A Short Story Collection #Wattys2018

Forest God (Turning into a Full Fledged Book)

Your village left you behind in the forest to die as a sacrafice for the god of the forest. After a while the god shows up, but its not interested in your death, instead it's looking for a new servent.

* * *

All my life I've been preparing to be sacraficed to a forest god my village adored. Every few years or so, the seer in our village is blessed with images of the future and one of them always involves the forest god. The visions tell her of the child that is to be sacraficed. I am the most recent one.

Her vision told her the child would be a girl born to a widow's whose husband died during a hunting. It said the child would be born on the coldst day and that the next day would be warm. The child would have a birth mark on her forehead and a missing hand. All of these are true about me.

I grew up being honored and was given a special place in our village's ranks. I was named Chosen and was allowed to do as I pleased as I wouldn't take up an aprentienceship. The chief kept me away from males, and my only company was my mother, the seer, and a maid. It was very lonely for me because I wanted friendship, and i wanted to experience love. They believed it to be unnecessary because my life would end on my sixteenth birthday.

"It's time to wake Chosen," my mother whispered to me. "It is morning; it is time for you to do your duty." I open my eyes to see my mother looking down at me with a tear rolling down her face.

"I am sad to leave you Mother," I tell her sitting up and hugging her. It's a tight hug full of sixteen years worth of love.

"I am too my little one, but this is a great honor. You will save our village by providing food and shelter for the next few years." She tells me this with a smile, but I know it's forced. While she holds this belief true to her heart, I know she wishes deep down that another child would be leaving today.

"Can you dress me today like you did for me as a child?" I ask her. She nods her head, too overcome with emotion to speak. She dresses me in a thin white dress and places the ceremonial white robes around me.

Once done, the seer enters to escort me to the edge of the forest along with the chief, council men, and the hunters. The cheif leads the procession through the village, and those who see me bow down on their knees until I pass. It's a strange sight to me because I'd never seen it, but the chief's advisor told me that this happened on my birthday for the past fifteen years. I feel like I don't deserve their attention or admiration; my birth is the only thing that fulfilled the vision.

The chief stops at the edge of the forest to face the procession. "Today marks the day that our seer's vision will become complete and our forest god will rejoice once moe. Our upcoming years will provide us with food and shelter allowing our village to continue on thanks to Chosen's sacrafice." He gestures for me to walk over to him, and I do so bending to allow him to draw a cross on my forehead with mud. "Chosen, are you ready to fulfill your duty to your people?"

"I am ready Chief," I tell him stepping away from all of them and walk into the forest without looking back. If I looked back, I knew I would cry. The only life I knew would be done and gone.

* * *

For three days I roomed the forest in search of the forest god, but I couldn't find him. I grew weak from not eating because I elieve he will be angry at me for eating his animals since I belong to him now. I wouldn't want his anger to fall back on our village. but I can't help but wonder if he is angry with me and that's why he hasn't come to kill me yet.

I lay down on a patch of mossy grass by a river bank closing my eyes momentarily. When I open them agian, it is nightime and there is a fire to my right. I twisted over and saw a man sitting on a patch of flowers that wasn't there before. He was watching me with his catlike eyes, and I looked more closely at him. His legs were covered in deer skin and his arms were made of tree bark. Moss covered his hair, and he wore clothing mae of rocks and leaves.

"Are you the forest god?" I ask him. he nods his head slowly but otherwise doesn't move. "Have you come to kill me?"

"Not this time," he responded, and his voice reminds me of a snake's hiss. "I don't require a sacrafice for the next few years. You're seer got the vision worng." I sit up, startled at his words.

"Should I not be here then? Have I come too early?" I ask moving closer to the fire to warm my cold body.

"You've come at the right time Chosen," he says shaking his head. "The seer only got your purpose wrong: you're meant to be a servent not a sacrafice."

"Why would a forest god need a servent?"

"My job is tiring, and I grow older. I desire your help in maintaining the balance of my forest."

"I didn't know a god could age."

"I don't age as you morals do: I age with the forset. As the forest grows older, so do I."

"And I am destined to be your servent?" He nods and moves closer to me. He touches the numb of where my hand should be, and a branch grows forming itself into a hand. I move it around and watch in amazement as it acts like a real hand would.

"We will become one and the same once you take my hand." I glance down at his hand and place mine in it. I gasp out as my hair fell out and moss took its place. The cold no longer bit at my legs as much as deer skin covered them. My ceremonial ress an robes became a dress made of mud, twigs, and leaves and flowers grew at the place I sat. "You must come with me now."

The forest god took me away to his house in the hill that I stayed the rest of the night in. He woke me up as the sun rose and got to work teaching me all tht I needed to know. I learned how to grow fruit and berries that animals fed on and how to repair damaged trees and grow new ones. I became in tune with the aimals and was able to communicate with them. He taught me how to help the animals to reproduce in order to stay alive. I becam the other half of the heart of the forest.

Time passes differently in the forest. What may feel like days to me ar months in my village while weeks are years. That meant the new sacrafice came to us. My forest god knew I was sad continuing to live without being able to do what I would in the village. The new sacrafice was a young boy of three years that the forest god took in for us to raise.

It was the first time I felt a stirring of love for the forest god.

As the years passed, news of my mother's death reached my ears. I mourned for her, and rain feel down upon the forest as I did. Late one night, I went to my mother's grave and grew a pear tree for her - pears were her favorite fruit. I returned home, and the forest god wrapped me up in his arms, allowing me to cry until no more tears came. He and our son comforted me and filled my aching heart with new love.

I've been in the forest a total of twenty years now, and I've become happier than I ever was or could've been in my village. But now my village is no longer happy. A new group of people came and took it over. The villagers still lived there, but the new people told them what to do. They had taken over everything and were trying to ruin the forest. My family and I were running ourselves ragged trying to re grow trees and planting new fruits and berries. But our efforts weren't helping: there are three of us and about one hundred of them. We were outnumbered.

The villagers were beginning to rebel against the new people and were fighting them. We welcomed them with open arms to our forest hiding them from the enemy to ambush them. The enemies fired back at them with better weapons than they had, and the vllagers' number was decreasing.

The forest god had wandered too close to watch the battle and became injuried. The whole orest shuddered when he fell, and rushed towards him. I craddled his body in my arms praying to a higher god that he would be okay.

"You and our son must continue to keep the forest alive," he says with blood coming from his mouth. "Without this forest, the villagers would die and so would you two."

"Don't leave me like this please. We need you. I love you," I say crying and then feeling the rain begin to start.

"I know that; I've been knowing for a while now," he says closing his eyes. "I can die being loved genuinely." he goes limp in my arms, and I begin to shake in anger.

They've taken part of my life away from me. They've takn away the only thing that wanted to keep me alive. And they needed to pay for this.

I was going to release Hell onto them for everything they've done to me, my forest, and my village.

* * *