, as I was curious to know how night fell into winter woods. I left the bridge behind and continued walk through the phantasmagoric trees, which branches glowing under the dying sun. Soon would the sunset. I waited the darkness with a sick feeling of suspense. Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the pass, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. Would be it a hallucination? There were no farms in several miles around. However, the sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the forest, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the land, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the shadows of the dusk. Surely, I was turning on crazy; the madness would led me to any canyon where I would commit suicide.

Then, occurred a fact that gave me stillness. Far off in the distance, from the mountains on each side of me began a louder and a sharper howling, that of wolves. The beasts went out to hunt. Maybe, this was more dangerous for me than dogs; nevertheless, the howling of wolves was normal at that place. This was not a hallucination. I was not going mad, but I realized that I was taking a big risk. I wanted to go back to Walden House, but then I thought I was seeing again the shape of Borges. I would have to save the blind writer. I continued advancing under the declining light as a rustle who wish to vanish into twilight. At that time I saw the wolves, they lurked me behind the trees. I was minded to run, whilst the predators appeared and plunged madly again into the woods.

Soon I was hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the snowy way. The night fell over me like a gloom veil, but not for long. Soon, the entire woods became in silver castles under the full moon bewitchment. The coldest Hall I have ever known in my life. The view was beautiful and frightening at the same time. The wolves continued howling, now far away. I could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as I swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon all around me was covered with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the beasts, though this grew fainter as I went on my way. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the owls shared my fear fluttering scared.

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