by Blair Aaron
“I just want to go back to my old life. I want things to be the way they were. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than this constant fear and paranoia. That man who saved me is a good man. Maybe he'll protect me from that wolf. He's going to wake up soon, I promise. I just hope he doesn't go back into the Forest and bring his friends.”
Elsa had forgotten about the comatose man from the forest, as she attempted to process the density and gravity of Lili's story. And Lili was right, the man would wake up soon, and Elsa couldn't help but get excited by the anticipation of that event. The blond man radiated a goodness in Elsa's heart that could not ignore. But she couldn't reconcile Lili's story of that blond man's heroism with everything she had been taught about the Forbidden Forest--namely, that all the creatures it contained were evil, black and Satanic.
“That black wolf is Satanic,” Lili said, as if she were reading Elsa's thoughts. “There is no way I'll ever get him out of my mind. It's like he infected me with his evil, Elsa. I'm so afraid for my soul. I don't know what I'm going to do.” Elsa herself was at a loss for words. If what Lili said was true, and there was nothing to suggest she was making up her story, there was a black wolf deep in the heart of the Forest, possibly lurking on the border of the town. Elsa did not understand what allowed the blond man to cross over, and subsequently, what would prevent the wolf from following suit. The thought sent shivers down her spine, and then her mind gravitated toward the blond man again.
“What do you mean, he will wake up soon?”
“Well he's not dead, Elsie.”
“How did he manage to get across the border?”
“That's what I'm telling you. I don't know how. Maybe he's special?”
Elsa's spirit rose with that admission. Yes, of course, she thought. He was special, different from his magical brethren, because he was kinder, a savior for Lili and her son. “Well he did save you and Ennis,” Elsa said. “That must be why he was able to cross over.”
“Yes, that must be it,” Lili said, trying to convince herself, even though she still drowned in her fear of the black wolf. Tears welled up in Lili's eyes, and Elsa could see she was about to lose control of her emotions again.
“Mommy?”
Little Ennis stood in the doorway again, his innocent smile radiating compassion for his mother's fear. He walked over to her, his minuscule bare feet pattering on the wooden floor. He placed his tiny hand on Lili's cheek, pressing down to make small impression. She looked up at him, her chest still heaving from her sorrow, and smiled at her son's attempt to make her feel better. Then she hugged him. Elsa watched from the other side of the room, her heart warm for the scene presented before her, however tinged by a dark and ominous anticipation of some unforeseen tragedy waiting for all of them in the not too distant future.
CHAPTER 6
The clerics sent out word for an emergency announcement at 7 o'clock in the evening. The crowd of townspeople filed one by one into the church, as the teenage girls searched the pulpit area for Father O'Grady, who was nowhere to be seen. The middle aged couples anticipated the subject of the announcement would involve the mysterious blond man from the Forest, whom the town decided would watch over in him in his damaged state. While several members of the community had fallen into the clutches of the forest, and fewer than that had even made it back to the safety of their tiny civilization, never before had any magical stranger emerged from the weeds and wild tree limbs of the Forest.
The congregation waited longer than was comfortable for the majority of its participants, their compassion tethered not far by the weight of their hungry stomachs and falling energy levels. The crowd began to murmur after several hours, nearing the verge of leaving the town hall, knowing such a scarcely decorous action spoke volumes in the eyes of the other members of the community. But then a door near the podium shuddered, and three men walked through, the third being Father O'Grady himself. O'Grady reached the pulpit and the members nearest him on the first few rows of pews could see the shakiness of his hands and the sweat forming on his brow. They wondered if he was upset or excited. He unwrapped a piece of paper, crumbled from his pocket, and began reading a prepared statement.
