Makayla sat on her broomstick hovering over the dark twisted trees below, wondering how they were still standing all these years later. She once again, thought back to that time, lazily trying to recall if there were any other indications as to why the forest hadn’t fallen apart by now.
One crisp autumn when she was young, she’d been walking through a rich, luscious forest of ripe fruit trees, when out of nowhere and with complete disregard for her psychological well-being, three men with pitchforks and burning torches suddenly and aggressively appeared from behind some trees, hurling baseless excuses for their attempted highway robbery that she paid no attention to.
She had instantly hurled her hands into the air in surrender, tears quickly and silently staining her face.
One of the torches the robbers held seemed to suddenly catch some kind of turpentine sap in the wooden handles and the flames grew wildly, igniting the nearby dry autumn leaves of a tree, and then fire had spread far too rapidly for anyone to know what was going on.
The three men had run around like headless chickens, seemingly lost on their pursuit of her, but it was too late, the fire spread all throughout the dry-leafed forest and by the time Makayla had burst out of the edge of the trees, the devastation had been total.
Nothing. As usual, her memories brought her nothing new. How long had it even been? She couldn’t say any more, maybe 10 years? Maybe a hundred?
No that couldn’t be right, could it? Certainly not, silly idea. She slowly soared down towards the spot in the forest she’d found whilst search the wreckage of trees years after the event, down toward the strange stony entrance.
Surrounded by the most gnarled and blackened trees in the remains of the forest, the silent rusty-leafed entrance juxtaposed itself with the dark black cave-like entrance from which wind seemed to howl and the feeling of cackling laughter seemed to emanate.
Of course it was always her imagination but then, so might the colour of the leaves leading to the entrance be, she’d thought many times.
How else could they have retained their fiery orange and red hues all this time?
She alighted on the pathway near the entrance and began to stomp meaningfully towards the entrance. Ahh, home sweet home, she thought, with a gnarled twisted grin appearing on her face.
Probably a little odd for a young maiden such as her to be living in such a place, but at least here she was safe from all those pitchforks and pyres.
She had been so lucky with the multiple times the villainous simpletons had tried to place her on the pyres, the ropes had been pathetically tied and slipped off, or rain had suddenly poured down directly all around the pyre in a bizarre column wherever she stood. Even bladed weapons charging at her had accidentally found themselves buried in their carriers or carrier’s associates. Anyway, probably best to avoid all of that. But how would she find a handsome prince to carry her off into the sunset on a huge white stallion from out here? She needed something to bring them here, some heroic task or treasure to bring them to her. As she approached the cave entrance deep in thought, she heard strange whimpering coming from behind one of the twisted knots of the trunk of a tree.
Bravely, she darted behind it and reached out her hand from the leather collar she saw attempting to cower behind the tree. It belonged to a goblin who looked up at her as she pulled it up out of its hiding place and seeing each other for the first time they both screamed in terror.
Makayla’s grip loosened and the creature fell to the floor with a thud and an “Oof”. The goblin quickly tried to run away, but Makayla couldn’t just let any old thing know where she was hiding so through her fear, she summoned all her courage and ordered the thing to
“STOP!” The goblin immediately did so, its one leg touching the floor and its limbs comically suspended in a freeze-frame running position; its other leg trailing behind in the air and its arms bunched into fists one forward and one behind for that extra push of speed. “You can’t just go around spying on innocent maidens hiding in the forest!”
“Achhh!”, The goblin screamed. “Please don’t eat me Mrs Witch der!”
“Hey! I’m not married! Come back here!”, Makayla answered haughtily as the goblin turned and mechanically walked back towards her, its face pulling away as if blasted by the rush of hot air from opening an oven. “And also, why does everyone say that? I’m not a witch!”
“Well… uhhh der… the broomstick, for one thing der”, The goblin said through gritted yellowing spiked teeth. Why was it walking towards her like that so weirdly? Just another one of those weird things that happened in the real world, not like those lovely warm novels she read which had none of the ghastly realities of the world, like constant dark clouds wherever you went, or weird unpredictable lightning that seemed to strike all aggressive people down out of nowhere.
“Hey! That was a totally normal broomstick. Once. I mean, I woke up one day and suddenly its gravitational charge had just gone ‘poof’! And so, I mean, it’s just one of those things. It’s really quite convenient actually. But though I would totally recommend it for travel during those lean winter months, I couldn’t possibly tell you how it happened.”
“What about the pointy black hat der?”, The goblin said, suddenly less afraid, staring at her with curiosity, now standing a metre or two in front of her.
“This? This, was my grandmother’s hat, and she was an absolute matriarch of the local community. Wearing it is my way of honouring her memory, God rest her soul.” The goblin arched an eyebrow, which was impressive because it nearly reached back half way over its bald skull.
“So you’re not going to eat me Mrs. Witch der?”, It enquired hopefully.
“I am NOT married!”, She yelled, stamping her foot, sending shockwaves for hundreds of metres, causing a million crimson leaves to fall.
The sudden shock around them sent the goblin leaping into the air and cowering behind a gnarled old fallen trunk habited by several generations of fungi, making their homes there.
Makayla on the other hand was rooted where she stood, momentarily transfixed by what had happened when she stamped her foot, her mind both refusing to accept reality and unable not to do so at the same time.
With the stress of hiding, terror, accusations, a goblin was afraid of her, and now this; she had to remind people she wasn’t married? …
It was all just too much. Her head tilted back and she began to bawl. Eventually soaking herself with her tears, her head began throbbing with the intensity of her crying, until she nearly fainted.
As she cried the goblin, whose eyes had been peering cartoonishly around the side of the rotten wood, frowned slightly, the seed of a new idea beginning to grow inside his mind. He cocked his head slightly and began to step out from his hiding place, the pit of doomed worry and fear in his bowels disappearing. Now he could no longer see the endless labyrinth of cracked wrinkles and warts growing out of warts, now he saw a beautiful young woman who needed love and care, recognising the feeling of desperate loneliness he had himself felt for so long. He leaped forward as she began to drop, and caught her with his needly little arms, landing heroically on one knee just in time.
As she turned her face towards him, his sudden bogey-green skin, long pointy ears and a couple of wiry hairs on his largely bald egg-shaped head loomed like a ship’s hull over a clownfish who’d lost their family. His cracked, cold-blooded lips met hers and the universe shattered into pieces. When she opened her eyes, there stood a being as handsome as any she’d seen, his chiselled features smiling down at her, his locks of auburn cascading in slow motion.
Her fear was gone too, and as her beady old hag’s eyes locked within his marbles of obsidian, she knew in that instant that she’d finally found a soul to touch hers, one who wouldn’t judge her for whatever she was, even if it might possibly be something… perhaps… related to… a witch?
Because she would never judge him either. In the end, the task she’d laid to lure her prince charming had simply been for two equals to see each other without judgement.
They saw no point in wasting time, and married the next day. After the ceremony, ordained by themselves of course (who could do it better?), their cave was transformed into the grandest palace of flowing waterfalls and rainbows, star and sunlight glittering off luscious pools of diamond and pearlescent crystal. Rich fruit trees of any kind they could ever want or imagine gently wafted in a breeze that gently caressed one’s face with the light warmth of cookies from an oven.
But no-one who passed by ever knew, because all they saw was a ruined burned down forest, with a rusty-leaf-covered cave entrance.
