The Elven Wood

For Sage.

~*~

The forest was sacred once, untouched by man, unspoiled. The druids knew it for a holy place and entered only for the Rite of Passage. Sometimes they did not return, and the people knew the forest had claimed its due. To be fairy-taken was an honour, they said, for those who were taken became a part of the forest- became something divine.

But the druids are gone, and their secrets forgotten, and their traditions known only to few. The forest grew, and it grew darker, too, and for many centuries it was a feared place. People said it was an evil place, an accursed place that took those who strayed into it, and so they shunned it, dreading the gloom beneath the boughs of the trees.

These people believed, but they are gone too. The wood became wild and larger still, but the Baron did not believe in its magic, dismissing the folklore as baseless superstition. And so people entered the wood, and took axes to it and made paths through the underbrush, and built bridges over its streams, and on a large hill they made a clearing, and there they built the Baron a manor.

The forest claimed its due, and people disappeared, but the Baron would say they had lost their way in the wood, that they had simply been careless. They made more roads and built bigger bridges, and cut down trees to make a broad lane, from the plains all the way to the hill and the manor. When this great task was finished at last the Baron moved into the manor with his wife, and in that forest manor she bore him a daughter so lovely that people said she was surely divine.

She had chestnut hair and eyes the colour of young moss, and rosebud lips that always hinted at a smile. She was tall and slender as the willow and had a gentle warmth about her that reminded people of a pleasant Summer's eve. She had a voice like a songbird's, and when she danced, she swayed like a dryad. She loved the forest and would often escape her tutors to enter it, much to everyone's frustration. It was a habit that did not wear off as she grew, and people would often fondly call her the Forest Princess; Rea Silvia.

~*~

The sun was already low in the sky when Rea finally managed to escape. It had been easy enough for her as a small child, but now, almost a grown woman, they watched her more closely and it was harder to hide. She wrapped her cloak a little closer about herself. It was late Autumn, and although the sky had been clear all day it had remained chilly. The rustling of the last leaves on the trees told her that a breeze had picked up, and it promised to grow to a storm during the night.

She followed a familiar path through the trees, the fallen leaves whispering gently underfoot. Somewhere nearby an owl announced it had woken up early, but there were no other sounds to be heard. Rea enjoyed the serenity of the forest, and she knew she would miss it when the family moved to the city for Winter. It was a dreary, noisy place that seemed to her devoid of life, and sometimes it was smelly too.

The forest was a sanctuary, her refuge from the stiff life she had been born into. She liked to think that as long as she was in the forest she was free, and she'd spent many afternoons exploring it, getting lost in it more than once. She'd lost count of the times the servants had had to fetch her back.

She made her way past familiar places. The hollow tree she had used for shelter from a sudden downpour, a great mossy rock the path curved around, the blackened remains of a lone tree struck by lightning years before. After a while the path sloped downwards and she followed it to a small pool. Its surface was almost entirely covered by leaves, the only disturbance caused by a falling leaf that sent ripples across.

She left the path and went to the water's edge, watching the ripples grow and then slowly disappear again. Fog had started to rise from the ground by the time the pool was still once more. The wind must have been picking up already, because even this deep into the forest there was enough of a breeze to stir the mist now. Pale, thin fingers of fog crept about, and for an idle moment Rea thought they tugged at the hem of her dress.

"The wights are harmless." It was a gentle, quiet voice not too far behind her, but in the absence of all other sound it startled her. She turned around. Several feet away was a man atop a great grey stallion, smiling down at her. He was dressed plainly, like a hunter, and he was tall and lean. His pale, handsome face had distinctly noble features and was framed by rich golden curls. His eyes too were pale, but she could not quite say in the fading light if they were grey or blue.

"The wights. They tease, but they are harmless," he said. Upon her puzzled expression he gestured vaguely at the fog.

She frowned. "The fog?"

"Wights. Not fog. It has not been the weather for any proper fog," he said casually.

Rea took a moment to consider this. It had not rained all day and the air was crisp and dry, but at the same time it was ridiculous to think that this fog could be alive. There was the matter of the pool to take into account as well.

"This pool has nothing to do with it, I assure you."

It was as if he read her mind, and she scowled at him. "Exactly who are you, sir?"

He smiled and dismounted with an easy, natural grace that very few people possessed. He gave her a mock-bow. "I am Edrin Elvenking," he said.

"You don't look like a king, you look like a hunter," she said, and, after a moment's hesitation; "You don't look like an elf either."

He laughed. "I look like a hunter because I was in fact hunting, and I did not think a crown and shining armour fit for the occasion." He paused a moment to allow her to consider this. "And what do elves look like, according to you?"

She bit her lip. "I don't know," she confessed.

He shrugged. "Most people don't, not really. They have driven us from their hearts and minds, and now we hide in places like this until we diminish and fade, or return to Faerie."

"But Faerie is-"

"Real. As real as you are. As real as I am. As real," he smiled and watched amusedly as she tugged her dress free from the fog about her with a blush, "as that very naughty wight."

"Then what is it like?" She eyed the fog suspiciously.

"Faerie? Hard to say, it is constantly changing." He moved closer to the water's edge, the fog parting to make way for him. He sat down on a rock and beckoned her over to him. Very reluctantly she stepped forward until she was right next to him. "Would you like to see it?" he asked. She nodded. He patted the empty space beside him and she sat down with him on the rock. He put an arm around her waist and leaned forward. "Watch closely."

