The people who live in the house across the field seem nice. I can tell they want to help me, but the thing is that they can’t. I can’t let them.
The father tried to catch me once. I led him on a long chase deep through the woods until he gave up and went back home.
Their house looks warm and cozy on cold nights like this. I wish I could go in. They play music and sing sometimes and they laugh and all of the food they cook smells wonderful.
Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly brave like I did yesterday evening I go up and knock on their door.
The daughter opened it. “Mom, it’s the girl, the one who lives in the woods!”
The mother ran to the door and was as kind as kind can be. She asked me if I wanted to come in and have dinner with them. I wanted to. I wanted to more than anything, but I told her no thank you.
“Please come in, you’ll freeze out there. Your coat is thin and your boots are falling apart. Come in with us and be safe and warm.”
I almost did. I was tired and oh so hungry, and weary from being on my own. But I remember sometime back when there were others who had promised they’d keep me safe and they didn’t, and I don’t want to feel safe and warm again only to have it snatched away.
The mother does what she can to help me. She gives me a bottle of water and two sandwiches and the daughter brings me a blanket and a pair of wool socks and her old boots which are just my size and in much better condition than the ones I’m wearing.
I change my socks and boots right there and feel warmer already. I leave my old ones on their porch, wrap the blanket around me and trudge back through the snow into the woods.
Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to have dinner with them, and I’ll let the mother be my mother and the father be my father and the daughter and I can be sisters who argue sometimes but love each other most of all, but I’m not brave enough tonight. Tonight I’m still the girl who is only free under the open sky and only protected by the snowy trees. I am the girl stuck in winter, because for now this is the only girl that I feel safe to be.