The Cabin in the Woods

  There are very few things as scary as getting lost in the woods. Teddy never imagined how quickly it would grow dark when he was playing in the back yard, and he never imagined that he really went that far, but now he was spinning in circles and he couldn’t tell which way he had come, or which way he was going. 

  His small Velcro boots were wet and freezing in the snow, and he couldn’t get all the buttons on his coat to button. He shivered in the cold and tried not to cry, because he was a big boy now and big boys don’t cry, but as his eyes filled with tears it was getting harder and harder to keep them all in.

  Teddy was rubbing at his eyes, because it wasn’t really crying if you rubbed the tears away before they fell, when a dim light appeared at the edge of his vision. He expected it to go away, but as he stared at it, it became brighter and brighter, and the brighter it became the more it seemed to... bounce?

  At first he thought that it might be Mom, or Dad, or maybe even Grandma coming to find him, but then he realized this light was a shortish light, not much taller than he was, and that there was a stocky shortish person carrying it. 

  “Hello there!” Called the shortish person with the bouncing light. “Hello! Are you alright?” 

  Teddy didn’t know what to do. Mom always said you should never talk to strangers, and the stocky little person, it sounded like an older woman, maybe someone’s aunt, seemed very strange indeed. 

  But then again, mom always told him it was ok to ask a responsible adult for help if he needed it, and this shortish stocky woman who was an auntish age was carrying a lantern, so did that make her responsible?

  She was very close now, so Teddy couldn’t really run away. 

  “Hello, love!” She said as she walked up to him. She looked like a small round pile of laundry, all fabric and folds with a few loose threads here and there, and not very scary at all up close. She had soft kind eyes and a large round nose.

  “Hi.” He squeaked out in a quiet little voice. 

  “What’s your name then?”

  She had a funny, fancy voice, like something from one of mom’s movies about people who lived hundreds of years ago. 

  “Teddy.” He said, a little louder.

  “Nice to meet you Teddy. Who are you out here with?” She raised her lantern to look around, swinging it this way and that. 

  “N-Nobody.” Teddy was trying not to sob, but it was dark and cold and this shortish person, although not scary, was still a stranger, and therefore much less comforting than one of his parents would have been. 

  “Nobody? Well that’s not good. Are you lost?”

  He nodded. 

  “Oh dear, that’s very bad. Do you remember which way you came from?” 

  He shook his head and sniffed. 

  “Well, standing out here in the cold can’t be very good for you. Would you like to come home with me? Then we can figure out where you’ve come from and send you back again, alright?”

  Now Teddy knew you should never, ever go home with a stranger, because they could be dangerous or crazy, or they could give him peanuts which he was allergic to, but he also knew it was very bad to stand outside in the cold, at night, with wet boots, because that’s how you get sick. 

  Poor Teddy was so very cold and tired, that he really didn’t know what was the right thing to do, so he stood there and said nothing. 

  The short woman looked very worried, and started to shake her head. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you out in the cold like this, so I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come home with me, and I’ll make you make hot cocoa, and you can get warm. Then, if we can’t find out where you’ve come from, I’ll bring you right back here and you can start over, does that sound good?”

  At this point Teddy was so scared and miserable, that the idea of a warm house and a cup of hot chocolate was too nice to say no to. He nodded a little nod and took the kind little woman’s hand as she led him through a crowd of trees and onto a little path that he had never seen before. 

  When he was walking through the woods before, the looming trees and the birds that called out to each other had seemed so scary, but now there was the lantern, and the short woman talked to him, telling him all about her cottage and her family that lives there.

  “There’s me and father, we’re the ones who run everything, mostly, then there’s the brownies, who are always cleaning messes or causing messes, depending on the hour,  then there’s jack who breezes through on occasion for tea and a chat, then there’s...” And on she went, filling up the harsh frigid air with her lively chatter.

  Although Teddy didn’t understand everything she said, he was beginning to really like this funny woman, and he was glad she had found him. 

  In a seemilngly short amount of time, they had reached a small cottage that, in all his walks through these woods in the day light with his parents, he had never seen before. It almost seemed to glow, like the lantern only bigger. There was music inside, and someone singing very loudly. Teddy knew it was someone real singing, and not the radio, because even from outside the music was so loud and rich and the voice was so awful that he was sure no one could ever record it. 

  The door to the little cottage was rounded, and when it opened, Teddy was welcomed by a wave of light, warmth, and noise. The inside of the little cottage was full of colors, from the red kettle, which the short woman was filling up with water for her tea, to the blue round rug where a cat slept, somehow indifferent to the singing, to the singer himself, who was dressed in bright yellow suspenders, green pants, a white shirt and an odd little hat that wasn’t quite blue or purple, but somewhere in the middle. 

  Upon seeing Teddy, this oddly dressed and also somewhat short man stopped his singing and playing, and smiled at him broadly. 

  “Well now Mother, who’s this young lad?” 

  He spoke the same way the short woman spoke, kind of fancy, but when he spoke it sounded more like a growl. Not a mean growl, but a friendly kinda growl, like when you are trying to take the stick back from a dog so you can throw it again.

  Mother was just filling up a pot with milk, presumably for Teddy’s hot chocolate. 

  “This is Teddy, Father. He got lost in the woods, so I thought we could help him find his way back.“

  “Lost in the woods?” Father asked, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “You weren’t hunting for goblins now, were you? That’s a sure way to get lost. Besides, you’re a bit too small to be a proper goblin hunter. Why, they’d use you for a toothpick if they could.”

  “Father!’ Mother scolded him. 

  Father looked innocently at her. “What?”

