Enchantment of Sorrow

Chapter 01

~Behold their beauty and their grace!

The song on the wind and the smiles they bring to your face!

Enjoy their music, enjoy their song

But I warn you do not linger long

They will tease, they will tempt

They will not truly show what their actions truly meant

Take in their beauty and love their sense of time

But beware the faerie food, and the cup they offer of their sweetest wine!~

You had wondered into this forest hoping to see a house or at least a hut somewhere to shelter you from the cold or at least let you make some phone calls as your cell phone had died as well. You had forgotten your charger, and worse still the closest house outside of the forest was 15 miles back down the road. Snow was beginning to fall, and a blizzard was being called. Your car stalled and finally died on your way to see your dying mother. All you had to do was reach the other side of the forest and the city you grew up in would be there. You had seen from the top of the hill where your car had stranded you lights within the forest that could only be coming from a house or a cabin of sorts. It did not seem all that far away until now. The late afternoon was long gone and night was beginning to fall darkening the woods around you. You had already tried to find your way back out, but it was as if the layout of the forest had changed, and any landmarks you kept in your mind had vanished.

This forest which was old, and filled with tall, thick trees, shrubbery and clinging vines was beautiful in the light, though admittedly seemed darker than most and somewhat dangerous. You had grown up with the locals stories of the forest. Filled with faeries and elves. Sinister spirits that liked to kidnap children or lure people to dance until they died. While the people in the city you grew up in put such things up to superstition, you included, the farmers and the gamekeepers in the wilder areas closer to it swore they were true. Now, cold and lost with night soon approaching you were beginning to wonder if the people in the rural areas were right and what you had seen were faerie lights. You did not know much about faeries, elves and the like, you just knew they were not very welcoming to humankind according to the locals.

You continued on in the direction you had seen the lights until you stopped dead in your tracks coming to a swift moving stream which was unable to freeze over due to its power. You barely seen it in the light around you. You heard it before your eyes came upon it. Sounds were starting to bother you now as well. Frightening you, and making you look about wildly. Somethings you knew what they were. Others you had a harder time explaining. You had not felt like this since you were child separated from your mother in the mall and unsure where she had gone. The stream was the last straw. Snow had already fallen in the area a couple of days before. If it had not been for it's pure white shimmer there would be nothing around you to reflect any light at all.

You sat down underneath a great beech tree and held your head in your hands. You wanted to pray. You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry. You just had no idea which one you wanted to do first. You had never felt more alone in your life and now, so cold, very hungry, and lost in a forest at night no one dared go into, you were sure you were sure you were going to die here.

"Help me someone please. Please." You whispered to whoever or whatever was listening.

You looked up a moment later in alarm when you heard a series of twigs snap in front of you. You looked up across the way in alarm and then had to withhold a gasp. Shining almost as bright as the snow itself was a stag. A white stag, still fully crowned with an impressive crown of antlers. This struck you as odd since you knew bucks should have shed their antlers by now. The next thing that seemed off was how the creature seemed to glow in the little light there was. Not just reflective light but seemed to emit a glow all of its own. It's eyes, wild and untamed had more than an animalistic look, they looked wise. They held you in their gaze, as if you were locked in them.