The Enclave

Maeve keeps her eyes down, looking for fallen branches and sticks. One hand grips tighter onto the knife as she slides a glance over her right shoulder toward the setting sun. She can’t see him, but he could be anywhere by now.

Soft flakes of snow replace the icy wind. She pushes her way through thick parts of the forest, collecting the firewood with her free hand and slinging them into an ancient shawl tied like a papoose on her back.

The dense forest provides some camouflage. The clearings are another matter, but she knows she’s the only one who can fetch the fuel. Her parents left on a journey six months ago and haven’t returned. Her brother and sister are both useless for different reasons.

Maeve makes a run for it across the clearing to the wooden cabin, now surrounded by snow. In the fading light she’s relieved to see a weak plume of smoke still feebly leaving the chimney.

With a strength that belies her tiny frame, she uses her backside to push open the heavy wooden door.

Inside the cabin she heaves a sigh and drops her heavy load onto the hearth. The fire is barely going and Maeve hopes that her fuel collection will be enough to last the night.

“I saw the wolf again,” says Maeve, sorting the wood and kindling.

“Did he look hungry?” asks Peter, rubbing his arm. He can’t help but feel guilty that his broken wrist has left him virtually useless for hunting and providing warmth and food for his sisters.

“Wolf, wolf!” cries Jinny from his lap.

“Very,” says Maeve, “as am I.”

“Woof woof woof woof,” Jinny takes off from Peter’s arms and crawls around the cabin barking.

“Jinny, this wolf isn’t like a nice doggy. You don’t want to pat him ok?” warns Maeve.

“Woof woof,” was Jinny’s reply. Not yet two years old, Jinny knew little of life in the outside world. Still a baby when their parents left, the siblings had unwittingly become carers responsible for her health and safety.

Thick smoke fills the room as Maeve adds some of the snow damp wood to the fire. “Is there anything to eat?” she asks.

Peter shrugs a little and points his chin toward the pot hanging over the fire.

“Soup,” he offers.

Maeve isn’t very hopeful of the nutrition to be gained by this soup. Most likely snow melt with some herbs thrown in, like the majority of their meals lately. But she’s pleased to find a few pieces of dried fish had been added to the soup.

“How did you get the fish? I thought we were all out?” Maeve asks her brother.

“Rachel swapped it for some milk.” Peter doesn’t meet Maeve’s eyes.

“Peter! Our milk is in very short supply! We can’t be swapping it for things!”

“I know Maeve, I know, really I do. But I’d like to see what you do when Rachel appears at the door with her baby sister in her arms, looking like a tiny corpse, and asks for some milk. And besides, how much longer can we go on without some proper food?”

Maeve doesn’t respond. She’s too busy dunking sweet potato bread into the soup, soaking up the last drops from her bowl.

“Did she have any news about the elders?” Maeve asks, after one more slice of bread.

Peter stifles a groan as launches his once lithe, but now slightly broken body out of the chair. Life has been harsh for him since his parents left. So much responsibility for a sixteen year old boy. And now so much guilt at his failures.

He scoops up Jinny with his good arm and returns to the fire place with a bowl of bush fruit they had collected earlier.

After stoking the fire, and studying a piece of the bitter fruit, Peter draws in a breath. But then sighs it out and stares into the fire again.

“Peter! Please tell me!”

“Alright, Rachel did have some things to say, but how are we to know if they are true? Since the happenings, this last year, there’ve been so many stories about the elders, I really don’t even want to waste much time thinking about more rumours.”

“Tell me what she said.”

“She said that her cousin Borguss had returned from the lowlands. He told his brothers and cousins that there was no sign of any elders in the capital or anywhere in the lowlands. Rachel said he had a strange story of a young verger giving Borguss a letter.”

“And, dear brother, what pray tell was in this verger’s letter?”

“Why don’t you read it for yourself?” says Peter, handing a well worn scrap of paper to his younger sister, who he was sad to admit, was the better reader.

It had been a long anxious wait for Maeve and Peter and the rest of the young folk on the mountain. She glances at Peter with a mix of fear and hope in her eyes. Could they finally be getting some answers to so many questions? Where were her parents? Why had all the adults in the area disappeared, until only the children remained?

But on opening the letter, Maeves heart sinks as she stares at the hieroglyphs written there. It’s not a language she recognises. Definitely not Barrian, the local dialect that she’d learnt from her mother.

Maeve stares at the symbols, willing them to tell her something, anything about where her parents could be.

“Woof, woof, woof!” barks Jinny pointing to the window of the cabin.

Maeve gasps to see the wolf on the other side of the window, looking almost longingly into the cabin.

No that’s silly, she tells herself. It’s a wild animal. It’s just longing to eat us most likely.

Peter’s protective instinct kicks in and he lunges for the fire poker and runs out the door with more grace and speed than he’s shown for weeks.

Jinny follows him outside, calling “woof woof.”

“No Jinny! Don’t try to pat the wolf! Peter! No! Leave him, he’s not wanting to harm us! Please Peter, come away!”

Maeve isn’t even sure why she feels so strongly about saving the wolf that has been watching her from the forest for weeks. But something makes her need to protect it. The wolf locks eyes with Maeve, ignoring Peter and Jinny.

“The letter isn’t for you,” she hears in her heart. Her eyes open wide but the darkness seems to only increase.

“The letter is not meant for the young folk. They will find out soon enough.”

“What is in the letter?” Maeve begged the wolf. “If you know something you must tell us! We are just children, we want our parents back.”

“We were to wait until your fourteenth birthday to tell you this. But I must speak now before other young folk put themselves in danger looking for answers.

“The elders have been returned to the Otherland. The land they once escaped from when they were children like you. You must all continue to live your lives here and not try to find them. They had a reason for leaving the Otherland. They want you to live in freedom and with nature. Their lives now are bound again to white walls, stale odours, no plants, animals, herbal medicine and no books.

“You, Maeve, daughter of Pehr Snowbound, are wise beyond your years, stronger than your meagre frame and more able to lead the young ones than you may know. You have been chosen by the High Priestess before her departure, to lead the enclave of young ones, and protect the community your elders built here.”