El ran, and the branches bit and tore into her legs, her dress. She didn't pause for breath, only ran, choking back tears, ignoring the pounding in her head and the stitch in her side. Sirens wailed and lights flashed. Overhead, a helicopter made wide, sweeping circles through the sky, shining a searchlight over the uniform streets of Mike's neighborhood.
Mike.
The bad men were at his house, questioning him, tainting him with their empty promises and lies.
Lies lies lies lies lies lies
The word repeats, over and over, in her mind like a mantra, until the sound detaches itself from meaning and hangs there, in the dark.
Lies ruled her life, defined every chapter, one after another, until she found him.
Mike.
He's the only truth she'd ever known. He taught her what it is to be a friend, to be kind. To be brave. He's a promise.
El pressed her palm over her lips, still coated in slime and sticky membrane. An enormous, agonized gasp slipped from her mouth, muffled by her fingers.
No time. No time to think about him, now. No time to go back, to reach him, to touch him, to hold him in her arms.
She stopped when she reached the woods, near Mirkwood, near the storm drain's entrance. Her fingers brushed over the bark of the nearest tree, and she leaned against it, cupping a stitch in her side. She wiped her face with her hand, clearing away the dirt and tears and goo, and glanced at the sky. The helicopter drew nearer, and she could hear its propeller whirring, filling the night with its ugly, mechanic hum.
She forced herself to move, fear and instinct drawing her away from the clearing, towards a fallen tree. She got on her hands and knees and crawled through the foliage, nestling into the bushes. She stole another glance at the sky. The helicopter's searchlight drowned out the stars.
For a moment, it was quiet. El attempted to slow her breathing, sucking oxygen through her nose. The soil underneath her was cool and damp, and the mid-November air carried a chill. Her clothes were still damp from the kiddie pool, and coated in wet slime. She shivered and tucked her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible.
She could hear all types of woodland creatures moving about in the brush and in the trees. An owl crooned, and a lone cricket sung its ballad in the bushes only a foot away.
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over her lashes. A branch snapped, and faint voices punctured the gentle mumblings of the animals in the woods.
The voices grew louder, and flashlight beams sliced through the darkness, skirting the ground, dipping and wobbling. El closes her eyes, listening to the voices draw nearer, trembling. And over and over in her mind, the word promise. She anchors herself in that word, accompanied by Mike's earnest, freckled face.
An hour passed, and two, and the bad men moved into another part of the woods. She drifted in and out of consciousness, and everything in her body ached. The dull pounding in her head wouldn't go away.
She woke as the sky began to lighten, filling the woods with soft, gray light. She stifled a yawn with her hand and sat up, carefully, straining her ears against the silence. The bad men were gone. The helicopters were gone. The sirens were gone.
She stood, and the muscles in her legs protested, painfully. She was stiff and sore from lying there for so long. She took a tentative step and wiggled her toes inside her sneakers, trying to work the feeling back into her legs.
El's stomach groaned. She wished she had Eggos, or any of Dustin's snacks, really. She was thirsty, too.
She spent the day wandering the woods, debating whether she should risk a visit to the town. It was dangerous, but she was so hungry, so tired . . .
She decided against it. The bad men were still looking for her. She needed to stay safe, stay hidden.
The hours bled into days, and the days bled into one another.
El wandered, treading softly, careful to stay out of sight and away from the roads. The days grew colder. The nights were coldest. She pulled the blue flannel, grimy and worn with holes, tighter around herself. She watched her exhalations float and dance in the air, dressed in white. She got water from a small stream running through the woods. She learned to find food, to hunt, to build a fire.
She began to count the days.
On the third day, she killed a rat and ate it, grateful for what small bit of nourishment it gave. In the lab, she killed a small, white mouse not unlike it. Papa told her to.
On the seventh day, three high school boys wandered into the woods. El heard their voices and dropped to the ground, covering her mouth with her hand to muffle her breathing. They paused in a clearing only a couple yards to her left. She could hear the click of a lighter, and made out the soft, orange glow of a cigarette. They remained there for an hour or so, chainsmoking and talking and laughing. As they turned to leave, the lighter floated out of a boy's jacket pocket and landed in her open palm. El ran her fingertip over the cool, smooth metal, wiped the trickle of blood from her upper lip, and smiled. In the late afternoon, she built a small fire, and enjoyed the first warmth she'd felt in the better part of a week.
