Charles, Princess of the Forest

Breath coming ragged and fast, Charles raced through the underbrush. He jumped a mossy log. He ducked a low hanging branch of a pine tree. Arms crossed over his face he barreled through a clump of bushes. Taking no care for his already battered shoes he splashed through the shallow creek.

In the end, a half buried length of rusty barbed wire caught his pant leg and sent him tumbling into a patch of wild flowers and grass. Sunlight streamed through a break in the forest canopy, slanted lines of illumination falling at the very spot where he lay clutching his knee. The snag had twisted it, and somewhere in the midst of the tumble it struck a rock as well.

“I told you,” huffed a familiar voice, “if you ran, it’d be worse.”

Charles groaned and rolled onto his back. He stared upward, his eyes tracing patterns in the bright gaps between the leaves and branches. It was not so much that he accepted his fate as he was too out of breath to do anything about it. Except maybe that one thing. The thing he swore he wouldn’t do in front of another living soul.

The familiar voice continued, backed by menacing chuckles, “Now, you pay.”

Charles sat up, raising a hand, “Stop! Go no further. You underestimate my power.” His voice was weak and tinny, perpetually on the verge of cracking. Such was puberty.

“You are one nutty little nerdling.” This brought out chortles and snorts of derisive laughter from the accompanying henchmen. Charles considered them, his tormentors. Darryl, the school bully, stood towering over him several feet away, ripped jeans and heavy metal T-shirt, as if he’d been dressed intentionally in cliché. To his left, Douglas, portly but powerful, scratched his crotch and kept an eye on Darryl for the signal to proceed. Derrick was back to the right looking nervously around, the smallest of the group and therefore tasked with lookout rather than violence, not that he was opposed to it.

The Three D’s, as they were known, had decided to harass Charles for the usual reasons. He was smaller. He was overly attentive in class. His pants were a size too small, and his shirts a size too big. He wasn’t athletic. And yes, that one time, Charles had slipped a stink bomb into Darryl’s back pocket, where it broke, at which point Charles announced that the reason for the smell was that Darryl had the imagined disorder of, “super gay ass cancer”.

That incident had been over a month ago. The Three D’s had not forgotten. This was understandable as in response to their first retaliation, a “swirlie” executed in the gym bathroom, Charles had acquired the answer key for the social studies test and planted it in Douglas’ desk. Then, after they stuffed Charles in his own locker, he got back at them by having a large bouquet of flowers delivered to the lunch lady during lunch, signed with love by Derrick.

In defiance of all reason, earlier that morning, Charles preempted the next act of revenge by coming to school early and painstakingly shoving an impressive amount of kimchi through the vents in all three of their lockers. By the beginning of school the smell permeated the halls, leading to mass curiosity, two instances of vomiting, and a careful investigation that led to the lockers of the Three D’s. This whole scenario in turn led to the very angry boy chasing Charles directly out of school at the sounding of the final bell and into the nearby woods.

“This ends now,” Darryl announced, gesturing emphatically by pointing at the ground in front of him.

“Yes, it does,” Charles agreed, gaining confidence, “but now how you think!”

“You are so dead, man,” Douglas wheezed gleefully between fits of laughter.

Charles shook his head, “Not today.” He closed his eyes briefly, composing himself. Head thrown back he called out, his voice suddenly containing an underlying trill that reverberated through the woods, “To me, my woodland friends! To me in my hour of need! Come, come to my aid!”

The Three D’s were stunned for a moment. Derrick even stopped scanning the environment to stare with slack jaw at Charles sitting on the ground in the gentle sunlight.

Darryl spoke, bemused and calmed, “The little weirdo thinks he’s a cartoon princess.”

This was it for Douglas who busted out with riotous laughter, clutched his ample gut, and fell over into a pile of leaves and twigs. Even the usually reserved Derrick let out a giggle or two. Darryl just stood there shaking his head.  

