Out of the Woods

Out of the Woods

My father loved adventure. My mother loved the idea of it. I—well, I existed somewhere between, mostly invisible in their curated chaos, living in a prison gilded in gold. At ten, I was officially the guide for their latest obsession: Paradise Lost, a luxury forest retreat where guests could “experience the wild, authentically,” as long as it looked good on social media.

The public was too blind to see the secrets and manipulation festering behind closed doors.

I was draped in a cloak stitched from moss, pine needles, and feathers, because blending with the forest was apparently critical to the aesthetic. The first time I stepped into the woods, I felt the trees hum, not with words, but with a knowing hush, as if the forest had been expecting me. I brushed it off with a mere shrug and a dismissive attitude, but the whispers began echoing in my ears, reinforcing a mystifying presence that did not trail away into nothingness.

And then I saw her.

Claren. Her hair was fire caught in autumn sunlight; her eyes, the green of untamed leaves. Her hazel brown eyes enchanting me in a realm of fascination, leading to an unknown threshold. She moved with a grace that made the forest tremble beneath her feet yet left no trace. She smiled once, briefly, and suddenly even the birds fell silent, like the world itself was holding its breath.

Not long after, I began hearing murmurs about Elias, the old groundskeeper who had lived on the edge of the forest for decades. Guests whispered he had “walked in and never walked out.” My father dismissed it as nonsense—“Elias was unreliable”—but the locals at the market only shook their heads and muttered that the forest takes who it wants.

One twilight, I stumbled upon Elias’s lantern, its glass cracked, lying half-buried in moss. Beside it, a pocketwatch sat frozen at exactly 7:03. The roots around it twisted tight, almost deliberate, as though the forest had swallowed him whole.

At night, the walls of the retreat carried sound too well. I overheard my parents arguing, their voices sharp as breaking glass.

“He’s right,” my father insisted. “One guest goes missing—controlled, staged, captured just right on camera—and bookings will triple. People love danger when it’s curated.”

My mother’s silence stretched long before she whispered, “And if it isn’t staged?”

I pressed against the wall, heart hammering. For the first time, I wondered if my parents feared the forest or only feared losing control of the story they told about it.

Among the guests was Maren, a woman whose smile never reached her eyes. She asked me to guide her into the woods. Along the way, she told me about her daughter, lost in an accident years ago. “The forest heals,” she murmured, as though repeating a prayer.

One night I saw her slip away alone, white shawl trailing like smoke. I followed. In the thicket, the whispers surged, louder than ever. And then—I lost her. Only her shawl remained, caught on a branch. When I brought it back, my parents told me there had never been a guest named Maren.

But I remembered her hand on my shoulder, her voice breaking when she spoke of her child.

At a bonfire in the nearby village, an old woman told a story: of a spirit with hair like fire and laughter like bells, who lured wanderers deeper until they forgot their names.

“She is not cruel,” the elder said, her gaze fixed on me, “but she does not belong to your world.”

Claren’s smile flashed in my mind. My stomach twisted.

I searched the retreat’s archives for answers and found a leather-bound guestbook. Pressed between its pages was a map of the forest, inked in fading black. Paths curled like veins across the paper. But when I traced them on a later walk, I returned to find those same lines gone, as though the map had rewritten itself.

One clearing remained, circled in red ink. Beside it was a single name: Claren.

When I met her again, the forest itself seemed to bend, parting to let us through. We ran together, weaving between roots and underbrush, guided by trails only we seemed able to see. Time collapsed—minutes became hours, or perhaps the reverse.

We reached a clearing where sunlight bathed the moss in gold. Claren leaned against an oak, her face glowing with light.

“Do you ever feel like the forest chooses you?” she asked.

“I think,” I said slowly, “it might be choosing both of us.”

She laughed, like wind through chimes. For the first time, I believed in magic: that people could vanish into trees and emerge transformed.

But as shadows lengthened, the paths behind us vanished. Branches twisted unnaturally, roots rose like coiled snakes. Claren’s eyes glinted gold. Her smile widened, too sharp, too certain.

I ran.

The forest closed in, whispering louder, syllables almost human. I stumbled on enormous footprints—human-shaped, impossibly perfect, deliberate.

“Out of the woods… or into them?” a voice murmured, layered and deep.

Through the trees, I saw the retreat: cameras flashing on their own, empty chairs arranged in perfection. Ahead, Claren stood at the horizon, her eyes blazing gold.

“You can leave,” she said. “But only if you want to.”

I fought through invisible weight until the forest finally opened a clearing, the moon lighting a path home. I ran, heart pounding, and stumbled into the retreat’s perfect staging. My parents’ world of curated cabins and filtered danger.

But the woods behind me were silent. Empty. No Claren.

In photos displayed on the retreat’s walls, I noticed something chilling: no Elias. No Maren. Faces I remembered vividly were missing. In their place—blank spaces, as if they had never existed.

I told myself Claren was gone, a trick of the forest, a fever dream. Yet the memory of her golden eyes lingers. And sometimes, when the wind whistles through my window, I hear her laughter. The trees whisper my name.

Perhaps I never truly left the woods.