Camilla Lind picked up the pace. What had looked like a small shower when she left home was now a downpour. Maybe she should turn around, she thought. But she loved the smell of the wet forest floor, the raindrops plunking her sweaty forehead.
She had begun running after moving into her in-laws’ large manor house, Ingersminde, in Boserup, not far from Roskilde. She never went very far, but at least she ran, which gave her the opportunity to explore the large section of private forest on the property.
The path narrowed and curved to the right, passing through a small thicket that quickly gave way to the more open space of forest. As she ran, she tried to come up with a good title for the interview she’d been working on all day. She was a freelance journalist, currently taking assignments for the paper in Roskilde, and once in a while they gave her some doozies. But it had been a pleasure to interview Svend-Ole at his little workshop out in Svogerslev. For the past thirty-five years he had emptied the slot machines in Tivoli, and he had a large collection of one-armed bandits in his garage that he and his wife enjoyed playing.
Suddenly Camilla caught sight of something between the trees. She slowed down. Everything looked blurry through the rain, but she could make out a boy crouching under a big tree, eating something he picked up off the ground. Even at this distance, she could see he was soaked to the skin, his wet hair plastered to his head.
She started walking over toward the clearing. As she drew closer, she smelled wood burning, a sour odor, and she noticed a large area where there had been bonfires, which made her wonder. She’d definitely never been here before.
“Hi!” she called out. “Aren’t you cold?”
The boy started when he heard her voice, then immediately jumped up and ran.
Which surprised Camilla, who called out, “Hey, wait!”
But the boy sprinted off. Strange, she thought. She decided to run after him.
Just before reaching the tree, her legs slipped out from under her. She swore loudly as she fell, landing on her stomach in a mud puddle.
Slowly she stood up. Besides being shaken by the fall, she was covered with mud. She walked over and sat down with her back against the tree. A wet pile of picked-over food lay where the boy had been sitting. She thought it looked like leftovers from a grill party. It troubled her that the boy had been eating it. Some animals in the forest seemed to have been feasting, too, from the looks of the several gnawed bones scattered around. But they’d left some of the food. They must have been interrupted. Maybe by the boy, she thought, shuddering.
She was getting cold, sitting there in her wet jogging clothes, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the boy. Though the forest was private property, everyone had the right to walk through it, meaning that he had no reason to run. Some people did drive in, which was forbidden, but Frederik or the manager gave them hell when they caught them.
Camilla winced from the pain in her knee. After standing up and carefully shaking her leg, she leaned over to wipe the mud off. Strangely enough, the mud was more red than brown. Suddenly she realized it was blood, not mud.
Desperately, she wiped her hands on the tree trunk, then she jogged through the trees toward a small stream she’d discovered earlier. She felt foul, unclean. Along the way she tore off leaves from saplings and bushes, and tried to wipe the blood off.
She was freezing by the time she found a path down to the stream. Cautiously, she stepped onto the stones sticking up out of the water and squatted to wash her face. She cleaned her arms with leaves and let the icy water run onto her legs. Muddy blood streamed down her thighs and calves. She scooped up more water; the thought of being covered in blood nauseated her.
She heard a sudden noise in the forest behind her, twigs being stepped on, something being dragged along the forest floor. She whirled around in fright and almost lost her balance at the sight of an old woman in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a long braid hanging down over her right shoulder.
“The wagons are rolling on the Death Trail,” she said. Her clear, ocean-blue eyes looked earnestly at Camilla. Then, using a sturdy limb as a cane, she turned on her heel and vanished silently and astonishingly quickly into the forest.
Camilla stood midstream, too shocked to speak to her. She had no idea where the woman had come from; had heard nothing until she was practically at her back. She didn’t even know if there was an entrance to the forest anywhere near the stream.
She hurried home in the twilight, dripping wet, her heart hammering in her ears.