Free Hallowed Ground by David Niall Wilson, Steven & Wilson Savile Page B

Vines gripped at his ankles and branches whipped back across his face as he pushed through them.   He cursed and stumbled forward.   The ground loosened underfoot and he fell hard on his hip.   He cried out and reached for a dangling branch.   Just for a second he had it, felt its reassuring solidity and strength and then he his fingers slipped and it was gone.   He panicked; pin-wheeled his arms, and tilted out over the brink.
    Strong fingers clamped over his wrist and spun him back hard.   He hit the ground.   The breath wheezed from his lungs, bright splashes of light igniting before and behind his eyes.   He groped wildly with his free hand, found the stump of a scrub pine and clung to it tightly.   She never loosened her hold on his wrist.
    "Get up," Jeanne Dubois said.   "There isn't much time."
    She was right; the night was gathering about them.   The moon hung like a traitor in the sky, casting its silver like a smattering of coins across the land.
    When he had his bearings, she let go.   He rolled to his knees, pulled himself upright and followed her more carefully, taking every handhold the slope offered and keeping his gaze focused on the ground at his feet.   The moon showed him the way.   To his right, he heard the rushing water of the river, pounding its way through the gorge.   Ahead the slippery, dangerous trail they followed disappeared into the side of a heavy forest.
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    Benjamin had been in the forest, but only on horseback, and only then by the light of day.   It was a different place at night.   His mind whirled with the stories he'd heard ever since he was a boy, stories of Indians, demons, bears and spirits.   As a man, he'd simply avoided the place, the boy’s fears still deeply rooted in his soul.   His work as a banker called for little or no travel, and lessons learned young were by far the hardest to shake.
    The woman was another thing altogether.   It had been several months since word of her presence filtered through to the town.   She lived in the forest.   She never entered the town by day - most had never seen her enter at all.   Certain of the older women in the town believed she could heal and went to her for infusions and herbal remedies.
    "It is all here in the trees," she told them.   "Everything you need, given freely by nature." Others believed she was a demon sent to tempt their souls, and would brook no contact with the 'hag of the trees'.   A few of the men claimed to have spent time with her, swapping coin for a different kind of devotion, but there was no evidence to support the claims, and the men themselves were wont to lie on a number of subjects if they thought it made them look somehow more than they were.
    When Elizabeth took ill, Benjamin had wanted to approach the witch immediately.   In truth he would have done anything to save his fiancé, but when it came to Jeanne Dubois, Elizabeth's father, mayor of the town and a righteous man, forbade it.   Righteous, in his parlance, meant superstitious.   Jeanne Dubois might as well have had horns.
    Benjamin had stayed with Elizabeth.   He'd refused to leave her bedside and had listened to every word the doctor spat out of his foul old incompetent mouth.   All the while, he'd sat and held Elizabeth's hand as he watched her slowly die.   It was a bitter thing, to think that there might be something he could do, and yet be helpless to do it, so instead of praying he found himself saying her name, Jeanne Dubious, over and over barely above a breath, as though she might somehow hear him, the words carried by the intensity of his need, and come to him.   She did not.   Elizabeth was beautiful to the end, but in those last moments, so weak.   So helpless.
    "What would you give to have her back?"   The question had come when he was at his lowest.   He remembered the words, spoken so softly, so teasingly.