CHAPTER 1: AN ANGEL AMIDST THE SNOW
The wind doesn't just blow tonight; it howls. It is a guttural sound that strikes the wooden walls of my small cabin with malice—a structure that, while usually my sanctuary where the whisper of the pines lulls me to sleep, feels fragile today, almost defenseless. There is something in the frequency of that whistling that isn't normal; it feels like a warning, a dark omen traveling down from the highest peaks. Winter in these mountains knows no mercy; it is a severe judge that accepts no pleas, and unfortunately, my bank account shares that same implacable coldness.
I stand in the kitchen, my gaze fixed on the rent receipts resting on the worn wooden table. They are cold papers, death sentences for my stability. Having been fired from the village café just two days ago, that pile of crumpled bills I keep in the drawer is the last of what I have left. I am not going to cry. I forbid myself. If I start now, I fear I won't be able to stop until the spring thaws the mountain.
"Tomorrow is another day, Cassandra," I whisper to myself, my voice barely a thread lost in the empty room. I tighten my old wool robe around me, searching for a warmth that seems to escape through the cracks in the windows. "Tomorrow you'll look for something. Tomorrow you won't be afraid. You'll find a way to keep going, just like you always do."
Just as I reach out to turn off the kitchen light and submerge myself in the safety of the shadows in my bedroom, a sound different from the wind cuts through the air. It isn't the cracking of a branch or the whistle of air through the rocks. It is a lament.
I stop dead in my tracks. My heart takes a violent leap against my ribs, paralyzing me. Then, it happens again: a hoarse, deep crackle, laden with an agony so dense it freezes my blood far more than the air seeping under the door. It comes from the back, where the small clearing of my garden surrenders to the impenetrable and ravenous darkness of the national forest.
My survival instinct, which is usually quite loud, begins to scream at me. "Turn around, Cassandra. Walk to your room, double-lock the door, get under the blankets, and don't come out until the sun rises." But there is something in that sound, an almost human vulnerability, that pulls my feet in the opposite direction. With trembling hands that can barely hold the cold plastic, I grab the flashlight from the side table and open the back door.
The porch light is on, but its glow is weak, barely able to reclaim a few meters of the yard before being devoured by the blackness. As I step out, the snow strikes my face like a thousand crystal needles. The blizzard is fierce. I aim the flashlight beam outward; the light dances erratically over the white mantle, revealing the frantic dance of the flakes, until it stops on something that does not fit the landscape.
"You shouldn't be out here, Cassandra. This is the stupidest thing you've ever done in your life. Turn around right now." That is what a sensible woman would do, someone with a grain of logic in her head. But, since I've already accepted that sense is not my greatest virtue, I continue taking steps forward.
At first, what I see looks like a deformed rock, covered in mud and forest debris. However, as the beam of light stabilizes, I notice a rhythmic movement. A flank rises and falls with agonizing difficulty. It is a living being. From the shape, it is obviously an animal, but the true question that freezes my soul is: what kind of animal is large enough to look like a boulder?
Sinking up to my knees in the snow, ignoring how my feet instantly go numb, losing all sensation, I draw closer.
"Hello?" My voice cracks, lost in the roar of the forest.
When I am a few meters away, reality hits me. It isn't a rock, nor a bear, nor any predator that usually stalks these peaks. It's a dog. Or at least, it has the shape of one, though its dimensions are surreal. It is an immaculate white—or it would be, if it weren't soaked in mud and a red liquid so dark it looks black under the artificial light of my flashlight. It is a massive beast, majestic and, despite its state, terrifying. It lies on its side, and the snow around it is no longer white; it is a crimson lake spreading rapidly.
"Oh my God… little one, what happened to you?" My breath escapes in a cloud of vapor that dissipates instantly.
I move closer, and the scent hits me like a punch: iron, damp earth, and the unmistakable fragrance of approaching death. Seeing the wound up close, my stomach does a violent flip. It is a diagonal gash, deep and clean, running from its shoulder to its chest. It's as if a giant knife or a nightmare claw had tried to split it in half. The flesh is gaping wide, exposing living tissue that pulses with a weakness that tears at my heart.
I feel a wave of nausea. I've always had an unbearable aversion to blood; a simple cut from a kitchen knife turns me pale and makes me sit down so I don't faint. Now, seeing this magnitude of butchery on this poor animal makes the world begin to spin.
"Leave, Cassandra. Go inside and lock the door. It's going to die anyway; there's nothing you can do for it," my subconscious hisses. Have I mentioned that my inner voice can be a bitch without a shred of humanity? Many times I have listened to her to avoid trouble, and today, for a second, I am about to obey.
But just as my boots begin to turn to flee, the dog opens an eye.
I am petrified. It is electric blue, a color so intense and unnatural it seems to glow with its own light in the middle of the storm. There is no aggression in that gaze, no wild glint you would expect from a wounded animal. There is a silent plea, a final trace of a deep intelligence clinging to existence. That blue eye anchors me to the ground more firmly than the ice. I cannot let it die like this. Not on my watch. Not in my garden.
"Don't move… well, I know you can't," I tell him, trying to keep my voice from trembling so much, more to convince myself than to calm him. "I'm going to help you. I swear."
I race back inside the house, panic injecting an adrenaline that makes me ignore the cold. I grab the thickest sheet I have in the linen closet and a heavy wool blanket. I go out again, and this time the cold pierces to my bones, but I no longer care.
