Atalanta

by Jennifer Saint

The air was golden-green, filtering through the leaves, rich with the scent of pine and cypress and soft black earth. A fat spider squatted in the center of her web between two branches, her hairy brown body and striped legs almost disappearing against the bark. A snake darted forward, coiling swiftly into a protective circle, the diamond sheen of its scales glittering where the sunlight fell across it. Where the trees thinned out on the higher slopes of the mountain, lions prowled, sleek and soundless through the ragged bushes and rocky outcrops—a forest sharp with fangs and claws, trickling with venom, pulsing with life and beauty. There were a thousand interconnected threads crisscrossing through it: from the ancient roots soaking up water deep beneath the earth so that the trees could lift their mighty crowns toward the sun, to the insects that burrowed into the deep crevices of the bark, to the birds that nested in the boughs, to the deer that trotted lightly and the stalking predators ready to pounce.