He reached down with his free hand and lightly touched the water's surface, sending ripples across the pond. The breeze picked up for a single sudden gust, and the leaves that had been floating peacefully on the water were swept up. They danced in the air above the pool for a moment, then they were whisked away. The fog had crept over the water now, swirling slowly, first one way and then another. Eventually it withdrew to show the ripples fading away, making way for images.

There were tiny imps, stealing through the shadows of a traveller's camp, wreaking all sorts of havoc. There were waves on a lake that turned into nymphs that danced in the moonlight, and there was a star for every soul of a beloved departed. There were satyrs dancing around a fire in a forest, and there were even little pixies who came out at the break of dawn and lovingly restored what careless feet or hooves had trampled or knocked over the night before.

Images followed each other in rapid succession. Faeries turned into eagles which became dragons, and these dragons in turn became castles, and mountains and forests, until finally the pool settled down and the image was of a man and a woman clad in all white and crowned with leaves of red and gold, staring back at their counterparts.

Edrin smiled, and the reflection on the water copied him with a wink. "Such is Faerie, ever changing and ever growing."

"And you are king?" Rea asked, watching her reflection rest her head on Edrin's shoulder. She frowned, but her mirror-self did not see fit to copy this.

"Of the Elves, and of Faerie, inasmuch as Faerie allows itself to be ruled."

"Oh…" She let her fingers dangle into the water, but no ripples formed, and the figures didn't seem to be bothered at all. Edrin's hand closed over hers and pulled it out of the water.

"Leave them," he whispered. "They are happy together right now, we should not disturb them." He got up and carefully put her on her feet.

"But that's-"

"Not us. Not really. The mirror likes to fool us sometimes." He walked back to his stallion and mounted. "Come, it is late, and no longer safe for you to be here on your own. I shall take you back to your home."

She looked over her shoulder, back at the pool. She could still vaguely make out the two figures in white. Her cheeks flushed. "Why would it fool us?"

He smiled as he rode up to her, then picked her up and set her behind him. "Because mirrors are naughty. Like wights." He whispered an unfamiliar phrase, and the stallion started moving at a steady pace.

"But why?" She wrapped her arms around him for stability.

He shrugged. "Who knows? To tease us, perhaps, or to share a wisdom we do not understand. Sometimes I think they may mirror our desires, other times I think they just like to play tricks on us. Mirrors are difficult to understand."

"I see…" She pondered this for a while as they rode through the forest. "What do you think it was trying to say, just now?"

"Something other than it showed, I'm sure." They had reached the edge of the forest and he reined in. "This is the border of my kingdom. I can take you no further."

She looked past him to the house on the hill. Light was coming from behind many of its windows, and on the hill moving flecks of light betrayed the presence of people with torches. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted.

"They're looking for me," she said hesitantly.

"So It would seem." He didn't move.

She held on a little more tightly. "I won't see you again, will I?"

"I suppose not." He seemed to want to say more, but he chose instead to let an uncomfortable silence stretch between them for some time. "Your place is in the house on the hill."

There were more lights now, many almost at the base of the hill. They were drawing ever closer to the forest edge. The flames were fighting the increasing wind, but around Rea and Edrin there was none. It was as if their renewed silence had inspired even the forest and the storm to hush near them, like creatures treading around the couple on tip-toe to avoid disturbing them.

"The storm will force them to go inside soon," Rea observed. Edrin smiled.

"You should join them," he said, "but you don't have to."

"I don't?"

He shook his head. "No. You don't."

~*~

The storm did force the servants to return to the manor. It howled around the building all night, tearing at wood and stone, beating on the windows. In the morning, when the worst of it had passed, the Baron rode out himself to join the renewed search, but there was no sign of his daughter.

A week they looked for a trace of her, the Baron always the first to depart and the last to return. The people started to recount folk tales of old, remembering the ancient curse, saying that the Baron's daughter had been claimed by it. A month more they sought, increasingly despairing, until even the Baron had to resign to the truth. There had been no trace of her, and with Winter approaching swiftly the chances of ever finding the Baron's daughter had been reduced to nothing.

The reign of frost was long that year, and if not for its tragedy it would have been remembered for sheer length. The Baron did not return to the city. The Baroness had demanded they stay and wait for their daughter, and even though he knew better, he had given in to her. The Baroness was taken by a malady of the mind, and none of the physician's cures were of any use. She would wander the manor's corridors in the dead of night calling for her daughter, and during the day she often strayed outside in nothing but her shift. It was a particularly cold morning in February when servants found her hanging from the single chestnut tree in the garden, her lifeless eyes fixed on the forest.

The Baron became reclusive, eccentric. He spent the greater part of his days under the chestnut tree, and he never uttered so much as a single word again. Four weeks after the death of the Baroness the body of the Baron was found sitting against the tree, staring at the forest. The snow around him had coloured crimson.

~*~

They say there is a manor on a hill, hidden away in the forest. They say that, centuries ago, a nobleman lived there with his family, and that they were cursed. They say that the nobleman lost his daughter and his wife, and took his own life in his grief. They say that the frightened servants abandoned the place, telling tales of ancient pagan rites and forest demons. They say that the manor is in ruins, that the furniture has mostly rotted away, and that the graves of the family are betrayed only by a few slabs of stone covered in moss, their names now forgotten.

One way or another, the forest always takes its due.