The sudden impact of hard earth knocked Luhan’s breath out, made him gasp.

He was aware of the wolf sprawled across his chest, its own furry abdomen rising and falling with its efforts to draw air. Luhan didn’t know how long they had tumbled down the hill, but it was enough to make his back scream and open new cuts on his arms. Luhan had his face smashed into both fur and earth, and he was more than eager to spit out the remains of everything he had collected in his mouth.

In his exhaustion, his moment of vulnerability, he expected the wolf to tear itself off of him and rear back, claws into his chest and fangs buried into his neck. He was surprised to find the wolf just as immobile as he was.

Something dripped onto his bare thigh, where a sharp rock had ripped off the material of his pants. It was warm and sticky but runny. It’s blood, he thought with a jolt, as more of it began trickling into his pants, bathing his own clean leg with scarlet rivers.

The foliage here was thinner, more accommodating of the silver moonlight ing its way through the leaves. Luhan saw gleams of bronze on dancing bits of mussed up fur and realised with a jolt that the wolf on top of him was the same wolf he’d injured at the witch’s back yard. Like him, it seemed to have sustained more wounds in the rough tousle of their fall. The wolf was whining, too much in pain to do much in hurting him.

Luhan heaved it off of him as quickly as he could, digging his fingers out of the dirt to clamber away from it before it could regain its senses and attack again. He managed to stand, swaying a bit on his feet. His sharp ears pricked at the sound of pattering dirt gathering not too far from where he was standing. He looked up to find a grey and white wolf sliding down the incline like a skier on snow, paws braced onto the soft earth for purchase so its descend was not as graceless as Luhan and its wounded friend’s. Even from afar Luhan could see the burning fury in its eyes.

Luhan took off, ignoring the creak of his joints and the screams of his nerves as his wounds were jostled. He picked himself over bits of rock, brushed vines (which seemed to multiply the deeper he delved into the forest) out of his eyes and did his best to not run into a tree.

This part of the forest was wilder than the one that bordered the village, more treacherous and filled with dangerous secrets. More than once Luhan had to skirt away from several bushes of leaves spread around the underbrush –harmless looking things as green as any other plant, but twined with poison that gave the most vicious of rashes. There were more fallen logs here and most of those were of wide berths, too large to jump over and too long to circumnavigate. At this point, Luhan had to stop and clamber over them, digging his fingers into rough ridges and pulling himself up with all the strength he could muster. 

He was always left panting, body quivering and legs swaying, but the wolf, magnificent in its leaps and bounds and exotic coat of salt and pepper fur, was always too near for him to stop to catch his breath.

As his feet thumped over the soft ground –trampling every insect, every little plant too small for him to see –the realisation that his luck was wearing thin began to kick in. Despite that it was he who volunteered himself into the forest, Luhan wouldn’t lie and say that he planned to die here, in the light of the moon, at the claws of ruthless predators with the most haunting –and curious –eyes.

The plan had presented itself to him while they were scrambling around in the darkness to find the porthole. It was a crazy plan, and even Luhan had to admit it required a different brand of recklessness to act out. In the haze of the darkness though, while adrenaline pumped through his veins in anticipation of danger, Luhan realised that they had no other choice, and time was too precious a treasure to waste by riffling through the potential outcome. And so Luhan had steeled himself, looked Minseok in the eye, and forced him to comply before Luhan could lose his nerve.

The general idea had been to lure as many wolves as he could into the forest, leaving Minseok with lesser enemies to face while he searched for his rifle. Luhan hadn’t given the nagging details much thought, and the fact that one of the wolves in his pursuit was wounded and that there was a slope to fall down on had been nothing but a of luck.

He didn’t think luck would help him now, with the wolf so close that he could hear its panting breath with every lope.

But then he saw a ray of light, a small sliver of hope in the form of a branch, hanging low enough on the ground for him to reach. Luhan readied himself and allowed a final burst of speed to jolt his muscles. His feet pattered faster over the mushy underbrush, gaining momentum. He leapt onto another fallen log, which was lying conveniently just a few metres away, and used it to vault himself into the air.

