its head to accommodate her short arm. The older girl guardedly approaches. “Anna, I don’t like this. We should go. We need to find our way home.”
“Clara, stop. It’s perfectly fine. Come here and see for yourself.”
The older girl slowly steps closer. She reaches out her hand for the unisus to sniff. At first it objects to her and moves backward. The younger girl reassures the creature and it calms itself and leans in to the older girl’s hand. A smile spreads across her face, warming her expression.
A soft glow of light illuminates my pendant and suddenly I am overwhelmed by the fact that these are my sisters. Clara, the beautiful girl who dreams of a family of her own and does so much to care for me. Anna, the only one in our family who can tame each and every animal on our farm with her gentle words and touches. Why am I seeing this moment? And then, without any warning, it becomes clear.
A deafening roar shreds the silence as a ferocious bettinger soars out of the trees and jumps on the back of the unisus. The unisus spreads its wings and screams in protest, trying to shake the murderous beast off its back. Clara shrieks. She grabs hold of Anna and they both fall to the ground. Clara scrambles to move away, encouraging Anna to come with her. Anna lies limp, face down, on the ground.
Clara shakes Anna’s small, lifeless body, begging her to move. She struggles to turn Anna over onto her back. When she finally does, a blood-curdling scream reverberates through the air, nearly drowning out the sound of the attack of the bettinger.
A circular hole, the same size as the horn of the unisus, has been pierced through Anna’s chest and blood gushes out. Her nightgown is soaked in it. Clara covers the wound with her hands, begging the blood to stop flowing.
The bettinger drops the lifeless body of the unisus to the ground and stands sated, blood dripping from its chin and chest. The pristine white fur of the once beautiful unisus is spattered with blood and dirt. No longer the stunning creature Anna had been so captivated by; it lies dead in the frozen dirt of the forest.
The bettinger pants heavily, a low animalistic growl and cry of satisfaction looped into each huff of breath. Somewhere in his blood-drunk euphoria he notices the presence of the girls.
“No,” I say to myself. “No, I can’t watch this.”
Zoë runs around the pond to be by my side. “Is she dead?” I ask her when she reaches me.
“I don’t know.”
The bettinger shrieks and falls to its knees. An ice-cold gush of wind rushes over us. We grab each other’s arms and hold on, expecting the pendant to shift us to another memory. But it doesn’t.
Clara is startled by something she sees in our direction. She falls back onto the ground while scrambling to get away.
Zoë and I look over our heads, as the air grows bitterly cold, our breath easily visible. A thick, black cloud of smoke hangs over us.
Clara scrambles to her feet and grabs Anna's arms. She tries desperately to drag her away, but doesn’t get more than a few feet before the black cloud is hovered over her and slowly descending. Fear gripping her, she releases Anna, leaving her lifeless body behind and runs for the cover of a large tree trunk.
I make the mistake of looking down at the frosty white ground where I see a trail of blood—Anna’s blood—streaked around the edge of the pond. My breath catches and I feel weak. “Just hold on to me,” Zoë whispers.
The cloud centers itself over Anna and slowly descends, stopping just before it reaches her body. It slowly expands, covering the length of her entire body, before dropping itself on top of her, engulfing her entire frame. When the cloud retreats, Anna is gone.
Clara stays hidden behind the tree. Her sobs are audible, but she is left unharmed. The cloud vanishes just as quickly as it appeared. The bettinger rises to his feet, no longer under the control of the darkness that subdued him. He knows where Clara is hiding and he heads straight for her. His steps are slow and methodical, as if he is planning a deliciously torturous kill in his mind. Clara. “Zoë, I don’t know if I can watch this happen.”
A vibration spreads through the air, pounding at our eardrums. We cover our ears with our palms but we