She was running. She thought she was. Quickly. Across the grass, the track, the dried earth. Her foot hit a rock and she stumbled badly. Halted, she listened for him behind her, but could only hear her breath. She ran on, painless, disconnected, all she knew was running. The trees were very black in the spaces in between. They looked like refuge. She fixed her eyes on the black spaces, imagining hiding in them, hearing her feet patter on the ground. She ran on, warm and weightless. She would hide. He would not find her in the dark. Her mouth was open, dripping blood or saliva. She observed it from far away, going on, running, thinking she was running. It occurred to her she might be dreaming because she had no pain. She might still be in the car or kneeling on the ground. She heard nothing. She felt nothing, just the air on her face.

And then she reached the trees. She stopped, because she was too out of breath to go any further. Her vision blackened, opening and closing like shutters banging in her head. The woods and the horizon and the sky tipped and tilted and spun. She put her hand out to break her fall, but it wasn’t the ground under her hand, it was the trunk of a tree. She held onto it. Getting her balance, she walked into the woods.

She walked through the trees, and their presence was like company. She was among them, like stepping into a crowded cave; no, higher than that, a huge hall, filled with silent guardians, waiting for her. She heard a wind, like whispering voices, far above her, and slippery pine needles beneath her feet. She couldn’t see. She held her arms out, to feel her way, groping, blind. Her breath rattled and the pain came back, and awful terror. She summoned all her courage, and held it tight, imagining the thousands and thousands of trees around her, solemn in the dark. She felt bark under her hands. She felt her way along, and around a massive trunk, and then there was a space, just nothing, and then another tree, under her fingers, and she put the flat of her hand on it, and went to it. The branches creaked. She took a step, and then one more, sensing them allowing her through, still and watching. After each step she asked her body to take one more, but the steps got smaller and her mind failed. She tried to fall slowly but it was a long way.