Reaching his side, I realize the logistical problem. This creature is massive. It must weigh at least eighty kilos of pure muscle and soaked fur. It is physically impossible for me to carry him in my arms. I have to be smarter than the strength I don't possess.
I think feverishly as I spread the sheet on the ground right next to his back. I drop to my knees in the snow, feeling the ice bite my skin with a cruelty necessary to keep me awake.
"Forgive me, this is probably going to hurt a lot," I whisper to him, hoping my tone conveys that I am not a threat.
I sit on the ground, digging my boots into the snow to gain traction so I don't slip. The plan is simple but exhausting: I have to get him onto the sheet first. I place my legs on either side of his inert body and brace my thighs against his wounded side, trying not to directly touch the open flesh. I can't lift him... I'll have to roll him.
With a groan of effort that tears at my throat, I push with all the strength of my back while pulling the sheet from the other side. The enormous dog lets out a dull growl, a low vibration I feel in my own bones. The smell of blood intensifies, hot and metallic. I feel the liquid soak through my robe, staining my hands and clothes. Dizziness threatens to disconnect me, to send me into the dark, but I grit my teeth until my jaw aches.
"Move, damn it!" I scream, giving one last desperate shove with my legs.
With a clumsy, heavy motion, the dog's body finally rolls onto the fabric. I pant, my heart hammering against my side like a caged bird trying to escape its own ribs. But the job isn't done. Now comes the hardest part: dragging him to the house.
I stand up, wrap the ends of the sheet around my hands until the fabric cuts off my circulation, and start to pull. My muscles burn as if they were on fire. I move back step by step, facing away from the cabin, as my feet slip over and over in the mud and snow that the animal's own weight has churned up. Every inch is a victory won through pain. Getting up the two small porch steps requires a superhuman effort that makes me see stars in the darkness. Finally, with one last tug that leaves me breathless, I manage to cross the threshold and drag him to the center of the living room.
I slam the door shut, throw the bolt, and return to his side. The heat from the furnace envelops us immediately, but the sight under the warm lights of the house is much worse than I imagined.
He is there, on my light-colored rug, leaving a trail of dirt, mud, and blood that looks like a violent crime scene. I collapse to the floor beside him, my hands shaking so hard I have to press them against my thighs. Seeing my own palms stained with his blood, the revulsion returns with renewed force. I run to the bathroom and vomit in the sink, my fingers gripping the cold porcelain rim tightly.
"Calm down, Cassandra. Breathe. If you faint now, he dies," I tell myself in the mirror. My face is as pale as a ghost's, my eyes wide and frantic.
I return to the living room. The dog is barely breathing; his chest rises and falls in increasingly long intervals. Quickly, I grab my phone with clumsy hands and search Google: "how to heal a deep wound in a dog," "first aid for large animals." Nothing I read seems enough for a gash of this magnitude. I check the time: it's two in the morning. I can't believe so much time has passed. No vets are open at this hour, and even if they were, I have no way to transport him nor the money to pay for a night emergency.
"I'll have to do it myself," I whisper, feeling the weight of fate crushing my shoulders.
I look for the first aid kit in the bathroom. I have alcohol, gauze, and a suture kit I've kept since my grandmother, with her country wisdom, taught me to sew wounds on the farm. I also find an old bottle of whiskey someone gave me a long time ago. That last one will serve... to disinfect and, perhaps, to give me the courage I lack.
I heat some water in the microwave and return to his side. I sit on the floor once more, straddling him, but this time with infinite delicacy. With warm water, I begin to wash the wound. As I clear away the crust of dirt and snow, the gash reveals itself in all its rawness. Someone has attacked him with malice. The cut is clean, diagonal, almost surgical. This wasn't an accident with a branch or a fight with another wolf.
"Who did this to you?" I ask him, as the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
The dog doesn't answer, obviously. He doesn't even growl when the alcohol touches his open flesh; he is too weak to defend himself or even to feel the pain. I take advantage of this semi-conscious state to start sewing. My hands, which wouldn't stop trembling before, become strangely steady, guided by a rush of pure adrenaline. Every time the needle pierces his thick skin, I feel a small electric shock in my fingers. My mind disconnects from the revulsion and focuses only on the task, following the instructions of a video tutorial I play over and over on the phone propped against a cushion.
Stitch after stitch. Knot after knot. When I finish, I bandage him tightly, wrapping his enormous torso with strips of clean cloth. I am exhausted. Moving him to pass the bandages has been like trying to move a mountain of living stone.
I can already predict that my meager savings for rent are destined to disappear tomorrow on medicine and, if I'm lucky, on a clandestine visit from a vet who doesn't ask too many questions. But in this moment, in front of this being breathing heavily in my living room, money seems like a problem from another life.
I go to the kitchen, heat up some chicken broth, and, using a dropper I normally use for my plants, I begin to hydrate him drop by drop between his white, long, and sharp fangs. Then I do the same with water.
Finally, I drag over a pile of blankets and cover him completely, leaving only his snout out. I watch him, feeling a strange satisfaction mixed with a latent terror. The fear hasn't gone; it has only changed shape. What if he wakes up and rips out my throat? What if he decides I am his next meal? I've heard stories of large dogs attacking their owners... and this isn't even a normal dog.
The adrenaline begins to fade, leaving a heavy emptiness in my muscles. I reach for my small air pistol—the only thing I have to defend myself in this isolated cabin—and move toward the sofa, a few meters from him. My eyelids weigh tons. The last thing I see before succumbing to sleep is the glow of the fireplace reflected in his fur, now clean, and those blue eyes that, before closing, seemed to trust a human being for the very first time.