The Golden Pen

Adam hadn’t been back home in years, and the only reason he came back now was for the funeral. He felt guilty. He’d spent the weekend clearing out his mother’s old house, packing books and records and clothes into boxes for donation. The house felt lonely when it was so quiet. He remembered the magical stories she told Adam throughout his childhood. Looking at the fireplace in the living room, he remembered her stories about miniature dragons that lived in the ashes and lit the coals when they grew cold. From where he stood, he could see the forest line beyond the misty garden. She would tell endless magical stories about the forest; trees that created impossible mazes with their branches, giant spiders that spun wide webs as traps for straying travellers, and frogs with tongues like whips that could snatch anything into their mouths, including small boys. It had felt so real to Adam as a child. His mother had been a wonderful storyteller.

Turning back to the room, he continued emptying the desk drawers. He opened the bottom drawer and paused. The drawer was empty excepting slim, golden pen. Adam was sure he had never seen it before – he certainly would have coveted it as a child. He picked it up and it glowed in his hands. 

‘This is too special to donate,’ he thought, putting the pen in his pocket.

After dinner, Adam gazed out the window to the forest. His head was swimming with images of magical birds, fairies, and trees. He felt the pen still in his pocket, digging sharply into his skin, begging to be used. He took it out and began writing the story of his favourite childhood fantasy. 

I have a mission to complete. I am determined to defeat Vilborg, the villainous giant that rules the forest. Once a glorious and enchanted world, the creatures now live in fear of Vilborg’s destruction. In a forest filled with powerful and delightful magical citizens, Vilborg turned to aggression to assert his rule. His strategy worked and he is without competition, but the forest is a sad and dark place. Creatures that once lived harmoniously have since become savage. No man has returned from this forest since Vilborg’s reign – its deepest dangers are unknown.

I’m in the forest now, walking along a path, armed with nothing but a compass and a waning sense of courage. I know the tales of the magic here; mosquitoes with wingspans three feet across, toxic slugs that hunt you with supernatural speed, and whip-tongued frogs whose croak is a warning of your last breath. With each step I grow more afraid, unsure of what trap, poison, or injury might be waiting for me. There are eagles soaring at a great height looking for their next meal, and spiders waiting for me to stumble into their webs. But the forest fauna is the least of my concern. As I look around, I can see the forest squirming, the vines already taking their positions to snare me as I go deeper. The path ahead is growly quickly darker, and I look up to see the trees shifting their canopies to block the sun. I stop walking. 

“This was a mistake,” I think aloud, and turn to run home, but I find there’s no path behind me. I’m faced with a dense, green wall of forest, silently knitted by the trees behind me. There is no way out, the only way is forward. Shivering, I look ahead and continue on the path.

Feeling buoyed by the sensation of revisiting his childhood and anticipating an adventure, Adam set the golden pen down onto the notepad, leaned back in his chair and yawned. 

‘I’ll get back to this after work tomorrow,’ Adam thought as he stood up and headed for bed.

***

“Before you leave today, Adam, I need you to prepare this quarters expense report and leave it on my desk.” Adam’s boss was sifting through a pile of paperwork as she spoke. “Are you alright?” She asked when she finally looked up at him. People had been asking him the same question all day. Adam supposed it was due to his vacant expression. He couldn’t take his mind off the golden pen and his story, brimming with excitement. He’d brought the golden pen and his notepad with him to work, hoping in vain to write quietly through lunch. They were still carefully stowed in his briefcase, begging for his attention.

“Yes, I’m fine, Sue, just a little distracted. I’ve been…” he trailed off as he caught an unexpected flash of green behind Sue’s head. Looking closely, he saw a thin vine with a single small leaf creeping out of the ceiling’s air conditioning vent. It was climbing across the ceiling before his eyes, moving towards his desk. “Look at that, Sue,” he began, pointing. “We should call maintenance about that vine; it’ll be all over the ceiling in a matter of hours at that rate.”

“How curious,” replied Sue. They were both still staring when something moved in Adam’s periphery. Turning in his swivel chair he saw an enormous insect hovering outside his office window. 

