Trees

The woods were dangerous, or so they told the villagers huddling in their thin blankets, praying to the gods that did not listen.

They surrounded the southern border of the kingdom, thick and dark and full of things the villagers didn’t speak of. To say something’s name was to call it, and the villagers had enough trouble already.

The trees ended just outside the village, but a few remained, gnarled and knotted and twisted and bent, missing the darkness from which they came. The houses were weak and small, made of brush and sticks and prayers. They would not stand a chance if the woods wanted to grow into them, but the woods stayed where they were. For now, they were safe.

The palace protected them. That's what the villagers were told. The money they paid the king each year, the money they could barely afford to give, went to the king so that he could protect them from the woods. They wore their tattered clothes and lived in their tiny houses and wished the king would stop taxing them so relentlessly, wished he would just chop down the cursed trees once and for all, but the fear they had for the woods kept them from rebelling.

***

She was born at dawn, from a poor woman who died in labor. Her mother, like many of the villagers, had no name, but her daughter would. Her daughter’s eyes were bright like the stars, and her smile was sweet as the crescent moon. Her name was Mila: that was what the mother said in her dying breaths, and no one argues against a dying woman.

She grew up without her mother. Sometimes she wished she had one. Mostly, she accepted it for how it was. The world was a cruel place, prone to taking the things she needed most. She knew this, and she lived anyway. She was brave in that way. 

Her father worked long hours, shaping metal to his will, and came back when the stars were up and the moon bled its light into the sky. She played with the village children, going almost too close to the woods, drawing back just before it was too late. They would dare each other to go into the Shallows, where light could still pierce the branches and the sky could still be glimpsed between the canopy of leaves. No one was ever brave enough, but sometimes Mila wondered.

And then she was fifteen, no longer playing with the children who were also nearly grown. Instead, she worked at the market, selling bread and flour to the villagers who needed it. Her eyes had lost some of their shine. She still looked at the stars at night. She still dreamt of other things. 

She learned quickly the world was a dark place. She was forced to sell her wares for far too much so her father could pay taxes to the king, for the protection he granted. She was forced to beg and plead to the miller until he gave in and sold his flour to her for half price, despite the fact that now he couldn't pay for his own protection. Yes, the world was a cruel, unfair place, and she had to learn to live in it. That didn’t mean she liked it, but the pangs of guilt she felt each time she brought her prices higher were getting weaker.

The prince came to their village to collect the taxes, and he saw her, and he fell in love. By then, her eyes had lost nearly all of their shine. She cried at night, missing the mother she had never known. The prince wanted to marry her, and he did, after he paid her father enough to secure him for the next few years. He took her away in his carriage, never to see her father, or the tiny, brush village again.

The palace was beautiful. The marble walls gleamed and the pictures on the walls depicted creatures she had never seen: delicate unicorns, wise phoenixes, fierce dragons battling brave warriors, trying to protect their hoards of gold. 

But she knew that the palace had been built with the money of her village, the labor making the happiness seep from their eyes. She knew that the jewelry and gold had been bought with the money she gave them, that was supposed to be used for their protection. She wept in her tower at night, missing the father that left her. Missing her home, or the place she thought was her home.

For months she lived here in this beautiful prison. She hardly ate, hardly slept. The light was gone from her eyes, her smile was tight and sad.

The year passed. She wasted away, her once bright soul dimming, her once full heart broken. When the sun set on the last day of the year, she slipped out of her room. She did not know where she was going. She knew she couldn’t be there anymore.

 Her feet were bare and her dressing gown was hardly more than a slip of silk, nothing against the cold of the night. But she kept going. The woods called her.

She left the palace and she ran, not to the village where her father had sold her off, had abandoned her. She glanced at the light from the candles outside the houses to ward off evil, and remembered when she was a little girl, watching the flames flicker and bend. She kept going, past her old village.

The woods enveloped her, welcomed her. The air was cold but the roots wrapped themselves around her, like snakes, like arms in a never-ending embrace. They warmed her skin, even as she froze on the inside. Her heart was broken into icy shards, but she didn't feel the pain anymore. Her soul was dark, but she no longer minded so much.

Her father had turned her into this. The prince had turned her into this.

She was far past the Shallows now.