The Ministry of Predators

For years she would go
on her way free.
Many would see her beautiful,
darting around the forest gracefully,
and some would presume
that they could, would, might
capture her.

They would dress in camouflage,
and tread so lightly,
lightly for such brutes.
They would wash in animal urine to hide the warning signal of their true selves.
They would use masterfully devices to imitate the mating call.
All at best achieving but limited success.

She'd nimbly flash in and out of open spaces,
dodging singing bullets and humming arrows;
never more a nick or a cut.

But one day,
a hunter's footfall,
sent her gliding into the glaring Autumn sun.
The distance opening easily up behind her...

The leg felt like it was nearer wrenched from the socket.
Her hoof felt like there were vice-like jaws clamped over it,
teeth slowly sinking
cell by collapsed cell deeper into
the epidermis.
She tried to gnaw at the wire
of the snare, but her teeth found no purchase.

The footfalls were thudding louder,
and for once she was scared.
She pulled hard, once
and the peg holding the wire did not give.
She wrenched the the wire in all directions with all her weight
and wept as the metal cut deeper,
but the motion loosened the soil enough for a final tug
to disgorge the wooden stake.
The assailant thrashed through bushes mere feet nearby;
even with one near lame leg, she easily outpaced him.

She sat within the shelter of the bushes
and licked at her wound.
She realised that nothing she could do could remove this device
that in fact, anything she did just made it tighter,
that the wound would not heal,
that the leg would become infected,
that she would either die slowly from gangrene
or quickly to a predator.
For the first time in a long time
she cried.
She cried because she felt sorry for herself.
She had finally found herself vulnerable
and unable to extricate herself.
For the first time,
she felt her own mortality stand close by
and not just skulk around in her instinct.
She found refuge from her self-pity in her dreams.

She awoke,
and found a curious thing.
The kind of thing that initially seems very good
then just simply too good to be true
then upon further reflection,
downright suspicious.
About one foot from her sleeping head
Someone had laid down a heap of fresh berries.
The disturbing thing being
that whoever did it had managed
to effect this in complete stealth,
and could have just as easily
slit her throat.
The more perplexing thing
is that it was most likely the same person
who flushed her into the snare to begin with.

She tried to move from her hide
but found that it was too late
that infection had already gripped the limb.
The next morning, more fruit was left.
She was starving. She sniffed suspiciously at it,
it smelled okay.
She reasoned, it probably was,
since if the gifter had harmful intent,
he'd've killed her already.
She ate ravenously, and then slept.

Over the next few days the food donations repeated.
She was in fever and now totally at the mercy of this person.
She could smell them coming a little closer to her each day,
she could feel them letting her sense that happening,
she could perceive their eyes now watching from within
the distressed pattern of chaotic foliage.
It was both reassuring and disturbing.

One morning she woke,
and she felt worse than ever,
the infection was spreading from the top of her leg
into her torso.
She was ravaged by fever and weak as an hour old foal.
She knew she would die before long.
Depressingly, there was also n0 fruit that day.
She guessed, her maimer and benefactor
had also concluded she'd soon die
and had moved on to better things.
She closed her eyes and began to weep,
to weep at her plight
at the abandonment.
Then when she opened her eyes,
about 10 feet from her stood a man
in camouflage,
his hands outstretched
bearing fresh fruit.

The man drew slowly closer,
till he sat next to her.
He slowly and carefully
fed her the fruit.
When she was full,
he then stroked her fever brow sympathetically.
He was handsome, indeed.
He then lifted her emaciated body in his arms,
and walked away from where she had expected to die, alone.
She fell into the deepest of delirious sleeps.

She broke the crust of sick sleep from her eyes,
and found herself
snug in a bed.
Memories flashed
of travelling out of the forest
and over pastures.
She became aware of her body,
of how the fever had backed off somewhat,
enough to no longer feel the hand of Death
on her shoulder.
Then she noticed something else.
She raised her leg from under the blankets
to discover that she was free of the snare,
and there was a clean bandage hugging her now
in empathetic embrace
as opposed to the choke hold of metal.
The infection was now in retreat.
She smiled.

