Forceful Justice

by Blair Aaron

  CHAPTER 24

  Elsa awoke before she even opened her eyes. The damp ground cooled the surface of her cheek, but the air above her was hot, like the interior of an oven. Without needing a mirror, she felt the pine needles impressing themselves on her face and palms. Something told her she was being watched and she dared not let me him know she was alive. She could lie here, playing dead, for all of eternity. Part of her wanted to, because despite what she told herself, she knew she had made a grave mistake, even though exactly what form her mistake had taken remained unclear to her. Perhaps her first mistake was trusting Freja in following her to Dorien's cave dwelling, in order to trap Elsa. Or maybe it was the fact that she agreed to kiss Dorien--maybe then the crystal never would have come to life, entrapping her to her current position. But then there was no telling what Dorien had in store for her if she had disagreed. Elsa wondered to herself what ultimate goal Freja had in mind by making her kiss Dorien. Freja either needed to know Elsa's intentions, in the way a mother would require her son's potential wife to prove her love--or, more likely, the ruby crystal contained a magic that allowed Freja to get Theo's love. There was no way Theo would love an ugly hag like Freja Stein, however. Elsa lay there, utterly confused about how to solve her current predicament.

  A gust of wind tossed her face a space above ground.

  “Get up,” a voice said, gruff and commanding. A scaly claw nudged her in the ribs, making Elsa wince. “I said get up. I know you're alive.” Elsa opened her eyes, a saw an orange eyeball the size of a grapefruit staring back at her. Sulfur wafted into Elsa's face so that she could barely breath. A dragon's breath obviously reeked of potent chemicals. “You're in for some pain if you don't stand up and hear your options.”

  “What options, Dorien? Since when do you give me options?”

  “If I had the power, you'd be a sizzling pile of sticks right now. But, fortunately for you, dear Freja had different plans for you. Gotta follow boss's orders.”

  Elsa stood up and surprised herself at the sheer lack of energy she had. She looked around and saw that she was standing between the edge of that familiar forest which had called to her on the way to Dorien's cave, between that and the edge of a cliff, where Dorien in all his glorious dragon form now sat on his hind legs, his eyes narrowed on Elsa like she was prey. His scarred bat-like wings expanded like the sails of a massive ship, poised for flight, should he need to. Despite his massive frame, horrifying expression, and fuming breath, the dragon seemed ever so slightly afraid of Elsa, though she didn't know why. She dusted off her dress and looked him straight in the eye, ready for her fate, which was no doubt going to involve extreme amounts of heat.

  “OK, I'm here. Go ahead and light me up. Just do me a favor and make sure it's quick. I hate waiting.”

  “Shut your mouth, I'm not going to torch you, although I really want to. Turn around and you'll see your fate.”

  “I know what's behind me. It's a stupid forest, which you think you can scare me into getting lost in.”

  “I don't need to scare you,” Dorien said. “The Forbidden Forest will do that all on its own.”

  “What if I refused? I am going to find Freja and kick her ass for what she's done. Then you're going to tell me where you have taken Theo.”

  “You have thirty seconds to get walking, or you won't be able to outrun the flame. I'll give you a head start.”

  Elsa pretended her heart was not palpitating, but she was indeed very afraid. “Tell me where you have taken my fiancée! Think about what you have done to your own brother, Dorien! He loves you, followed you anywhere, wanted nothing but to protect you! Have some compassion.” Elsa thought she saw a glimmer of regret in Dorien's eyes, but then it was quickly replaced with furious anger. He took a deep breath, and Elsa could feel the surrounding air rush into his lungs. She knew what was coming, so she turned her back to Dorien and prayed she would reach a safe distance from his wrath before he burned her alive.

  But into the darkened forest ahead, she could never go, even though there was no other choice. It was either death by fire, or the mysteries and danger of the evil Forbidden Forest, which she had been warned about her entire life. The choice was heavy and shackling to her conscience, as she knew by entering the forest, the choice destroyed any hope of finding Theo. She would choose evil and frailty to save her own life, at the expense of everything she believed in, at the cost of saving the person she loved. She would sign her name into the Devil's guest book, in blood, red as the passion she once had for Theo but was now lost forever.

  So into the woods she ran, as fast as the wind. Behind her, the heat lapped at her back, singed her clothes, and filled her lungs with dusky soot. And before her, deep despair waited, a journey into nothingness. Her heart sank at the realization. But she ran on in spite of this, unsure of the future, into the spindly, swaying, intoxicating trees.

