Travelers beware. For in the forests on the edge of the King's Valley, there is great evil. That damned place is haunted by terrifying ghosts and those who enter never leave. You don't believe me? Fine. Let me tell you the story of a girl named Lily.
Long ago, Lily was a princess. She was an extremely clever girl who never believed in things such as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. She had black hair so devoid of color it seemed as though it was made of an empty nothing and eyes blue like the deepest oceans. Lily lived in the castle with her father, the king. Her mother had died when Lily was only five. Her mother had entered the forest next to the castle and, like so many others, never returned. After months of futile searching and waiting for her to return, the Queen was pronounced dead. Her father became afraid of the forest, and rightly so. He had high walls that seemed to touch the sky built around the castle and Lily had been trapped inside ever since. However, Lily had always been curious and adventurous and because of this she longed to see what was beyond them. Pay attention now, this is where our story truly begins.
The young princess had just turned 10 and was being told off by her nanny for trying to escape the castle walls for, by Lily's count, the two hundred fifty second time. “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times!” the nanny shrieked, “Don’t go beyond the walls! It’s much too dangerous! You have no idea what nasties could be lurking beyond” “I'm sorry, I just can’t help it,” Lily replied, “Its so lonely hear. Theres no one else my age.” The nanny sighed exasperatedly at her. “You have hundreds of the finest toys in the kingdom,” she said “Put them to use for once and I will see if we can arrange for the young royals from our neighboring kingdoms to visit in a few weeks time” At that, the nanny left, her parting words being a faint “good night” as she left. Lily sat on her bed and huffed. She had tried every means of escape she could think of and nothing had worked. She felt as if she were locked in a huge prison built just for her. She had tried to climb the walls, but they were much too high. She had tried to dig under them dig, but had found the hole filled before completion the next morning, much to her dismay. She had even tried to disguise herself as one of the "prison" guards which, if you were wondering is not a very good disguise for a small child. The list went on and on but she could not thwart her father’s will under his watchful eye. Everywhere was completely secure. Except… no. She couldn't. She had promised herself she wouldn't. But then again... she desperately wanted to see what was beyond the castle walls.
There was a singular unguarded way in and out of the castle that only the royal family and their closest friends knew of. Her mother’s personal crypt. Lily wanted to get out, but did she really want to get out that badly? She knew the answer. Yes. And so she waited. At promptly one o'clock in the morning, she set off, dodging the guards easily, having memorized their schedule already from adventure past. Walking down the dark and empty staircase and ducking into the hidden corridor where her mother lay, she made a point not to look in the direction of her mother’s casket and soon was leaving the castle far behind her. Forgetting the dread that had filled her as she walked through the crypt, she could now feel nothing but an overwhelming sense of wonder. The feeling of the soft grass between her toes and the cool, fresh night air on her skin was by far the best thing she had ever experienced in her short life. She had always been warned never to go into the woods and knew the stories that were told of the monsters deep within, but she was drunk on the feeling of finally be free. And so she hurried towards the tree line and ran into the deep dark of the forest.
As she ran deeper into the woods, laughing, jumping and shouting, she was unaware of the eyes watching her from all directions. No. She could only see stars like diamonds poking through the tree tops and breathe the air that smelled of pine and fresh water. When she stopped to catch her breath she began to hear a faint rustling, growing louder by the second. She froze, finally remembering the terrifying storied she had heard and became terrified, so she listened. Almost at once, a giant, flying mass of darkly colored pixies flew forward and attacked her with teeth and claws sharp like daggers, scratching at her face, hands, and any exposed skin they could find. She tried desperately to escape them by running deeper and deeper into the forest until not one of the vile pixies was left surrounding her. Looking around, she realized that she could no longer see the edge of the forest and that the canopy was so thick above her head she could no longer see the stars. She was completely and utterly alone. Suddenlt she spun around, hearing a melodic voice behind her ask, “Are you lost?”
