Into the Eldritch Woods

“The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished into the Eldritch Woods. The sun stopped at its noon zenith and headed back east, where it set over the mountains in the exact place it had dawned. The most powerful witches in the capital city dropped to the ground when the sun went dark, never to draw breath again. And magic has not been the same in our land ever since.”

Elise was not one to question the deep tones of her grandfather’s tale-telling voice, and she was less inclined to do so when they sat around the bonfire with most of the village in attendance on the anniversary of the Queen’s disappearance. It had been ten years since the Queen had left with no trace to be found of her whereabouts other than her signet ring on a stump near the edge of the Eldritch Woods.

Elise was too young at the time to understand why everyone became solemn for weeks on end back then, and she wondered at the time why they’d been so upset on her birthday—had she done something wrong? She remembered everyone had dusted off their best clothes, the ones that they wore to the temple or to a funeral, and her laughter and playing was discouraged with shushing sounds.

It took her longer than it should have to realize that the solemnity had nothing to do with her birthday, which unfortunately fell on the same day as the Queen’s disappearance. She eventually became as solemn as the grownups. She still didn’t understand completely, but knew only that it had something to do with an important person far away, and she wasn’t supposed to talk about it with the grownups or they would become upset.

Now, years later, she wanted to ask a question quite badly. Or, if not one, three. Because as she’d gotten older over the decade since the Queen’s disappearance, she’d had a lot of time to think about what had happened. Everyone in the kingdom had. And the more she thought about what her grandfather said, the more she wondered at the accuracy of his story. Especially because all she knew about magic was how it was now, and frankly it was quite unimpressive. So unimpressive that it was hard not to have some doubts about such a momentous an event as her grandfather described.

It was a good thing she had a little brother, though. And her brother was much like she had been at one point—unafraid to ask what was on his mind. Over the years of growing up and working on the farm and going to temple services every week, the curiosity she’d always felt had to be tamped down. She knew better than to ask with such forthrightness as her younger brother: “Did you see it? Were you there?”

At his words, their grandpa’s head snapped up and he glared across at the offender. “Was I there?” he repeated in a scoffing tone of voice. “What do you think, boy?”

And Marklin, perhaps too young or too unobservant to notice the danger signs, tilted his head to one side and considered their grandfather’s scowling face. “I don’t think so,” he decided. “You are not important enough for royalty, so you were probably here in the village.”

A ripple of laughter circled the bonfire. Perhaps it was aimed at Marklin for a five-year-old’s frank appraisal of the situation, or perhaps it was aimed at the accuracy of his words. Either way, their grandfather’s face darkened and he stood up from the log he’d been sitting on and began to unbuckle his belt. “That’s enough out of y—”

“He didn’t mean anything by it, Pa,” their mother was quick to insert herself between her son and what their grandfather was sure to do. She swooped in and picked up Marklin, whisking him to the edge of the circle of onlookers and listeners. And although her words were hissed in her son’s ear, she walked right by Elise. She could hear her mother’s fiercely whispered, “Don’t you sass your grandpa. He’d’ve given you a whipping and you would have deserved it—” before her mother moved out of earshot away from the fire.

But the solemn mood her grandfather had been trying to create was lost, and he was storyteller enough to realize when the curtains were about to fall. He stomped back to his spot in the circle, bent down to reclaim his mug, and lifted it in a toast. “To restoring the Queen!” he shouted, his tone still angry, but everyone was willing to go along with the village headman’s lead.

“To restoring the Queen!” The ones who held glasses raised them up, and the ones who didn’t brought up their fists instead.

Inside Elise’s head sprang another question that she dare not ask: Does the Queen even want to be found? Because one of the greatest mysteries of the whole story, at least to her, was how she walked out of her palace and no one even stopped or questioned her. Not a guard, not a lady’s maid, not a soul. They just watched her go as if their mouths were stoppered by gags and their limbs as heavy as gold.

Or so her grandfather said.

Early the next morning before the sun had even risen, Elise’s mother gave her a brief and tearless hug. They’d both known this morning was coming. Their small village was less than a day away from the capital city, and this burdensome practice started the year after the Queen’s vanishing, upon decree of the royal council who governed in the Queen’s absence. Queen Mathilda had been the last of her line, and no one dared stepped into the vacancy left in the wake of her magical abduction.

And now it was time for Elise to make the same pilgrimage as every other eldest daughter when they turned sixteen and find out if she would be the one, finally, to set things right.

Even though they’d already discussed it countless times, her mother held her out at arm’s length and her eyes traveled over her daughter’s face. “Magic doesn’t run in our family,” she said yet again, and it had the feeling of a wish—a talisman to keep away what horrible fate might await her daughter if Elise were the one.

Elise didn’t know how to respond. Like most farm families, she had a number of siblings, and Elise as the eldest often helped her mother with managing all of them. Without her there today, she knew that her mother would be even more tired and worn down by the work. It was already an impossible task with just the two of them and all the cleaning and feeding to be done with her four younger brothers. Not to mention that she’d caught her mother looking pale in the mornings again—a sure sign of another baby to come.

But there was also a small part of her that wondered about her coming journey too. The part that wanted to ask questions she was not supposed to ask, the part that held those questions to her chest like a beating heart waiting for the blood that would keep it thumping with life.

Finally, Elise nodded. “Yes, Mama,” she said. Her voice was low, and she knew her mother would attribute it to nervousness.

