The Second Labor, Part 2
As the arrow found its target, embedding itself deep into the wendigo’s right eye just before the moment the hind would have ended its cursed life, Sam recalled a lesson he’d heard from a priestess of Pan that one summer Marie had dumped his twelve-year-old butt at summer camp.
“Of all the horrors that stalk the wilds, the wendigo is perhaps the most pitiful,” the priestess had told the kids gathered around the campfire.
One of Sam’s friends had asked, “Why’s it pitiful?”
“Its origins make it so,” the priestess had answered. “A wendigo is birthed after a gifted, out of desperation to stave off starvation, eats the flesh of another human being within the domain of the great Pan, god of the wilds.”
“Eugh,” one kid had said.
“Disgusting,” another had replied.