The Forest
By Jessica
For six years, four months and 5 days, Janet had avoided the Carter Woods that backed up to her family’s property and everything else associated with the day Thomas vanished. She’d made her younger brother switch rooms with her so she wouldn’t see the woods from her bedroom window. She wouldn’t touch berries unless they came from the grocery store in a plastic clamshell package and the sight of any type of mushroom made her queasy.
At first, she tried to tell people what happened that day - the overpowering sense of dread that filled the clearing as it grew dark, the drums and bells in the woods around them, and the sharp-faced woman with enormous eyes that had picked up Thomas’s limp form, smoothing his pale hair back from his face with her unnaturally long fingers. Janet had wanted to scream, to cry, to do anything as the woman took Thomas, but she’d been completely paralyzed. Naturally it had all been dismissed as a hallucination brought on by the Amanita mushrooms they’d eaten. Nevermind that the search and rescue for Thomas had been repeatedly interrupted by massive thunderstorms and flooding or that the dogs stopped a few hundred feet into the woods and would go no further, whimpering and laying their heads on their paws. It quickly became clear that no one would believe anything strange had happened beyond the disappearance of a 10 year-old boy. Janet stopped trying to convince them.
Having been with Thomas when he vanished left a taint that never quite came off. It was a couple days before Halloween and, after months of dry heat, it had rained profusely. Squelching and slipping the entire way home by herself thinking about how Thomas would have turned sixteen in a few days made the distance between her and normal teenagers seem unbearably vast.
Her boots were covered in mud, she’d sat on the doorstep to get them off. Prince, her fat, lazy Ragdoll cat, ambled up to rub his cheek against her arm.
“Well at least you love me,” she said, scratching him behind one ear. Suddenly he jerked away and stared into into the yard with fierce focus. Then he bolting past her, out the door and ran straight for the forest. Panic lurched through her. In all the years she’d had him, he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in going outside. Janet chased Prince to the treeline where she stopped short, gulping breaths and feeling waves of heat wash over her as she fought the urge to vomit. He raced ahead, but she couldn’t bring herself to take another step. His fluffy white tail waved like a flag as he flashed between the trees, getting further and further away. Surely he’d get hungry and come home on his own. She should just turn around. But then all she could think of were the far off howls they heard most nights. Prince had few proper feline instincts. If he didn’t come home on his own, she was certain the coyotes would get him. All at once, she was furious - she wouldn’t lose anything else she cared about to these damn woods. She crashed through the carpet of fallen leaves. Now a few hundred feet away, Prince stopped and began digging in the leaf litter.
“What the heck got into you?” she asked as she caught up and hefted him into her arms. Then she saw it, tied to Prince’s collar - the purple, blue and orange friendship bracelet she’d made for Thomas. He’d always worn it, despite its hideousness. She started to tremble. No one else had been here. She knew they hadn’t. Janet whirled, trying to see everything around her at once. It was starting to get dark and the spot between her shoulder blades prickled. Prince yowled. She went to the place where he’d been digging. Under more leaves there was a rock with a filthy, folded piece of paper underneath. She almost dropped it twice trying to open it.
“Halloween is my last chance to come home. I’ll ride by here that night with the Queen and a few of her servents. Bring something to bargain with. And iron. Please.”
Janet stared at the note. It had to be a joke, a prank, something. Except she knew it wasn’t. The dirty, frayed bracelet hadn’t been on the ground or in a bush - it had been tied on. Clearly the woman hadn’t been a hallucination at all. It had been real. Thomas had been taken. And Halloween was in just two days.
As soon as her parents left to drop off her brother off at a Halloween sleepover, Janet headed for the woods. She flipped on her headlamp and made her way to the spot where she’d found the note, treading carefully to avoid tripping and trying to slow down her breathing. The earthy scent of wet leaves and a touch of decay seemed to climb inside her. She did not feel good about her chances. She’d settled on a woven gold bracelet that her grandmother had given her as a gift to bargain with, though it didn’t seem at all compelling for a faery queen. She also carried a fire poker and several bags of iron filings. In days of frantic reading, she’d found endlessly conflicting information about the fey. She just hoped she had enough right to get herself and Thomas out of this. The poker and iron were a last resort - even if she got up the courage to use them, she could only imagine the nastiness of the faeries’ revenge.
