The Ritual

creatures of the forest think in order to prolong their lives and to evade the skilful predators.
    The chorus above knock their little feet upon the floor of the attic. They bang the old timbers for blood.
    He looks down at the old woman, but she is no longer before him in the room. The house cracks about him like an old hand closing its fingers; he stands alone amongst the splinters and the dust,
holding the knife.
    When the sun broke through the thin cloud, Luke awoke.
    Again.
    And sat up, gasping. But this time the air was colder and sharper around his naked body and he knew that this time he was really awake.
    Luke adjusted his position upon the bed to ease the aches in his ankles. He rubbed at his sore wrists. Widened his feet. The dreams let go of him.
    His breath caught in his throat.
    He was untied.
    Startled mute and perfectly still by this realization, he stared at how the eiderdown had been turned down to the foot of the bed. Between his knees on the tatty sheepskins was a red Swiss Army
knife; the main blade folded out. It was his knife.
    Draped over the side of the bed was the blood-mired gown and the little crown of flowers.

SIXTY-FOUR
    Naked, Luke squatted upon the floor of his room and watched the door. It was early. Outside his window the sun was bright and steely where it found fissures in the cloud cover.
The rain had stopped.
    He stilled the rushing of his thoughts; the chattery clutter that was eroding his advantage before he realized he had one. He tried instead to understand his new position in a world that was
entirely a place of confusion, of terror, of the impossible and his bafflement before it.
    The old woman; she came to him in a dream while he slept in the wretched bed, bound like a captive, like a sacrifice. But now he was free and within his hand was a knife. So she had really come
in the night and cut his restraints and left him a weapon?
    He gaped, he grinned.
    They were so angry with the old lady last night, when she refused to call that thing out there, out from amongst the black trees. She disobeyed Loki; she refused to bring the demon, the God, to
take him as he hung upon the cross. And now she wanted him to run, or to get rid of the youths from her home; he wasn’t sure which, but he had good cause to do both.
    The impossible idea of him living again, for more than just a few hours, came back to him. It took his breath away, even his balance, and he had to steady himself by putting one hand against the
dirty floorboards.
    The awareness of his new circumstances shivered through him; it was a white electricity coursing under his skin. It made his eyelids jump and the nerves spark inside his muscles. He was as light
as helium, as fast and jittery as a hare.
    He could not remember ever feeling the same way before. There seemed to be no limit now to where his mind could reach or to where his limbs could carry him. He was strength. He was unbound.
    And unsure he had ever been fully awake before right now, right here; naked and dirty and scarred and so reduced in this moment-by-moment existence. And he understood that he had given up long
before this time. Had been drifting. Baffled. Inactive. Futile. His old self was flimsy, insubstantial. His old world grey. There had been hesitation at critical moments; so much self-doubt. He had
languished, demoralized, for so long, forever. He understood this. The realizations came all at once and very quickly. His whole life until this moment was preposterous; and himself in that life
absurd.
    But now he wanted to live.
    If he survived the next few minutes, every moment of his life would sing. Each word spoken would have meaning, every meal eaten and drink taken would be a gift: his salvation would be the living
of life.
    He smiled at himself. He was simply not about giving up. He received again a sense of what he loved, of who he no longer wanted to disappoint, of what he wanted to live for. It came back to him,
but stronger, and clearer than ever. His memory rested on the image of his little dog, at home; the small trusting figure, blinking snowy eyelids up at him in the mouth of his tiny dismal kitchen.
He smiled and he cried silently at the same time.
    He mattered again to himself. Watching his own end come closer and closer, while in constant fear, was abhorrent to him. He had arms and legs he could still move; senses that received and
experienced the utter wonder of existence, moment by moment. He laughed, quietly, through