VII

Anna looked out over the marshes, the morning light reflecting off the muddy water.  She could see the smoke rising on the horizon just as she could from atop the cliff.  Fog still rested between the trees and made it impossible to see much in front of where she was walking.  The butterflies helped guide the way as much as they could, but they only could do so much.  Anna kept looking all around her as she traveled deeper into the marshes.  She kept her ears open, hoping to notice any danger before it was too late, but the only thing she could hear was the squishing of her shoes in the mud.  The deeper she traveled, the more and more she smelled a terrible odor.  It invaded the entire swamp; it was inescapable.  With each and every step, Anna became more and more delusional.  She began to lose her senses and felt very lost.

 

“I must rest a moment.”  She looked around for a rock to sit on, but as she stepped toward one, she fell to the ground.  She laid on her side and reached out for help, any at all.  As her vision began to blur, she saw a small silhouette come into view.  Anna whispered out to the creature.  “Please…help.”  As she fell out of conciseness, the creature moved over to her, sloshing in the shallow water.

 

———

 

As Anna came to, she could see a candle flickering in an open window.  She smelled warm cider brewing and a hint of pipe.  Sitting up slowly in the bed she lay in, Anna rubbed her blurry eyes.  “Faun?”  There was no answer.  As she became more and more awake, she realized she was not in the faun’s forest cottage.  Just as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, a small creature walked in the tiny one roomed dwelling.  It was a sickly looking creature, grey and thin.  It leaned on a stick taller than itself, which must have been used to aid in walking.  Its knobby fingers wrapped around the stick, connected together with flaps of skin.  Its feet were the same.  It was nearly naked except for a small tattered loin covering that loosely hung around its petite waist.  When Anna looked at its face, she realized that the creature had no eyes.  Instead, there was just the grey skin stretched over where eyes should have been.

 

“Oh, yes, I see you have woken.  And how are you feeling?”  The small creature spoke with a raspy voice, breathing in sharply with every pause.  It moved its head around, tilting its head back and forth as it talked.

 

“I, I am alright, I guess.”  She paused to rub her forehead and let out a sigh.  “Where am I?”

 

“You are in The Swamps, yes you are.  I found you, I did.  You were laying on your side looking quite unwell.  I brought you back, I brought you to here.”

 

“Thank you.  I can not quite remember what happened.  I was walking, and the next thing I knew, I was here with you.”  She paused, trying to remember what happened.  She spoke slowly, uttering each word as she began to remember more.  “I remember a door, a door that had steps.  And there were two…two—”

 

“—the important thing is you are here, yes.  You are well?  Come, come.  I will show you the others.”

 

“There are more of you?”

 

“Yes, yes.  There are more.  Come with me, come with me.  I will show you them, I will.”

 

Anna followed the odd creature out of the small dwelling into a larger clearing of solid ground.  All around were other huts just like the one she had been in.  They all sat on a little dirt island in the middle of the swamp.  As she looked around, she saw other creatures just like the other one.  They all were the same pale grey, skinny and frail.  Just then, she spotted one of the fires from which she had seen the smoke the day before.  Anna stared at the fire for a moment with a puzzled look on her face.  It seemed to remind her of something.  Without turning her eyes from the rising smoke, she addressed the creature.  “Who are you?”

 

The creature stopped in front of her and turned around, leaning on the big stick.  “Oh, we are nobody, nobody.  Just simple folk.  Of no importance.  Come, come, you must be hungry, you must.”  The creature hobbled over to a large black pot that was suspended above one of the fires littered around the village.    Inside was a thick soup of some kind, green like a pea soup.  It bubbled and popped, spiting small drops of the soup out of the top of the cauldron.  The creature grabbed a shallow wooden bowl and filled it with the mystery slop.  He turned and held it out to Anna.  “Eat, eat, yes.  You are hungry.”

 

Anna took the bowl from his hands and drew it close to her face, smelling its contents.  It smelled horrible.  However, she was starving and she did not want to reject such hospitality.  She took a spoonful and brought it to her mouth.  Pausing briefly just before it touched her lips, she second guessed her decision and then put it in her mouth.  It was possibly the most foul tasting thing she had ever eaten.  It tasted of the sourness of green tomatoes, but spoiled and earthy.

 

“Do you like it, girl?  Does it taste good?”

 

Anna squeezed her eyes together, forcing herself to swallow what was in her mouth.  “It is, well, different from what I am used to.”

 

“We have plenty, we do.  Come, sit while you eat.  Sit, sit.”

