The Desolate Forest

The Desolate Forest

 

The girl rushed into the desolate forest, with trees that clouded the sky. The humid and marshy mud spilled over her soft, Victorian clothes and the scent found its way into her nostrils and stayed in her hair. She looked up and saw the sparsest glimpse of light pour into her eyes and the shrieks of a bat flying across from tree to tree. The air, filled with dirt and mud, hovering into her mouth and almost ensuring she puked. Not even a rifle could keep her safe from this cursed forest. She tripped into a puddle of water and filth spread across her cheeks. She continued running trenched over this disease ridden water. The trees were not only sharp with pointed spears but twisted and leafless, all centuries dead, though still staring into her eyes. She could not tell whether night had fallen or the day was still bright outside. The deathly forest forbade the existence of time. The girl could not discover how far she ran, only knowing that she if looked back, only branches and swamps could be seen.

 

   Elizabeth was horrified by those bandits in grey suits with brown muskets. Their odor was as powerful as the sewers in London and clinged to everything they went near. She was near a filthy lake so deep with mud they almost matched the colour of her shoes. Her lush, brown hair was much lighter and her eyes glowed in such a dark place, with only the impossibly distant sky coming close to matching her eye colour. She was still young, 12 years old, though her parents believed they should move into a city and find work, including for her. She would adamantly protest, asserting that a town was better than a factory that churned like dragon. Her skin went from white to red and her clothes got darker as they were smothered in dirt. She was good one of the best at running… Splash! She fell again into the a deeper lake and so she running continued deeper still. Her determination was still as great as the scent of mud in her hair. Soon after several lucky minutes of not a single slip, she lay down and breathed with the dirt drying on her skin. Now that, she thought, was fun before remembering what had happened. The bandits were misfits in her town and at first she wished to travel around through the cities and the countries like they would before they killed the inn keeper. She would likely run a thousand miles away from the single traveler she meets.

Soon Elizabeth heard a noise and crept behind the nearest tree. Then she heard a few more, all screechy and rough.

“Spew forth the dirt and turn it into sand,” one said.

“Spew forth the water and turn it into oil,” another said.

“Spew forth the bats and turn them into dogs,” still another said.

“Spew forth the chains and turn them into plates,” the fourth said. “Let this be what makes this forest clear.”

   The witches poured their ingredients into a hole in the ground and chanted shrieks that reminded Elizabeth of the stories of the devil. Thier tipped hats always bowing down because of the witch’s crooked backs and the muddled, black clothes almost hiding the creatures in the shadows of the forest. The horror at the whisky aroma of eternal disgust churned at the sight of that ugly business. Each time they put those ingredients into the dirt, a puff of dilated purple smoke infected the air.

     “How could that be,” she whispered, forgetting that this was not show put on by jesters but the doing of things that had the power of life and death. And so soon she was running as the two of the witches scrambled to get to her.

     A musket bursted, two shots were fired and the hollowing breath of a crooked creature, this time a human, was howling in her ears. “Whaaaaa!” she shouted as she slided past a man preparing for her eventual death.

     “There, hello. Have they been touching my pets?” the man in rugged, coffee shorts and an almost refreshing white shirt. Tiny shards of brown hair sticking out of his skin, across his face, hands, feet and head. “So good to see some company, isn’t it?”

   “Who are you?” Elizabeth asked, politely as she could.

   “Ha ha ha, well I am who I am.”

   “And who is that?”

   “Me”
   “Just answer my question!” she shouted to this man, losing all pretentions of civility.

   “Me”

  Elizabeth sighed and gave up, despite the fact that she had plenty of time, she did not want it wasted. “Why are you here?”

     “Why, dear, this is a forest! And a forest is where you go when you are hunting or being hunted. A forest is where you go when seek freedom and reward. A forest is where the outsiders stay, away from those who haunt them, yet a forest is where all the trenched and cursed live. That is why I am here dear. Now go and hunt that wolf and I shall give you the greatest treasure, that all the other forests in the world could never have. Here,” the man said as he gave Elizabeth his musket.

     And there it lurked, around the black tree, tall and sacred, scenting of charcoal. It beared the height of two men and the strength of a thousand, for this was not the usual wolf. The fur was sticky, sweaty and black. Its red eyes pierced the darkness all round and even made the air smell like death. The wolf came around husked with a great, big roar at Elizabeth and prepared for the charge that would ravage her to her bones and rip the flesh off that would be its dinner. The wolf stood tall, howling at the girl. It yelled and screamed and so Elizabeth, just so young in this new world, shot it between its eyes. The blust pushed her back to as her strength did not rival that of anything she had hoped. “Oh, how am I ever going to go back home,” she said as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

   “Well by going through those two trees dear!” the rugged man exclaimed.

   “Wha… ”

   “Oh, yes there,” he said interrupting Elizabeth.

   “What do they do?”

   “Well they turn back time, to any time in your life and there you may change it! How wonderful is that?”

   Elizabeth was puzzled, amazed but least not in doubt. “But then why, how…. Ah! Why haven’t you gone through it?”

   “Because this is a forest, dear. And a forest is….”

   “Okay, okay. I will see it, but please could you give me something? A coin to see that I am not insane. That I was here?”

   The man walked a threw a bag of gold and said “I stole that from the witches!” Elizabeth ran towards the his directions and there the trees stood high. And so Elizabeth wept at this sight, embracing the only normal trees in a thousand towns. She touched the wood and felt a sense that she was born anew. The perfume of normality spread across her face and she tasted clean air. She saw her town and she began to cry. A single foot crossed and she was there…