The Woodsman and the Wizard

So, sort of in the style of a Tolkienesque Grimm fairy tale ... something I am writing for my ENG 370 class.

The Old Wood was forbidden. It was not forbidden by law or decree of any sort, but by the common sense of the people of Worthmint. The Wood itself was not like the other forests, even the other forest which surrounded Worthmint and lined the road that passed through it—while the sun shown through the forest on the King’s side and the Lord of Worthmint often hunted in them, the Old Wood was dark, as though the sun could not penetrate into its canopy of leaves and its walls of thickets. It was a deep green which never lost its color, even in the direst of winters. One blisteringly hot summer, a fire had begun after a thunderstorm, and it burned a portion of the forest on the King’s side, leaving a visible line of blackened land and felled trees at the foot of the evergreen Wood.

At the edge of a farmer’s field, where a poor woodsman and his wife lived by agreement with the farmer, the line of tall pines that stood against the naked fields of Worthmint’s farmland served as a barrier on all the kingdom’s maps as the boundary between the King’s realm and the wilderness where the creatures of the old world still ruled. The sky above was dreadfully silent and deep grey-blue, just at the very onset of dawn. The trees were black against the dim light of the sky, their stillness unsettling. Even when a gust of wind from the west rustled the wheat of the field and creaked the timbers of the wooden fence surrounding the field, the forest seemed to swallow the wind, its branches and leaves unmoved. Then the silence was shattered.

A voice, high and inhuman, shrieked with delight. From the darkened homestead on the edge of the field leapt a pale, indistinct thing. It was the size of a small man, but moved too quickly to be seen clearly. It ran, laughing in horrible cackles, toward the forest. A tall man sprung from the door after him, half-dressed, crying,

“Fey-man! Thief! Coward!”

The pale man-kin hopped over the fence without a glance behind it and disappeared into the blackness of the Wood, its harsh giggles lingering. The man ran after him, but stopped at the fence. A shiver ran though his body as  he peered intot he depths.

A woman emerged from the house, more dressed than he, and cried after him,

“Aelfric! Come away from the Wood!”

“I must follow it!” Aelfric returned, “It’s ruined us if I don’t!”

“What has it done?” she said.

“It has taken my axe!” And with that he crawled over the fence and he, too, disappeared into the Wood.

After the pale fey ran Aelfric, roaring with the pain in his head from the last night’s drinking and stumbling in fatigued clumsiness. He wove between the trees as best he could, bush and thistle slapping his face and arms in the darkness around him. Beneath the canopy of the old wood in the predawn and all but choked in by thorny growth, he could see only a faint glimmer of light ahead like the tail of a comet marking his query’s progress ahead of him.

The forest seemed to have a will of its own, however, and the harder he ran after the faery, the more the bushes and thistles seemed to throw themselves into his path. He strove with the invisible thickets and vines that lashed and tugged at him from the darkness of the forest, but like a fly wrapped in spider’s silk, he soon found that his struggles only worsened his lot. Soon the silvery glimmer of the fey faded away, and all fell dark. He gave a shout of despair that was consumed by the thick air around him. He struggled, but the vines and thickets held him as tightly as rope. So there he lie, staring upward in despair, straining his eyes for a snatch of light through the vaulted leafy ceiling, but all was silent, cold, and black.

Then, much to his surprise, the silvery light returned, at first faintly, then stronger, until he saw he was in a grove of trees. Each tree trunk was thicker than his house, wrapped in vines and furry with moss, stretching too far upward to see even the branches of. Near the center of the grove he lay tangled in every manner of forest plant, roots, vines, bushes, thistles, and thickets, all clinging to him and wrapped around his arms, his hadns and feet, and his neck, and they seemed to writhe as through controlled by a mind. they moved in utter silence, not stirring one another’s leaves, but in perfect togetherness dragging him closer to the center of the grove, where the growth was densest and from which many stones thrust upward like jagged teeth.

The fey stood above him. He looked rather like a child, small, beardless, and slight, with pinched features and a wicked grin upon his face. He was naked and his flesh was bloodless and pallid. His white hair, tangled and knotty, fell heavily around his bony shoulders, from which hung long, thin arms down to his long, thin legs. He leaned over him and gazed into his eyes with his own white-within-white eyes, like a blind man’s. He parted his teeth and spoke,

“The manling has become caught! How have you become caught so quickly?” He held up Aelfric’s axe and looked it up and down. “the Wood remembers you, methinks, and the bite of your axe. But no!” he seemed to spasm, and went kicking the vines and branches which held Aelfric down. Each went slack and motionless as the fey struck it, and soon Aelfric freed himself. No sooner had he risen to his feet than he gave a cry and lunged toward the fey, who deftly stepped out of his way.

“No!” he giggled, “No, no, no! My game is with you, and the Wood shall not spoil it!” and he lighted off again, deeper into the wood.

“What game?” cried Aelfric, charging after him, “What game is this? Why do you toy with me and not someone else from the village?” He was too slow—the faerie was already so far ahead that Aelfric could only run in the direction of the light.

“You, you!” the fey’s voice floated back to him from the trees ahead, “It is you I want!”

“I think,” Aelfric wheezed, winded from running, “You will not be so pleased with me when I catch up with you!” Now as he ran, Aelfric tore away any vine or branch that caught on his clothing, and was lighter on his feet than before. His head was clearer, also, and his headache ebbed.

A deep, dim blue light began to fill the Wood as the sun’s early rays penetrated the fortress of leaves and branches overhead, and his eyes had adjusted better in the half-light of the fey far ahead of him. These trees stretched far above, and were unlike any he had before seen. Unlike those of the grove, these trees were gnarly, bent, with stretched bark showing beneath carpets of moss, like the belly of a fat man poking out from under his shirt. Some stood straight, like unbending giants, while others leaning to one side before laboriously reaching upward.