“This afternoon, as we all prepared our Sunday meals, the chief medical leader of our village informed me that the man who entered our borders six days ago…” Father O'Grady stopped, taking a deep breath, preparing himself for the aftermath of the statement, as the rest of the audience listened with open ears to his every word. There was speculation amongst the crowd in the time since the announcement spread throughout the community that the man had succumbed to his injuries, expired into the afterlife, dead. Those rumors permeated the minds of the older members in the cast of something resembling hope, as the strange blond man threatened their sense of safety and structure, which they so desperately needed in the waning years of their lives. But for the younger members, particularly girls the age of Sarah and Chloe, and to some degree Elsa and Priscilla, they worried that this man, who symbolized the magic and spiritual creativity they so longed for in their community and which their minds flirted with at night, as they dreamed, might give them confirmation of all that had been missing in their lives. His death, therefore, would destroy the great excitement and hope he'd brought with him when he crossed over from the forest.
“The man has awoken,” Father O'Grady finally said, as the crowd erupted into turmoil. “Please keep your voices down, as the other clerics here have laid out a plan for his eventual assimilation into this community.” There was more turbulence with this last statement. There was a growing fear, in addition to a great swell of joy and excitement for what the man would offer the community. Perhaps he would teach children some magic he learned from the interior of the Forbidden Forest, some thought. This was both a good thing and terrible thing, depending on the perspective one assumed.
Elsa stood at the back of the meeting hall, watching Chloe and Sarah squeal with delight. Priscilla, sitting next to them, looked back at Elsa, her face conveying all the fear about what the red ivy meant. Elsa herself worried what would happen if the rest of the town found out Sarah and Chloe idolized the man. He was dangerous to such young girls, particularly those prone to fantastical imaginings and exciting themselves with secrets. Elsa reached down in her pocket, gripping some wad of cloth with the red ivy, having confiscated it from the girls. Standing there in the crowd, seemingly anonymous, Elsa could feel a spotlight on her, someone looking down on her from on high, and she became suspicious the people around her, without voicing their insight, knew her secret, that she was becoming infatuated for this dear blond man whom she had never spoken a word to. That forbidden desire was growing from the interior of her heart, no matter how long or hard she struggled against it, and it would burst forth any second to take hold of her. Her heart was set ablaze by a mysterious and inexplicable tug toward that man from the moment she set her eyes on him, and this was something Elsa had never experienced. She became afraid, almost as fearful as Lili herself, that she had summoned an evil from that terrifying forest into her soul, a sickness she could never rid herself of, because she opened the door through some weakness in her personality. That she would seek the blond stranger out to keep for her own, before she knew how or why, terrified Elsa, as the emotion pulled her into action, overriding any conscious thought, in the way someone might feel when they were possessed by an evil spirit, as it took control of their soul. She prayed God would give her the strength to resist the longing for the blond man growing more powerful with every passing second, and yet grieved for the possibility as well, for this passion presented a new side to life with which she had heretofore been unfamiliar. So Elsa stood there, surrounded by scores of people, yet completely alone, resolved to avoid the blond man's cabin, while at the same time scheming a way to get as close to him as possible.
CHAPTER 7
The leaders of the community kept the blond man locked away for several weeks in a cabin by the cliff, near the sea. The house Father O'
Grady offered to give him was once occupied by the oldest living member of the community, long since passed, before Elsa was born. She surmised it could have been the blacksmith who followed his children into the forest, in the hopes he could bring them back, the same man Elsa's father told her about when she was just a little kid.
The blond man didn't emerge from the cabin for days, while several village leaders guarded his door, lest the young girls like Chloe and Sarah meddle into his cabin at night, and disturb his sleep. The whole town united in solidarity in protecting the blond man, spurred by Father O'Grady, from any perturbation. Father O'Grady counseled anyone who would listen, both on Sundays in his time at the lectern and on the sidewalk as he came from his home to work every day, about the importance to letting the man be. The man gave every indication that he wasn't wanted by the community, that they would reject or ostracize him. O'Grady also made it clear to the town's people that the man would warm up to the people in time, as he promised he had no plans to inflict harm on his neighbors.
In the weeks since the announcement, the man's residence sat atop a steep hill, overlooking the sea on one side, and on the other side, a wide gradual slope which neared the depth of a typical valley, on which the main area of the town resided. The tiny blue house was a metaphorical star which attracted the attention of every last resident in the town. The children created games around it. The teenagers came as close as they could at night, before the leaders guarding the young man ran them off, into the dusky night, the freshly grown grass of summer just beginning to fade. Autumn was upon them.
