by Blair Aaron
She wandered through the Forbidden Forest for several hours, passing glistening streams which emitted their own sparkling light when there was no sun or moon to reflect it. The water, therefore, took on a blackened, oily quality, and Elsa used the soft blue embers growing on the mossy skin on the tree bark and rock ravines, enlivening themselves perhaps from her presence, like blue fireflies scared by human beings, to grope her way through the black forest. The trees around her were gargantuan, massive and old, like they were made from a fairy tale. Their trunks extended far up into the canopy of the forest, where Elsa could not see, and had a circumference which Elsa never saw back on earth. They were big enough to drive ten wagons through in tandem.
She continued on, vaguely aware of the information she had gleaned from the stories in childhood--something about the passing of time in the forest versus back home where she grew up. The experience was strange, as Elsa's body continued in part to respond to the horror of her situation, as if to warn her of the massive danger she was in, even if her mind shut down to prevent being overwhelmed by terror and grief. She could feel, then, a heart murmur when a black shadow passed in her peripheral vision. And her skin grew cold when she moved too far away from the soft blue hue in the ground's moss and grassy area, which lighted her way. In the distance of the blackness, two lime-green dots appeared from nowhere and then grew in size. Before long, Elsa wondered, in her soporific and somnambulant state of mind, if the pair of dots were actually a pair of eyes. As the dots grew closer, the question was finally settled, because she also saw the faint white glint of angry teeth.
A black wolf had been following her for some time and only now was making its presence known. She ducked down onto her knees, and the icy air filled her nostrils when she breathed. She hoped the wolf had not seen where she went, and after waiting several seconds for sounds that he was circling around her hiding spot, she peeked her head above the small crevice in the rock near the trail. And standing before her was the most beautiful, Satanic wolf she'd ever laid eyes on. Never before had Elsa ever encountered a vision of something so magnificent, so strange, so terrifying. A lump formed in her throat. Without saying anything, the wolf stared at her, and its eyes conveyed the most curious mixture of wild passion and horror all at the same time. Elsa wanted to move from the spot she was standing on, but the wolf's gaze transfixed her, mesmerized her, into a stone statue at its command. She had no idea what the wolf wanted, large and menacing on the mountain's edge, staring down at her. Perhaps she had walked into its territory accidentally without knowing better, or maybe her imagination conjured him up as a coping strategy for the situation in which she found herself, or worse, maybe he could smell the shame, the evil, rising within her as a result of the mistake she made with Dorien.
She looked back for a split second at the edge of the forest, a dim line in her sight, and Dorien continued setting the tree line ablaze. She wondered when he would get tired enough to give her a chance to escape, because she feared what other creatures waited for her in the deeper parts of the forest. When she looked up at the place where the enormous black wolf had been, the spot was empty. Elsa breathed a sigh of relief.
CHAPTER 26
Elsa continued walking through the darkness of the forest, using the same path lit by the blue glowing moss. For a while, as she strolled through the darkness, she got lost in her thoughts, forgetting for a moment she had been damned for the foreseeable future to the sylvan abyss in which she currently passed. Voices in the distance, shouting, broke her reverie.
“How many strippers do you think you could fit on your bed, Humby?”
“Where is this going, brother?”
Two men were walking along the path between two pine trees reaching up into the obscured sky.
“Just humor me. Are you going to answer?”
“Twelve. I could probably fit twelve strippers on my bed.”
“Why that many? I thought you only needed one, to tell you you're the father!”
“Humburt, you are truly the dumbest person I have ever met. Where in that joke was I supposed to laugh?”
“I don't know. It took me all day to come up with that.”
Elsa ducked once again behind a tree, as she could see two tall, slender, but muscular red-headed men make their way in her direction. They were shirtless, dirty, and one had a bow slung across his chest. Elsa could not take her eyes off their bodies and faces, as their appearances struck a strange, long-forgotten hunger in her, which was heretofore unfamiliar to her. She didn't know exactly what she wanted from them--it wasn't sex necessarily, as she just wasn't that kind of girl. As they came closer, she realized they were identical twins.
