Moonlit forest

It was a bad idea right from the very start. Leo knew that he really ought to have stayed in bed and pretended that he had not seen his sister, two years his elder as she neared her eighteenth birthday, slip silently through the garden and out the back gate. If Lilibet was going somewhere after midnight in her night clothes that was her business and her's alone. But he knew, for he had overheard stories that he pretended not to hear, that it was very dangerous for young ladies to go walking about late at night, especially dressed for bed, for there were beasts waiting in the darkness waiting to pounce and eat them alive.

So, not wanting to let his sister be eaten alive by some unseen predator of the night when he could have been there to stop it, he begrudgingly hauled himself out of his particularly inviting bed and trudged on after her. Unlike her, however, he took a moment to tug on his muddy work boots that he had left just by the back door and tossed the closest coat that could fit him on to combat the bite of the cold night air. The overall impression of this was not some great hero setting out to save somebody, but rather a bedraggled farmboy who dragged himself out of bed to go stamping about the forest in the middle of the night. Fortunately this was previously what he was so perhaps it was not so very terrible that he was out there looking like himself.

In his haste, he forgot to fetch a candle before he left the house, but he hardly thought it would be necessary before too long. The full moon, heavy with a golden light that seemed to drip from it like rich honey illuminated the world around him in a way that made it almost difficult to believe it was nighttime at all. He hoped this worked in his sister's favour too. Lilibet was always far too dreamy for life on the farm. 'Off with the fairies' as his mother often said when she was caught slacking on her work. Leo hoped that wherever she did go in those moments where the hazel of her eyes seemed glassy and seeing something far away and wonderful it made her happy enough to make the extra effort he went to in order to let her stay there just a little while longer.

Leo had no doubt that she had gone into the forest. Had she taken the little dirt path that ran parallel to it, he'd have seen her. There was very little subtly in dressing in all white when wandering about at night, and so that meant the only option was that she had woven her path through the trees, heavy with golden red leaves that crunched underfoot if he was not careful to not shift his weight gently. There was nothing to say that the fearsome beasts that eat innocent passersby would stop and let him carry on his way just because he was a boy. It would frankly just be embarrassing to go out trying to look after someone only to fall victim to the very same ordeal he was seeking to avoid.

The lad was half-tempted to call out her name, perhaps demand to know what precisely it was she thought she was doing sneaking around at that hour and what she thought their parents might say about it all. But he didn't. The idea of speaking aloud and cutting through the melody of the autumnal night felt sacrilegious in a way he could not find the words to fully articulate. Perhaps there were no words for it, for the crime was older than mankind's ability to name it as such ever could be.

Or perhaps his wariness came about, and if nothing else what was already there managed to be reinforced, as the glow that started out as a flicker through the trees drew nearer and grew brighter. It was not the moon's doing and he knew it. Knew it in the same way he knew when it was going to rain before even the clouds seemed committed to the idea.

It was not all too long before the reason for the peculiar and off-putting light made itself known. Small candles as white as - white as a sun bleached skull - parchment lay scattered intermittently in pools of melted wax. What seemed at first to be random placement swiftly made the form of a path, winding through the trees in a way that seemed almost a little impractical. Something in his mind seemed to tug at him, to urge him back to the house and back to bed. His sister could sort her own nonsense out, he should turn heel and leave. There was something about the little trail of candles leading into the heart of the forest that did not sit right with him.

But if there was danger to be found there, it would be selfish of him to run back to safety and leave his sister out there in danger.

The trail of candles most definitely served to inform him that this was his last chance to turn back. Unfortunately, however, as most newly sixteen year olds often were, Leo was far too foolhardy and so pressed on. He was, at least, smart enough to put that little bit extra thought to muffling his footfalls to avoid being obviously sneaking about somewhere he definitely was not supposed to be.

Through the growing silence of the night, the lad found himself straining his ears for anything at all that could be lurking unseen, and so he became gradually aware of the occasional scrape and shuffle coming from just ahead of him.

Warily, he peeked out through a denser thicket of trees, only to see a sight that sent chills racing through him like shards of prickly ice.

He had, up until that moment, assumed that whatever his sister was getting up to was her own business, but that assumption was promptly dismissed as he gazed into the clearing. Bathed in the golden moonlight that spilled in waves down though an almost unnaturally perfect hole in the canopy was a variable gaggle of girls. Some of them were familiar to him, among them, the rare sight of the banker's daughter letting her hair spill free rather than tied up neatly, the butcher's daughter with her poorly leg evidently being the cause of the sound he had heard for all the other girls moved as silently as a ghost. His sister danced among the group of girls, both those who were familiar and those he would have thought to be strangers to both of them.

It was not the girls he knew that brought about such a profound certainly that he was seeing something that he was not supposed to see. No, it was the strangers. Figures of such ethereal beauty that it seemed they had been carved from fine crystal, a serenity to their dainty features, head tilted back just so as bliss painted their faces, eyes closed as if in a dream. They were beautiful, yes, but almost too much so.

The more he watched them, the more he could see the wrongness to them. Limbs just that little bit too long and bending just a little too much in ways they shouldn't. Angles where there shouldn't be. Everything seemed just that little bit more than it should be, in ways he could not fully understand himself.

And the silence in they way they moved made it appear as if they were not breathing at all. Strange marionettes concocted of moonlight and autumn fog.

Yet Leo could not look away, so enrapt as he was with the sight befalling before his eyes. It was impossible, it frightened him terribly, and yet he could not draw his eyes away from the dancing girls. It was as if he was frozen to the spot.

He would have thought his presence went by unnoticed, and he would have liked to believe this was the case, but unfortunately that would make a liar of him. One of the girls, the strange, beautiful and wrong girls opened her eyes and met his with her own. The girl's eyes were wells of darkness, the night sky, hidden by the light of the moon, instead lay within her very eyes. The serenity fell from her face, replaced by some odd delight. A smile graced her delicate features, stretching too wide as it curled up to reveal twin eye teeth that were just too sharp to be human.

For a moment he could have sworn he felt fingertips brush his shoulder, but as a jolt of sheer primal terror shook through him, he did not wait to see if this was merely a trick of his overactive imagination. Like the coward he feared to be, he turned on his heel and ran like the devil itself was nipping at his ankles. He cared little if anyone were to hear him, he had already been discovered so he could not rule out the possibility of them knowing he was there all along, and so he ran and ran until he could cling to the perceived safety of his blankets.

His sister returned that morning and seemed no different than she did any other morning. Lilibet did not speak of the previous night's events, neither of the mystery of it or, if she knew at all, to chastise him for being there when he wasn't supposed to. Feeling the coward for it, Leo held his tongue too, and tried to forget the ancient weight that seemed to crush him the moment he locked eyes with the strange girl from the forest.