by Casey Morgan
I just didn’t want Marilyn to get here while Jessalyn was.
That would be tragic.
Marilyn was not prepared to encounter Jessalyn or even to find out the whole truth about why we in Bethel Forest needed her help so much. What she needed was time for the information to be given to her slowly and for her to train so that she could be strong.
“Thank you for letting me know,” I told Jessalyn. “It’s good that OTHERPACK has decided not to attack tonight. I’ll call my pack off, and that way they can get some sleep, and so can I.”
She nodded, still looking suspicious, but not as much. I think I did a fucking great job of convincing her. I should win some kind of acting award.
And I could actually follow through with what I was telling her because I felt that Marilyn was a lot closer than we had expected, that she was gaining speed and strength as she traveled further into the forest, following the North Star.
I looked up into the tree to make sure my partridge friends were still there. They were, and that was good. They helped continue the spell that blinded Jessalyn to Marilyn’s presence in the woods. And they would help Marilyn know where I was.
But I didn’t want her to come yet. Not just yet. I would call my pack members back and look at the orbs and find out when to expect Marilyn. I just needed Jessalyn to leave.
The baby was screaming now, shaking really, and I said, “Jessalyn, doesn’t the baby need to eat?”
“She does,” Jessalyn said, regretfully. “I’ll go tend to her so that she stays alive, unlike her weak mother.”
I cringed when she said that. It was so fucking wrong. But I didn’t want to challenge her on the subject of the baby, as I knew it would only bring out her wrath.
“But I’ll be back,” she informed me. “I want to make sure you and your pack stay safe, and to warn you if OTHERPACK is coming.”
“Okay,” I told her, acting happy to hear this news, although nothing could be further from the truth. “I appreciate that.”
“I’m also going to keep an eye out and all my senses on high alert to make sure no one else comes uninvited to Bethel Forest,” Jessalyn says, almost yelling now, to counter the baby’s screams.
I was glad they were both being so loud, because it would alert my pack to the fact that we had a problem.
“Okay,” I yelled back at her, repeating that one word which was the most I could say to her without adding “fuck you.”
I knew exactly what she was alluding to. And when she headed off, she turned back around again to make it clear, just in case I hadn’t understood.
“I will not be the least bit happy if anyone comes to visit this baby,” she said. “Especially not someone who left a long time ago and will not be welcome back. The baby is mine now, and mine alone. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I told her, hoping to prove her wrong, as the baby looked at me with tears streaming down its little face.
Finally, Marilyn left, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, but at least I had gotten her off my back, for now.
And it was just in the nick of time, because before I knew it my pack members were rushing back, with the orbs hot on their tail.
“Melchior!” they called out. “Melchior!”
“She’s coming right now!” some were saying.
“It happened so fast! We didn’t even have time to check the orbs!”
I already knew. Because the baby had told me so. But unfortunately, the baby had told Jessalyn so, too. And I just hoped that their paths wouldn’t intersect for a while, so that I could teach Marilyn all that she needed to know first.
And maybe so that I could have a little time with her, all to myself.
Chapter Seven
Marilyn
I had been traveling through the forest for so long that I had had to stop and rest. It wasn’t a very long sleep, but it must have given me energy. Because something had awoken me. I was normally a very heavy sleeper who could stay asleep through anything.
But now, it was the tiniest thing that woke me up. The flapping of a pair of bird wings.
I had looked up, and there had been partridges up ahead. I remembered the letter I had received from the man named Melchior. The whole reason I was in the forest.
And I knew I had to continue on my journey. Making sure that the North Star was in front of me, I began running, even faster than I had before sleeping, so the rest must have done the trick.
But I could have sworn that I was being pushed ahead by some invisible force. Because I had already been running faster than I had ever managed to run in my life, and now I was practically flying.
I had never been a great athlete, and that was putting it mildly. I was more of a nerdy, bookish type who preferred not to exercise at all. Not to mention that my big boobs always flapped around too much when I ran.
But I had tried out for several sports in high school, to please my father, who had always wanted an athletic tomboy daughter. He’d never outright said as much, but it was obvious. And I’d felt that he hadn’t ever been able to have any children after me.
I guess that wasn’t true. He could have found someone else, after my mother died, but he never had. He’d devoted all his attention to raising me.
That was why I had put up with his over-protective and domineering nature for so long. I was all he had, and he had given everything for me.
But even I had my limits. It just got to be too much. Especially when he’d found my box of cards from Aunt Marla and had punished me so severely, by taking away my Prom. I was supposed to go with some dumb kid I wasn’t that into, but at least I would have had the typical high school experience. Instead, I had to stay home watching Carrie and wondering if the role of the mom could just as easily be played by a dad.
Anyway, I’d tried my best for him for a while. I played field hockey for a couple seasons and even softball, staring up at the clouds instead of paying attention to the ball. One time, a ball had even hit me because I’d been too busy thinking about a book I’d been reading to see it coming.