“I've got a real joke for you,” said Augustus.
“Ok, brother. Lay it on me.”
“There once was a young woodworker engaged to a pretty seamstress. The day before their wedding, a tornado destroyed their town and killed them both. They both woke up in heaven, thankful that they at least could still be together, even in death.”
“Where's the joke, Humburt.”
“You haven't let me finish. Anyway, when they got to the pearly gates, they saw the gatekeeper and asked him if they could still get married, because their wedding had been interrupted by the violent tornado, which God undoubtedly sent to bring them to the afterlife.
“The gatekeeper said he would have to ask, so he made them wait until he could get permission. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. After three whole months, the gatekeeper finally returned and said that, yes, they could get married even though they were dead. The couple smiled and kissed each other, but stopped after a few moments. They looked at the gatekeeper and asked if it was possible to get divorced, too. The gatekeeper slammed his fist onto the table, furious and red-faced.
'What's wrong, ' they asked him.
He looked up at them and said, 'Do you know how long it took me to find a priest to get you married? There were only three! And now you want me to find a lawyer, too! I'll never be able to!'“
“That's stupid,” said Humburt.
“You just don't get it,” Augustus said. Then he took his over sized fist and punched his brother in the arm.
Humburt gave his brother a stern look. “Don't do that.”
“Make me. I'll do whatever I want.”
“Try it and see, pig boy.”
Augustus and Humburt began tussling, trying to outdo one another in a battle of physical strength. Despite their supposed distraction, when Elsa accidentally kicked a rock and sent it bouncing down the canyon at her feet, both men looked up. They were no more than 10 feet from her, and from this distance she could see the color of their eyes, an emerald green. She covered her mouth, aghast. One of the brothers, whom she heard called Augustus, had a pale birthmark on his square cheek. The other, apparently named Humburt, had tousled auburn hair, as if he'd been riding through the wind, over the chilly mountains and evil forest in which Elsa now found herself.
“Brother, be still. Someone's here,” said Humburt. He let go of his brother's shoulder and approached the area where Elsa was hiding. He ran his hand through his hair, visibly nervous, and peeked around the corner. As he did, Elsa rotated her body around the tree until she couldn't anymore in order to avoid being discovered.
“Brother, you're just hearing things again. I told you that you're going crazier than we all are.”
“No, shut up. I know I heard something.” He waited and looked around for a while without saying anything. “Guess it was nothing, let's get back to camp.” Then they walked away, and Elsa thought she was safe after several minutes. When she came around the corner of the tree, though, they were waiting for her and almost instantly grabbed her wrist. “Got ya,” said Humburt. Elsa screamed. “Look who was hiding the whole time. Lesson number one in hiding from werewolves, little miss: when I get close enough I can track you by your scent.”
“I didn't do anything,” Elsa said, wincing at the pain in her wrist. “Please let me go.”
<
br /> “Why should we let you go? Where did you come from? We know all the creatures in the forest before the The Enchanted Cottage. We've never seen you before. Where'd you come from?”
“You're hurting my wrist,” she said. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Humburt looked up at his brother, as a light bulb went off in his brain. “Augustus, you don't think.”
“No, I don't. Don't be crazy.”
“It has to be. The prophecy says this would happen. 'A lone girl will stumble into the Forbidden Forest, innocent and lost.' She looks pretty innocent to me.”
“Humburt, I said no. You're always seeing patterns and meaning in the stuff that happens to you. I'm telling you it just isn't there. Try using your brain for once, brother.” But Humburt wouldn't let go of Elsa's wrist, determined to prove his theory right.
“I'm taking her,” he said.
“God, why do we have to go through this every time you meet someone new.”
“What are you talking about, brother? We haven't met anyone new. No one has entered the Forest in decades, ever since Prince Theo left.”
Elsa's ears perked up. “What did you just say?” But Humburt ignored Elsa and continued trying to convince his brother that Elsa's presence was spiritually significant.
