Prologue

Prologue

A strange wind shrieked through the forest. Branches swayed and twisted into ugly dances, clashing their claws at the veil of ubiquitous fog. A dark figure plunged through the trees, hands masking his face, bare feet slapping and sliding on the muddy earth, breath rasping inside his chest. He stumbled over a tree root, lost balance, flipping through the air in an awkward roll.

            ‘Arrgh.’

            Thump. His head smacked a rock. Hard. White, hot light flashed behind his eyes, igniting his skull into flames. Nothing felt broken. Damn painful, but not broken. Bodhi blinked, once, twice, three times, placed a hand in front of him and watched his fingers slowly slip back into focus.  There was no time to waste. It lurked nearby. He hadn’t seen it, but he could damn well smell it. In one smooth motion, Bodhi sprang onto his feet, spat out a mouthful of mud and darted into the fog. How long he ran for he couldn’t tell. Time was distorted. What seemed like seconds might've been minutes, hours, even days.

            Something prickled his ears. A gentle lapping amongst the howling wind. Water. Bodhi skidded to a halt, nearly slipping on a clump of wet pine needles, steadying himself by grappling onto a nearby tree trunk. A wave of panic washed over him. He couldn’t swim. He had done it before, many times, but some embedded impulse screamed that he would drown.

‘S**t.’

The curtain of fog wrapped tighter around Bodhi’s body. The air dropped colder and the wind wilted to a whisper. There was no doubt about it, that thing -that fear, it was creeping closer. He could feel it moving between the trees, his nose was sick from the smell of it. Bodhi reached up to the nearest branch, pulling himself higher, his fingers curling like talons in the icy air. He steered his way up the branches, hugging onto the tree trunk the way a child grips its mother. He looked pathetic, damn near laughable, but fear has a will of its own. The only choice you have is to hide.

‘Still breathing.’ Bodhi croaked. ‘Still breath �" oh Gods no.’

Bodhi’s eyes split wide with horror as the thing slithered through the trees, the outline of its tiny frame barely visible in the choking fog. Bodhi felt something warm trickle down his leg, splashing onto his feet and dripping onto the branches below. He dared not imagine what his father would say, if he knew Bodhi, hunting leader of the Putuati tribe had pissed himself while hiding up a tree like some whimpering dog. Some truths are best kept a secret.

‘Heavens..’ Bodhi whispered. ‘Help me.’

            The world suddenly jolted, spinning around in a sickening swirl. A thick branch rested above Bodhi’s head and he grabbed onto it, legs flayed uselessly in the empty air, muscles aching, jaw clamped shut as he desperately clung onto the bough for sheer life. A loud crack whipped across the sky, and claws of yellow lightning reached out, illuminating the shaking forest. The deafening noise blasted Bodhi’s ears, setting his thoughts on fire.

            ‘Heaven’s please! Save your f*****g fury!’

A second crack, louder than the fist, ripped across the sky, striking the branch and snapping it clean in two. Bodhi plunged through the air, body spinning, broken branch still clutched in his knotted fist.

            ‘Arrgh.’

            Scattered rocks rush up to meet him, there jagged edges ready to bite into him like great grey teeth. Skating seconds slid by. A lifetime of memories fleeted across his mind �" his inauguration into the tribe �" his Mother’s death �" his first hunt with Ziko and Rikar - Bodhi, Eagle of the forest, that’s what they called him. But it was going to take a God damn miracle for this bird to fly.

            Crunch.  A searing, hot pain shot up his spine, spreading out to every last nerve in his body, his mind exploding into blinding white light. He tried to scream, managed to cough out a mouthful of blood and watched hopelessly as it splattered against his belly. Moons ago, he stumbled down a ravine in the hunt of a wild boar. He remembered the moment his ankle snapped, the searing pain, the flood of adrenaline, the shouts from his brother hunters. There was no hope of rescue now. He was God damn sure of that. This time he was going to die alone, lost in the deep heart of the forest, bloody and broken, heart rattling like a snake in his chest, mind melting into a pool of fear as the thing crept closer.

            ‘Mother.’ He spluttered. ‘Take me with you.’

He closed his eyes, expecting his conscious to slip away, for it all to end, for the comforting stillness of death to embrace him. It didn’t happen.  He opened his eyes a blearily crack to see the forest motionless; no wind whispered, no beat of thunder thudded the sky. Somewhere to his right he heard a twig snap, leaves rustled and the smell of the thing flooded his nostrils, threatening to explode in his brain.

 ‘Nooooo!’

             Bodhi writhed like a slaughtered animal, arms flapping, heels thumping the ground, trying to wriggle free from the sharp rock that stabbed through his back. He had never expected life to end so unceremoniously. He’d expected to die screaming, but for the right reasons, fighting perhaps, in the heat of battle for the pride and protection of his tribe, not crippled and helpless, having his life sucked out by the living fear that stalked him. With one final ounce of effort, Bodhi tried to climb to his feet. It was a futile effort. He should have known his luck had run out.

           A small child stepped out from the fog. Its skin was pale white, stretching like a scar over its featureless face. It was a thing soulless, soulless and hungry; hungry for the fear that swam in Bodhi’s eyes. It shuffled forwards, cold feet crunching the dead leaves and dry twigs, its fingers rattling like bones, inching closer towards Bodhi’s face.  Vomit surged up Bodhi’s throat, but when he opened his mouth, the only thing that escaped was a scream.

Reviews

[Christoph Poe]

I feel like you really have something great going on here, so I'm going to gut it some. I hope you don't mind, but maybe it will help. Please remember I'm not a professional, but I have been doing this for a good minute now.

"A strange wind shrieked through the forest. Branches swayed and twisted into ugly dances, clashing their claws at the veil of ubiquitous fog. A dark figure plunged through the trees, hands masking his face, bare feet slapping and sliding on the muddy earth, breath rasping inside his chest. He stumbled over a tree root, lost balance, flipping through the air in an awkward roll."

This is your opening paragraph, so make it amazing. I would completely remove the first sentence because you provide us an excellent description of the wind in the next sentence. So here is where things might become a bit difficult to explain. Your description of the wind is not "flowing" with the description of the figure falling/jumping through the tress. They are both excellent descriptions, but they stand alone. They appear too random to sit side by side. My thoughts while reading were: "oh, very mysterious. This is a beautiful picture of the woods." Then it all went by the wayside when the figure just "fell through the trees."

Your organization of events within each paragraph need to rise an fall. You have a rise in this first paragraph, but ending it so abruptly kinda sends your reader off a cliff. (In a bad way.) Writing poetry has helped me in some ways to kill this, though there's no real practice that I know of. Everyone works differently. Read a high acclaimed novel, look for a meaty paragraph, and notice how the "train" of thoughts hit a high point, the point they are trying to prove, then the tension will fall back down. (Your readers WANT a roller coaster ride.) This isn't used in all styles and methods of writing, but it's pretty common, and always works well in the readers heads.

To summarize what I mentioned above, you have brilliant description, then action, then more action, then MORE action. We >>the readers