On the thirteenth day, it snowed. It was the first time she'd ever seen snow. It was beautiful, at first, all the flakes in the breeze, melting on her lashes and her tongue. Eventually, the wind picked up, and the snow came harder, at an odd angle, stinging her cheeks, freezing her bare legs. She pulled her arms and knees into the flannel and built up a fire. She avoided sleep, scared that if she drifted off she'd freeze. Sometime in the night, though, she nodded off.
When she awoke, three-foot snow drifts covered every surface. The woods had transformed into something entirely new. She trudged through the drifts, knowing she must keep herself moving. The snow clung to her dirty pink dress. Her whole body ached, from the cold and loneliness. Snow blanketed the tree boughs, and the branches bent under their weight. Eventually, the snow grew too heavy, and it fell with a soft thud to the ground. She jumped at these noises, at the softest twitch in the brush. Eventually, she memorized the sounds, grew immune to them, because those cold, inhuman sounds where the only thing that kept her company.
Another week crawled by, and another. El trudged through the snow, trying desperately to keep warm, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. El had been alone for so long, she wasn't even sure she was alive, if she was real. El raised her hands to her face and pressed them over her frigid cheeks, and tears spilled over lashes.
"I'm real." She said, aloud. Her voice was ragged, barely audible from so little use. She started and glanced around, heat racing. Her voice was so loud, so impossibly loud. A squirrel paused on a branch above her. It cocked its head, curiosity winning over fear. It became a meal. It was skinny, from the winter and the shortage of food, but it was enough.
She caught sight of her reflection in the stream and paused, horrified. The girl's image, wavering in the water, was not her own. The girl was skinny, too skinny. Her eyes were empty and sunken in, her bones much too prominent. Her fingernails were torn and bloodied and dirty, from the biting. She stared at the ragged skin around her cuticles, then back at her reflection, trying to find some piece of herself. Trying to find something, anything, left of the girl called El.
The days faded into a colorless smear, immeasurable, and El wondered if any time passed, at all.
She counted the days. On day twenty-two, she attempted to build a shelter out of a fallen sticks and cut her thumb on the jagged edge of a branch. Blood leaked out of the wound, ran the length of the lines in her palms. She gasped, clenched a fist around the bloody cut. She licked her lips and closed her eyes, savoring the sting, the ghost of her pulse in the wound, like a second heartbeat. She sat back and laughed. The woods filled with her rough, maniac laughter. A bird took flight, startled.
"I'm alive." She said, laughing, holding her sides. "I'm alive."
It felt good.
This was pain. This was a bleeding, beating heart. A life force.
On day twenty-seven, a man approached her, holding a rifle, speaking softly. She could see the glint in his eyes, the hunger. She knew that look, she'd seen it too many times. This man was dangerous. Her eyes moved from the gun to his face, and she kept still, heart beating in her throat. The squirrel she'd been cooking rose up and struck the man in the face. She rushed toward him, trembling with anger and fear, and ripped his jacket from his shoulders. She threw it hastily around and her, and, after a pause, took his hat, too.
She ran, finding it hard to breathe or think. She ran until she'd put as much distance between herself and the man as possible, then sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands. She cried until there was nothing left, until she felt empty and numb.
She stood up, and put the jacket on. She zipped it.
It fell past her knees, and the sleeves were much too long. The scent that clung to the fabric was unfamiliar, unpleasant. The jacket was warm, though. And the nights were growing colder, still. She needed the jacket. She ran her hands through her hair, which had begun to grow, and put the hat on, too.
The shelter functioned, though it wasn't perfect. On a particularly warm afternoon, the snow began to melt, and the water dropped through the cracks in the branches. El awoke to the sudden cold on her face, the water droplets falling on her cheeks and nose. Her hat was soaked through. She shivered, sat up, and dragged herself out of the shelter to find more sticks. She tried her best to repair the holes.
She spent a lot of time asleep, curled up in the shelter, trying to keep warm. She lit fires only out of necessity, scared someone or something would see the smoke and flame and come after her.
While she slept, she dreamt. Most of her dreams wandered, full of darkness and shadows and long paths leading to nowhere. Echoey, unintelligible voice called out to her from the darkness, some menacing, some beckoning. Other dreams, she found herself back in the lab, back with Papa.
