Lost

A story about a seven-year old child, lost in an enchanted forest.

The creature stepped off of the stone platform. As it walked toward me, I grew aware of its appearance. Part of it was a woman, but most of it was a tree. Rather than flowing locks of hair, branches grew from her head; twigs ran this way and that through the endless forest on her cranium. The roots of said wilderness ran beneath the skin of her beautiful face, and over her eyes. She looked at me and I saw the emerald green of them. Strange as it was, I never found it odd that she had brown pupils. This was, after all, Mother Earth.

            Or so I thought. The strange part that made her seem as if she were an ancestor of humanity was the pale skin of her neck and chest. Everything else was bark, sapwood, and cambium. Her face had skin over the wood—wan, pale flesh—like a mask. She was nearly five feet taller than I was, and when she stood over me, looking down at me, I had to crane my neck to look back. Even as she was kneeling down, I was staring at her diaphragm. She rested her hand on my shoulder, if you would call the branch that was set upon my arm a hand. Brown, hard tree bark made up her body. The joints consisted of the hardest bark I had seen in the woods, yet some magic made her ability to move match that of the quickest mortal.

            When I looked at the hand I saw something that confused, yet fascinated me. Her branches became so feminine and human at the wrist, became hands. The nails, as though neither cut nor cared for, were long and jagged, curling downward toward her palms.

When I looked into her face, I saw there just as much curiosity toward me, as I had toward her. After a moment of silent stares, she smiled, warmly. It was as though a mother was staring at her child with green, rooted eyes.

She opened her mouth and whispered, “Daphne,” to me, as though it was a secret, no one was supposed to know. Her vine-like tongue slipped from those lips and nearly touched my hair.  

            In an attempt to find the right reply, I questioned, “Nay, I’m not Daphne. Who is she?”

            Instantly, the creature’s expression went from smiling to cross and she stood up, towering over my small childish form, knocking me backward, onto the ground. And again, as if it were the only word she knew, she roared, “Daphne!”

            Then I cried back, “Nay! Tell me who she is!” She ignored my words, and roared at me again.

I crawled backward, trying to escape, but, young as I was, I was not stupid. I knew that I wasn’t going to get far. Her feet stomped on the earth as she moved toward me, roaring as she went. In a last attempt to save myself, I cried out. Screaming my heart out, screaming, screaming, screaming. Crying, screaming, kicking, yelling, and hitting.

Obviously fazed by my outcries, she stopped and stared, but I continued. Then she moved backward, as if being pushed, so I stood and walked toward her, screaming, pushing her back toward the platform on which she had stood, not minutes before.

As the creature stepped backward onto the platform, gray stone-like mud began to travel up her legs, stopping her movements. As the mud crawled over her, she showed such pained expressions that I was nearly willing to attempt a rescue, before the mud reached her chest. Her arms began reaching upward, but were ceased in their movements as the mud moved over her shoulders. Her eyes and mouth wide, she tried to move once more as the mud went inside her mouth, stopping all movement. Her eyes were covered last, looking at me in fear.

How was she so frightened by a mere 7-year-old that she was willing to be turned into stone to escape from my scream?

Then there was silence. All the trees began to silently cry to me and I stared at them. Soon they were laughing at me. Laughing like school children laugh at one who was put in the corner as punishment.

 Soon enough, without my knowledge, I had thrown my head back and bore my knuckles, laughing maniacally. I was barely seven and had already realized that I was a lost and doomed soul. Lost in a magic forest, never to be found, never to be forgotten.

Author's Note

Please give creative criticism; tell me about spelling or grammatical errors.