That was embarrassing, and I’d quit, and I think by that point my dad was glad, because he’d rather me not play any sports than be so bad at one.
Then I found track, which was his thing, really, because he was a runner himself. I did decently at long distances, but sucked at sprinting.
He’d call over the fence to me, as if he was the track coach, but he wasn’t— in fact, the real track coach had even told him he had to cool it— and tell my time as I rounded each lap.
“Come on Marilyn, you can do it!” he’d yell out. “You’re going to get a personal record!”
My personal record wasn’t anything great. I came in third place one time and you’d have thought I’d won some huge award.
I always got sick to my stomach during last period before a track meet. I’d ask myself why I couldn’t just sit on the bleachers and read a book instead of making myself compete against runners who were clearly better than me.
One time I even pretended to trip and hurt my ankle just to get out of a meet I was falling behind in. I was really not well suited to the sport at all but I just kept trying. One day, an old man was in the bleachers as I finished running my race.
“Good job!” my dad had called out to me.
“Oh, that’s your daughter?” the man in the bleachers had said. “I was wondering how she could run so fast, with that bubble butt of hers.”
“That’s not nice!” my dad said, scowling at him, but I kinda wished he would have punched his lights out for me.
After that, I didn’t run track the next year. I realized it wasn’t for me. The old man was too blunt but he was right. I wasn’t even shaped for the sport.
But here I was running faster and faster in this strange forest, all towards a guy I didn’t even know. It was almost as if I was possessed and something had taken over me.
Before I knew it, I was going faster than I thought
humanly possible. But I stopped in my tracks when I saw a pack of wolves standing just ahead of me. Or at least I tried to stop in my tracks but I ended up failing, nearly skidding into the center of the circle of wild beasts, thanks to the momentum I had built up.
“Please!” I called out. “Don’t hurt me!”
“They won’t,” said someone, from up above.
I looked up and saw the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my entire life. He looked like some kind of a god: tall, broad-shouldered, with a full head of hair even though he otherwise looked quite a few years older than me, and with a sexy grin. He even had a dimple as the cherry on top of all of this goodness.
“Melchior?” I asked, hoping that it was.
Because if that was the guy who wrote the letter, I was very happy indeed.
“Yes, it is me. Good job noticing the peasants,” he said, with a handsome wink.
It was only then, when I looked up above his head, did I notice all the peasants up there in the tree. I had clearly had my eye on other things.
He climbed down from the tree, which was an amazing feat in and of itself, since the tree was very high up and also quite thin. It looked like a sick tree, to be honest. And I had no idea how he had managed to climb up there in the first place.
“It’s nice to meet you, Marilyn,” he said. “Thank you for coming all this way.”
“Of course,” I told him, and as he took my hand inside his much larger one, I really wanted to melt into the floor of the forest. “I don’t really know what all of this is about, but I figured you’d explain it more when I arrived.”
“Definitely,” he said, but the corners of his mouth turned down in a way that made me think that perhaps he wasn’t exactly sure that was a good idea. “All in due time, that is.”
I was a little annoyed about this— I wasn’t going to lie. I had traveled all this way as fast as I could, and he wasn’t even going to tell me why he had asked me to come?
He put his arm around me, though, and I started to instantly forgive him. There was something protective about him that made me feel as though he probably had a reason for not telling me what was going on.
“How was your trip here?” he asked, looking deep into my eyes, as if he genuinely cared.
I wasn’t used to anyone looking at me like that. I’d always been a loner and I figured that I had missed out on having a mom, so I didn’t really know how to connect with people.
It seemed guys were always only out for sex and girls only ever wanted something from me— not to increase their popularity points, since I had none, but maybe to copy off a test or have me “help” them with their homework, also known as doing it all for them.
But Melchior seemed like one of those rare souls who actually did care, and maybe that was why he had sent the letter. And I wasn’t fooling myself that even if he did want to have sex with me, that I would mind one bit.
After all, I’d been wanting to lose my virginity for quite some time anyway, and he was a much better option than the alternatives. He was especially better than Charles, and I was so glad I hadn’t given it up to that douchebag, when obviously someone bigger and better— no pun intended— awaited me.
“My trip was fine,” I told him. “Uneventful, until I ran into this pack of wolves, anyway.”
I looked down at the wolves at around me, but Melchior shook his head as if they weren’t nearly as scary as they looked.
“Don’t worry about them,” he told me. To them, he said, “Shoo.”
The wolves dispersed, as if they were used to listening to him.
I looked up at him, perplexed, and then down at what looked to have been a shelter under the tree, before it had been destroyed. I wondered just what kind of man seemed to live in the forest.
“I bet you’re hungry,” he told me, picking up a bag that he had under the one part of the shelter that hadn’t been torn off. “I’d like to get you some food. But we need to go somewhere else. It’s not safe here.”
