Raghav stopped.
For one wild second, he thought the forest was mocking him.
A blind man abandoned by his wife, led by a wolf, now hearing the same wife crying from underground.
“Kavita?” he shouted.
The crying stopped.
Then came a choked sound.
“Raghav?”
Her voice cracked on his name.
He moved forward too quickly, and the wolf snarled low, blocking his legs.
Raghav froze.
The animal nudged his knee sideways.
Only then did his stick hit empty air.
A pit.
Deep.
Hidden under dry branches and leaves.
One more step, and he would have fallen in too.
He dropped to his knees and felt the edge carefully. Loose soil crumbled beneath his fingers.
“Kavita, where are you?”
“Here,” she sobbed. “Below. I fell. My leg… Raghav, my leg is broken.”
The wolf circled the pit, whining softly.
Raghav’s hand shook around his stick.
“How did you fall?”
Silence.
The answer sat between them.
She had been walking away from him.
Running, maybe.
Running back to the village before anyone saw her returning alone.
Running from the husband she had left to the forest.
“Raghav,” she whispered, “please help me.”
The words struck him strangely.
For years, he had been the one saying please.
Please place the cup near my hand.
Please tell me if the stove is lit.
Please walk slower.
Please do not leave me alone.
And now, from the dark earth, Kavita begged him.
The wolf nudged his shoulder.
Not gently.
As if reminding him that this was not the time for pain.
Raghav swallowed the stone in his throat.
“Is there water down there?”
“No.”
“Blood?”
“I don’t know. My leg is trapped under something. I cannot move.”
Raghav reached around the pit. His fingers found rope marks in the dirt, cut branches, sharp bamboo stakes snapped at the bottom.
Not a natural hole.
A hunting pit.
Someone had dug it for wild animals.
The wolf growled, as if it knew.
Raghav understood then why the animal had brought him here. This pit had almost caught the wolf too. Maybe it had already lost something here. A mate. A cub. A piece of itself.
He took a deep breath.
“Kavita, listen. I cannot pull you out alone.”
“Don’t leave me,” she cried.
His chest twisted.
She had left him.
But her terror was real.
“I am going to find help.”
“No!” Her voice rose into panic. “You cannot see. You will get lost. Raghav, please. I am sorry. I am sorry. Don’t leave me here.”
The apology came too fast.
Too desperate.
Not yet repentance.
Only fear wearing its clothes.
Raghav turned his face toward the wolf.
“You brought me here. Can you take me to people?”
The wolf stood still.
Then it brushed its body against his leg and walked back the way they had come.
Raghav gripped his stick.
“Kavita, keep shouting every few minutes. I will return.”
She cried his name again.
He wanted to hate the sound.
He could not.
He followed the wolf.
The journey back was worse than the night. In darkness, fear had been everywhere. In morning, fear had direction. Every root tried to catch him. Every branch scratched his face. Twice, he fell. Once, he hit his knee so hard he nearly vomited.
The wolf never went far.
It waited.
Nudged.
Growled when he turned wrong.
At last, through the trees, Raghav heard a cowbell.
Then an axe.
Then men’s voices.
“Help!” he shouted.
The voices stopped.
“Who is there?”
“Raghav Shinde! Help me!”
Footsteps ran toward him.
Someone gasped.
“Raghav? Arre, what happened to you?”
It was Suresh, the potter’s son.
Another man said, “We heard Kavita returned alone last evening. She said you had gone to your cousin’s house.”
Raghav went still.
Even after leaving him to die, she had prepared the lie.
For a moment, rage filled him so sharply that the forest seemed to tilt.
Then the wolf growled behind him.
The men shouted and stumbled back.
“Wolf!”
“Don’t kill it,” Raghav said.
“Are you mad? It will tear us!”
“It saved me.”
Nobody spoke.
Raghav lifted his bleeding hand.
“My wife is trapped in a hunting pit. Bring rope. Bring men. Bring the forest guard. And do not touch the wolf.”
Suresh hesitated only one second.
Then he ran.
