Dream Lover

SIX

Elle forgot all about revenge when she spotted a family of small pigs moving across the clearing in front of them in a tight clump. There was a mother pig and three babies. It was a relief to see something almost normal. Compared to the pigs she was used to seeing on TV and in petting zoos, they were tiny. They looked a lot like what she would expect a wild boar to look like except the mother couldn’t have stood taller than a foot off the ground from hoof to shoulder and her little tusks seemed more for show.

The mother was cautious she stood in the clearing for a moment and sniffed in every direction then gave a snort and began to graze. Her piglets went off like a shot, instantly chasing each other around the clearing making cheerful squealing sounds as they did. The mother continued grazing looking up only occasionally to mark the spot where her children had run.  

Elle was smiling to herself when suddenly the mother screeched, the little piglets all returned to her side and she hustled them into a hole among the roots of a tree. She turned to defend the opening then fell in a heap. There was an arrow in her neck. Elle kicked her feet out from under her and began the process of moving her hands in front of her body. The instant they were she was struggling to her feet ready to help the hurt pig. She had barely gained her feet when her captor bumped her to the side and stepped forward first. He was putting the bow on his back and taking the knife from his hip.

"Don’t" Elle gasped a moment too late. She'd been frozen in shock and surprise. He'd crossed the clearing in two quick jogging steps and plunged the knife into the mother pig’s heart. Right there in front of the hole where her children were hiding. She gave a final short terrified squeal before she went limp. Tears stung the back of Elle’s throat as he roughly stuffed the pig’s stout little body into a rough cloth sack and tossed it over his shoulder. 

She glared at him as he returned to where she was standing. 

He looked confused for a moment but then kept moving past her. She didn't want to go anywhere with him. She stood where she was silently apologizing to the hole in the tree. 

"Hurry up!" he shouted at her. Heart breaking for the three newly motherless piglets she turned and followed their mother’s murderer. At a much larger distance than she had before she'd seen him kill the pig. He led the way to another section in the forest where two of the huge trees managed to grow side by side. "This is my home" 

Great, Elle thought, he didn't even have a tent he was obviously delusional too. Of all the people, you jump this guy.

 "After you"

"After me... where?" Elle asked looking around. She saw them then, deep rectangles nearly the size of shoe boxes were carved into the trees exceptionally thick bark. She followed them up with her eyes first, then her whole head. When her neck was craned all the way back, she saw it. A wooden floor covered in pollen or maybe moss that colored the whole thing a deep green save a few spots that were still the rich deep brown she would expect of particularly expensive hardwood flooring. After the last neatly carved rectangle there were floorboards inserted into the tree’s trunk that went on to extend to the next tree where floorboards were inserted there as well. There was nothing else supporting the floor Elle looked hard for support beams thinking they might be covered with moss as well and camouflaged as tree branches but nothing else touched the wide space of the floor between the two trees. It couldn’t be stable, and Elle wasn’t going to die because of an obvious mistake like ignoring the laws of physics. 

"I can't go up there." he misunderstood her; it would probably be an ongoing problem. He covered the ground between them stepped behind her and pushed. When she was only a few inches from the ladder's first step, he untied her hands. 

"Climb"

"No"

"Then we are going to the brothel" he shrugged. 

"If you try to take me anywhere, I swear I won't stop until one of us is dead," she told him. She was grandstanding, but it had worked for her in the past. "At this point I've got nothing to lose."

He studied her for a moment and then made to grab her. Elle jumped to the left, heard her one remaining spaghetti strap rip, and felt her dress begin to fall. The way she saw it she was all out of options. She stopped struggling just as quickly as she'd began, she didn't even grunt when he tossed her over his shoulder. She was tired of walking anyway. Her mind changed quickly when he took a step up and not out. She screamed

"Okay! I'll climb. I'll climb, just put me down." he stepped back.

Elle tied her two ruined straps around herself and fashioned a serviceable halter-top then began to climb up the tree until she was inside the tree house. 

Very slowly, 

    very carefully, 

        she eased herself off the tree and on to the tree houses floor. Her arms shook and her heart pounded as she touched one foot and then the other to floor and after a long breath placed her full weight on the floor.

 Elle squeezed herself into the far corner of the tree house and put her back to the wall before she took a moment to take in her surroundings. She shared a wall with a fireplace that looked like it was used for both heating and cooking and a large window with a dresser underneath it. In the center of the room, a small table and two chairs sat in front of the fireplace and beyond that, a medium sized bed made use of the curve of the other tree trunk as a head board. In the far right corner, a door closed off a second room. Elle thought it was probably some primitive bathroom, maybe just a whole in the floor and a bucket of water. It could have been almost nice if it wasn’t precariously balanced between two trees and filthy. Every surface, with the bed the sole exception, was covered with layers of dirt and ash.