For Those Who Dream Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page A

face when she first told him he had a son. His face had lit up;
he had taken the little boy from her and held him in his big, strong arms … her
husband … then an image of the last time she had seen him – seen his mutilated
corpse tied to the old walnut tree in the orchard…
    She
was back in the present, fighting to save her children – losing the fight to
save her children. The little pig was gone – she had put it in the wicker
basket at the side of the sleigh and fastened the straps when the soldiers were
getting drunk inside her house. She had gone back to the barn to get the
children, to flee with them under cover of darkness to what she hoped would be
the relative safety of her parents’ village. Someone must have seen her put the
little pig in the basket, someone cruel enough to take the time to do up the
straps after sentencing her children to death in the wolf-infested forest.
    The
little pig was gone and another sacrifice was needed in its place to protect
the horse. The woman prepared to jump out of the sleigh. She turned to Irena
and shouted, “Give Vitek to Kasia!” Irena stared at her mother blankly. “Give
your brother to Kasia!” The woman’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch.
Four-year-old Kasia clung onto her two-year-old sister, and Irena began to cry,
clutching her brother even tighter. “Give him to her!” screamed the woman, “I
need you to hold the reins!” But even as she said it, she knew that the
six-year-old would never be able to control the terrified horse. Her own hands
were a bloody ruin and she wondered how she was able to hang on as the frantic
animal fought its way forward.
    “Irena!
Give Vitek to Kasia – now!” But Irena saw something in her mother’s eyes that
scared her more than the dark and the shaking sleigh and even the wolves. She
clutched her brother to her chest and shook her head, fresh tears rolling down
her face and freezing to her cheeks.
    A
large silver wolf clamped its jaws onto the horse’s left hind leg. The horse
stumbled, but managed to right itself and the wolf let go, unable to keep up
with the horse in the deep snow – but not for long. As the chestnut reeled, the
sleigh lurched and the woman panicked. She had to act now or lose all her
children. She could not give her life for them because they would never make it
to safety without her. But a sacrifice had to be made. If she could not die to
save her children, then one of them would have to die to save the others. She
would not lose them all. One of them would have to die and she would have to
choose. The delicate fabric of the woman’s sanity was finally stretched to its
limits and gave way. She threw back her head and howled her anguish into the
night. All around her the night howled back.
    The
woman turned and looked into the faces of her children. A sharp intake of
breath – like that taken by one about to drown. She took the reins in one hand,
and with the other she reached out for her beloved son – her husband’s greatest
joy; the frailest of her children, half-frozen despite his sister’s efforts to
keep him warm, too exhausted even to cry, and the least likely to survive the
journey.
    “Give
him to me!” she screamed at Irena. The girl struggled with her mother. The
woman wrenched her baby out of her daughter’s grasp and held him to her, gazing
for a moment into his eyes. The woman smiled through her tears at her son. Snow
was falling on the baby’s upturned face, the frost had tinged his lips a pale
blue, but in the woman’s fevered mind, her baby smiled back at her.
    Two
of the wolves had closed in on the horse and were trying to bring it down. The
woman screamed and threw Vitek as far from the sleigh as she could. There was a
moment’s silence, then a triumphant yelping as the wolves turned their
attention away from the horse, and rushed away into the night. Irena cried out,
and her little sisters stared uncomprehendingly at their mother, who screamed
and screamed as she