They’re afraid of me. I know they’re afraid of me, because I hear the children on the wind as they scurry along the borders of my home and dare each other to cross into my darkness. The older ones are always the most confident, but never make it more than three steps past the first crooked boughs before turning tail and running home to mothers who warned them of the creature that lives beyond the trees. The elders of the village carve symbols and sigils of protection in corners of their homes and fences where they think people can’t see. I can, but it comforts them to think I don’t. I’ve felt every burning branch and leaf when a harvest rots, and they blame me instead of the sun, disease, storms, or their own careless keeping. They burn my woods because maybe if I’m gone they’ll make it through the winter. I know they’re afraid, because I can’t cross the tree line without being greeted by rocks to the head and curses spat at the ground I created. Funny, you’d think the curses would come from me.
I know they’re all afraid. Except for her.
* * *
It’s a rule of mine that I don’t talk to the people of the village, and they have a rule that they don’t talk to me. I remember the first villagers and their scattered cottages with shoddy walls and slapdash roofs, interrupting a landscape that had been empty of human life for the three decades since I put the first seed in the ground and began my home. Eager for company that could hold a conversation beyond chirps and growls, I rushed to greet them. I crossed the hill, squinting against the rays of light that swirled and chased me, trying to replace the shadows that clung stubbornly to my skin. A woman in a thick cloak stood over a small fire in between two cottages, poking around in the contents of a stewpot and far too busy to notice me. I raised a hand in greeting but my steps faltered at the shriek that came from another home further down the road. A child’s head peeked out over a windowsill and their terrified eyes took me in as they screamed for their mother. The woman at the stewpot shot up at the sound and locked eyes with me. Her face paled and she dropped the wooden spoon into the pot with a clatter followed by a soft gurgle as it disappeared into the pot’s contents.
I’m not blind to how they see me. I’ve learned that hair that curls around you in a pitch-black embrace and spindly fingers too long for human standards can be unsettling. Equally unnerving are the thick horns that stretch behind you, that have a proclivity for never keeping a consistent shape, that shift with each cloud passing over the sun. At the time of the first villagers, however, I knew nothing more than the joy of meeting and learning from a new creature. They taught me my first lesson in the value of hiding, changing my plan of introduction for one of escape. They taught me with each hit of their stones and sticks, as I let the shadows of my forest pull me back into their cool comfort. They taught me by covering the eyes of their children as I fled.
I stayed wrapped in the branches of my home for the decades following, unwilling to return and face those horrified screams again. I was needed in the woods and I welcomed the responsibility. I nurtured the seedlings that pushed through my footprints, and reassured the small creeks and pools that spun around clusters of trees and protruding but companionable boulders. My bed was the moss and my blanket the treetops, and I luxuriated in the light of the stars that cast a soft glow each night.
On the day of the flames, I sat in the dirt, coaxing the grass to curl around my fingers in playful rings when I heard an unfamiliar crackle. The air changed, tinged with a hint of bitter ash. A rumble echoed through the air, and squirrels, rabbits, deer, and all the other animals that took shelter under my arms stormed past in a wave of terror that weighed heavy on my tongue. I hurried the grass back to its place safe beneath the ground and turned to see bright orange light licking up the sides of the trees that kept the village from my home. Whatever it touched it devoured. On that day, I learned that fire can hurt, can destroy. I felt each leaf, branch, and piece of bark as they succumbed to the oppressing heat that pushed ever onward into the heart of my home.
I screamed. I screamed, and the flickering faces of the villagers standing at the tree line with torches and anger on their brows became uncertain. I screamed, and the creeks flooded their banks, rushing over my feet and pressing down in cold fury on the fire that grasped for more wood or leaves or anything to feed it as it vanished and sputtered out beneath the water. The creeks calmed when the blaze was gone and lapped gently at my feet as they receded back to the confinement of their banks. I watched the torches shrink to dots of light in the distance as the villagers ran back to their homes. They were gone within the week.
With the next few groups of villagers it was the same story. I would reach out, hopeful that this time they would let me stay long enough to speak; but, each time, I was driven away. Eventually they would make a move against my home, once they connected the dots about me and mine. I stopped trying after the fifth arson attempt and instead stayed away, letting the rumors fly about the shape in the woods and how the sun never managed to punch through the barrier of gloom. I don’t blame them for being wary. They’ve been told since they were small to fear the unknown, it keeps them safe. I understand why trees perpetually bathed in moonlight could appear unsettling to the eyes of a child cowed by the threats of morality and death laid upon them by their parents.
However. I understand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t ache with each hushed word and sideways glance.
* * *
She came to the village as the heat of summer started to shift into the cool breath of autumn. She brought one basket, a cart with a few covered belongings, and one cat that rode in the basket with its head peeking from the edge of the blanket that sheltered it from the sun. I barely acknowledged her when she walked past my home, used to ignoring the stares and foolhardy behavior of the villagers. Only when she had turned the corner past the border wall without looking once at the woods did I take notice of her.
