Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Christopher Kloeble

the creature was standing up to its chest in the water, scanning the opposite shore. Then it slipped back into the forest. Anni leapt up and ran along the lakeshore, dodging branches, leaping over roots, but never taking her eyes from the spot where the creature had disappeared among the trees. When she reached it, she heard a branch snapping, followed the sound as quietly as possible, pressing deeper into the woods, groping from trunk to trunk in the half-light, scraping her palms on the bark, creeping slowly along, then pausing to listen: the tentative groans of the trees, and beneath, her heartbeat. Anni panted for breath, coughed, stumbled, tripped over a pine sapling.

Its needles fluttered. The last sunbeams hung in the treetops high above her, and down below the shadows were gathering. If our father had been there, she would simply have had to hold his callused hand to find herself home again: the forest had swallowed him up every morning, and every evening spat him out again, often with some sort of booty in tow. Anni stood up, and set her cap aright. “I know my way around here,” she said to herself. “I KNOWMY WAY AROUND HERE JUST FINE.” Ine-ine-ine! mocked the pines. The creature stepped out from behind a tree not five feet in front of her. It wasn’t naked any longer, instead it wore pants and a shirt and a coat, like a man, and it

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