Tell the story of a scar

A constant conversation piece was the scar on Emily's left hand, small but noticeable, jagged, and crescent-shaped underneath the thumb. Whenever someone asked about it, she waved it off with a few careless words: "Oh, some childhood accident," turning the conversation to another subject. She hadn't mentioned this scar for decades. It wasn't painful or traumatic; it just seemed unbelievable.

It happened when Emily was twelve years old during a summer spent with her grandparents in the country. Their place was located on the edge of dense woods, the kind of location that seemed as if secrets were tucked away in every shadow. The woods themselves were Emily's favorite place to go exploring, weaving between the trees, thinking of herself as an explorer finding new lands. She had climbed up almost every bluff and reached nearly every stream that summer, except for one glade—a small, secluded clearing that her grandparents always warned her to steer clear of.

"There's something odd about that place," her grandmother had said, sitting on the porch with the two of them, sipping lemonade one evening. "Animals avoid it, and trees grow all bent there. Not a place for children.".

Of course, this caught the interest of Emily. Why wouldn't the animals go there? What was so different about a gnarly mess of trees? Maybe it held some treasure, she surmised maybe a cabin or even magic. So warned by her grandparents, she trekked out to find out.

One afternoon, when the sun hung high in the sky and the air was heavy with the scent of pine and moss, Emily packed a small bag with a sandwich and her flashlight and set off into the woods. She followed familiar trails to the edge of the glade. The trees looked unlike anywhere else; the trunks were taller and the branches more gnarled and knotted, like the hands of old giants. The air was cooler, too, as if the glade existed in its own little pocket of the world, untouched by the summer heat.

She hesitated only for a moment before moving into the clearing. As soon as she crossed this invisible threshold, something strange washed over her. It wasn't exactly fear, but an overwhelming sense of being watched. The trees leaned in, their knotted limbs creaking against each other in the breeze, though there was no wind to speak of. She glanced around; her heart thumped, but nothing seemed out of place. She shook off her nerves and started on deeper into the glade.

That's when she saw it.

Right there in the middle of the clearing stood a solitary tree, much larger and much older than any she'd ever seen. Its bark was dark, almost black. Its roots ran in all directions, like the legs of some great, sleeping creature. But it was what hung from its lowest branch that had caught Emily's attention.

A small, silver key.

It hung on a chain that was about that thick, swaying gently as though someone had just set it there. Curiosity takes hold of Emily like some kind of weed sprouting in spring. Who hangs a key out in the middle of the forest? What does the key unlock?

Not thinking, she reached up to take the key in her fingers. Just as her skin touched the cool metal, a jolt of searing pain shot through her hand. She gasped, pulling her hand back, but it was too late. A thin line of blood began to trickle from her palm where the key had cut her, making a crescent-shaped wound. She pressed her hand against her shirt to stem the bleeding, but something else had caught her attention now.

The air around her changed. It no longer held cool and still; it was living, crackling with energy like a far-off storm, and the trees shifted, rolling their branches in impossible ways. The ground beneath her feet shuddered, and out to the distance she heard a low, grinding sound.

Then fear, cold and hard, gripped her. She turned to go, but the way back seemed different: narrower, darker, as if the forest tried to shut her off from it. Panic rising, she dashed forward, thinking this must be the way out, branches snagging at her clothes, roots tripping her feet. The growing sound of rumbling grew louder, closer, as though the very earth awakened.

Just when she thought she was lost, she suddenly pushed through the edge of the glade and into the familiar forest. The rumbling stopped. Still again, the air, the trees: normal. Her heart pounded inside her chest, and she glanced back. The glade sat there, silent and untouched, as if nothing had occurred.

Emily never came back to the glade. She never spoke of the key, the rumbling, or that odd feeling that something had trailed out of the woods behind her. But whenever she gazed at her hand and its scar, she remembered. It was not just a childhood accident scar, but a reminder. A warning.

Years later, when Emily was grown and living far from her grandparents' house, she received a package in the post with no return address. Inside the box, nestled in soft velvet, lay a small, silver key, a key which seemed to await more important things than being lost inside a suitcase.

And this time, it had an accompanying note.

"Your journey isn't over."