I was careful in the following weeks, watching for any sign that the stranger might inspire a new attempt on my home. Occasionally, telling a newcomer the tales of the dark woods stirred up centuries of resentment in the older villagers. .
I reclined on the sturdiest limb of a tree close to the forest edge, and watched as she set herself up in the home of the baker and made fast friends with everyone she met. I saw villagers point towards my home and begin to tell her something with a grave expression, but she laughed it off every time before giving them a tight embrace and going about her business.
Three weeks after her arrival, a group of young boys sauntered up to the edge of my home and demanded entry in loud voices that wobbled on the squeaks of puberty every few syllables. I don’t know why everyone always asks me for permission, I have never and would never close the woods to any comer. More than anyone I understand the need for escape. I watched from below the surface of a creek as they began the routine of nudging and shoving each other towards the trees and viciously shaming those of their cohort who wouldn’t come closer, all while not moving themselves. Tensions rose fast and—at a particularly barbed comment about his mother’s relation to a pig—one of the boys landed a solid punch in the eye of another.
A woman’s voice shouted something unintelligible and the boys all whipped around to see the source of the scolding. The newcomer came down the hill and waved at them to disperse with a friendly but stern smile. She said something I couldn’t make out and the boys nodded before shuffling back to the village with hung heads, still occasionally jamming their elbows into the ribs of whoever was closest. I let out a soft sigh of relief as they left. If they had tripped or fallen they would have disturbed the small family of rabbits that lived in the grasses tucked along the tree line. That relief quickly turned sour when the woman kept walking towards the woods without a single falter in her confident gait.
I watched in mute astonishment as she bent down over the tree line, plucked a bright red flower from the ground, and moved back out into the light. She turned the flower in sturdy fingers, looked into the woods, waved with a satisfied grin, and went back to the village with the flower tucked into her fine braid. I was glad for the cool water around me then as I could feel a warm heat rushing to my cheeks and a strange anxiety running through my arms to my fingertips, buzzing.
A few months after the flower, she had her first lunch next to my home. She’d wandered through before while looking for more flowers or just peering into the trees, but this was the first time she’d stopped and stayed. I couldn’t do anything aside from crouch in the trees and stare as she settled into a comfortable position and began reading from a small book. She occasionally took bites of her bread and a glistening red apple. When she was finished, she tucked the book back into her skirts, pushed a second apple into the shadows of the trees, and left. I didn’t touch the apple for a number of hours, some jaded part of me afraid it might be poisoned or some other trick. Finally, with some reassurance from a very bored beetle, I picked it up and took a cautious bite.
I had never tasted an apple sweeter.
She came back three days in a row, each time with the same routine. Each time I left the apple for hours after she left. Each one I ate was somehow sweeter than the last. She didn’t come on the fourth day or the fifth, and I accepted it with ease. Her visits had been nothing more than a brief stutter in the monotonous rhythm of antagonistic children and avoidant adults. What surprised me, however, was the sharp pang of loss that struck each time I came upon the spot under the tree she had claimed as hers.
On the sixth day without a visit, an apple waited for me when morning came. I rolled it in my hands, careful not to smother it with the dirt that clung to parts of my palms. I took a bite and groaned happily at the burst of sweetness that filled my mouth and curled my lips up into a smile, crooked on a face so unused to the movement. Apples appeared in the same place every morning, the only evidence that she remembered the thing in the woods.
On the eleventh day since she first sat down to eat at my doorstep, I felt more than heard the commotion of a crowd of people quickly approaching my home. I rushed to a better vantage point and watched as villagers hauled the woman down the hill. The men holding her by her arms let her go just before they reached flat ground. She stumbled and fell at the sudden loss of support. She pulled herself up and pushed back against the base of the tree—her tree—she had rolled next to and stared up into the face of the older man who led the crowd.
“Do you, Mercy Bottard, accept the charges laid against you for conspiring with devils?” His voice was creaky with age and grated against my skin like sandpaper.
“No! This is ridiculous, all I’ve done was eat a meal!” Mercy balled her skirts up in a white-knuckle grip as she shook with emotion and welling tears of confusion.
“Prudence Masters and Judith Timpy both testified to seeing you leave offerings to the--” he gestured with disgust towards my woods, “thing that occupies the dark. Are they mistaken?”
“No! I mean, yes, I did leave food here for the girl in the woods. But that’s all it was!”
“Now you accuse honorable members of this township of fraud and slander? I will hear none of this from a woman of your standing.” The curl of his lips on the word “standing” made clear just what he thought of her.Mercy opened her mouth to object but he silenced her with a slice of his hand through the air. “All who agree that this woman should face punishment for these charges, say ‘aye!’”
A chorus of “aye” came from the crowd. The whole village, it seemed, had come to witness this moment.
“All who agree that this woman face the judgement of the river say ‘aye!’”
Another solid round of “ayes.” Mercy covered her mouth with a sob and my blood boiled, the wind picking up around me as I leaned forward, lip pulled up in a snarl. In the brief silence that followed, a young man stepped out from the crowd and nodded his head to Mercy before clearing his throat. I recognized him as the boy who had been punched for his comment about his friend’s mother so many moons ago.
