The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

The pack was catching up with the sleigh now; the wolves spilled forward, biting at the horse. The woman shouted at the wolves, whipped at them and at the horse with the reins, but there was nothing she could do. She cast a glance at her daughters: the two little ones pale as sheets, Irena holding onto Vitek as if he were life itself. And Vitek — her perfect little boy. The woman remembered her husband’s face when she first told him he had a son. His face had lit up; he had taken the little boy from her and held him in his big, strong arms… her husband… then an image of the last time she had seen him — seen his mutilated corpse tied to the old walnut tree in the orchard…

She was back in the present, fighting to save her children — losing the fight to save her children. The little pig was gone — she had put it in the wicker basket at the side of the sleigh and fastened the straps when the soldiers were getting drunk inside her house. She had gone back to the barn to get the children, to flee with them under cover of darkness to what she hoped would be the relative safety of her parents’ village. Someone must have seen her put the piglet in the basket, someone cruel enough to take the time to do up the straps after sentencing her children to death in the wolf-infested forest.

The little pig was gone and another sacrifice was needed in its place to protect the horse. The woman prepared to jump out of the sleigh. She turned to Irena and shouted, “Give Vitek to Kasia!” Irena stared at her mother blankly. “Give your brother to Kasia!” The woman’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. Four-year-old Kasia clung onto her two-year-old sister, and Irena began to cry, clutching her brother even tighter. “Give him to her!” screamed the woman, “I need you to hold the reins!” But even as she said it, she knew that the six-year-old would never be able to control the terrified horse. Her own hands were a bloody ruin and she wondered how she was able to hang on as the frantic animal fought its way forward.

“Irena! Give Vitek to Kasia — now!” But Irena saw something in her mother’s eyes that scared her more than the dark and the shaking sleigh and even the wolves. She clutched her brother to her chest and shook her head, fresh tears rolling down her face and freezing to her cheeks.

A large silver wolf clamped its jaws onto the horse’s left hind leg. The horse stumbled, but managed to right itself and the wolf let go, unable to keep up with the horse in the deep snow — but not for long. As the chestnut reeled, the sleigh lurched and the woman panicked. She had to act now or lose all her children. She could not give her life for them because they would never make it to safety without her. But a sacrifice had to be made. If she could not die to save her children, then one of them would have to die to save the others. She would not lose them all. One of them would have to die and she would have to choose. The delicate fabric of the woman’s sanity was finally stretched to its limits and gave way. She threw back her head and howled her anguish into the night. All around her the night howled back.

The woman turned and looked into the faces of her children. A sharp intake of breath — like that taken by one about to drown. She took the reins in one hand, and with the other she reached out for her beloved son — her husband’s greatest joy; the frailest of her children, half-frozen despite his sister’s efforts to keep him warm, too exhausted even to cry, and the least likely to survive the journey.

“Give him to me!” she screamed at Irena. The girl struggled with her mother. The woman wrenched her baby out of her daughter’s grasp and held him to her, gazing for a moment into his eyes. The woman smiled through her tears at her son. Snow was falling on the baby’s upturned face, the frost had tinged his lips a pale blue, but in the woman’s fevered mind, her baby smiled back at her.

Two of the wolves had closed in on the horse and were trying to bring it down. The woman screamed and threw Vitek as far from the sleigh as she could. There was a moment’s silence, then a triumphant yelping as the wolves turned their attention away from the horse, and rushed away into the night. Irena cried out, and her little sisters stared uncomprehendingly at their mother, who screamed and screamed as she grabbed the reins in both hands and whipped the horse on into the dark.