Every rustle and crack, every shuffling in the underbrush made her pulse skitter. Over and over, she had to make herself stay where she was instead of running from the woods. When she finally saw them, there was no sound, just a horrid chill that swept along the ground in front of the small group. There were four of them - the queen, with blue-black hair and nearly purple lips, who Janet recognized, on a massive white horse. She was followed by two women on matched greys. They had the fey’s inhuman loveliness, but lacked the queen’s presence. Behind them was Thomas, tall and gangly, with pale blond hair falling into his eyes. Frost iced the ground in front of them and curling up Janet’s legs. She braced herself and stepped in front of their horses.
“Lady, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m here to bargain for the life of the mortal with you.” Everything she’d read had said to be polite.
“Bargain? Really? What could you have that I could possibly want?”
Janet felt what little confidence she’d had shrivel, but the Queen’s eyes, so huge that they rendered her face utterly alien, sharpened on Janet. She was interested. Something Janet had read said faeries couldn’t help themselves when it came to bargaining and she desperately hoped it had been right. Looking at the Queen, Janet knew for sure she shouldn’t offer the bracelet - it would be seen as insultingly insignificant. She had to think fast.
“You tell me. What would convince you to give him up?”
The Queen cocked her head to one side in a bird-like gesture. Then she turned to the two women riding with her. They pressed their heads together, one black, one silvery-white, one pale lavender.
“I should give you nothing. We won him fair and square when he stole our fruit and fungi, but I do like courage and, of course, a bargain. You may have him if you pass a trial,” the Queen said.
“What sort of trial?”
“Hold him. I will transform him four times. If you still hold him at the end, you both go free. If he escapes you or you let go, you also come with us.”
“No more than two human minutes per form,” Janet replied immediately. The Queen’s eyes narrowed slightly, “If I pass your trial, we both go free and unaltered - no weird aging, no memory lapses, no pining for Faerie or inability to eat mortal food,” Janet thought for a moment, “and no trying to recapture us or anyone from town.” The Queen’s current-colored mouth twitched down at the corners, but she nodded.
“We have a bargain.”
Thomas’s mouth hung slightly open as he slid from his horse, but he closed it firmly as he approached Janet. She saw cords of muscle straining in his neck as he clenched his jaw and stared unblinking into her eyes. It seemed clear to Janet that he’d seen this sort of thing go very, very wrong, but she took a deep breath and gripped his hands. She barely had time to think how much larger and stronger they were - a man’s hands instead of a boy’s - when Thomas began to transform - into ice that turned her fingers blue with cold, smoke that she had to suck from the air and hold in her lungs, sand that slid through her fingers, but that she collected in her shirt, and finally fire that seared her hands until she wept. It was the fire that almost did her in, but she held on even as her flesh seemed to smoke. All she could think of was the time he’d gotten suspended for punching a boy that shoved her even though he knew he’d probably get worse at home because of it. She’d been a miserable, picked on little thing who was always scared, and that had been just one of a million tiny moments where he’d tried to make her feel safe.
At the end of it her hands looked like they’d been dragged through gravel and were already starting to swell. Thomas dropped them the moment he was back to himself and looked away. In the silence of the clearing, Janet was pretty sure she could hear his teeth grinding. The Queen shook her head, but also smiled ever so slightly.
“Such courage for such a young creature. Go.”
Janet started to say something, but stopped herself and nodded instead. They left the forest as quickly as they could without actually running. Janet’s hands throbbed with every beat of her heart.
As soon as they reached Janet’s yard, they sat on the cold ground in silence. “I really don’t know what to say,” he said, “I was desperate…” he looked at her blistering flesh.
“Don’t say anything. Not yet anyway. Let’s just try to be normal for a bit. We’ll have lots of time to talk about it all”
“What are you going to tell your parents?”
“Fireworks, I think,” she said.
He groaned. “I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged, “You were my best friend. I guess I could have left you to the supernaturally hot fae ladies.” He shuddered. She would surely regret the scars, the stares, and definitely her parents’ reaction to her messing with fireworks, but even as the pain increased in pitch, screaming through her hands and up her arms, she knew she wouldn’t regret having done it. “Where are you going to tell everyone you’ve been?” It was his turn to shrug.
“Do you think they’ll believe amnesia?”
They laughed a little at that, slightly broken laugher, but it was enough. They stood and passed through Janet’s backyard, out of her gate onto the sidewalk. A group of tiny girls in multi-colored leotards wearing fairy wings ran by, clutching pillowcases and baskets of candy, shrieking with joy.