How You Like It

Chapter 2: There is magic in these woods

Hey guys, I know I promised this the day before yesterday and I had it written, but the way I had written it initially really bugged me so I spent yesterday editing it.

Thank you for reading this book I really appreciate it x

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There was a boy, Marcus, with no surname worth mentioning, who had wandered into the morte Forest that evening. It was late December, the snow had settled and the light crunches of Marcus' dirty shoes stained the white blanket marking how far he had trekked in.

As the snow continued to fall it hid his path back, though, if he were smart boy maybe then he would have realised that he was lost.

As the burning sun lowered her gaze and fell behind the trees, darkness took its place in the sky.

He was the baker's son and was set to inherit the bakery when he was a little older- a burden which he carried from a young age. In a world of dreamers and poverty, Marcus was lucky to inherit the successful bakery which paid for his tuition at Amarok School for Boys and his mother's hospital bills. Yet, he didn't much like the idea of baking bread for the rest of his life.

Most days, he sat on the concrete steps of 'Brown's Bakery' thinking and watching people enter and leave, often creating stories for the different characters passing to entertain himself.

Other days, he begged his body to grow slowly into adulthood (which in his mind) was a labyrinth which only led to work and disease, neither of which could be cured.

Marcus was a scrawny ten-year-old, so while his friends snuck into the theatre pretending they were fifteen (he couldn't join them) which didn't help him end the monotonous boredom of being a child in the town.

Marcus didn't want to grow old; Marcus didn't want to stay young.

Marcus was a sentimental boy, yet he didn't know why he wandered into the forest that day like it was a special day, instead he chose to believe that the forest called for him.

Regardless, going into the forest that day reasonless, was breaking a code he didn't realise was written deep within.

Perhaps he was trying to be like the men his father sent into the forest once a month to get the berries which only grew there. They would plan their journey each time loading and reloading their guns, praying and doing other silly rituals which Marcus never really understood.

He had watched the men for years and he followed all their rules, like praying three times and kissing the ground before he entered. It would be a lie to say he knew all of them because as he waved them off, his father would be quick to rush him back inside saying it's not something a boy should see.

So just before Marcus entered, he made up a few rules himself, like shaking his left leg and knocking on the first six trees six times in six-minute intervals.

He had a day to waste, most of which was spent ritually.

The men were hunters, giant snowmen Marcus thought as they strapped up warm with feathers from geese and other foreign birds to the town.

The forest swallowed the men for two days before returning them to his house to drop off the berries and get paid. Often, an alarming thought passed through Marcus' mind- the men seemed aged when they returned- like they hadn't been sleeping or like they had been in the forest for years.

Even if that was true, the men never brought it up and returned to his father the month after to collect the berries again.

Whatever the case, Marcus noted how eager the men were to return- his father could have paid them pennies and they still would have gone- like the forest was calling them, the way he wanted it to call to him.