And for Elsa, the longer she tried to ignore the house, the more it consumed her attention, lurking in the back of her mind at her job as a waitress in the local tavern, and directly overpowering her thoughts at night, as she sat in a rocking chair on her porch, watching the sun set. She waited and waited for signs that he would come out of his house and join the rest of the town. The idea enervated Elsa's imagination, to think of a magical man from the forest who decided to permanently reside with them in the town. She surmised all the glorious possibilities it would bring to their village. Perhaps, she thought, they might one day leave, with the man as a guide to how to pass into the wilderness. Elsa stopped that line of thinking, realizing how unholy it was. Father O'Grady would never forgive her. The cool air careened down from the cliff on the sea, through the town and onto her porch, bathing her naked neck in a sweet, cold draft, sending goosebumps through her skin's surface. She lay her head back, daydreaming about the man, wondering what to call him, and how he would respond to her once he laid conscious eyes on her.
And one day, despite the nearly intolerable build-up to meeting him, she saw someone familiar in the garden near the cabin. Elsa was coming home from work, and for a moment, she forgot she was passing by his house. The grass on the pavement next to his home grew wild and unkempt, and she looked ahead at a man in a red shirt, plowing the field next to his house, his large and muscular back bent over, so she could not see his face. Elsa simply had not been paying attention, and she thought in an absent-minded way how kind it was that the man standing before her offered his services for that reclusive inhabitant she so longed to see. And like so many times before, her body and heart realized who the man bent over plowing the field was before her mind did. In an instant, she ducked behind the wall, just as the man stopped his work and looked up into the air. He felt her presence, or someone's presence, clearly. He took off his brown hat, revealing shiny, luscious hair. The wind tousled it, drying the sweat from the crown of his forehead. Elsa looked behind the wall, as the blond haired man looked around the area, wondering whose presence he sensed. Elsa looked him up and down, at his statue-like frame, his height, his form-fitting gray pants, and burning red shirt, which outlined massive muscles along his back and chest. Physically the man was imposing and dangerous, but his demeanor, his aura, never approached violent, as his soul radiated goodness and truthfulness. The same foreign, powerful feeling continued to blossom in Elsa's heart for the man, so electrified was she by the first sight of him since that night in the grass. But she dare not approach him now, because she was not ready. She waited behind the wall until he wiped his fit forearms with the towel and went back into his home.
CHAPTER 8
The day's events spurred Elsa to take a walk around town, the energy of meeting the blond man once again, the leaps of joy bounding through her heart upon witnessing his vitality and health giving her a spurt of energy that refused sleep. On her walk, Elsa passed another familiar cottage, separated on the exact opposite side of town, the area some might describe as slovenly, perhaps even dangerous, though there was only one real place that posed real danger, the Forbidden Forest.
Even though the community in which Elsa was raised taught her the importance of brotherly love and the dangers of being judgmental, most of Elsa's friends could never keep themselves from terrorizing the local elderly woman, named Freja Stein, on the other side of town during the autumn months. The children labeled her a witch, building up myths around her back story that involved the leaders of the community, its priests, parishioners, cooks, counselors, and teachers somehow overlooking the fact that Freja Stein had come from the forest. The leaders wanted to forget about the witch in her lonely cottage, the children told themselves, because Freja might cast a spell on them. One particular story most of them believed was this: Freja Stein was feeding her slew of owls one day, while a teenage girl laughed at her for being crazy. Then Freja simply looked up to the girl who mocked her and clicked her eyelids just once. The girl continued walking home from school, chuckling to herself, but soon found owls flying on various perches throughout her walk. They became more numerous the closer the girl got to her home, and soon enough, thousands of owls swarmed the poor girl from all sides. She tried making a run for the house, but the owls pecked her eyes out before she made it inside.