 

The creature guided Anna over to some low benches made from logs around one of the smoldering fires.  As Anna sat down, she noticed that many of the creatures had begun to quietly crowd around her.  It was unnerving because although they did not have eyes, she felt as if they were watching her.  She did not know what to do, so instead of eating the ghastly food again, she starting talking.

 

“Thank you for bringing me here.”  The creatures still kept their silence.  “You have shown me much hospitality.  I do not even know who you are and yet you have shown me such kindness.”  Still the creatures just seemingly watched her.  Some turned their heads to the side, listening to her.  “My name is Anna.”

 

At this, some of the creatures began whispering amongst themselves.  She could not understand what they were saying.  It was hard to tell if they were speaking so indistinctly that she could not understand or if they were speaking some odd language.  Before she could figure this out, the creatures began to pull on her sweater, urging them to go with them.

 

“Come, come.  You must meet him.  He will know.”

 

“He will know what?  What will he know?”

 

The creatures led Anna by her arm through the village across the island.  They took her to a hut just at the edge of the water.  It was a bit larger than the rest of the huts, but not by much.

 

“He is inside.  Come, come.”

 

Anna followed the creature into the small hut while the rest stayed outside.  Once inside, she saw where she had been taken.  Sitting in a wooden chair on the wall opposite of her was what must have been the leader of the small group of swamp dwellers.  His arms and legs where thin and he had only skin where his eyes should be.  He was clearly much older than the rest.  Although he was pale and sickly looking just like the others, Anna thought it odd that his stomach was quite fat.  He had a headdress of some sort on his head and looked as though all he did was to sit in his chair.  He sat so still that Anna scarcely believed he was alive.

 

“I have found a girl, I have.  I brought her to you.  She is here.  I knew that you would know.  Her name is…Anna.”

 

At that the king, or so as Anna had figured, moved for the first time.  He turned his head up toward them and as he spoke, Anna noticed that his voice, although raspy and short winded sounding, it was deeper than the others’.  “You have brought her here, you have?  I must see your face, girl.  Come close.”

 

Anna did not understand how he was going to see her face, but she did not want to offend the marsh king.  She took a few steps and was already right in front of him.

 

“Come closer, dear, yes you must.”

 

Anna leaned in and just as she felt as if she was too close, the king threw out his hands and placed them on her face with a quickness that she did not think possible.  She was so startled but he held her head down close to his.  He examined Anna’s face very similarly to the way that the faun had.  When he was done, he let go of her and blew his nose into his hand.  Anna stepped back away from the king as he flung whatever had come from his nose onto the floor beside his chair.

 

“Now that I have seen you, you will dine with us, you will.  Tonight we will have a feast.”

 

The other creature grabbed hold of her arm again.  He spoke with an excitement in his voice that Anna had not noticed before.  “You will be the guest, the guest of honor.  Come, come, you must get ready.”  Let led her quickly out of the king’s hut and across the dirt clearing.  He brought her to another hut and motioned her inside.  “Inside, inside.  You can get ready here.  Be quick, be quick.  Our dinner is soon.”

 

Anna ducked into the hut.  As she did, she could hear the creature shouting excitedly as he walked away.

 

“There will be a feast tonight, yes!  A feast, a feast!”

 

Anna looked around the room and saw a wooden bucket, tub, and bench.  She also found some tattered old rags thrown in a pile next to the bench.  The roof had holes in it and the light poured through them down to the dirt ground below.  It must have been an attempt at a bathroom of some sort.  She reached for the water to wash her face but found it to be a dirty brown color.  Some type of green plant resembling moss grew on the sides and top rim of the bucket.  It smelled awful and she thought it must have been taken from the swamp water itself.  The large wooden tub had no water in it but instead had dirt.  Bugs of all sizes crawled all around the bottom and up the sides.  Anna did not know how she was going to get ready for the feast and so she went over to the window opposite the door and looked out over the marshes.  She wondered how the strange creatures could ever have begun to live in such a place.  She thought maybe it could be because they have no eyes to see.

 

As she was pondering over these things, a brilliantly white butterfly fluttered close by the window.  It caught Anna’s attention right away; it was so noticeable against the dreary background.  She reached out of the window with a sense of familiarity but as she did, one of the creatures came into the room.

 

“It is time, it is time.  The feast is about to begin.  Come girl, come.  You must not be late.”

 

When the creature spoke, she had turned away from the window.  As he led her back out into the village, Anna turned to look back out of the window, but the butterfly was gone.  She wondered if she had seen it at all.

