Myra

Takes place in the year 1267, a young girl wanders into the woods her parents warned her about, and she meets her fate.

Innocent children are perfect for curious fey. They lure children in with beautiful songs and promises of endless fun. Once a child in their sights, they are already lost.

Fey have many uses for a child. Sometimes they raise it as their own, sometimes they are used as slaves, or for a delicious meal. When a faerie sets sights on their victim, nothin can stop them from getting what they want. 

Such is the case with a beautiful little girl in Meath, Ireland, hundreds of years ago. Six-year-old Myra was outside playing, dancing around in the tall grass and feeling the breeze play with her long red locks, tied up with a soft, green ribbon. 

Myra ran through fields of daisy, plucking the little wood anemone flowers from the ground and making a crown. She tied it off, placed it on her head, and ran towards the shallow river. 

She looked behind her at the smell of a delicious meal being made, reassuring herself that it was not quite time to return home. She saw her father working out in the garden, glanced at her mother in the window, cooking their dinner, and nodded, turning back to her adventures. 

She jumped into the freezing water, letting out a shriek. She giggled as tiny fish swam around her feet. She pulled the now damp bread from her dress pocket and began feeding them, smiling as they peck her small fingers. 

She soon grew tired of the cold water as the fish began to swim away, and decided to wander close to the thick woods behind her home. 

As she got closer her father's voice spoke up in her mind. 

"You stay away from those woods dear," her parents always warned her. "Those woods are filled with big, scary monsters, with sharp teeth and glowing red eyes, who love to eat lost little girls like yourself," her father always joked, poking his giggling daughter in the arm. 

Myra acknowledged her parents warnings and was about to run back home when she heard music coming from the thicket of trees. She stopped and listened; the music grew louder. It sounded like a flute; a soft, almost morose song. 

The girl crept a little closer, just outside of the tree line, when she heard a woman's voice. It sounded Gaelic, but an ancient form of the language that Myra had never heard before. It was beautiful to the lass' ears. 

She looked over her shoulder to check if her parents were watching. They were still busy working away, so Myra made the decision to creep into the woods in search of the source of the haunting song. 

She wandered for a few minutes down a worn path that she swore wasn't there before, growing ever closer to the mysterious music. Finally, she'd come to a large clearing and the music suddenly stopped, as if it were never there to begin with. The forest went silent. There just the sounds of birds flying away from something as if they were scared. Myra began to grow nervous.

In the middle of the clearing was a large oak tree, its roots spread out in a maze across the ground. Myra forgot all about the music and decided to play on these roots, jumping from one to another. A small bullfrog hopped around her feet along with her until she bent down and scooped it up into her palms. 

"Hello little one, you're very friendly," she grinned as it snuggled into her palm. The frog croaked happily as she caressed its tiny, bumpy head. After a few moments the frog leapt away, towards the base of the tree. 

"Hey, where're you going friend," she giggled, following along. 

The frog disappeared, replaced by a small straw doll, wrapped together in a thin twine. Myra sat down on a raised root and picked up the doll, turning it around in her hands. On the back of it there was pinned a yellowed, faded note that read, "to the little one who finds my special doll, her name is Persephone, and she is all yours to keep, as long as you treat her with kindness." Myra suddenly grew cold and slowly placed the doll back on the ground. She knew what this was. Her parents warned her of all the fae's tricks. 

"Do not ever accept a gift in the forests, Myra. Those are faerie gifts. They are traps to lure children," her mother warned her one day, after news that a little boy from the village disappeared in the woods. "They beckon you with song, friendly animals, and then gifts of the earth. If you accept the gifts, they take you away, and you will never be seen again." 

"I don't accept your gift, monster! Leave me alone," she cries, stepping away from the doll, the tree, the frog, the music.

Myra turned, prepared to make her way back to her home, when she noticed that the path she had taken here had disappeared. She turned and circled the entire clearing but there was no path. Her heart started to race as she thought of how to get out of there, but there was nothing. Her breathing grew faster, and she began to feel lightheaded. She fell to her knees, tears gathering in her soft green eyes. She swiped at them, furious at herself. How could she be so stupid?

As she started to sob, she felt a hand resting on her shoulder. She gasped and turned to see a very beautiful woman, with long, silky white hair draped across her shoulders. She wore a pure white dress, the sleeves falling below her shoulders, the ends brushing the ground, yet they gathered no dirt. 

"My poor child why are you crying," the woman asked, kneeling down beside her. Her voice was soothing, like the sound of bells or the twinkling of stars. It was the very voice Myra had heard singing.

'Is this a faerie,' Myra asked herself, wiping away more tears. 'No, father said they had red eyes and sharp teeth. This woman is beautiful, and kind.' She stood up and brushed herself off. 

"My way home," Myra sniffled. "I came here on a dirt path, and now I can't find it."

"Oh, you poor girl," the woman sighed, rubbing Myra's shoulder. She stood, brushed a stray hair out of Myra's emerald eye. "You must be careful, coming in the woods alone. It's very dangerous for children. What is your name?" 

"M-myra. My name is Myra," the girl says, her head down in shame. The woman grins and pats her head. 

"That is a beautiful name, Myra. Here come along with me. I can't take you home my dear, but I can take you someplace safe, where we can have lots of fun," the strange woman offered, holding out her hand. 

