Strange Folk
A short little something.
Photos taken from Pinterest.
Tags: fae, prince of fae, fairie king, true names, forest, night, secrets, magic, m/m, sfw
My mother liked to tell anyone who would listen that I was a “mellowed out” oddball, as if boasting that I was Off at one point—or trying to assume credit for putting me back On, which was too ridiculous to consider.
“He’s always been so quiet,” she’d muse, “So imaginative. He’s never had many friends, but at least he has friends that exist, now!”
It seemed a little cruel to me that she chose to write me off without researching the subject for herself, but I had resigned myself to that particular quirk of hers long ago.
When I was a young boy, I liked to sit outside on the edge of Yellow’s Meadow and weave together flower crowns and baskets. A steep ditch neatly spliced the edge from the rest of the meadow, so a thin ribbon of land was sandwiched between the trench and the Dark Wood.
I particularly liked the edge because the other children never dared to approach it themselves; they wouldn’t so much as call out to me, should I jump the ditch. It was my favorite place in the whole wide world.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all the children that would abandon me to the edge. Certainly, all of my classmates and neighbors left me well enough alone, but every third day a child or three would skip out of the shadows of the Dark Wood and throw themselves at me until I was forced to relent.
Those kids weren’t like the others—they were cruel, but never mean. They never lied, but they kept hoards of secrets they liked to hold over me, taunt me with, as if it made me lesser to not know them. By unspoken mutual agreement, we never traded names, and I stubbornly refused to give them any importance by giving into curiosity and asking why the were in the Wood.
Some were more pleasant than others. I made a point not to ask them anything, either.
They weren’t really my friends, I don’t think, but I did (involuntarily) spend more time with them than any other children my age. Mom never did believe me when I complained about them.
One would think that after all these years, I would have forgiven her for not believing me, but thirteen years later, there I was, at her funeral and thinking about all the times she implied I was mad.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Ms. Walker from across the street weeped, her black eyes large and gushing. Her wrinkled mouth wobbled. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, Brooke. You’ve always been like a son to me.”
Aww. Not necessary, but—nice. “Thank you, Ms. Walker,” I replied, trying for a small smile.
She patted my shoulder with a leathery brown hand and limped off, letting the next person make their amends.
“I’m sorry for your loss …”
It is cruel how we deign to place the left behind loved ones at the forefront of never ending apologies and tears from other people. Every “sorry” made my jaw clench a little tighter, every sniffle made me want to snap for everyone to shut up, and hearing the priest speak on the righteousness of my very unreligious, flighty mother made me want to get up and leave. I’m not really sure how I managed to stay in my seat and not scream, but I did.
The wake was in St. Peter’s Graveyard—Mom’s favorite. I didn’t know if it was altogether normal to have a favorite graveyard, but St. Peter’s was steadily being infiltrated by the looming trees of the Dark Wood, giving it a mystical, alive feeling that Mom adored. Some days I thought she harped on my supposed insanity simply because she was jealous, but in the end, I don’t suppose it mattered.
It seemed unbelievable that the weather would comply, that clouds would ring out rain like oversized sponges for my mother’s funeral, but there we were, water slicking down our collars and our hair pressed to our faces and necks under the barrage of rain. No one had thought to set up a covering or shelter for this, so the priest stammered a few quick words and we hauled Mom’s casket into the ground as quickly as we could before the hole flooded.
When I looked up, squinting into the gray of streaking water and chilled to my bones, I thought I saw people standing in the Dark Wood, pale faces almost indistinguishable in the harsh weather. But when I wiped my face and looked again, they were gone.
~
I don’t know why I didn’t go straight home.
My suit was soaked, stiff and stuck to my skin uncomfortably, jacket tied around my shoulders to avoid dying of heatstroke. Likely, the suit was ruined. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation with the store I rented it from.
The forest was dark, but it wasn’t quiet: crickets were screaming into the night, owls and birds calling to each other on black-coated branches, mosquitos buzzing around my ears. My pant legs were probably covered in critters as I shuffled through tall grass and underbrush, but I couldn’t make myself care. Moonlight attempted to break through the ceiling of foliage, and just barely succeeded, tinting the air with its ghostly light and dying before it could touch the ground. The shadows between the trees were tar-thick and full of cobwebs.
I wasn’t sure where I was going; I just had the thought to get away. My house was some distant point behind me, but I couldn’t go back. As soon as I had arrived at home, I felt choked by it, by its familiarity and silence and the unspoken judgement of its invisible eyes. I couldn’t do it.
The forest around me vibrated with life. I walked further into it, welcoming it, ducking my head into its noise and dark and smell. I didn’t know where I was going. I could have passed into the Dark Wood for all I knew, but I couldn’t find it in me to worry.
The trees around me shook, leaves and branches bouncing in a nonexistent wind. I could feel and hear the underbrush shiver, and the buzzing around my ears grew more and more pronounced until I was forced to pause, frowning.