Elsa grew out of those silly little superstitions faster than her peers did, but even she was not immune to the petty torments most children are prone to. On the dark days in October, Elsa played with Priscilla and the others, throwing rocks through the poor woman's window, breaking the glass, and sending dirty drafts through her house. Freja never retaliated to the girls, and looking back, Elsa's heart broke for the damage she helped inflict on the woman's home. A few days later, she hobbled out of her home early in the morning to tape some cloth over the holes the rocks made. Beyond that, the children never saw much of Freja, and the adults gave her the space she obviously wanted. She never made it to church, or weddings of young couples, or the birth of children. Although, at an elderly man's funeral, she did make an appearance, several years ago, her hair disheveled and her face ragged in the way people stricken with sudden grief often look. The girls speculated that Freja wanted to make sure the man was dead as a doornail, so that she could know her black magic worked its course.
Elsa herself had an altogether different theory, that the man, who was married at the time of his death, secretly fell in love with Freja and pursued a relationship with her, meeting her sugar cookies in her cottage at night, when no one was watching. It was possible that Elsa's romantic personality concocted this fantasy from no actual evidence in real life, but even the possibility it was true made Elsa feel somewhat better about how she had treated Freja as a child. That Freja might have had a true friend, let alone a romantic partner, lifted her spirits in response to Freja's otherwise lonely existence. But since that funeral several years ago, not a single person heard from Freja Stein. She crawled back into her sad, broken down cottage, ready to pass into another plane existence, where she might be wanted.
Elsa's thoughts circled back to the blond man again, and how she would approach him. She wondered about his reasons for staying away from the other members of the community for so long. Did he not want to get to know the townspeople? She feared he would reject her, but ultimately decided she couldn't wait any longer for him to make his way out into the wide world. It was time she took her fate into he
r own hands and resolved to knock his door the next morning.
CHAPTER 9
When she stepped on his porch, she was wearing the same dress as the day before and the night Chloe and Sarah revealed their vicious little present to her. Elsa looked down at the red stain on her dress, the moment after she knocked on his door, anxious that his eyes would go straight to the area. She became severely self-conscious in that moment.
“Hello,” a voice said, Elsa still looking down at her shameful red stain. Her face blushed as she realized the man had already opened the door and was standing there, waiting for her response. She braced herself before looking up. She bravely locked eyes with him, falling deeply into his blue orbs. He smiled at her, knowing she would arrive sooner or later, it seemed. “My name is Theo,” he said, extending a paw in salutation.
“Hi, Theo,” she said, placing her small dainty hand in his. He shook her hand gently, and Elsa's knees seemed to weaken. Theo had grown a ruddy mane around his neck in the time since the accident, and for all his sculpted beauty, he struck Elsa with a dose of masculinity hidden underneath that angelic prettiness.
“Please, come in. You just happen to be the second visitor to pay me a visit today,” he said, turning back into his house. As Elsa followed him in, her face flushed hot with the possibility that someone had gotten to Theo before she did. She resolve to determine just who exactly it was. “The place is much cleaner than when I found it,” Theo said, a wry smile forming on his lips. Elsa was again struck by the beauty of his smile as well, perfectly aligned teeth, which gave a cat-like impression to anyone watching close enough. She looked around the open area of his cottage, which only one small wall dividing the living area from the kitchen area, and a large window on the back wall of the place, revealing a scenic view of the cliff's edge and the ocean beyond that. Elsa's soul floated out that window into the infinity of the sea, along with Theo. She looked over to him, the connection between him and her sedating her, intoxicating her. Her world faded into black, and she woke up later on his bed, vaguely recalling him gently picking her up from the floor and carrying her into his bedroom, his bed covered with soft downy sheets and cloud-like pillows. Theo was a stranger, yes, but for some reason, Elsa knew him. He sat next to her, his arm propping him up on the side, smiling over her. She breathed in a big waft of his scent, a pleasant mix of freshly cleaned skin, along with faint but heavy dirt and grass. Her ran his thumb across her forehead, caressing the side of her cheek, and her heart shuddered with the gesture. Despite her ever-knowing certainty when it came to their connection, she was still human, with doubts and second guesses about her hunches.