'If the heavens ever did speak, she's the last true mouthpiece...'
-
Our village was surrounded by a thick forest, cloaked in mist, just like the ones you imagine in horror stories, where people go in and never come out. That wasn't entirely true for our forest, because as long as you stuck to one of the paths that travelled through, but if you stepped off the path, you never got out.
We were taught our entire lives to keep away from the forest, and if you really had to go near it then to stick to a path. Or at least, other children were, my mother ignored all that kind of advice that seemed to be essential to all the others.
When I asked why, she stiffly informed me that those rules didn't imply to us, so why should we mind them. Papa had shot her an angry warning look at that, stopping her from explaining it any further, and a few years later when he went into the forest and never came out, I stopped asking my mother questions.
The children at school thought my mother was a witch, a sentiment I agreed with most days. Her pale skin and almost white hair was the opposite of everyone else in this town, and distinctly foreign, unwelcome. I had inherited had paleness, though my hair was a bluish shade of black that almost matched my Papa's, it was the trait I was most proud of, and helped my blend in slightly among my classmates, though they still saw me as an outsider.
I used to think that my mother hid away in our home, only going out when she had to get food or the like, because she was ashamed of how she looked, or felt uncomfortable under the villager's hostile looks. Then one day I had accompanied her to the market, I remember feeling their glares on my back, burning holes.
Mother had spun suddenly, catching them in the act, and stood in such alarming stillness, watching them with such intensity that the whole square seemed to freeze, and the only movement was caused by a chilling wind that whistled through the village on that remembered day.
No one moved to pull their coats tighter though, we were caught in a spell, the fear in the air almost tangible to me, as I was only a bystander to this event.
Only a bystander, yet her enchantment filled my bones as well, instilled them with the same dread that I was sure the villagers were feeling.
Then, as sudden as she had first moved, she turned back around to choosing potatoes, and the incantation lifted. Most of the people in the square that day hurried away, not entirely sure what had happened, but knew enough to know it wasn't anything good.
But the thing that remained in my mind for years after that event had been the quiet smile on my mother's face, and the way she met my eyes and smirked. No words were exchanged between us about the event, and I think that's just how she liked it. After all, people fear most the unknown.
And it must have worked, because I didn't sleep that night.
Or the night after that.
The people we lived near hated and feared her, though none were brave enough to say it to her face. My father, bless his soul, had been the only one to see her as anything other than the foreign witch with a daughter whose skin was too pale to ever fit in. He accepted her, and in doing so, had earned her the hatred of an entire village, for corrupting one of their own.
I had mostly been exempt from that loathing, until my father strayed off the path at the age of thirty five, with me only being twelve, prompting rampant conspiracy theories of just how and why it happened. My mother was the centre of most of these, after all, she was the ice queen of the village, married to a small town golden boy, and now he was dead. No body was ever found, but everyone knew that if you went off the path, there was no chance of survival.
It was a bad year for both of us, and I never dared to ask if she really had killed him. The memory of my gentle, loving papa, so at odds with the frozen image of my mother, was not something I wanted tainted by the knowledge of what my mother had or hadn't done.
But anyway, I was tolerated at best from then onwards.
We lived like that for years, constantly skirting around the edge of the people in our sheltered little village, until one cool winter a few weeks shy of my nineteenth birthday, when what my mother had been running from, finally caught up with us.
*****
It was a cold November evening, the snow crunching under my feet having come early this year. Everything was closed, even the school had been, for the pupils that is, the teachers had gone in, and cleaners, of which I was one of. Due to the raging hostility that still followed me six years after my father's death, it was the best job I could get, despite being top of the class in everything when I left.
I pulled my coat tighter, and sped up slightly, I was almost to the end of the lamp lights that lit the village, and the dimness beyond was more than a little intimidating. Here, the forest grew out slightly, a jagged edge that was as sinister as it was dark; but there was a path that cut cleanly through it, straight to my house.
Most would go right around the edge, even if it added an extra twenty minutes, and I would too, but recently I was too desperate to get home to bother about a bunch of creepy trees, and as long as I stayed on the path I would be fine.
The nights were getting colder and colder, and the days not much better; I didn't like it. Strangely, it wasn't the creeping cold that frightened me, as I never seemed to feel the cool breezes on my cheeks as others did, or I did, but they didn't affect me. No, it was pure on-edge feel of a winter night that unnerved me the most, it made me feel like I was straining to or not do something, and I always got the sentiment of being slightly wild, and it scared me, and chilled my bones in a way that the biting cold never could.
I hated the frosty months, when I felt like a prisoner within my own body.
But this night seemed especially bad, with something teeming up inside me, caught in my throat, I wanted to get home and sleep away the feeling as soon as I could.
So I took the path through the wood. Boots sinking into the unblemished snow, I made my way along the path, keeping an eye on the boundaries, where real life ended and the forest began, I didn't want to accidentally stray in the wrong direction.
Either side of me, the tall trees rose up in uniformed lines, seeming higher than the sky. The darkness descended quickly, and it was only by the light of the moon that I could see my way; in the distance a wolf howled and I shivered, but carried along regardless, unsure whether I would find my way out if I tried to go back.
I focused on my feet, counting footsteps as a way to calm myself down, the silence was getting to me, and every time I looked to the side, I could only ever see the first row of trees, an all-engulfing blackness the only thing behind them.
Then, out of the stillness, there came a deep growl, and when I looked up, a pair of startlingly yellow eyes.
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Kay, I've finished this chapter, and I've added more to it if you didn't realise. Dedication is for someone reading the story! Thanks for reading, and I'll hopefully update soon! :) xx