“Elder Driscott, I have no objection to the charges laid against this woman but I propose an alternative.”
Murmurs ran through the crowd and Elder Driscott motioned for the young man to continue, his brow pinched.
“Drowning is quick, too easy for someone so loyal to the servants of evil you say reside here. I suggest that we instead leave her to the will of the very devils she communes with.” He made a sweeping gesture towards the woods. “Now that she has been exposed, they no longer have need of her. What punishment could we dole out that could compete with that from the hands of those she once served?”
Elder Driscott’s eyes lit up and he nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “There’s promise in you yet, Jonathan Hendell. All in favor?”
The crowd, again, gave a resounding affirmative.
“Mercy Bottard, I condemn you to the favor of those who have corrupted you. Begone and remember what you once were, God willing. Only then will you be granted forgiveness.” At that, he clapped his hands and the men who were carrying her earlier hauled her back up to her feet. They shoved her roughly to the ground just beyond the tree line.
She landed in the moss and damp earth with a thud and her blonde hair gleamed like silver in the moonlight. I itched to jump forward and put her back on her feet but I couldn’t risk it, not when the villagers were already so eager for blood.
“Take comfort in knowing that your sacrifice has saved the children of this town from corruption,” Driscott said before leading the crowd back toward the village. Jonathan looked back and shook his head before blending into the people around him.
Mercy spat some dirt from her mouth and lay where she had been dropped, idly toying with a small clover that poked up between her fingers. Her dress was torn and smudged, and her normally neat braid hung undone in long tangles that caught in the grass as they moved with each of her hitching breaths. I shifted my weight and a twig snapped under my foot. I froze. She did too. Then, with a deliberate slowness, she pulled herself up onto her feet and held her hands to her sides in a relaxed stance.
“I’m not here to hurt you.” Her voice was low and soothing as if she was approaching a frightened animal, not the devil of the dark woods. I almost laughed at that. Of course not. She’d shown me kindness. Why on Earth would she change now, when she had been thrown to the wolves and the branches and I was the only thing she thought she could trust. No, that wasn’t why I kept to the darkness. I hid because the shadows hid all of me from her, horns and too long fingers included. Shadows bring protection and secrecy, and leaving them only brings rejection. I hadn’t forgotten the lessons her people showed me all those years ago, and I wasn’t sure I could abide the fear and pity I knew I would see in her eyes once I stepped out into the moonlight. Hidden, I could easily guide her through the woods to the other side where she could leave and find another town where she could rebuild her life. She didn’t need to be trapped in these woods; they weren’t her home. They weren’t part of her like they were me. I could help her leave while keeping her at a distance, the only way to keep her close without losing her.
She took a step and leaned to try and see around the trunk of the tree. “Please, will you come out? I’ve wanted to talk to you since I saw your beautiful flowers and heard the pretty bells of your creeks running through the trees. I wanted to thank you for bringing me peace in those afternoons, when your oak gave me shelter from the sun.”
The buzzing in my fingers was back and I rubbed them against my arms to try and make it go away. The movement caught her eye and she took another step.
“Please?” This time her voice was softer, an undercurrent of hurt coloring the word.
I tensed. It almost sounded like she thought I was the one refusing her. I chewed on my lip and then, keeping my eyes firmly shut so as not to see the look in her eyes, I stepped out from behind the tree and into a pool of moonlight that filtered through the ever-rustling leaves above me. She took in a sharp breath and I winced, waiting for the sound of her footsteps pounding on the ground as she escaped back to whatever fate awaited her in the village. They never came. Instead, featherlight fingers brushed against my hand and I could feel her warmth pressing in through the chill of the night air.
“Hello. Open your eyes for me?” I slowly opened them, blinking to bring her face into focus as she was suddenly much closer than before. Absently, I noticed that soft freckles covered the bridge of her nose and the tops of her round cheeks. She had green eyes. Eyes that didn’t shift to the side after taking in all that I am. She brought her other hand up and hovered it next to one of the ridged horns that tucked close to my skull. “May I?”
I blinked twice as I processed her question and then nodded. The same light touch traced the shifting shape of them and curled a lock of black hair around her finger. I don’t think I’ve breathed before but I certainly haven’t since. I swallowed. The same smile she had when she took the first flower stole across her face and she pulled her hands back, tucking them into the folds of her skirt.
“How rude of me to get so close without introducing myself. I’m Mercy. May I ask your name?”
I hesitated, tongue loose around a name that I hadn’t uttered in centuries.
Her grin widened. “Show me around these woods, would you? I hear I’ll be staying for a while.”
* * *
They fear me, this is a fact as true as time itself. Another fact, just as true but so much more important, is that she loves me.
Sarah Dutton (she/her) is a queer writer living in North Carolina who fantasizes about living anywhere else but knows the South will always be home. She's passionate about studying history, raiding used bookstores on the weekends, and embracing the occasional dark story that stumbles its way into her brain. She has previously been published in Rune Bear and you can find her on Twitter at @sarahduttonn.