There, Lily saw a vaguely humanoid figure standing a few feet away, seeming to slightly glow. The figure had blonde hair paler than the face of the moon and eyes as cold and blue as a glacier with large, wings on her back that seemed as though they were made of glass. “Um,” Lily said, “yes actually. Can you help me?” “Of course I can!” said the figure, “Just follow me, I’ll keep you safe.” “Really?" Lily asked, her spirits soaring. "Thank you so much!” she said as the figure started walking away, or was she floating? Lily couldn't tell. “What’s your name?” Lily asked. “Nightshade,” the figure had replied. The name sounded familiar, though Lily was not sure why.
Nightshade then gestured for Lily to walk in front of her as they once again began their journey towards the castle, knowing there was no other places to stay for miles. As they walked, the colors of the forest seemed to get a bit more vibrant and though Lily had been freezing just moments earlier, she no longer felt the bite of the cold night air. “It’s quite warm in this part of the forest, isn’t it?” she commented, looking up to Nightshade. “Yes, very” she replied blandly, not sparing Lilya glance, but instead focusing her eyes in front of her on the path they had stumbled across. Lily now saw that this path lead into a small clearing just ahead.
As she followed Nightshade's gaze, Lily saw something that made her stop dead in her tracks as she felt tears come to her eyes and a familiar ache in her throat formwd signalling that she was about to cry. “Mom,” she whispered. The few thoughts that had been bouncing around her head left as she ran towards her mother, tears streaming down her face and blurring the edges of her vision. All the while, Nightshade floated calmly behind the girl, seemingly unaffected by the encounter. After all, why should she be? Lily thought. She doesn’t know that my mother died. And then it hit her like a brick wall, her steps faltering. Her mother was dead. Something in her head seemed to snap and she began to realize she was not, in fact, in a warm clearing of a brightly colored forest, teeming with life, but in the middle of a frozen lake, surrounded by darkly colored trees and deathly silence surrounding her. Her mother was not there. She never had been.
Lily, now stunned, stopped and looked around to find Nightshade at her side, looking at her with a quizzical expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I just-” said Lily “I thought I- Nevermind.” It was then she heard yet another strange noise. Not a rustling this time, but a shifting and she realized just how thin the ice she stood on was. Lily had never realized why the phrase of someone "being on thin ice" was a warning until this very moment. It was terrifying. Now that Nightshade was so close, she could also hear a faint whispering that seemed to surround her and Lily finally saw that something about her just seemed to be… off. Pixies she could deal with, but a mysterious figure who can put visions inside your head? Lily didn’t think she could handle that. “I can see you’re worried,” said Nightshade, in the same airy, concerned voice she always did. “But don’t worry,” she continued “Just stay with me, I’ll keep you safe.” Lily no longer felt safe as she understood that it was Nightshade who had led her to the middle of this lake on purpose and only then did she remember where she had heard the name "Nightshade" before. She had heard it in a Botany lesson with her personal tutor at the castle. It was a beautiful flower, but a poisonous one. If you eat more than a few berries, you’ll die. Beautiful, but deadly. Lily thought. Just like her.
As the pair stood there, Lily began to ramble about the different toys she had at the castle, trying to look as though she had not yet understood Nightshade's plan as an attempt to gain enough time for her clever and mischievous brain to form a plan of escape. As she did so, she began to feel exactly how cold it really was on the surface of the lake and the temperature seemed to be dropping as it grew colder and colder. Lily was now becoming more and more aware of the creaking of the creaking below her as the ice strained to hold her weight. Just then it seemed that a plan formed out of nowhere and she began to put it into action immediately. “And those are my top 15 favorite dolls and their names,” she concluded. Nightshade looked thoroughly unamused, saying “We must go now if we want to get back to the castle before morning.” “I completely agree,” Lily replied, “Just one last thing," she continued. Lily then brought her foot down as hard as she could on the center of the hairline fractures that had begun to spread over the top of the ice below just moments prior.
