Beyond this Forest

Chapter 1: A Forest Looms, Dark and Cold

Word count: 1204

I had no idea trees could loom so tall.

Wandering through this forest, I was just a small, insignificant being in the world. A no one in a village full of no ones. A girl of the clearing. A human pushed to the farthest reaches of the world to escape the evil faes who lurk beyond the forest.

The first time I had ventured into these woods, I was still a child. The first time I had ventured into these woods, I was scared and afraid of the monsters lurking both in the folds of green and the faes outside. Sharp briars and thorns and roses that would cut my skin.

In my village, to celebrate the coming of Autumn every year, we hold a festival where every adult in the village brings something to make the festival better. Typically we bring fruits or grains or woven shawls and blankets. We have a huge feast caught by the hunters who go into the Westward Plains to hunt for weeks to get all of the food for this event.

I am Enya, the daughter of a cartographer from a village in the southeast of the clearing. It's small and most of my neighbors are crops. My village is made mostly of fishermen and hunters, farmers and tradespeople who take boats down the river laden with our products and come back with products from the villages in the north.

I live in a hut at the very edge of the River Julian, named after the fae hero that fought for us in the Great War, and sealed us inside the Dark Forest so that the rest of his kind could not kill us.

When I left the house and began my trek through the fields, dawn was only just breaking the horizon over the tops of the trees. Rows upon rows of corn blanketed by soft golden light rising on either side of me. The path under my feet made from packed dirt rough against my worn-out shoes.

I walked for hours until I reached the treeline stretching far above. From my view at the edge of the crops, it was a large and menacing monster poised to strike.

I had no idea trees could loom so tall.

Sticks cracked under my feet as I ventured deeper into that forest. That beautiful, familiar forest I knew from my previous visits.

Pine cones and ferns and all types of ground litter, sunlight filtering through gaps in the densely packed leaves overhead, not a sound but that of my own footsteps. In all the times I had been here before, I had never seen another living soul, not a bird tweeting far above, or the rustling of a small animal in the bushes.

Nothing but trees and silence.

I had ventured in to find fruit to bring for the third year running. Each time I returned they were rounder and juicer when they were cut open and the children poured the sweet liquid down their throats.

Adults had been much more patient and had cut up the fruit, mashed it into a pulp and combined it with other fruits and herbs to make delicious drinks. By that point the children had noticed and were begging their parents for a cup.

Too bad there was a limited supply.

Sticks cracked under my feet as I ventured deeper into that forest.

I was scared, oh so scared of the monsters said to lurk in the deep dark caves and under looming boughs of this forest. My heart struck up a tune in my chest, and as I trudged ever farther, it rose and rose into my throat.

As I wandered around, I had no sense of direction, no idea which way was forward or backward, if I was just walking around in circles. That was, until I smelled a luscious scent on the breeze. Fresh fruit.

From there, my thoughts receded and only my nose and the occasional rumbling of my stomach guided me. I continued with no sense of time until my feet stopped me. At some point during the journey I guess I had closed my eyes because I could remember opening them to the sight of the tallest tree I had ever laid eyes on.

Lush green leaves and branches bowing under the weight of fruits as big as my hand. Sunlight filtering through its leaves so far above the tops of the other trees in the forest.

Stealing those beautiful fruits seemed a crime in itself, as if I was taking from the god's tree itself... But I had to, I had to make a submission for the Autumn Festival. Last year I was 17 and was supposed to submit my first festival offering... but Lillie, she had died and I just couldn't bring myself to..

No, painful memories.

I couldn't bring myself to recall my precious baby sister for fear of curling up on the mossy forest floor and crying for the rest of my days.

She had not even lived to her first birthday.

So I had to take the fruit. I had to prove myself after my grace period last year, and strike the elders with something they weren't prepared for. I would show them that I could be just as good as those who had submitted their first tribute last year.

I would surpass!

The sun sparkled as I stepped out from the trees. I was not back on the worn dirt path in my village. Instead the path before me was forged out of river stones that positively gleamed in the sun sliding behind the horizon.

The sun sliding behind the horizon?

No, that couldn't possibly be right. I had left just after dawn, so how could it be sunset when I emerged from the forest, much less in a different place then I had entered. This could not be the clearing, the sun shone too bright, the air was too crisp, too clean. This was most certainly fae territory.

Suddenly the tales I had been told of the faes since I was born cascaded back to me. Faes with unnatural gray skin shot through with prominent veins, their sharp fangs bared as they prepared to feast on my flesh and blood. Wings made from bone shards and dark feathers beating against the sky in a solid line ready to wipe out everything below.

Nightmare creatures.

Beings that took pleasure in death and destruction, in the killing of innocents.

Those were the fae, but this path, this world spreading out in front of me, was so different than I had imagined. It was not a wasteland of scraggly trees and barren rocks where life struggled to survive. It was lush and green, brighter than even the gardens of the highest nobility within the clearing. This was a land where living things not only survived, but thrived.

And so, without a second thought, I turned my back on the forest and began my walk into the unknown.

In my excitement of being free, I did not remember the fruit I was supposed to get for the Autumn Festival, I did not remember my human home at all, let alone the second part of those legends that had been drilled into me every waking hour.

I needed to get back before the morning sun broke the horizon.