Mike was a regular visitor in her dreams. Sometimes she saw him in a distant memory, the first night in the woods, or kneeling in front of her, teaching her the definition of friend or promise. Sometimes he screamed and cried, and she tried to get to him, to take his pain away, but she'd wake before she reached him. Sometimes, was just there, close, caressing her face or her hand, never speaking. And his presence was so strong, so real. She'd wake up and the feeling would fade, leaving only the biting cold and snow and silence.
She began to talk out loud, to reassure herself of her own existence. She mumbled words, phrases, tasting the syllables, listening to her own voice.
On the thirtieth day, after a particularly long stretch without anything to eat, she stumbled and fell and didn't get up. She stayed there, tears running down her face, and waited to die. She wanted to die. She watched the sun's procession across the sky through the cracks in the branches. It sank, bathing the woods in long shadows and yellow light.
El drifted in and out of consciousness, numb and dreamless.
She opened her eyes. The stars winked and glittered. A rabbit wandered by, fur coated in snow. It paused, poised on its hind legs, and blinked. It remained there for a long moment, ears twitching, then went about its business, unconcerned.
She inhaled, staring up at the sky, shaking from the hunger and the cold. Slowly, painstakingly, she lifted her hand to her face and pressed it against her cheek. Her fingers had begun to turn blue. She sniffed, swallowing the tears.
She made herself move, then, biting her lips to keep from crying out, because her whole body hurt. It hurt to move or think or breathe and she didn't know if she wanted to keep going on like this. There was no end or beginning, just pain. And snow. And silence.
It was much too quiet.
Blood ran over her teeth and her tongue, mingling with saliva. She spit.
She stood up, swayed, dizzy on her feet. The rabbit paused again, cocked its head.
"You promised." El whispered, to herself. She shook her sleeves over her hands and drew them close to her body. El turned her back on the animal and stumbled off.
On the thirty-sixth day, a car engine rumbled in the distance. She froze, licking her chapped lips. Darkness had long fallen, and she thought she ought to return to her makeshift shelter. Something kept her there, though, frozen, listening to the engine cut and die. Before she could fully comprehend a decision, her legs carried her toward the noise. She stopped, near the road, and cling to a tree. A man, armed with a flashlight, made his way through the woods. He was large and tall, and he wore a hat, and something about his lumbering gait seemed familiar. She covered her mouth with her sleeve and waited. The man paused, looked over his shoulder, then to the left and right. He knelt down. For the first time, El noticed a small, wooden box, half buried in the snow. She watched. She waited.
The man turned his head, and El connected name to face. This was the Chief. This was the big man that helped them save Will. This man cared. This man was good.
She watched him pull a small package out of his pocket, lift the lid of the wooden box, and place the package inside. He sighed, ran a hand over the stubble on his face, and straightened up. El remained by the knot of snow laden trees, still and silent. Her heart beat against her chest, fast. A part of her wanted step into the beam of his flashlight. She made to move forward, but something kept her there, concealed, among the trees.
Hopper turned to leave, throwing a last, weary glance over his shoulder.
El waited until the car engine hummed to life, then faded as he car sped down Mirkwood, before creeping out of her hiding place. She knelt before the box and lifted the lid. Inside, there was a small, plastic container. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands, then pried open the lid. There was a small bread roll, wrapped in a napkin, and an apple. She took the roll and crammed it into her mouth, shut the box, and took off into the woods, hugging the container close to her chest.
El sat in the shelter, that night, chewing the bread, mind and heart racing. He knew she was here, cared enough to leave food. She fell asleep with her stomach full, feeling considerably lighter and warmer. Content.
Hopper visited several more times, over the course of the week. El waited for him in the evenings, crouched low to the ground. Sometimes, he waits a few moments, peering into the woods, shining his light on the shrubbery, the bushes. Sometimes he lights a cigarette and takes a few drags, thinking. Often, he sighs, deflated, and makes the trip to his car in silence.
On the night of his fourth visit, El watched him leave. She steeled herself, swallowing, and followed him out of the woods.
No more.
No more hiding.
As he reached his car, he turned. She stopped, looking at him, trying to conceal the trembling.
He saved Will. He brought her food.
Hopper swallowed, took off his hat.
"Eleven?" He asked, softly.
"El." She said.
Hopper drew a shaky breath and smiled.
"Merry Christmas, El."