Never Drop Two Coins in a Wishing Well

‘Where are you going?” 

She looked up and around her path, the sun’s rays cut between the thicketed leaves above, to share a wrong colored sky. Claudia was alone on her path for the first time in her short life, and to spite everything Aunt Gillian had taught her, she felt unprepared. 

She was trapped in a forest more a labyrinth than collection of trees, and she wasn’t at all sure what that meant for her. 

So she walked, hand braced against the trees at either side of her as she wandered. She was lost and she knew it.

‘Where do you think you are?”

She even knew how she got here, and if only to block out the voices of the strange branched roots coiling about, and begging her attention, she clarified it to herself.

It had been the usual thing, taking a walk with her sisters into the forest by Aunt Gillian’s house, a bit after breakfast a bit before lunch. Though it would sound like the start of a fairytale, or something like that, they’d done it before and had no reason to be scared.

‘Oh, weren’t you wrong?”

They weren’t being led off from famine, so their parents could be spared their starvation. They were girls walking through a forest of bright greens, and scented pine, and under the morning light they were as safe as they’d be back in their house.

“Why do you think you’d need money? We ain’t going anywhere to spend it.” she remembers Alina saying.

“I don’t know, I’d just like some.” was Isabel’s response.

“With where we go everyday, there’s no need for more than in our hems.” Alina said heading their path, Isabel twisted in her movements, she remembers already lagging behind, when she heard it.

‘Claudia’, A whisper from far away. She thought to turn to it, the voice before yelling, “Izzy!”

“What?”, Isabel squawked, and she turned to her voice instead, not trusting the first. She ran up ahead to Alina when she saw her just to get away from whatever was talking.

‘It was good of you to try.”

“Things shouldn’t talk.” she says to the hollow of the trees. Before feeling out her memory, they walked and walked, but they weren’t tired in the least. Though the path was meandering and strained, they found no oddity beyond the faintest unfamiliarity.

Their parents had died long before any such time that Claudia could hope to remember, so in a sense it should’ve felt all the stranger not knowing even that place like the back of her hand. But neither Alina nor Isabel spoke of it so she had no reason to think it was odd.

‘Big mistake.”

“Things should be quiet.” she said in her next step, something caught her at her foot tripping her. Quickly finding her balance she kicked and kicked, until the roots twisted away, she refused to be pulled from her path or her thoughts.

It was in a temperate place that they found it, a well, what Isabel dubbed a wishing-well. Finding it a stable enough landmark, Alina had sat down to read while Isabel set out her diary to draw.

Claudia being much younger simply wandered in hollering distance of them both.

‘You’re a bit farther than that now.”

“Yeah.” She could almost cry, if only that would do anything. Something pulled at her leg, and she knew she had stood still for too long. She tore at the thing, the ugly root that had seen fit to impose on her body like that.

The base of them, where they’d been cut, stretched up worryingly, she made a point to stomp them out, as she walked farther. If you can stay in one direction, do that. If you find water follow that. Don’t trust branches that tie your legs in knots.

Don’t get lost.

‘But you are.”

“I know.” she saw where she was, how it led her around. How it twisted her path when it caught her legs. It was a strange thought of hers, drop a penny in the well, “watch me Izzy, I’ll be a millionaire!”

Just a half inch of finger-ran hem, dropped into that well.

Alina, she would’ve pulled us both away, but Izzie was closer, when it pulled Claudia in.

And now she was here, stuck in the forest in the well.

Her mouth was dry, and so was her throat. 

She needed to drink. And eat. And cry. But she was in this place that didn’t seem real, in the crawling thicket of some great beyond, and she couldn’t help the thought.

‘You called?”

“Yes I did, didn’t I?” There are some things Gillian had taught them that were not especially cogent for a normal walk through the forest, let alone getting lost. And now as the roots crawled up her leg she understood.

“Death is so cheap that you can pay with a penny for each eye,” she said, voice cracking. “I dropped a penny, so did she,” the vines pulled her down, and in and away, “That’s close enough for a thing like you, I’m dead and you want to eat me up.”

‘Who ever said I wanted that?”

It was the usual thing, all roots would do it, if they were hungry, “Why pull a girl into your roots, if you don’t want to eat her up?” her fingers had started to numb, through her skin like a dull thrump.

‘It would seem so, but that’s not all I can take from you.”

There was no clarity to the thought, “If it’s nothing you need can’t you let me go?” Concerning what it was it probably didn’t matter, but this little conviction seemed better than any wasteful begging she couldn’t bear to muster.

‘Oh, well, it seems just so unfair to let you into where I’m burning. Besides, I still have use for you.”

Whatever numbed her sunk deeper, as she listened to the voice.

‘You are a princess dancing on the tongue of hell, and you will save us.’