 

Out side, the creatures had built a large fire right in the center of the small island.  They were crowded around the fire, chattering amongst themselves.  Anna could not understand what they were saying but figured that it was sometime of social gathering they did not have much and so all were excited to be there.  As she walked up to the assembly of creatures, they noticed that she was there.

 

“There, there.  There she is.  Yes, a feast tonight, a feast.”

 

“Come, sit with us be the fire, yes sit.”

 

The creatures had set aside a small wooden bench for Anna to sit at.  She walked through the crowd and sat in her seat as the guest of honor.  She could feel the heat of the fire on her face and felt uncomfortably close to the flames.  She was just about to say something when the whole gathering fell dead silent.  They all sat down cross-legged, their walking sticks poking up from the mass of grey.  Anna could see now why they had fallen quiet.  The king had come from his hut and was making his way over to the convention.  Another wooden throne waited for him directly across the fire from Anna atop a small pedestal.  Anna leaned down to one of the creatures sitting beside her.

 

“Is the feast going to begin now?”

 

“A feast?  Yes, a feast.  Soon, soon.”

 

The king finally made his way to the throne and sat for a moment before speaking to the crowd.

 

“Welcome, welcome.  We have not had a gathering, no, not in many years.  We are honored, yes, to have a girl with us.”  The king pointed to Anna and all the creatures began to clap and cheer.  “Thank you, thank you for coming.  There will be a feast tonight!”

 

Again the crowd roared with cheering.  Anna began to feel a bit uneasy.  Something was not right, but she did not know what.

 

“Before the feast, yes, we must do the tradition.  We must hunt, we must, for the feast.”

 

The creatures jumped up from their seats and began to dance around the fire.  “A feast, a feast.  We hunt, we hunt.”

 

Anna started to get up, but suddenly she smelled the strange odor she had smelled before.  Only until then had she realized that it had gone away.  But now it was back, and it began to make Anna very dizzy once again.  She fell back down to the ground and as her vision faded, she could faintly she the dancing shadows above her and their cry of rejoicing.

 

“A feast, a feast.  A hunt, a hunt.  A feast, a feast.  We hunt, we hunt…”

 

———

 

Anna came to, but this time she remembered where she was.  Although she no longer had the village surrounding her, she was still in the swamps.  It was darker now, closer to nightfall.  The air was thick and humid and felt like it was about to rain.  Thankfully, the odor had ceased and she was able to stand without difficulty.  She scanned what was around her and found nothing but vegetation and water.  There was no sign of the creatures.  She wondered what happened back at the gathering, which the more she thought about it, seemed to be a ceremony of some sort.  It began to scare her and she wanted to find a way out.  Unaware of which way was out, Anna decided to pick a direction and stick straight to it until she was out of the swamps.

 

As she walked the mud squished between her feet.  Soon it was quite dark out and Anna became increasingly worried about her predicament.  The swamps seemed to stretch on forever in a maze of trees and water.  She had become accustomed, already, to the sound of her shoes in the mud and something caught her attention.  It sounded like there were footsteps sloshing through the shallow water around her.  She stopped to try to hear it more clearly, but it stopped, too.  After a moment, Anna began walking.  Again, she noticed the sloshing.  In a burst of fear, Anna ran toward a large tree and went around the one side, hiding behind its large trunk.  She stood behind the tree, waiting for the sloshing to continue, but it did not.  Slowly, she peeked out from behind the tree and peered into the darkness of the swamp, squinting her eyes, hoping to see anything.

 

Just as she came out from around the tree, Anna saw it.  A large shadow, if there could be one at night, stood a short distance in front of her.  She slowly took a few steps backward and it followed her.  As Anna walked, the shadow moved into a moon beam and she realized what was following her.  The black cloak reflected no light.  There, standing before Anna, was one of the People of the Dark.  She froze, unable to do anything.  She seemed trapped by the empty opening of the hood.  It began to raise its hand toward Anna, the long, black claws poking out through the bottom of the sleeve.  Anna gasped as one of the claws touched the skin of her arm.  She winced with pain as she began feeling so cold that it burned.  She was paralyzed, unable to move at all.

 

Suddenly, a butterfly flew out of nowhere into the hood of the People of the Dark.  It stumbled backward, quickly bringing it hands away from Anna and up to its face.  It screamed out in pain, the noise so piercing that Anna fell to the ground.  Even while holding her hand tightly over her ears, she could not block out the screech of the People of the Dark.  Laying on her side, she watched for the second time the death of a People of the Dark.  It blacks, wool cloak lay in a heap on the ground.