His arms flailed in the short few seconds that he was airborne, desperate for something to hold. Luhan was half convinced that he was going to fall, limbs splayed on the ground below as the earth received him, cold and unforgiving, when his hands hooked onto the branch, suspending him in mid-air.

Luhan scrambled onto the branch just as the grey and white wolf soared below it, its jaws narrowly missing one of his dangling legs.

He didn’t stop but continued to climb. He picked out strong branches instinctively, his hands curving over the surface before heaving his body up. At one point, he had to hug that bark and scale his way up to get to another branch. He only stopped when he thought that he was suitably high enough from the ground, and also because the branches above could no longer hold his weight.

Luhan leaned back, panting. Every breath he drew in seared his lungs, but was a relief nevertheless. He could feel the ache building into his muscles, a slow rising tide that rippled over him in waves, encompassing his legs and then his arms. Luhan swore that the tumble down the slope left more than a few bruises.

And then he saw something that made him almost cry in dismay. The wolf seemed to have learned from his demonstration, and was using the log in the same manner to vault itself up after Luhan. Its claws dug into the soft wood of the hanging branch, and Luhan thought it was a bit unfair how the wolf could swing itself up so easily. It looked up at him then and pulled back its lips into a snarl.

Luhan realised with blood-curling horror that the wolf was leaping from branch to branch, each jump getting it a little bit closer to him. The wolf made slower progress on the tree than it did on land though, so Luhan allowed himself a small bit of relief over the fact that he had time to think of another plan.

His eyes roved around his surroundings. The ground was too far below him for him to jump, a dizzying panorama of sinking blackness that was just about as welcoming of the base of a dark well. The branches above were thin and sparse; Luhan wasn’t a heavy guy, but he wasn’t entirely weightless. That only left the third option, one that he was having a little problem trying to come to terms with.

His eyes flickered downwards again. The wolf was gaining, having gotten the hang of the tree’s little maze. The way it settled its weight onto its haunches to launch itself up a little higher every time was a thing of strange beauty, and Luhan couldn’t help the shivers that shook his spine when the wolf looked up and locked gazes with him. Its eyes were still too far for Luhan to see them clearly, but he saw that they had the gruesome cleverness that wasn’t entirely animal.

When he could feel the fine tremors of quivering branches and hear the soft growls over the sound of skittering claws, he abandoned all thought, took a step back and jumped off the branch.

For a second, Luhan wondered if he had just plunged to his death, if the moonlight had failed him and the shadows had beguiled him to pull him into the darkness. But as he drifted closer, the twisting, rope-like thing began to look less and less like a play of the shadows and more and more like Luhan’s lifeline.

His outstretched fingers caught the vine and he clung to it, his ears roaring with his thudding heart. It whipped like a rope below him, and Luhan’s momentum had caused to swing with him. Luhan tried to angle it so that it swung towards the large bough of the tree in front of him. It looked welcoming enough, large and thick and possibly strong enough to withstand the sudden impact.

He only had one shot at this; swing back and the wolf might hook its claws into his pant leg or he might not be able to swing high enough anymore. Luhan stretched out his legs –his hands burned as they slipped an inch down –and when he was near enough, hooked them to the bough to stop the swinging.

A small wail escaped his lips and fought to keep his legs in place, to ignore the trembling. His hold was flimsy and he curled his toes, tried to dig whatever he could onto the branch below him. His arms ached and he was forced to let go of the vine. For a moment, all Luhan had was the bough and his failing sense of balance; he felt himself sway like a leaf in a violent tempest. Gravity then got too strong and Luhan’s body arched backwards, falling into empty air.

And then something hit his back hard and knocked the wind out of him. It took a minute for him to realise that he’d fallen onto another branch. He heard the soft puffs of his rapid breathing and merely lay on his back, staring at the stars peppered between the soft dusting of the tree’s leaves. His back hurt and his limbs were splayed at odd angles, hanging down the tree like a sloth’s.

Something wasn’t right though: the breeze here was too strong. It stirred the leaves, pulled his bangs out of his eyes and raked through it as through it wanted to pluck his hair away. The leaves were thin, lesser than the ones before. With painstaking effort, Luhan tried to heave himself off the branch, to plant his feet to it instead of his back. He managed the manoeuvre, though it took more effort, more time than he would have liked. It was strong branch, but it still was relatively small in width; one wrong move and he’d be tumbling a few feet down towards the earth.