“Humby if you say his name out loud again, they might hear. And you know what will happen.”
“Yes I know but still. Maybe this will bring him back.”
“He's never coming back. He left, because he didn't want us to find out that he was a fraud. And he WAS a fraud, brother.”
Humburt looked at his brother, searching for any sign of pretense. “You know that's not true. Dr. Kirbleitz will send me away, but I don't care anymore. I don't believe what he says.”
“Humburt, stop! We must quit speaking of this at once, or it will be too late. He can hear our every thought. We must not even think of it. Kirbleitz cares for us and wants nothing but to help us. You know that. He took us in when dad never would. He taught us to hunt, to fish, to fend for ourselves. If he didn't care, why would have taken the time to do that?”
“I don't know. Maybe you're right. But this prophecy, Humburt, it's crazy talk. You had dreams like this all your life, and have any of them ever come true?”
“No, but--”
“Exactly. You just have a big imagination. You always have. But I'm your twin brother and I know you better than anyone else in the Forest. You have to trust me on this. This girl is not some prophecy you think will bring Prince Theo back.”
Elsa could not bite her tongue any longer. The more times she heard Theo's name, the more excited and anxious she got. “I know who you are talking about. Theo is my fiancée.”
Both brothers stopped and looked down at Elsa, shocked. August creased his brow. “She's lying. She's making it up so we don't eat her. Or give her to Kirbleitz.”
“It's true!” said Humburt. “I knew it. The prophecy is true! What do you know about Theo?”
“I met him at my old job,” Elsa told them. “Before all this happened. He came to me, because he was trying to save me from his brother.”
“Dorien?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Someone hexed him and I don't know where he went or what happened to him.” Both brothers' eyes grew big this time. Humburt started to say something but his brother interjected.
“Did Theo disappear like dust in the wind?” Augustus asked.
“Yes!” Elsa said, thankful she finally had someone on her side, who might know how to find Theo and bring him back to her. She knew there was something to her hunch that Theo had gone back to the Forbidden Forest, or that someone made him come back. “Listen, I'm so glad I came across you guys, I just--” Before she could finish her sentence, both men morphed into two silver-coated wolves with red eyes, their mouths salivating, angry and ready for battle. Humburt, with the same tousled fur on his wolf head as his human head, grabbed the leather on Elsa's shoe in his mouth and dragged her through the forest. The small pebbles on the ground, the pine cones, the thorny tree limbs, and the ice cold air rushed over Elsa's body, sending searing pain through her front.
“Please,” Elsa screamed, “Please let me go. It hurts so bad.” But the wolves kept on, running faster and faster, kicking up a tornado's worth of debris. Several minutes passed, until Elsa could not take the pain anymore, the air slicing across the bridge of her nose and forehead, so that it seemed like she was not traveling through space any longer, but instead through time. She knew the wounds were already bleeding but she could not fight against the wolf's strength. Every time she tried lifting up her head, a small tree branch would knock her in the forehead. Soon enough, various colors rushed through her vision--streaks of yellow and blue, bursts of blue and orange, against the background of black. Then she fainted.
CHAPTER 27
Elsa's head hung from her shoulders, as she slept, her neck having lost its strength. She could vaguely hear people talking as they man-handled her body with some material that felt like sandpaper against her skin. She eventually realized the mild burning sensation was a thick rope coiled around her body, starting at the base of her shoulders around her waist, across her shins and around her feet. The rope itself attached to a pike in the ground, and Elsa could smell a curious stench of charcoal. She mustered all her strength to open her eyes but they were swollen shut.
“I got her tied for you, Doc,” she heard Augustus say. “She's all ready for some cookin'.”
“Good,” another man said, with a boxy, deep voice, which made him sound like a man made from a mountain, so big did he sound. Elsa tried to scream but she could not muster the energy. She knew two of the voices at the very least were Augustus and Humburt. But aside from those two, and the monstrous voice, she could sense two other men beside that.
