The Springborn

CALDER

I watch her from the forest shadows—but not in an improper or sinister way. It’s for her own good. Her protection.

Almost every day, I follow her as she walks through the woods with that ugly burlap sack in her hands. She moves like one born to the forest. Not like a lumbering bear or skittering chipmunk, but like a nimble young doe. Which is fitting, given her antlers.

I know all about the antlers.

She thinks only her parents are aware of them. She does well at hiding the bumps on her head and never removes the detached antlers from the bag unless she’s deep in the woods. I’m not one for peering into windows, but I confess that, out of concern, I have done so a time or two. Or ten. If I can help it, I shall not spy on her through the clouded glass panes ever again. The sight of her sadness, the cruel-toothed saw, the severe set of her father’s jaw—it is too much to be borne.

In the woods, though, I will watch her. I was given the task by my guardian and I take it seriously. This girl must be kept safe until the day she’s invited to join our little family of curiously gifted folk, or the day she chooses to run away from her unkind parents. The world is full of hateful men and women who would kill her before trying to understand her differentness. History speaks of martyrs murdered for less than wearing a set of antlers. Mankind is keen to reject and spurn rather than to embrace and love. I will not let her be jailed or burned.

When first I saw her six years ago, I was thirteen years old. It was not love at first sight. Even I know that such a thing is more mythical than girls with antlers. But when I saw her, my heart said, “I know her, and have always known her, even outside of time.” That is the truth, and I will stand upon it until my dying day.

Today is Christmas, but events unfold as usual. She creeps out the front door of her wooden house, looks both ways, and then runs through the dusting of snow in the direction of the woods. To the same path she always takes. She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t hear me. She doesn’t know that I see the wet streaks of tears on her pale cheeks, or that they wrench my heart most painfully.

I trail behind her as she steps into the shelter of the pines. We walk together, but separately. Our feet trod over dead ferns and dormant moss. I listen hard for strangers and predatory animals. No harm will come to my antlered girl if I can help it—other than the harm already done to her by parents who ought to love her.

Who might she become when she realizes that she is wonderfully special rather than a shameful secret?

The day of her liberation from them cannot come soon enough.