Just as this brief reprieve looked ready to end, the laughter subsiding and the boys beginning to approach again, a pair of squirrels scurried onto a nearby stump. The boys paused. A chipmunk descended a poplar tree behind Charles and stood at its base. The boys looked at one another. A rabbit and a groundhog ambled from around a tree off to the left, cautiously inching toward Charles. The boys looked at Charles with great curiosity. Two deer, a doe and a young buck with short stumps for antlers, bounded in from the right, skidding to a halt at the edge of the clearing. 

“Aha!” erupted Charles, finger extended towards Darryl, trembling with excitement at the impending victory.

Darryl took a faltering step backward. Derrick took two.

Again with the background trill to his voice, Charles addressed the assembled animals, “Now, my friends, destroy them! Tear them apart! Show them the fury of the forest!”

All three of the pursuers froze, eyes darting from one creature to the next, frantically wondering which would attack first. The animals did not move. They seemed to be looking at one another. The rabbit lifted its hind leg and seemed to be defecating.

“Yes, my furry friends,” Charles said, “now that they are shaking in their boots, attack!”

Still the animals did not move. The doe swung her head to the side and nuzzled the young buck at the neck. The squirrels seemed to be shifting their weight nervously from one haunch to the other. The groundhog flopped back a bit to sit on the grass, looking like a middle aged man in his lazy chair.

The chipmunk picked its way between the flowers and blades of grass to come to Charles’ elbow, at which point it chirped in a language that only he could understand, “I’m really sorry, but we don’t do that sort of thing.”

Still looking quite nervous, Darryl pressed, “What? What did it say?”

“Umm,” Charles paused, “he is just asking a clarifying question. Because, uh, they want to know if they should, you know, go for your eyes or your balls first.”

The Three D’s winced, as did the chipmunk, who piped up angrily, “That’s going way over the line. Look, we came by to see what the situation was, but we are not down with the violence.”

“Wh-what now?” Douglas pleaded.

Looking nervously between the chipmunk and the trio, Charles tried, “He is, um, wanting to know if they are allowed to eat you or if I want your bodies identifiable.”

“You’re a sick little boy,” the chipmunk chided, “We can understand you, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to do your bidding.

At this point a rustling came through the trees. In a flurry of dark feathers an impressive pair of ravens settled onto a nearby branch behind the bullies and off to the side a little. In the leafy shadows they looked like specters, omens of death. Their powerful bills flexed open and clacked shut with apparent menace.

“Now you’re in trouble,” Charles said, trying to hide the quiver in his voice. He addressed the birds, bringing the trill back to his voice, “Go on. They’re all yours. Peck their eyes out!”

After a burst of squawking laughter, one of the ravens called down, “Dude, we’re just here to watch. He bet me a bottle cap one of the squirrels would go ballistic up a pant leg.”

Charles looked quickly and anxiously over at the squirrels. The squirrels looked at one another. Looking back at Charles they both shook their heads vigorously. One of them cast an apologetic look to the raven who would now be out a bottle cap.

Darryl, who was now looking a bit less nervous, asked, “What’s going on now? How come none of them are attacking?”

“Because they’re arguing about who gets to come after you first. So, so, um, so you better run while you can,” Charles said, trying very hard to sound confident.

“I don’t think so,” Darryl said. He took a cautious step forward. None of the animals advanced. He took another step, and Douglas now joined him in the cautious approach.

“You better stop,” Charles cried.

The rabbit turned to the groundhog, “I kind of feel like we should go, but I also kind of feel like I want to watch.”

“You little jerk!” Charles shot angrily at the rabbit, the trill now a shrill descant to his words.

“I knew it!” exulted Darryl, “Get him!”

With that they descended on Charles, taking turns punching and kicking him in adolescent fashion. The chipmunk scurried back up the tree before they landed the first punch. One squirrel went bounding into the undergrowth while the other sat watching. The deer placidly observed the first round of hits then ambled away. The rabbit did wind up watching while the groundhog flopped forward and hid its face in its front paws. As they had always intended to do, the ravens watched from above, offering some commentary on the proceedings.