Sirena
The crowd folds and shifts like the bonfire smoke.
The winners of the costume contest are announced, and people begin to drift away, children heading home with their parents to go to bed, laughter thinning as lanterns flicker out one by one.
The Festival of Masks is over for another year.
As I step toward the edge of the field and the forest’s edge to light myself a joint and calm my nerves, I begin to feel a bit more at ease.
Bass still thrums in the distance, low and steady, every beat a pulse beneath my skin. Somewhere between the firelight and the shadows, I feel him again—not a sight, not a sound, but a presence. A heat that coils low in my stomach, spreading outward until I can barely breathe.
The air feels charged. My body hums with it.
I turn, scanning the crowd—masks of demons and angels, feathers and horns blurring into one restless, breathing mass.
He’s nowhere, yet everywhere all at once.
The bonfire’s heat licks across my bare arms as the final logs turn to charcoal, but a chill runs deeper, electric, and alive beneath my skin.
When I glance back, Carly’s gone—disappeared with the man she met by the cider barrels—and suddenly, I’m completely alone at the edge of the clearing where the crowd had been only just feet away for the costume contest. The fire pops across the field, a final burst of orange and gold that lights the woods beyond.
I take a deep inhale of my joint, focusing on the burn in my lungs instead of the tricks my mind is playing on me.
That’s when I see him.
Just beyond the tree line—still, silent—the wolf mask glints faintly under the moonlight. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch when sparks dance between us. It’s as if he’s waiting.
Instinct takes over. I drop my joint and raise my camera. The shutter clicks once, twice—too loud in the quiet. When I lower it, he’s gone. But I can still feel him. That strange prickle beneath my skin, that pulse in my throat that doesn’t belong to fear.
I tell myself to turn back, to find Carly, to melt into the crowd and head back towards the town—but when I turn and look, the crowd is already gone.
The field has quickly emptied, families returning home to put their children to bed, and only those cleaning up remain.
The music is fading into a ghost of sound, staff turning the volume down while they busy themselves, discarding the remnants of another Briar Hollow festival.
The night feels suspended, holding its breath.
At that moment, something in me breaks. I’m unsure what is pulling me as I step toward the woods.
My body seems to know before my mind does—the ache that lives somewhere between fear and want. My thighs press together. My breath hitches. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’ve read this book. I should go home, lock the door, crawl into bed, and forget the way his voice brushed my name like a command.
But I don’t.
Something deep inside me pulls—a thread I can’t cut.
The night itself seems to whisper, urging me toward the dark edge of the forest. Toward him.
Each step feels both forbidden and inevitable, I shouldn’t want this, but it’s exactly where I need to be.
I tell myself I’m only taking a shortcut home, but deep down I know that’s a lie.
Ash drifts through the air like black snow, tangling in my hair and clinging to the ribbon of my mask.
The music dulls behind me, swallowed by the trees.
The air shifts—colder, wilder—and suddenly the laughter feels miles away.
The shadows stretch long across the ground, and I can’t tell if I’m moving closer to him…
or to something inside myself I’ve never dared to touch.
The trail is only half-lit by lanterns, their flames dying in the late hours of the night, their soft glow flickering against the smoke that curls between the trees like the breath of the forest. The air grows colder with every step until I can see it—white against the dark, like steam rising from my lips.
The music fades entirely, replaced by something slower.
The rhythm of leaves. Of my heartbeat. Of his.
Something rustles ahead.
I stop. Listen.
Then, I hear it—a voice. Low. Rough. Far too close.
“You shouldn’t wander off alone, Little Doe.”
My mask feels heavier now, pressing against my skin. My pulse hammers against the ribbon tied behind my neck. “Who are you?” I whisper. The words barely make it past my lips.
No answer. Only the wind, sighing through the leaves, carrying the faint scent of the festival. I breathe in, and when the wind shifts, I smell him—smoke, pine, something faintly metallic like blood or rain on iron.
It floods my lungs. My head swims.
I tell myself now I’m only chasing a photograph—that perfect shot of the stranger who’s haunted me all night—but my hands tremble when I lift my camera.
Through the lens, the world narrows. Light. Shadow. Movement just beyond the trees. The flash pops once. A pale gleam catches—the edge of a mask, bone-white in the dark.
My breath stops. He’s there.
I can’t see his eyes, but I feel them—tracing the shape of me through smoke and shadow, undressing me, physically and emotionally, every layer I’ve built between who I am and what I want.
The air between us tightens, almost audible. I take one step closer. Then another.
The fire inside me flares low and hot, every beat of my heart echoing the drums I can no longer hear.
I don’t know if I’m moving toward him… or if he’s drawing me in.
Either way, I’m lost.
****
The Wolf
She freezes when I speak. A perfect stillness. Like a deer catching a hunter on the wind.
Smoke curls between us, glowing faintly in the lantern-light that’s barely reaching this far into the woods. She smells like ash and autumn rain, like something too pure to exist in this place.
I’ve been watching her since dusk — from the edge of the crowd, through the flicker of masks and laughter. The way she moves is different. Careful, as if she knows she’s being watched but hasn’t decided if she should be afraid or not.
Most people at the Festival of Masks wear them to hide. She wears hers like a dare.
I step closer. Her breath catches, just once, and I see her pulse jump in her throat. She doesn’t run.
“You shouldn’t wander off alone,” I say again, quieter this time, a warning, and a wish.
The lantern light catches her eyes — wide, unblinking, the color of whiskey and sparkling with something I can’t quite tell, is it fear, anxiety, excitement?
I tell myself I only want a closer look. Just one. But I know better. Something about her drags me closer, tethered by instinct and desire.
If I touch her, I’ll lose control.
If I don’t, I’ll lose my mind.
Her fingers tighten on the camera, knuckles pale against the black strap. I wonder if she realizes how she trembles — not from fear, but from knowing, from wanting.
There’s a kind of recognition between us — feral and impossible to ignore.
She doesn’t realize who I am, not yet. But some part of her does. The wild part. The one that used to run through these woods before people forgot how to fear the dark. The one who’s confided secrets I dare not repeat.
I take another step. The ground crackles beneath my boots, and she inhales sharply. The sound nearly undoes me.
“Run,” I whisper. Not a threat. A promise.