The sound of Evelyn's screams was slowly swallowed by the darkness of night, leaving only the rustle of breaking branches and the shrill baying of hunting dogs fading into the distance toward the west. Beneath the roots of a massive oak tree, the darkness felt far denser and more oppressive.
Anna Bell curled into herself. Her tiny body trembled violently atop a bed of cold, dry leaves. She could feel her own short, ragged breaths misting against the patched, threadbare cloth her mother had draped over her before leaving. In the dead of night, the smells of wet earth, tree sap, and the lingering scent of her mother's sweat clung to the fabric's fibers. To her, that scent was the only thing proving she was still alive, that the world had not been completely destroyed.
“Mom...” she whispered, so softly the word was almost soundless.
The voice became trapped in the narrow gap between the roots. Her memory returned to Evelyn's eyes moments earlier—eyes filled with overwhelming fear, but also radiating profound resignation. Anna remembered the warmth of her mother's trembling fingers as they released her grip one by one, until nothing remained but cold air stinging her skin.
Outside, the startled flap of a nocturnal bird's wings shattered the forest's silence. Anna tightened her arms around her chest, trying to keep her body from shaking so the dry leaves around her would not make a sound. She remembered Evelyn's warning clearly: Don't make a sound. Don't come out. She repeated the words in her mind like a protective spell against the monsters that might be roaming outside her hiding place.
Time crawled by. Every minute felt like a string of frozen hours.
The dogs that had been barking back and forth finally disappeared altogether. The night wind blew harder, swaying the high branches above her and creating a frightening sound like one long whisper. In that dark place, the black shadows cast by gaps in the branches covering her hiding place looked like long fingers reaching for her.
Pure fear slowly gave way to a crushing loneliness in the chest of the four-year-old child. She did not know how long she had been asleep or unconscious, or whether this night would ever end. At Black Hollow Plantation, night always passed quickly because dawn meant forced labor beginning again beneath the crack of the whip. But in this forest, night felt eternal, trapping her in a hollow space without answers.
Would her mom come back? The question knocked against her mind again and again. In her innocent imagination, Evelyn was merely wandering among the great trees, searching for firewood or wild fruit, and soon those warm hands would part the bushes again and come take her away from this darkness.
Yet the deepest part of her, shaped by the cruelty of Black Hollow, whispered a different truth. The children on the plantation knew all too well what happened when someone was chased by those men wearing leather headbands. Those who were brought back were never the same again, and those who did not return... were treated as though they had never existed.
Streaks of gray light slowly began to pierce the gaps between the branches covering the opening beneath the roots. Dawn broke, casting a cold hue over the thick fog hanging between the tree trunks. Forest birds began to chirp, greeting the morning with cheerful songs that felt cruelly ironic to Anna Bell.
The sun climbed higher, sweeping away the darkness and replacing it with golden light filtering through gaps in the leaves. Following her mother's instructions, Anna waited until no more strange sounds could be heard.
With hands numb from the cold and from lying stiffly in one position, Anna slowly pushed aside the broken branches covering her hiding place. The dry sticks tumbled down. She crawled out from beneath the roots of the massive oak and rubbed her swollen eyes, wet with tears that had never had the chance to fall.
The forest in the morning felt vast, unfamiliar, and terrifying. There were no torch marks. No sound of heavy boots. Only thin fog crawling over the ground and churned earth marked by footsteps leading west.
“Mom?” The call now escaped her pale lips, slightly louder than it had the night before.
Silence. Only the whisper of the wind answered her.
Anna walked a few steps, following the trail of broken branches. Her small bare feet pressed into the wet earth. She stopped beside an old tree whose surface bore a smear of thick, dried blood—the place where her mother had been caught or had fallen the night before.
There, Anna stood alone amid the splendor of the indifferent forest. There was no warm embrace. No soothing whisper. At such a tender age, she understood one thing with certainty: she had been abandoned. The warmth of the love she had once known had now become a gaping hole in her chest—a cold wound that would one day grow into anger and questions demanding answers for decades to come.