“But you just said the wolves were harmless…” I started to protest.
He looked down at me and put his finger on my lips. I liked that. He was possessive and domineering, but in a protective way, while at the same time seeming to value my presence and to act as if he thought I was as strong as he was.
“They are,” he said. “It’s not them I’m worried about. Come on. Follow me, and once we’re alone and in a secluded space, I’ll try to tell you a little more.”
I nodded my agreement to follow him. I would have liked to have known more about where we were going, but I figured it was no time to argue, since he had said that where we were wasn’t safe.
And besides, I liked the thought of being alone with him, in a secluded space.
I was hoping we would be able to do a lot more than just talk.
Chapter Eight
Marilyn
I thought the goal was to get out of here and to some secluded space as quickly as possible, so I started to take off, feeling that energy pushing me forward again. But Melchior reached out and grabbed my hand.
“Wait,” he said.
I had to admit that the touch of his skin felt electric. I felt it run all the way through my arm and down my spine.
I know people say that when they’re attracted to someone. Like instant chemistry and all that stuff. But this was something different, I swear. It felt similar to the energy that overpowered me and propelled me on this journey, making me run faster than my big thighs and bubble butt had ever been able to go.
“What?” I asked him.
“I want you to try something before we leave. Here. Touch this.”
Still holding my hand, he reached my arm out until I was grasping a thin branch of the pear tree he had been in when I first got here.
“Yes,” he said, holding his hand on top of mine so that it stayed clenched on the branch. “It’s working. I can feel it.”
“What’s working?” I asked him, very confused, to say the least.
“This tree is cursed,” he said. “Like a lot of trees in this forest. Someone doesn’t want it to continue to live. But your touch is healing it. Helping it.”
I looked at him like he had three heads.
It was all I could do to not say, “What the fuck are you talking about, your crazy person?”
But I could tell he actually believed what he was saying. This wasn’t a joke or some fairy tale he was telling me.
I mean, maybe it was, but if so, then he actually believed in the fairy tale, that much was obvious. He wasn’t just trying to fuck with me.
I didn’t get the sense that he was crazy.
Or at least any crazier than all the rest of this is.
I mean, ever since I became a teenager I’ve been getting letters addressed to me from Bethel Forest.
That was just weird, if you thought about it.
And I knew it was weird. I knew I had come from this odd place and I knew my father didn’t like it and didn’t want me to have anything to do with it so I hid the letters. I was always the first to the mailbox to make sure I could grab any as soon as they came, before my dad could have the chance to see it.
He thought I was just studious about my chores. Our community mailbox was near the community garbage dumpster so I would always take out the trash and walk the dog down there at the same time. He thought I was being helpful and responsible. But my ulterior motive was to be able to get these letters from this odd, forbidden place.
So, what did I expect to happen here?
I really had no idea.
“I’m glad it’s working,” I told Melchior, patting the tree branch a little bit for good measure.
“That’s good,” he said. “That helped. Try this.”
He took my hand and used it to stroke the tree branch, up and down, until he smiled and said, “I think that’s helping too. But it will take a little time to know how much damage can be recovered.”
I was still moving my hand up and down when he took his
hand off mine. I guess I was just dedicated to the task I had started. But both of us looked at each other and started laughing. Because it was a rather perverted gesture, when you think about it.
All of a sudden all I could think about was having sex with him. And I think he felt the same way too because it was like an invisible force was drawing us together.
Is that what fate feels like? I wondered, as he grabbed me and kissed me, fiercely, passionately.
I kissed him back.
Just as fiercely and passionately.
And I loved it.
He tasted like mint. He smelled like Christmas, like cinnamon and cider and hot chocolate all rolled into one. His lips were pulling on my tongue and his own tongue was circling mine.
It felt like his mouth was fucking mine.
I know that’s graphic, but it felt like that.
And I wanted more. I wanted him to actually fuck me.
For my very first time.
I could tell he wanted that too, he pulled his mouth away from mine, reluctantly, as if it was torture, and grabbed my hand again. We took off, with him pulling me through the forest and me following him. We were going fast and it was like we were two animals galloping or even flying through the forest.
We came up on a canyon and we slowed down a bit. Right before we walked down into it, he scampered up into a tree— I can only describe it as scampering because I don’t know how else to describe the animal-like motions he was making— and reached onto a branch that was high up, pulling down a canteen of water that was hanging there, and a satchel.
“Here,” he said, as he effortlessly jumped out of the tree— how the heck is he so agile?, I wondered— and passed me the canteen. “You’re probably thirsty by now.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
I had brought a lot of water in the pack that was on my back but it was nice not to have to dip into my supply. I had taken the survivalist tips I watch on YouTube seriously and had prepped well for this journey.
He reached into the satchel and pull out some nuts and dry fruit and passed those to me, too. After I took a few good swigs from the canteen, I passed it back to him while I quickly ate. Then he passed it to me so that I could wash down the food.