Myra stared at her hand cautious of the offer. "Why can't you help me find my way home," Myra asks, taking a step back. The woman sighed again and dropped her hand. "The woods are very dense and confusing, my dear. If you don't know your way home, how should I? Perhaps if I take you to my village, someone could help you." 

Myra thought for a moment and then asked, "you are not a faerie, are you?" 

The woman threw her head back and laughed; it was a beautiful bright laughter, and it made Myra smile along. "I would never harm a hair on your precious head. You can trust me, I promise." The woman swore, hand on her chest, and a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

After some thought, Myra nodded and took the woman's hand. She felt safe and overjoyed as they walked away. 

To anyone who may have been watching from a distance, it would seem the two simply disappeared into thin air. All that was left behind was the girl's green ribbon, and a small shard of glass, reflecting the trees above.

Author's Note

Please give me honest opinions and feedback! Tell me if you like it and if I should write more! ^-^

Reviews

[Throwing Romeo]

As I was thinking "girl what are you thinking??
don't go in there!
bbefore long i realized i was in there too!
got me stirred up, so i think you did good.
I could spew hundreds of critical words
and get a lot of points to become
Top reviewer ; you've already
Invited vampire Jayhawk in.
Keep writing,i know you enjoyed
writing this haunting tale.
Thanx for the story.

[JayG]

Well, you did ask… So take a deep breath, though what I’m about to say isn’t about your talent or how well you write. It’s what you’re missing. And that’s fixable.

• Innocent children are the perfect prey for curious fey Innocent children are the perfect prey for curious fey.

I give up. What are fey, in context of this story, and what do they do to the children? If you look up the definition of the word fey, it’s a condition, not a person. So you can’t assume that the reader will know how you mean it. And because of that, you’re telling the reader something for which they have no context. You know. The characters know. But what about the ones you wrote this for? Shouldn't they know?

And, this isn’t story, as the public views fiction. It’s someone we know nothing about talking about things meaningless to the reader, in a voice whose only emotion is what punctuation suggests.

• They lure children in with beautiful songs and promises of endless fun.

In? In to what? In your mind you have a picture of this happening, but you never gave that picture to the reader. In any case, this isn’t story, because no one’s on stage and nothing is happening. In writing fiction for the page we don’t begin with a lecture, we begin with story. Don't tell us that can happen, show it happening, in real-time, and in the viewpoit of the one living it (viewpoint is different from "person" as defined by personal pronouns) Why? Because our goal, as E. L. Doctoro defines it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” But here, you’re giving the weather report.

Two “gotcha’s” at work here. The first is that when you write, you have the images in your mind, along with context, so you’ll tend to leave out what seems obvious to you. Then, when you read the piece, your mind automatically fills in the blanks and you don’t see a problem. That's why we must edit from the seat of a reader, knowing only what the reader will know as they read.

The second hits about half of us when we turn to writing fiction. In this, you’re transcribing yourself telling the story aloud. But verbal storytelling is a performance art, where how you tell the story matters as much as what you say. Take away the emotion in your voice, rip out the changes in intensity and emotion, and the reader has the dispassionate words of an external observer, presented in overview and summation. Remove the visual performance: the gestures, the changes in expression, body language, and eye movement, and what do you have? A storyteller’s script minus the stage directions and rehearsal time. Have the computer read this to you, to hear how different what the reader gets is from your performance. That’s an excellent editing technique, in any case.

But the real problem—the reason behind those points—is that like everyone else, you left school a victim of what I call, The Great Misunderstanding. Because we learn only one approach to writing, and aren’t even told there are others, we make the natural assumption that writing is writing, and we have that part handled.

But think back to your school days. Almost all your writing assignments were for reports and essays, as they trained us to the needs of out future employers. So we literally leave our school days knowing ONLY nonfiction writing skills, as ready to write fiction as to pilot a commercial airliner.

So, when we try to write fiction it works for us, because we already know the story. For anyone else, it reads like, well, nonfiction. So it’s not your fault, you have LOTS of company, and it has nothing to do with how well you write. And of more importance, it’s fixable.

Unfortunately, it’s more than a list of, “Do this instead of that.” You'll be learning the skills of a profession, one they offer degree programs in. But it does come, and in many ways the learning feels like going backstage for the first time. And since it’s something you want to learn, it’s not hard labor. In fact, there’s a lot of “Wait…that’s so obvious, why didn’t I see that?” That’s fun for the first ten times, till you start hitting yourself over the head, and yelling at yourself for missing it.

And the good news? The act of writing becomes a LOT more fun.

I’d begin with a few books on the techniques—the basics. The library’s fiction writing department is a great resource. Personally? I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found, to date, at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Try a chapter or three. I think you’ll be glad you did. And if an overview of some of the major issues would help, the articles in my WordPress writing blog are based on the kind of thing you’ll find such a book.

I know something like this can hurt. But you did ask, and since we’ll not address the problem we don’t see as being one, I thought you might want to know. So hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[SamwisetheGay]

I understand what you're saying, 100% and thank you for the feedback! As for missing context, this chapter is being told like a legend, being passed down around a campfire. It's meant to be vague and secretive at first. As for the not know what they fae are, that's also supposed to be vague. I will explain in the next chapter in more detail.

But!! I will take your advice into consideration and tweak a few things, so thank you