  Mother shook her head and walked over to Teddy, taking off his wet coat and shoes and sitting them by the fire to dry out. 

  “Now you come along,” She said, wrapping an arm around Teddy, “And warm up with your coca, and if Father promises to behave, he can tell you a nice story.” 

  Father grumbled something about nice stories being boring. “Do I at least get some cocoa too?” He asked. 

  Mother handed him the cup of cocoa she had already poured for him, and he gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Now boy, have you ever heard of the the great red fish that jumped over the bridge and sprouted wings?”

  Teddy shook his head. 

  “Well, The story goes that there was a great it fish, with bright red scales, that used to live in the water under a bridge. He would swim around in little circles, and listen to the people going back and forth on the bridge above him, and he used to wonder what all the noise was up there. So one day, he decided to swim a little upstream, and see if he could get a head start, and then he swam very, very fast and made a flying leap, and made it over the bridge. Well, once he was up in the air, he looked down, and what do you think he saw but the most beautiful little goldfish, swimming around in a jar that had a red ribbon wrapped around it, being carried by a little girl. And as that little girl went across that bridge, that red fish’s eyes followed that little goldfish, until splash! Back into the water he landed.”

  Father went on telling his story, as mother handed him a sack of potatoes to peel. As the potato peels piled onto the table, and mother cut and prepared the chicken and the vegetables which she said were for a soup she was making, Teddy listened to the story with wrapped attention. 

  Once the story had reached a happy ending, with the goldfish and the red fish flying off into the sunset, and the soup was ready. As they ate, Mother and Father started asking Teddy questions like, what did his house looked like? What did the neighbors’ houses look like? and so on, until they thought they knew what house he must belong to. 

  As they were asking these questions, Teddy thought he saw little creatures running across the floors. They were so small, that at first, Teddy thought they must be mice, but they didn’t have fur, and they ran on two legs.

  He was about to ask them, when he noticed something even stranger at the window. Slowly, in neat little swirls, ice had begun to cover the window. Not just any ice, but the most beautiful patterns of feathering and fans that Teddy had ever seen, and they were growing quickly, the way a drop of food dye spreads quickly when you drop it in a glass of water. 

  “Look!” He said, pointing. 

  The other two turned their heads. 

  “Oh!” Cried mother. “Jack must be near. Father, go see if you can all him in. Maybe he knows where Teddy lives, he’s been through town enough.”

  Father went to the door and called to someone in the woods. 

  A moment later, Teddy saw the strangest man he had ever seen, coming in through the door in his hat and coat. He was tall, ducking through the doorway, but he was so thin that he looked a bit like a coat rack. He must have been very cold, because his nose and lips were blue, but really he didn’t act cold at all. He wasn’t even wearing a scarf!

  “Jack, this is Teddy.”

  Jack walked up to Teddy, towering over him, and shook his hand, which was as cold as ice. “It’s nice to meet you Teddy.” 

  “I’m afraid,” Mother continued, “That Teddy got a bit lost in the woods, and he doesn’t know which way he came from. Jack, do you happen to know the red house on Birming street? Do they have a little boy?” 

  “Indeed they do!” Said Jack. He looked at Teddy closely. “I believe I know just where you came from. Are you ready to go back?” 

   Teddy jumped up from his place at the table, dropping his spoon in his bowl. “Yes!” He cried, and dashed for his coat and his shoes. 

  “We will all go then, and see if we can’t find your house.” 

  Teddy had his coat on first, then Mother helped with his shoes before she grabbed her own winter gear. Father took a large brown coat from the coat rack, and took a pair of well worn mittens from the mantle. 

  In another moment, they were out the door, and heading back down the path Mother had shown him. 

  Although the woods were darker now, Teddy wasn’t the least bit afraid. Father told him stories about when he was a young lad and met a dragon, which Teddy knew couldn’t possibly be true, ‘cause mom told him dragons weren’t real, and mom was always right, but he enjoyed the story anyways. 

  As Father was showing him the face the dragon had made when he found that his gold was missing, Teddy thought he heard something in the distance. A small, far off voice, calling out his name. No matter how small that voice was, Teddy knew it immediately. 

  “Mom!” He cried back. 

  “Teddy?” Cried a second voice. 

  “Dad!” Teddy ran down the path, feet flying, his new friends all but forgotten, and didn’t slow down until he had burst through the trees and landed safely in his mother’s arms. 

  There was a lot of crying and scolding and kissing, but then finally Teddy told them the whole story of what had happened. His parents looked around, but there was no one else there. They went to the tree line and tried to find the path Teddy said they had followed, but they couldn’t find it.

  After one more look, they decided to go home, and hoped that whoever had found Teddy would stop by the house to check in on him so that they could thank them properly.

  The next day, Teddy came back with his mother on the daylight, and looked again for the little path, or the shortish woman, or the colorful man, or even the tall friend Jack, but there was nothing to find. They asked other people in town if they had ever seen such people, or knew about any little cottages in the woods, but no one had ever seen or heard anything of the kind. 

  Teddy’s parents started to believe that it had all been a dream, and the older Teddy grew, he started to wonder himself.  

  Teddy is all grown up now. He wears a grown up suit, works in a grown up office, wears a very grown up beard, and goes by the name Theodore. He got married, as grown ups do, and had a little boy, who he named Jack. 

  He doesn’t quite know what happened when he was little. Maybe he had dreamed the whole thing after all. And yet, when he looks at the frost on the glass of the window panes, the memories come flooding in, and he can’t quite believe it.

  Whether it was real or not, he will never forget his adventures on the woods, and when night comes, and Jack is snug in his bed, Teddy tells him stories of flying fish, dragons, little people, and cottages in the woods.