  PART TWO - INTO THE FOREST

  CHAPTER 25

  The fire dissipated from Elsa's vision fairly quickly, after the initial blast. She knew dragons could spit fire, but this was no simple stream of heat. Dorien's anger was so intense she might as well have outrun an atomic bomb, without the explosion. Running into the forest ahead, the single bright flash behind her formed her own shadow in the leaves, and then came the heat. Even here, at least a mile into the forest, she could still feel the heat and turned to see him spraying the tree line with violent, yellow hate. She turned back to the forest, searching for a small trail she could walk along, until she was a safe distance from Dorien. There was nothing but darkness before her, and the trees seemed to come closer and closer together, making the forest more and more dense. The shock of the trauma--losing almost all hope of ever finding Theo, the sudden understanding that there might be something to the crystal's glowing she had not been initially aware of, and the sheer loneliness of being forced to willingly walk to your demise, as she had done when she entered the Forbidden Forest--all this and more made Elsa feel completely separated from her old life. In her mind and heart, she entered a vast wilderness, accessing the darkest corners of her psyche and bringing out demons and witch people she always pretended not to see or notice in her regular life. Her old self lie like a dream behind her, receding into memory with frightening pace, and the evil forest forged her new identity. The moment when she placed her lips on Dorien's, Theo's damn brother, marked her shame, the unleashing of an ignominy which would haunt her far into the future. She felt like an angel in heaven, whom God had given the only thing truly worth having, and who, through the rottenness of her own nature, consciously chose her own damnation in Hell.

  She wandered through the Forbidden Forest for several hours, passing glistening streams which emitted their own sparkling light when there was no sun or moon to reflect it. The water, therefore, took on a blackened, oily quality, and Elsa used the soft blue embers growing on the mossy skin on the tree bark and rock ravines, enlivening themselves perhaps from her presence, like blue fireflies scared by human beings, to grope her way through the black forest. The trees around her were gargantuan, massive and old, like they were made from a fairy tale. Their trunks extended far up into the canopy of the forest, where Elsa could not see, and had a circumference which Elsa never saw back on earth. They were big enough to drive ten wagons through in tandem.

  She continued on, vaguely aware of the information she had gleaned from the stories in childhood--something about the passing of time in the forest versus back home where she grew up. The experience was strange, as Elsa's body continued in part to respond to the horror of her situation, as if to warn her of the massive danger she was in, even if her mind shut down to prevent being overwhelmed by terror and grief. She could feel, then, a heart murmur when a black shadow passed in her peripheral vision. And her skin grew cold when she moved too far away from the soft blue hue in the ground's moss and grassy area, which lighted her way. In the distance of the blackness, two lime-green dots appeared from nowhere and then grew in size. Before long, Elsa wondere
d, in her soporific and somnambulant state of mind, if the pair of dots were actually a pair of eyes. As the dots grew closer, the question was finally settled, because she also saw the faint white glint of angry teeth.

  A black wolf had been following her for some time and only now was making its presence known. She ducked down onto her knees, and the icy air filled her nostrils when she breathed. She hoped the wolf had not seen where she went, and after waiting several seconds for sounds that he was circling around her hiding spot, she peeked her head above the small crevice in the rock near the trail. And standing before her was the most beautiful, Satanic wolf she'd ever laid eyes on. Never before had Elsa ever encountered a vision of something so magnificent, so strange, so terrifying. A lump formed in her throat. Without saying anything, the wolf stared at her, and its eyes conveyed the most curious mixture of wild passion and horror all at the same time. Elsa wanted to move from the spot she was standing on, but the wolf's gaze transfixed her, mesmerized her, into a stone statue at its command. She had no idea what the wolf wanted, large and menacing on the mountain's edge, staring down at her. Perhaps she had walked into its territory accidentally without knowing better, or maybe her imagination conjured him up as a coping strategy for the situation in which she found herself, or worse, maybe he could smell the shame, the evil, rising within her as a result of the mistake she made with Dorien.

  She looked back for a split second at the edge of the forest, a dim line in her sight, and Dorien continued setting the tree line ablaze. She wondered when he would get tired enough to give her a chance to escape, because she feared what other creatures waited for her in the deeper parts of the forest. When she looked up at the place where the enormous black wolf had been, the spot was empty. Elsa breathed a sigh of relief.

  CHAPTER 26

  Elsa continued walking through the darkness of the forest, using the same path lit by the blue glowing moss. For a while, as she strolled through the darkness, she got lost in her thoughts, forgetting for a moment she had been damned for the foreseeable future to the sylvan abyss in which she currently passed. Voices in the distance, shouting, broke her reverie.

  “How many strippers do you think you could fit on your bed, Humby?”

  “Where is this going, brother?”

  Two men were walking along the path between two pine trees reaching up into the obscured sky.

  “Just humor me. Are you going to answer?”

  “Twelve. I could probably fit twelve strippers on my bed.”

  “Why that many? I thought you only needed one, to tell you you're the father!”

  “Humburt, you are truly the dumbest person I have ever met. Where in that joke was I supposed to laugh?”

  “I don't know. It took me all day to come up with that.”

  Elsa ducked once again behind a tree, as she could see two tall, slender, but muscular red-headed men make their way in her direction. They were shirtless, dirty, and one had a bow slung across his chest. Elsa could not take her eyes off their bodies and faces, as their appearances struck a strange, long-forgotten hunger in her, which was heretofore unfamiliar to her. She didn't know exactly what she wanted from them--it wasn't sex necessarily, as she just wasn't that kind of girl. As they came closer, she realized they were identical twins.

  “I've got a real joke for you,” said Augustus.

  “Ok, brother. Lay it on me.”

  “There once was a young woodworker engaged to a pretty seamstress. The day before their wedding, a tornado destroyed their town and killed them both. They both woke up in heaven, thankful that they at least could still be together, even in death.”

