LEVEL FIVE

  When Selphie reached level five, she knew she had come to the last level. There was another dead body that Selphie did not want to see.

  As she stepped toward it, she said out loud, “I’m really sorry about what happened. I… wasn’t lost… I didn’t tell you I was lost. I was dripping in blood and if I had washed off more than I did in the snow, I thought I would die of cold. I should have dropped the knife. I see that now.”

  She took a step toward the lifeless form that was sprawled on its side on the floor.

  She bit her lip.

  At least, she did not have the knife with her now.

  “I was leaving a trail of blood with my footprints. Tracking someone in the snow is pretty easy work even if they aren’t leaving red marks with every step they take. Dogs were coming. I could hear their howls. The men were coming. They had seen what I had done, how I had killed Brawley and they were coming for me. I’m so sorry, but I was looking for a wolf’s den.”

  The fur on the dead wolf’s back seemed to prickle. Was he not dead after all?

  Selphie got on her knees in front of the gray wolf’s muzzle. “I’m so sorry. Climbing a tree would not have saved me from the loggers. They climb trees when they do their work. I don’t know what they would have done to me, but I knew what a wolf would do to me. I thought I had a better chance with a wolf family. I’d heard stories about how wolves raised children sometimes, and if I didn’t get out of the cold, I was going to be dead either way. I chose you rather than them.”

  Then, just as she had done in the forest, she lifted something she should not have lifted and came in without an invitation.

  She opened the wolf’s front legs and curled up inside the curve of his still embrace. She was certain now. The wolf on the marble floor was dead.

  The wolf Selphie had met inside the den was alive. It sniffed the blood. The predator awoke. All the claws and all the teeth sunk into her.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Reflexively (it had been a reflex), she turned her knife on the wolf to combat the teeth in her neck and shoulder.

  Though wounded, the wolf tore her apart. Her last thought had been that it would be over soon and, at least, she would not die cold.

  Now, as she lay on the floor in the arms of her killer, she understood that she had killed him too. She hadn’t seen cubs in the den. She hadn’t seen anything in the den. It was dark. If he had a mate or cubs, she hadn’t seen them. Had she deprived a family of their father?

  She pushed the thought out of her mind and remembered the white wolf on the bed on the bottom level. Was he the same wolf as the one she had killed? Was that why they were here together? Because they had killed each other?

  Selphie fell asleep.

  She dreamed of a wolf.

  In her dream, the gray wolf was circling her. Couldn’t he speak? He looked into her eyes and licked her face. She cried and put her arms around his neck. He licked the spot where he had torn her neck from her shoulder.

  When she awoke, she was alone on the floor of the fifth level. She lay there and looked at the circle over her head. Circles weren’t supposed to have an end, but this one did.

  She had gone around the circle once when she lived through it. She went around again when she recounted it. Now, she knew she had a choice ahead of her. On the top level, she learned the truth. There was no door out. There were floors in the corners that went up and up, but Selphie knew they would be bare. She had already seen everything this place had to show her.

  Now there were only three things in this place.

  There was her, the white wolf, and the knife.

  She could choose to do what she did before. Take the knife in her hands and kill the wolf or she could let the wolf swallow her whole like he had the other corpses.

  She was ready.

  Selphie walked to the edge of the balcony. “There’s another body for me to throw down. Make sure you eat it!”

  The wolf poised himself to jump.

  Selphie took a few steps back.

  She ran.

  The wolf leaped in the air.

  She fell down the shaft of the tower.

  Time stopped and it felt as if she floated.

  His jaws were open as he shot upward.

  And then, despite everything, he caught her in his arms. She felt his fur and his bones come around her to hold her. With the whiteness surrounding them, they fell together, not to the first level. The first level was gone. They fell further, fell through the white until the light around them became so bright that they couldn’t see the ladders or the floors of the tower.

  Falling was the way out.