The Dark Forest Path

The path led off into the trees, deep into the shadowed darkness of the dense wood. She knew, she had been told enough times, what happened to girls who walked off into the woods, but she was – she thought – no longer a girl. She was a woman, especially since that evening after the village barn dance when the woodman’s son had taken her by the hand and led her out, away from the dancing, and they had laughed and fallen together into the hay where he had stopped laughing and become urgent, hot, insistent.

No, she was no longer a girl.

Anyway, there was a path, and those old stories only ever told of the bad things happened to those girls who strayed from the path. So she set off with determination in her step, a determination that faltered somewhat as the darkness under the trees seemed to rob the air of some quality it had out in the open.

It seemed as though the trees were arching over her head to steal the light of the sun away, that the soft green darkness was a blanket the forest threw over her as she stepped further and further away from that dwindling area of bright sunlight and on into the woods.

She shivered, not knowing what to expect, telling herself that those old stories were… well, just old stories. She didn’t believe in stories anyway, stories were just for children and old women sitting around the fire in the dark.

No, stories were for the others, not for her.

Then, some new story rose suddenly out of the dark shadows. A dark and terrible story grabbed her, pulling her down into the undergrowth, taking her far, far away from the world she knew. Grasping her tight in its claws, the story took her into the deep and the dark; far into a dark, ancient, story she had never heard before and would never hear again.