  “Where's the joke, Humburt.”

  “You haven't let me finish. Anyway, when they got to the pearly gates, they saw the gatekeeper and asked him if they could still get married, because their wedding had been interrupted by the violent tornado, which God undoubtedly sent to bring them to the afterlife.

  “The gatekeeper said he would have to ask, so he made them wait until he could get permission. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. After three whole months, the gatekeeper finally returned and said that, yes, they could get married even though they were dead. The couple smiled and kissed each other, but stopped after a few moments. They looked at the gatekeeper and asked if it was possible to get divorced, too. The gatekeeper slammed his fist onto the table, furious and red-faced.

  'What's wrong, ' they asked him.

  He looked up at them and said, 'Do you know how long it took me to find a priest to get you married? There were only three! And now you want me to find a lawyer, too! I'll never be able to!'“

  “That's stupid,” said Humburt.

  “You just don't get it,” Augustus said. Then he took his over sized fist and punched his brother in the arm.

  Humburt gave his brother a stern look. “Don't do that.”

  “Make me. I'll do whatever I want.”

  “Try it and see, pig boy.”

  Augustus and Humburt began tussling, trying to outdo one another in a battle of physical strength. Despite their supposed distraction, when Elsa accidentally kicked a rock and sent it bouncing down the canyon at her feet, both men looked up. They were no more than 10 feet from her, and from this distance she could see the color of their eyes, an emerald green. She covered her mouth, aghast. One of the brothers, whom she heard called Augustus, had a pale birthmark on his square cheek. The other, apparently named Humburt, had tousled auburn hair, as if he'd been riding through the wind, over the chilly mountains and evil forest in which Elsa now found herself.

  “Brother, be still. Someone's here,” said Humburt. He let go of his brother's shoulder and approached the area where Elsa was hiding. He ran his hand through his hair, visibly nervous, and peeked around the corner. As he did, Elsa rotated her body around the tree until she couldn't anymore in order to avoid being discovered.

  “Brother, you're just hearing things again. I told you that you're going crazier than we all are.”

  “No, shut up. I know I heard something.” He waited and looked around for a while without saying anything. “Guess it was nothing, let's get back to camp.” Then they walked away, and Elsa thought she was safe after several minutes. When she came around the corner of the tree, though, they were waiting for her and almost instantly grabbed her wrist. “Got ya,” said Humburt. Elsa screamed. “Look who was hiding the whole time. Lesson number one in hiding from werewolves, little miss: when I get close enough I can track you by your scent.”

  “I didn't do anything,” Elsa said, wincing at the pain in her wrist. “Please let me go.”

  “Why should we let you go? Where did you come from? We know all the creatures in the forest before the The Enchanted Cottage. We've never seen you before. Where'd you come from?”

  “You're hurting my wrist,” she said. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  Humburt looked up at his brother, as a light bulb went off in his brain. “Augustus, you don't think.”

  “No, I don't. Don't be crazy.”

  “It has to be. The prophecy says this would happen. 'A lone girl will stumble into the Forbidden Forest, innocent and lost.' She looks pretty innocent to me.”

  “Humburt, I said no. You're always seeing patterns and meaning in the stuff that happens to you. I'm telling you it just isn't there. Try using your brain for once, brother.” But Humburt wouldn't let go of Elsa's wrist, determined to prove his theory right.

  “I'm taking her,” he said.

  “God, why do we have to go through this every time you meet someone new.”

  “What are you talking about, brother? We haven't met anyone new. No one has entered the Forest in decades, ever since Prince Theo left.”

  Elsa's ears perked up. “What did you just say?” But Humburt ignored Elsa and continued trying to convince his brother that Elsa's presence was spiritually significant.

  “Humby if you say his name out loud again, they might hear. And you know what will happen.”

>   “Yes I know but still. Maybe this will bring him back.”

  “He's never coming back. He left, because he didn't want us to find out that he was a fraud. And he WAS a fraud, brother.”

  Humburt looked at his brother, searching for any sign of pretense. “You know that's not true. Dr. Kirbleitz will send me away, but I don't care anymore. I don't believe what he says.”

  “Humburt, stop! We must quit speaking of this at once, or it will be too late. He can hear our every thought. We must not even think of it. Kirbleitz cares for us and wants nothing but to help us. You know that. He took us in when dad never would. He taught us to hunt, to fish, to fend for ourselves. If he didn't care, why would have taken the time to do that?”

  “I don't know. Maybe you're right. But this prophecy, Humburt, it's crazy talk. You had dreams like this all your life, and have any of them ever come true?”

  “No, but--”

  “Exactly. You just have a big imagination. You always have. But I'm your twin brother and I know you better than anyone else in the Forest. You have to trust me on this. This girl is not some prophecy you think will bring Prince Theo back.”

  Elsa could not bite her tongue any longer. The more times she heard Theo's name, the more excited and anxious she got. “I know who you are talking about. Theo is my fiancée.”

  Both brothers stopped and looked down at Elsa, shocked. August creased his brow. “She's lying. She's making it up so we don't eat her. Or give her to Kirbleitz.”