But she wasn’t nervous or afraid. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but it was the farthest thing from those two emotions. It was something she never felt before. Something for which she had no name.

As she got into the back of the cart with the other daughters of the village, five total, there was a collective hush amongst them as the whip snapped and the cart creaked and rattled away from the square. The blacksmith Neddith was in the driver’s seat—he was a one-man walking mountain and the surest person to protect them, or so the villagers agreed. A taciturn man in general, and even more so around young women—what would he have to talk to them about?—which left the girls in the back to react to the trip as they saw fit.

Tears. Bowed heads. Shivers. The whole lot of them were a sodden mess, and Elise wondered why this should be so. What did any of them have to fear?

Perhaps they had listened too much to her grandfather’s morbid stories. After all, no one had ever been chosen in this type of ceremony, even after ten years of offerings, and Elise figured the event was mostly for show. The Queen was well and truly gone, she was sure. Years had passed with no trace of her.

And so Elise would go along with this and then return home again with nothing exciting at all happening in between. While Queens were different than village folk, Elise herself felt like she knew very little about life in general and the world in particular at sixteen, and she could only imagine being a ruler at such a young age. The crushing weight of responsibility. Helping her parents at the farm was responsibility enough for her.

The road took them through Bonhaven, the nearest town that was an hour’s ride from their village of Pinefell, and the place where there was a market once a week for farmers to sell their goods. She’d been to Bonhaven countless times to help her Papa during market days, and she knew it almost as well as she knew her own home.

But she’d never been beyond Bonhaven, let alone to the capital city. She looked around eagerly as they trundled through the town and out the road on the other side, and was a little bit disappointed that the landscape didn’t change significantly from one side of the houses to the other. There were still fields aplenty of wheat and barley, as well as a few orchards of apples and pears in clumps in the distance. The road was fairly straight along this stretch, and the rocking of the cart was enough to lull her into an almost-trance. It was monotonous, but not comfortable enough to rest, and so she gritted her teeth and endured the bumps of the road as they translated into her bones being rattled mercilessly.

They had only a couple stops along the way to rest both themselves and the cart horse, and it was almost noon when they topped a brief rise and Elise caught her breath at the sight of the city spread out below them and the colorful, noisy mess of people, buildings, and roads that seemed to stretch for miles and miles and miles.

Houses. Shops. Many-storied buildings that were so much taller than the two-story ones she’d seen in Bonhaven. A riot of colors and movement—waving flags and banners, people going in and out of the streets, horses, farm carts like theirs and fancy enclosed carriages drawn by pristine matching horses that looked like they had a noble bloodline as good as the people they drew.

Humanity spread in every direction, and in the distance was a building so impressive that she gasped—a castle of many stories rising up from the lesser structures like a dragon rearing above its prey. Grey and sprawling, it was not so much impressive as impossible. How did people build such a behemoth? Perhaps the powerful magic of the Queen’s bloodline was responsible. Surely no human could create such a behemoth.

And behind the city itself and spread out like a crescent moon with the castle in its center was the Eldritch Woods, a black mass that traveled so far from her sight that it merged into the hazy horizon and was indistinguishable from the distant mountains. Dark and brooding, with twisted, gnarled trees even along the edge where it met human settlement.

Looking at the woods made her heart beat faster, and Elise wondered again at all the questions she’d held back over the years about the Queen’s disappearance. Too late to ask now, even if there was someone who would be willing to answer.

The next hour was a blur of action. They descended toward the towering entrance gates to the city and were directed to a four-story building with a large stable in the back and a courtyard where carts were lined up four deep. Inside, the central hall was nearly as packed as the courtyard, and there were girls of all shapes and sizes and demeanors. The only similarity between them was age—all of them with a birthday in the past year that brought their ages to sixteen years old.

They were given gowns to wear—creamy white, like sheep’s wool, although not as scratchy. And then they were marched through the lined city streets, where people cheered and threw confetti and stamped their feet in approval. All the way to the edge of the city in the space between the castle and the Woods, where a Guardian of the Queen’s temple was waiting for them.

Guardians were generally unimpressive, Elise had always thought, but perhaps that’s because the one for their village temple was Master Henry, a genial man who resembled nothing so much as an acorn—round and nut-brown. However, this Guardian was pale as snow and fearfully intimidating, and he glared at the assembled young women as if they were somehow personally to blame for the Queen’s disappearance.

Elise shivered at his glance, then shivered once more when he began to drone in sonorous tones about the Queen and the royal house. She tuned out his words, looking around at the adults ringing the assembled group, which included some noblemen and women in rich and fancy dress. Elise thought they looked bored—they waved fans and stared into the distance, their faces impassive.

“Step forward and make your offering,” the Guardian finally said.

There was a stone altar at the edge of the woods, and Elise was nearly the last girl to make her offering. She placed the apple she’d picked from their house tree and prepared to move back into line, her job done.

“Hold, girl!”

The voice startled her, and she glanced back. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Her perfectly ordinary apple had burst into flame and was burning with a light that was as red as its skin.

“You.” The Guardian pointed at her and she swallowed hard. His tone was triumphant, but Elise’s heart dropped to her feet. She knew what he was going to say even before he said it, and she hoped against hope that she was wrong.

But she wasn’t. His teeth gleamed, and his expression looked more like a snarl than a smile. “You have been chosen.”