“He’s coming,” the forest whispered, all of it together. “He’s coming.”
Are they talking about me? I wondered. I glanced around, but I couldn’t see or hear anyone else.
“He’s coming.” Nature’s voice picked up a little, slightly louder, much more urgent. “He’s coming!”
“Who?” I asked the air.
“He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming.”
The hair’s on the back of my neck stood at attention. I spun around again, but still, it was only me in the woods. “Who are you talking about? There’s no one there.”
“He’s here.”
Everything became deafeningly quiet all at once. The birds stopped cawing; the crickets stopped singing; bugs stopped buzzing. Trees and underbrush and grass stilled, and I couldn’t even hear the crunch of leaves and twigs when I took a step forward. And another. And another.
My scalp prickled.
“You,” a voice flowed through a dark to match his voice: velvety and deep, soft and terrifying. I wheeled around to find the silhouette of a man across from me. “I saw you put your mother into the ground.”
The man took another step forward, and I instinctively stepped back. He was a man, but he also quite obviously wasn’t—his skin was so pale it was almost translucent, his body long and lean, his eyes too large and completely black. A long, spindly pair of antlers grew out from thick white hair, dyed a light blue in the scant moonlight. His clothes were long and the earthly tones of the forest around us: a moss green overcoat with billowing sleeves that drooped almost to the ground, light brown trousers that did not cover his bare, dirty feet, a dark shirt that appeared too baggy for him. A diadem of silver branches wrapped around the crown of his head, impossible to pull off with his antlers.
I didn’t know what to say. My voice failed me.
He took another step forward, watching me. And then another. Another. “Your loss is great today.”
“I wasn’t close to my mother.” It was the truth, hoarse as it was coming out of my mouth. I licked my suddenly dry lips, feeling self-conscious.
“And yet, you come to my forest stinking with despair.”
I decided not to comment on the “stinking” bit. “Who are you?”
The strange man tilted his head, as if confused by my ignorance. “Some call me sovereign. Some call my name. You called me ‘you’ when we played together.”
“Played … ?” My mind was working furiously to remember a kid with antlers, but none came up. There was a boy who would skip out of the Dark Wood with others with him, always, and he had this man’s white hair and black eyes, but was he this man? I couldn’t tell; it was too long ago, and I was horrible with faces.
He was so much closer to me now. When did he cross so much distance? “Do you remember? Do you remember me?”
“I …” my voice died in my throat, so I cleared it and tried again. “Maybe. I’m still not sure why you’ve come to me.”
“Come to you?” I had clearly offended him. He took another step forward and I took one back, flinching as my back hit a tree. “No. You came to my forest tonight. You have come to me.”
“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.” My pulse was thrumming in my ears, breath catching. I needed to run. But where? I could barely see anything.
The man drifted closer, and it was only then did I realize how much taller he was than me. He loomed over me, making me feel small and helpless—and I wasn’t a small guy. My heart beat a staccato against my ribs.
He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off, terrified of what he was going to say next. “I don’t have anything to offer you. I’m useless.”
A laugh bubbled out of his throat, beautiful as the gurgling of a creek. He reached out and took a lock of my hair between two long fingers, black eyes glittering inky. “You used to draw such nice pictures when we were young. I always wanted them afterwards.” His eyes flickered to my captured hair as he smoothed his fingers over it. “Everything you do has always been so beautiful to me.”
There was something there in his face that I hadn’t caught before. A strange thing, almost like hunger, but not quite. A fierce want, perhaps.
Ms. Walker once told us a story of fae stealing away young mortals to keep for themselves. I had no doubt that this was about to happen to me, if I didn’t run.
“What do you want?” My voice came out quieter than I meant, practically a whisper.
“Give me your name, and I will let you leave.”
“And if I don’t?” I mumbled.
He was so close now. When did he get this close to me? His black eyes fell to my mouth and went hooded, and then he was leaning into me, gorgeous and otherworldly, the smell of midnight and pine trees on his skin. I felt his breath on my lips and tasted honeysuckle.
“Brooke!” I gasped, pressing back into the tree. “It’s Brooke.”
He smiled then, an oddly cold thing. “Brooke,” he murmured, slow, like he was enjoying the way the word flowed over his tongue. A shudder rattled down my spine. His black eyes found mine again as he straightened, my breath flooding back with the space. “Fitting.”
I was trembling, but I couldn’t make myself stop. A chill had seeped into my bones without his warmth nearby, and the smell of pine was still in my nose, haunting me. “Can I go now?”
“You may,” he smiled again, “Brooke.”
Another shiver racked me. Dread pooled in my gut, the feeling of something wrong twisting my stomach into knots, but it was too late to do anything about it now. I peeled myself off the tree, and still shaking, hurried away, back to where I thought my house was.
“I will see you again,” the fae called after me, “Brooke.”
I had definitely made a mistake.