Lily broke off in a sprint, making her footfalls further the cracking of the ice, causing Nightshade to fall through. Lily quickly reached the shore of the relatively small, but extremely deep lake and turned around to see a truly horrid sight that chilled her bones more than the cold air ever could. Slick tentacles, hundreds of feet long, had reached out of the water’s surface and she just barely saw the glowing figure that was Nightshade be taken firmly in its grasp before it once again submerged itself under the surface of the lake, returning it to the glassy stillness it had had before. Lily knew those few seconds would haunt her forever and wasted no time, running away as fast as her small legs would carry her. Running away from that terrible monster and what she could only assume was a kraken.
She ran for what only must’ve been five minutes before she became paralyzed with fear at hearing an airy, concerned voice say “Where are you going? Just follow me, I’ll keep you safe.” Lily felt her insides turn to ice as she slowly turned around, expecting to see a severely injured, mangled, and drenched Nightshade, but instead she saw that Nightshade looked as though nothing had happened at all, which was somehow even worse. She was comppetely dry and didn’t look as though any harm had come to her at all. But I saw her. Lily thought I saw her get dragged under. But that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that she got back to the castle and she got there fast. And so she ran. She ran for what felt like hours, but may have been only minutes, every once in a while hearing those eerie words, “Just follow me, I’ll keep you safe,” and she would know that Nightshade was not far behind.
There! She saw the tree line just up ahead and she could even hear the guards calling her name. She ran faster than she ever had before, her heart soaring at the familiar calls of those protectors she knew so well. Even as Nightshade tried every means of stopping her, telling her she was safe, showing her her mother, letting Lily hear her mother’s voice, she ran. Ran to what she knew now was not a prison, but home. She began calling the names of the guards as she burst through the trees, Nightshade hot on her trail.
“She’s behind me!” Lily screamed, “She’s behind me!” “Who is, your highness?” one guard asked, concerned. “Her! Right there,” she said, pointing to where she could see Nightshade, feet away at the edge of the forest. “There’s no one there, your highness,” said another gaurd. When she blinked, Nightshade was gone and Lily felt her heart start to race as her insides turned to ice. Had it all been an illusion? She felt numb as the guards led her through the tall gates of the wall, into the castle, and back up to her bed for some rest, where she slept fitfully, continually waking in a cold sweat as nightmares wreaked havoc on her mind.
Later that day, the King came to visit her. However, before her father could say anything, Lily asked him the one question she dared not to ask before, for fear of its answer. “How did mother die?” Her father’s eyes widened as and he took a sharp intake of breath, caught off gaurd by the sudden question. “It was determined that she fell through the ice of a lake within the forest, we were never able to find her body,” he said, sounding sad, but looking very confused as to why Lily wanted to know. “But mother’s casket-” Lily started. “Is empty,” her father finished. Hearing how her mother had died, and thinking back on the earlier events of the day, she began to shake, thinking how the same fate had nearly befallen her. Lily then felt an extra set of eyes on her and she turned towards the balcony behind her. She then shrieked, falling off her bed in an attempt to run out of her room.
Nightshade was on her balcony. However, her father seemed only to be concerned with getting Lily off the floor and did not look concerned with the figure on Lily’s balcony, which had since vanished. Terrified, Lily began to sob, finally breaking down and telling her father everything that had happened that morning. As Lily continued her story, the King became paler and paler still, until, by the end of her tale, he skin was as white as the freshly fallen snow. Lily only heard him mutter strange words that sounded something like “exspiravit mortis” before he grabbed her hand and started shouting for all the servants and guards to pack all their valuables quickly, for they were moving to their second castle that very day. Lily was confused at the urgency in his voice, but eager to leave this place and all its terrors behind. The next few days passed in a blur as they quickly relocated to their other castle, leaving their first far behind and abandoned.
No one has lived there since then and the forest has long since crept up and taken over the castle and its walls. Legends told by the locals of the town nearby say that if you should venture inside the forest, be careful and cautious, and if you hear whispering, run. Because while many monsters can be seen with the naked eye, the scariest and most dangerous live only inside your head. Do you believe me now? I should know after all, it is I they are afraid of.
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- Asteria ♡: I hope you enjoyed this just as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please be kind in the comments, I'm new to this. Have a great day/night everyone.