When Luhan was finally able to look down, his eyes widened and he clung harder onto the branch.

The tree was right on a cliff, a steep, deadly cliff with the songs and howls of the empty abyss below. Darkness swept over the fissure, shadowing half of its depth from sight, but moonlight prevailed over the half above. The cracks and rough knobs of the earth’s gaping maw was burnished silver. Luhan saw the lone branch of a stray plant hanging on the opposite side, roots embedded deep into the walls of the crag. The wind kept calling it play but the plant remained obstinate, refusing to let go of the cliff.

 Below him, in the full light of the moon, two wolves were staring up at him with gleaming amber eyes. The grey and white one had leapt off from the other tree and had joined the russet one to circle under his branch. They were looking for ways to get to him, maybe even drop him, but the ground below them was limited to only the small bit of land of the clifftop and they had very little space to work on.

The russet wolf was limping, clearly hindered by its injury. But either it was acting out of sheer loyalty or because it was bound to do so, it refused to give up on him, yapping and growling at him from below. The other one, the extraordinarily dexterous one, kept staring at him with eyes b with shadows. It spilled down onto its soft fur, blending into the one stretched out from its feet.

Luhan felt shivers down his spine, but he couldn’t look away. The wolf didn’t make a sound, but Luhan could almost swear that it was speaking, calling him down. It warned him of the witch’s raw evil, threatened him with the things she would do to Minseok. When none of it worked, it curled its lip and bared its teeth.

Fine, Luhan could almost hear it saying, if you won’t come down, then I’ll come get you.

And then, just like before, it took a few steps back, found a rock it that could boost itself up, and launched itself onto a low hanging branch. Luhan panicked, watching as the wolf advanced up the tree in slow leaps, sinking its claws into the soft wood to haul itself up. His eyes darted around. There was only one route the wolf could take in the maze to get to him, and Luhan just might be able to stop him.

He threw himself down so that he lay on his stomach. His fingers felt around his belt and he pulled out his knife, his precious wood carving knife that got him out of the cage. Let’s see if you can get me out of this, he thought, staring at it with conviction. And then, letting his body hang halfway down the branch, he began sawing at the base of the branch below him, in the curve where it protruded out of the tree.

The soft grating of metal against wood set a rhythm for his thoughts, and Luhan wrestled his focus onto the task at hand. The knife was small and the wood wasn’t as soft as Luhan imagined it to be, but he was a carpenter who had worked with wood almost all his life. He knew that his sawing was weakening the branch, peeling it away from the trunk.

When the wolf was close enough and within his line of fire, he yanked his knife out of the groove, twisted his body so he was now leg-down, and shoved the branch with the heel of his boot. With creak, it split from the trunk and plummeted all the way down over the wolf.

The wolf barked in surprise, but the fallen branch had already crashed onto the one it was crouched on. With the sudden added weight, the second branch cracked too. Luhan felt like everything was moving frame by frame. He hung from his arms –hooked securely around the branch, his back pressed to it –and watched the strange domino effect playing out below him. The wolf’s branch ruptured, dropping the wolf and Luhan’s branch onto the ground below, directly above the small russet wolf.

All three landed on the ground like a thump, leaves showering down after them. The howls that rented the air were that of agony.

Luhan watched helplessly when the land, like the branch, slowly broke, small fissures drawing jagged trails where the cliff began. Earth grinded against rock and the cliff split, hacked away from land. Luhan wanted to close his eyes, to turn away, but he couldn’t. He watched as the ground gave way from underneath the wolves, earth shattering into rocks and pebbles, and they fell, floundering, desperately trying to sink their claws into something. But they were too far and the branches held them down, so they were left with no choice but to fall, to plummet down the abyss –straight to their deaths.

Luhan realised he was shivering. The slashes on his chest was bared to the night air and stung with every breath. The effort to pull himself back up took more of his energy than any of the outrageous stunts he’d pulled before with the vine and the branch. He sat on the tree with his body hunched, his limbs curled into a ball as he closed his eyes, trying to will away the howls that slowly faded into nothingness, into consuming darkness.