AN:// This is a bit old - I wrote it instead of Physics revision for my GCSEs. I got a good mark on the paper, if you're interested :)

Wild Hunt

The blood pounded almost painfully in her ears as she ran. Her hands pushed the more dangerous branches away from her face, earning scratches both deep and shallow to match those that littered her legs.

Anticipating the forest, she wore trousers and a shirt, both of sturdy material, but even they could not stand up to so much abuse from the clawing, bloodthirsty hands of the hawthorns.

Behind her, she could hear a dog calling its fellows to her scent. Drowning in her fear, she could almost feel their breath on her neck. Swiping a hand hurriedly across the back of her head, she saw the warm, sticky wetness of her blood, welling up from a shallow cut on her neck. They were coming for her.

All her life she had heard the tales of Huorne the Hunter, leader of the Wild Hunt. She now knew the truth of the tales, and it was far more horrifying that the fairytales portrayed. She had seen far too many stories with her own eyes for her to dismiss them as fantasy.

She picked up the pace, breath coming in ragged gasps as she tore her way through the undergrowth. Brambles and thorns gouged at her, drawing blood from hundreds of tiny cuts, opening a way for the dogs to trace her. She had to get to the river.

The nymphs there owed her a favour – meaning she had not completely wasted her time in the courts of the Fair Folk. She could ask them to take a message to Robin Goodfellow, her only definite ally. This didn’t mean much, though. It was a flimsy and untested alliance considering his powerlessness over his master the King.

She raced on, hindered by bushes and her own aching legs. Her lungs burned with the effort of supplying her body with oxygen, and exhaustion crept into every limb. The river was visible now, she could make it.

The horse’s hooves were audible now, catching up on her, threatening her with their pounding of the dust and mud. She tripped, but caught herself and kept on running. But it was enough. The leader snatched her up, crowing his triumph over the rest of the Gentry.

The last thing she saw was Robin, whispering his short apology as he brought the knife up and drew it across. The last thing she heard was his maniacal, hysterical laughter.

Twenty six years later, from the day she set out, they found her. She was wandering blind in the old forest, her voice gone from screaming curses at the faeries that jeered and taunted at her every step.

AN:// Well, there's not much Physics in it... it's meant to be set a few hundred years ago or so, when piskies still inhabited Cornwall and there was a New World waiting to be settled. Whether that helps or not, I don't know.