The room was quaint,
but plain.
For weeks,
the man would come in and change her dressings,
and clean her wounds,
and bring her food.
Slowly they would converse,
until they built a rapport,
and she would grow to expect and covet sharing his mind,
as her body had been strengthening and depending on his food.
He soon brought her gifts, items from the forest that would cheer her up.
One morning she awoke to find that he had silently spent the night
painting the whole room in a mural transforming the four walls and ceiling
into a woodland frieze.

She felt her muscles were growing back little by little,
she could now make herself upright in bed.
Then one morning at daybreak.
She awoke with an overwhelming sense of joy,
and knew it was time.
As though it was Christmas Morning,
she excitedly swung her legs out of bed,
and then tentatively pushed up her weight with them.
She wobbled and hobbled a little at first,
but soon felt confident enough to take some small steps.
She became bolder and made to stride across the room to the door,
so that she could finally return the favour,
and wake the man with breakfast, a smile and soft words.

She had overestimated herself however,
and barely made it past the end of the bed,
until her weakened leg simply gave way,
and she cam crashing into the washing table
sending the water jug flying
and crashing to the floor.
Seconds later,
the room door flew upon
and he was by her side.
His face furrowed with concern.
She simply smiled
and said 'Look what I did!"
He understood.
He helped her back into back.
But he looked terse and bothered.

He paced a little by her bed,
then flashed out the room.
And then she heard something new.
She heard a click.
She fell into an exhausted sleep,
after her little adventure.
But later, when she woke restlessly in the night,
she lay in the moonlight room waking, thoughts racing.
Determined as ever,
she rose again,
this time more gingerly,
she picked her way across the room.
To the door.
And she turned the handle and found it locked.
The unyielding handle however unlocked something in her,
and she stood there stunned, pondering what her gut was telling her.

The next morning, the man returned.
With a cold breakfast and even colder manner.
And this time, he locked the door as he came and went,
and never paused for any verbal exchange.
She wondered what was going on,
if she had done something wrong,
for him to acting this way.
And she'd pace back and forth
trying to figure it out,
her muscles building as the storm clouds gathered.

Then one morning,
he arrived with breakfast in one hand and a toolbox in the other.
And as she ate, he removed a panel from the door,
and replaced it with another.
An odd thing to do she thought.
Then next day, it all became clear,
when the panel opened and her breakfast slid through it.

Later, she was jerked from her pacing and fretting,
by a squeaking coming from the other side of the door.
She stood there curiously cocking her head at it.
When suddenly,
a metal worm broke through the wood.
Behind which an eye did appear.

Weeks went by, and she saw nothing more of the man,
 just plates going back and forth through the door,
and the sense now and again,
he was spying through the hole.
She would call on him,
and ask him to come,
to talk,
but he never did.
And it saddened her, like the loss of a limb.

And she wondered how it came to this
from blissful domestication into solitary incarceration.
And then her pacing finally brought her to her destination
and epiphany.
It was suddenly all there plain to see.
That this man was still a hunter like the rest,
and his kindness every bit a decoy,
a misdirection a ruse,
to entrap her
just like all the others.
Though more skilled he was,
 he had like all the others in the end,
overestimated himself,
and overlooked something small
but pivotal:
That she had despite all his efforts to make her lame,
resided by him through choice;
after his nursing her through the near fatal blow which he inflicted,
she remained his guest by inclination.

She paced the room a final time,
not so much deliberating, but crossing the Ts and dotting the Is in her mind,
of a thousand thoughts she thought a thousand times.
She had the answers to all the questions of what where why and whether or not he could or would change.
And then she did again what she did best and slipped away silent as a baby's breath.

The man slid back the hatch and and pushed in the plate.
Looked through the spyhole to the cell adorned like some woodland idyll.
And could see not hide nor hair or his beloved trophy.
He pushed in the key and couldn't unlock,
as the door was already opened.
He wandered bewildered in and looking around for clues,
he spotted the bent hairpin hanging out the inside keyhole.