 

Out from the folds flew the butterfly, it whiteness lighting up Anna’s surroundings.  She got up to go towards it, but something caught her eye.  At the foot of a tree, a small scarlet flower grew.  She walked over to it, the butterfly following close behind.  Anna looked down at the flower and then up at the butterfly.  She felt as if they both seemed strangely familiar.  Looking back at the flower she picked it and brought it close to her face.  Anna thought hard about why it reminded her of something.  Then it hit her.  She remembered everything:  Crof and Gleep, the Rare Scarlet, the butterflies being fairies, the Marsh Folk.

 

“The Marsh Folk!”  Anna yelled this aloud and turned to the butterfly.  Just as she did, a Marsh Folk burst out of the bushes and grabbed the butterfly, quickly shoving it in its mouth.  Anna screamed as the Marsh Folk ate her friend, its wing hanging out of the mouth as it was chewed to pieces.  The creature threw down its stick and began to walk toward Anna.  It did not seem sickly anymore.  As it stepped toward her, sharp claws shot out from it hands and feet.  Slowly, the skin over its eyes began to glow a bright pale white.  A flash of lightning revealed a large band of Marsh Folk all around closing in on Anna.

 

“A feast, a feast.  A hunt, a hunt.”

 

“No!”  Anna turned and began running with all her might with no real direction, realizing that she was to be the feast.  She could hear the chant grow louder and louder between the claps of thunder as the rain began falling down.  As she ran, she could see Marsh Folk chasing her, moving with such swiftness through the trees and water.  Their sharp claws flashed in the moon light, cutting through the brush in their attempt to capture Anna.  Anna ran and ran, the brush cutting her arms and legs as she pushed through, and the water splashing up her legs and filling her shoes with the cold swamp water.  The rain continued to pour down, covering her with water wherever the swamp did not get.  Soon Anna became exhausted and finally fell down on the ground.

She knelt for a moment on her arms and knees, breathing heavily.  She rolled over onto her back and sat up only to see the Marsh Folk emerge from the bushes and trees surrounding her.  They began to encircle her, all the while continuing their horrific chant.

 

Anna whispered to herself as the Marsh Folk crept closer and closer.  “Please, please. No, please.”

 

Just as they were about to jump on her, the Marsh Folk closest to her stopped.  He put his arms out, holding back the rest.  It seemed as though he noticed something.  Soon, all of them stopped trying to get to Anna and just stood there, frozen in their paths.  Slowly taking her eyes off them, Anna looked down to what was in her hand.  They were all fixed on the Rare Scarlet.  They seemed worried that she had taken the flower.

 

Anna stood up and called to the Marsh Folk, the rain slurring her speech.  “Do you want this?  Is it important to you?”

 

The Marsh Folk hunched over, turning back into the weak, little creature from before.  The pale light went from its eyes and the claws retracted back into its hands and feet.  It let out a faint groan and began wringing its hands together.  When he began speaking, there was such sorrow in its voice.  “What are you doing, girl?  It is the Scarlet, it is.”

 

Anna saw through the façade that the creature was putting on.  Calling its bluff, Anna dropped the flower on the ground and raised her foot above it, ready to smash it at any moment.  The Marsh Folk reached out his hand in protest.

 

“Please, girl.  Give it to us, yes.  Please.”

 

Anna stomped down; mud splashed up into the air and spattered everywhere.  The Marsh Folk fell to their knees, crying.

 

“Why?!  Why?!  It is gone, it is gone!”  Raising his head back up, his eyes faded back in from behind its skin.  “You killed it, you did.  You took it from us!”  The Marsh Folk growl and jumped in the air at Anna.  Quickly, she grabbed a rock and threw it at him.  It struck the creature in its head and it fell to the ground, blood streaming from the gash.  The rest of the clan growled and leapt toward Anna.  Suddenly, a flash of light came from behind her, momentarily blinding the Marsh Folk.  They yelled out in terror.  Anna turned to see the other two butterflies.

 

“Come on!”  Anna ran from the Marsh Folk, their screams fading in the distance.  Soon, she was out of the swamps and could see the wooden door in the side of the cliff.  She ran through the tall, wet grass and finally reached the door.  Pushing it open, she slammed it closed and fell to the ground, leaning her back up against the door, her knees pulled close to her chest.  The two butterflies fluttered down and rested on her knees.  One was one of the original butterflies, and the other the small stow away.  “We made it.”  The butterflies moved their wings back and forth, as if flapping, but they did not take off.  She remembered the fate of the third butterfly.  “Well, almost all of us.”