Once, when I was a little girl, my teacher sent me to stay with a friend of his while he was away and busy. I don’t know what it was he did, but he said it was important work and being as young as I was meant I didn’t have a reason to question him. But what I did question was what kind of place he sent me to. After living on a high mountain for so long, the first thing that struck me upon arrival was how heavy the air felt with humidity. I was convinced in some small part he despised me.
Of course, things were actually much kinder than that. The people I stayed with were good folks, and thankfully I met a boy within a few days of arrival, and we became fast friends. His name was Squall. A local boy with short brown hair and bright eyes – I’d never seen any like his. I might’ve even had a little crush. Squall was a year or two older than me, but that didn’t matter much to us.
Squall was the reason I got up in the morning. Not in a romantic sense, of course, but a very literal one. Sure, my hosts were very hospitable, but they were old and where we were was far removed from any towns or markets bustling with people. They just had no idea how to entertain me, and I think Squall was as much a relief to them as he was to me, taking me off their hands during the days and redirecting my seemingly limitless youthful energy.
The place where my host lived was about a mile out from a place called The Gardens, and it was a mile I walked daily. I would always meet Squall on the path, heading my way. On rare occasions he would already be at my hosts’ house when I was leaving. I never saw where he lived. It didn’t matter much to me, though, because the woods were our real home.
The Gardens weren’t really a garden. Not one that was kept up. It looked like part of an abandoned estate overgrown with vines and trees. It wasn’t particularly dense, but it sure seemed to go on forever. Squall showed me a few paths around the gardens, unofficial trails to interesting sites like statues, hollowed-out trees, or even just a place where a funny-looking bush was growing. We told each other stories of our homes, imagining what life would be like if one of us lived where the other did. Whenever we fantasized about having him coming live with me his eyes seemed a little less bright, but being the kid I was I never thought much of it.
While the woods were our home and adventure zone, we still set limits for ourselves. If we went too long without seeing something Squall recognized, we immediately turned around until we were in familiar territory again. He also set boundaries, significant features we shouldn’t go past for one reason or another. And all these years later, all I can remember decades later and the only one I can remember is the row of sheds at the edge of the property, all lined up beside a creek bed that was nearly dried out.
The remains of the sheds and creek weren’t anything to be concerned about. It was just a few bits of wood still vaguely shaped like structures and shallow stream of water that may have come up to my knees. The banks sloped banks on either side that were sheer but not insurmountable. The first time I discovered it, I immediately headed towards the water, just about ready to reach for it when Squall cried out from behind me:
“STOP!”
In that heartbeat of a moment, all blood rushed from my face as a thick, mud-coated hand wrapped its spindling fingers around my ankle and jerked downward, hard. A blur of colors, all smatterings of brown and green, decaying vegetation and the dank smell of earth that had held moisture for so long ensnared my senses as the mud forced its way up into my nostrils. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see; sheer panic rose in my chest as the need to breathe ripped through my lungs. The depths below the surface of what seemed so barren was so much more vast than the eye would have ever let us see at first glance.
Still, the hand clamped around my ankle, a slick, stinking vice of knobbled bone and sinew; It was everything I could do to keep my head from spinning at the lack of oxygen.
I’m going to die. THUD. I’m going to die. THUD. I’m going to die and no one will ever find me.
With a last, chest aching thud, we broke the surface. No, not the surface, the floor of wherever I had been dragged toward the creek bed.
(tagging @obstinatedreamer)
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