“That’s not possible,” he began to say as he watched hundreds of mosquitos gathering in an army around the building. Adam stood, unable to believe his eyes. As he stood, he felt a lump in his pocket. Pulling out a small compass from his pants pocket, Adam suddenly understood the golden pen. His enchanted forest was taking over his office building and the streets outside. Suddenly the ground was shaking with steady, distant thuds. Piles of papers and cups of coffee slid from desks to the floor, now carpeted with fine, soft moss. The neon lights flickered above them to the time of enormous footsteps. Finding his balance again, Adam knew what he needed to do. He snatched the golden pen and notepad out of his briefcase and sat down to write. 

“Think, Adam, think!” He urged himself. “You need to fix this! Just write something, anything!” He began to write. 

Looking around me, I quickly discover that the forest isn’t what I expected. Vilborg isn’t a giant here at all – he is just the right size. I suddenly realise that the trees and vines and mushrooms, and all the birds and bugs are larger than life. Even the grains in the pools of quicksand at the forest’s edge are huge, like quartz pearls. Looking at my own hands, I see that…

Before Adam could finish the sentence, he was knocked over by a toadstool larger than his own desk chair pushing through the earthy floor beneath him. As he fell, the golden pen dropped from his hand and rolled along the ground. Adam watched it sink into a growing slurry of quicksand under his desk. The golden pen was gone, and he’d missed his chance to make himself a giant too. 

‘As if it wasn’t difficult enough already,’ he thought, ‘now I have to survive a gigantic forest too?’

The office was already filling with oversized mushroom caps, and spiders the size of dinner plates were spinning webs like fishing nets. He had to crawl underneath big, sagging seedpods to leave the building. 

When he was outside, Adam saw huge tree trunks bursting through the bitumen and soaring towards the sky. As his story described, the trunks were moving, creating mazes through the streets. The canopy above began to knit together, casting broad shadows. But unlike his story, Adam was safe and protected by the huge trees. At first it didn’t make sense, but now watching the growth take place, he understood - they were taking up arms. With their newfound size, they could finally stand up to their tyrannous leader. Adam saw Vilborg steadily rounding the street corner. First, he saw his fist, the size of a barrel swinging high above Adam’s head. Next his foot appeared, the size of a car. He quickly realised it wasn’t only the trees working against Vilborg. The huge eagles had already begun their work of diving at his shoulders and leaving nasty gashes, and the moss was growing slick as oil on the road. 

Adam had a mission to complete. He was determined to defeat Vilborg, the villainous giant that ruled the forest. Thinking fast, he bundled together an armful of nearby vines and set to work. Using vines as ropes, he ran around each of Vilborg’s feet, swiftly ducking under fatal footsteps. He dashed between his legs, creating tight shackles. It was beginning to work – Vilborg’s thundering footsteps were reduced to a wobbly shuffle. Then Adam heard something, and he stopped to listen. At first it was just one deep croak, followed by a chorus, which quickly became a cacophony. An army of whip-tongued frogs hopped towards Vilborg. Adam stepped back and watched as they lashed and whipped and lassoed until their tongues connected with the giant. The frogs pulled their tongues back bringing Vilborg with them. With his ankles tied, he came down easily and with a ground-breaking crash that knocked Adam off his feet. With Vilborg now prone, the fat toxic slugs appeared and swarmed up and around him. The vines untangled themselves from his ankles and shifted their attention to his neck. The spiders were spinning threads of sticky web around him, forming a tight cocoon. Vilborg, squirming just moments earlier, was now still. When it was finished the ground softened and Vilborg slowly sank into the stirring quicksand. Adam stood to the side and watched as the creatures reclaimed their forest and completed their mission. The sky immediately became brighter as the trees unknitted their canopies, and the forest was brought back into life. Birds flitted from branch to branch and sang victory songs. 

Just as the forest had begun to celebrate, it was disappearing before Adam’s eyes. The frogs hopped into the distance and the spiders scurried out of sight. The trees and vines and mushrooms all retracted into the earth, leaving pits behind them that quickly filled leaving no trace at all. The birds flew away in all directions and the quicksand firmed up, until in just a few moments time Adam was standing alone in a street. There was no enchanted forest, and no sign that anything magical had happened. He’d begun the story on paper with a golden pen, and watched it unfold before his eyes, and now the story was complete. As he turned to go back inside, Adam thought of the forest by his childhood home, and wondered if his mother had ever written her magical tales with the golden pen.