One was a squeaky voice that laughed out loud to himself, apparently watching Elsa being tied to a post. “Boy lemme tell ya Kirby, she's in for a lot of heat. We'll get her sizzlin' real fast for ya. Won't we, Doc?” Elsa began to panic and lifted up her head, using every last drop of strength she had left in her. All five men immediately noticed.
She could barely make out any shape, except a blurry blob with a shark-like grin.
“Niklas Levitt, you get away from that pretty little girl,” the mountain man's voice said. She could hear him walk over to her and squeeze her shoulder softly to make sure she felt comfortable. “You are mistreating our guest, and that's rude. We don't want to be rude.” This was Doctor Hammond Kirbleitz, the leader of the pack. “You know what, let's untie her for a second. I want to make sure we have the right girl, ok?”
She saw the squeaky-voiced guy, shorter and younger than the rest of the men by far, walk behind her and suddenly the ropes released her hands. She fell down from the wooden post onto the charcoal at her feet. The porous material scraped the skin on her knees naked.
“Darling, can't you get up?” Dr. Kirbleitz asked. Elsa could barely shake her head. “Aww, you poor thing. I am really am sorry about the rough ride over here. But I guess it's a good thing the trees knocked you unconscious, because we don't want anyone knowing our location, now do we? Deep in the heart of our safe forest.” He picked her up by with both hands by her armpits, as if she were a scarecrow stuffed with hay. Elsa moaned in pain. “Listen, we can't have you crying like that. I want my boys understanding just exactly why we're going to burn you at the stake.” He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Between you and me, I don't think the little one here understands. This here is Niklas Levitt.” Kirbleitz stopped. “Actually, you know what? I haven't introduced any of my boys yet. Let's start with me,” he said, as he touched the tip of his index finger to his chest. “My name is Doctor Kirbleitz. I'm a specially trained spiritual soothsayer for these guys. I saved them when they came into the forest. If I wasn't for me, they'd all be dead, or worse, found their way back out into the normal world where they came from.”
Then he pointed to the twins last, Augustu
s and Humburt. “Those guys, you have already met, obviously.” Elsa noticed Humburt would not look Elsa in the eye, so ashamed by the look on her face. Elsa had a bad feeling about the whole situation, but she didn't have the energy to do anything about it. She couldn't outrun werewolves, or physically protect herself by fighting. She had to think of something quick before she burned alive.
“Now let me tell you why we gotta light you up,” Kirbleitz continued. “You see, in case you haven't noticed, the Forest you're surrounded by contains evil creatures and spirits. The longer you stay here, the further you fall into evil and spiteful ways. If I had not found Niklas, Hammond, Augustus, and Humburt, the forest would have eaten them alive and made their spirits part of its vileness. I taught them from a young age to pay respects to the Daeva God, who lives at the center of all this. See, if we pay respect to her, she'll keep us from falling further into evil and wrongdoing and corruption. There's no way we'll ever be able to undo the damage the Forest has done to us, but we can delay it.”
“Why don't you just leave,” Elsa muttered under her breath.
“That's a mighty good question, sister.” Dr. Kirbleitz laughed, rubbing his long, graying beard with one hand. “The Forest is who we are now. We have no place out in the real world. How would you people treat us werewolves? They would fight us to the death, and we can't have that. So here we are, stuck. We can't go forward, and we can't go backward. We just have to sit here for the rest of our lives, which uh--” Dr. Kirbleitz stopped for a second. “Well, let's just say we've been here for a while,” he laughed nervously.
Niklas sauntered over. He had big blue eyes and was so young compared to the other men. He shook Elsa's hand. “Hi Miss. Yeah, we've been here for a while, some more than others. Like our captain Doc here, he's been here for well over several centuries. We have tried to leave before, but the evil surrounding won't let us. The closer we get to the edge of the forest, the more it pulls us back and the more dangerous we become. So we just decided to stay here, that way we don't make things worse. There was only one person older than Doc, who tried to leave, but he--”
