Unfamiliar Territory

One day, the kids and I stopped by a small, hilly meadow in the middle of our run. I remember the orange grass swaying in the wind and that there was a small pond off to one side of it. Maple, Gust, and the twins immediately took to running through the grass, as though they had done so many times before. Trout demanded of me in his broken English that I let him play in the shallow pond. Meadow asked, shyly, if she could stay with me.

I gently laid down the small body of the girl in the grass beside her wilted flower. When I stood, I made for the vines. Before I reached them, several broke away from the wall and made to strike me.

“Why don’t you like playing with your brothers and sisters?” I asked her as we both sat by the pond. Trout laughed maniacally as he sat in the water and splashed his arms up and down.

“They like to play rough,” she whispered, holding her legs to her chest. “I don’t like it.”

I screamed as I tore aside the vines. More and more tried to hit me, entangle me, but I never gave them the chance. When I finally reached their wall, I tore into them with both claws, with teeth, until there was nothing left.

“Oh.”

I had only been watching the kids for about a week at the time. Most of them still didn’t like me. The way Meadow would never look at me, let alone speak to me, always made me feel like she was one of the ones who didn’t. Those were the most words I had ever heard her speak, even to Kat or her dad.

“Well, what do you like to do?”

Meadow glanced over at me for a split instant, also a first. She did not say anything for a few minutes. I had decided to give up for the time being when she spoke up.

“I like to play pretend.”

I immediately thought of Mary. “Oh, yeah? Like knights and princesses?”

“No, that’s silly.”

“Oh, yeah, way silly...” I chuckled, trying suddenly not to remember my shameful past. Meadow continued to hold herself, but she was looking out at the lake with a small smile on her face. “What kind of pretend then?”

She glanced over at me again. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

“Promise.”

There was no more sliding glass door behind the wall of vines. I heard the crunching of glass as I walked outside. There was hardly much of an outside left. The witch had birthed new, massive trees in a tight semi-circle around the house. They were so close together I could not see the mountain range beyond them; I could not see anything beyond them. I looked from tree to tree until my eyes fell on Leaf.

The young boy appeared to have partly melded into one of the trees. Only one of his hands and his head were visible, the rest were nonexistent.

I cried out his name. A massive shape in the shadows of a tree near the house answered my call with grunts and snorts. I turned to it just as it charged out at me. A massive boar with dark fur, large tusks, and bright, red eyes.

“Sometimes I pretend that I’m a fairy of the forest,” Meadow said softly. “And that my job is to make sick things better.”

“Like your dad?”

She shook her head. “Better than daddy.”

I grabbed the boar by its tusks. I shouted into its hideous face as it tried to push me back and pushed back in kind. I stared into its beady red eyes until I knew it was staring back. “I’m going to kill you and your witch for what she did, Bennie.”

Something flickered across those red eyes. I was thrown through the air when Tusk flung his head to one side. The damn thing was strong.

I hit a tree— hard. As I tried to catch my breath, I looked up and saw that it was Leaf’s tree. His head hung down, his dark hair fell all around his face. He didn’t appear conscious.

“Leaf? Can you hear me? I’m going to get you out of there, just—”

A rumbling of hooves. I did not have enough time to even stand before Tusk was upon me. I grabbed his two large teeth again as he tried to ram them into my stomach. I really smelled him then. A foul, dead, stench that latches into your nose and refuses to let go. He huffed rancid air into my face. My grip on him was slipping, my muscles felt like they were about to burst. Any second now he was going to push through and I would be done for.

“Mommy told all of us, when we we’re really little, that we were special,” Meadow went on. “Because we were hers, we had responsibility. She said we had to be better than her. Do a better job.”

“A better job at what?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, staring out at nothing. “I think she wanted to play pretend too.”

“You can tell me. I promise I won’t laugh.”

Her big brown eyes flashed to me. For just a moment, a ghost of a smile touched her face. “You can laugh about this—”

“Hey, you dirty ol’ pig! Leave him alone!”

Tusk stopped in his tracks, which was lucky for me because I had forgotten to keep him from skewering me. The both of us looked up and were met with the nastiest glare I had ever seen an eight year old boy give.

“Didn’t ya hear me, pork butt? I said leave Foxy alone!”

Leaf then let loose a wad of spit that soared like a comet through the air before making impact on Tusk’s wide, red eyes. The pig squealed and backed up enough to give me ample room to hurl a few good kicks into his face. I dug my claws into the tree and scrambled up to the closest branch, near Leaf’s face, before the boar could recover.

He and I watched Tusk pace the tree below us with fire in his eyes before Leaf laughed. “Nice shot,” he said, giving me a thumbs up with his only visible hand.

“Nice shot yourself,” I smiled back for a split second until the whole world caught up with me again. “Holy Christ, Leaf, are you alright? What happened to you? How do I get you out?!”

“Oh, you talkin’ about the tree thing?”

I nodded emphatically as he stared down at said tree. He mused for a short while, staring at the fingers on his hand as he curled and straightened them over and over. “Yeah, I dunno.” He paused to blow some stray hair out of his eyes. “I was tryin’ to get Lilly away from that nasty pig guy when—”

Leaf’s face suddenly turned sour. “Hey!” he shouted down at the boar. “Whatcha guys do with my sister?!”

“Leaf!” a new voice called out from across the clearing. “I’m over here!”

The voice sounded strange, like someone shouting from inside a tunnel. When I looked across the sealed off area, to a tree that had sprouted up right against the side of the cabin, I saw why. Two dangling legs were sticking out of the tree, about halfway down, as if they were just a pair of tree limbs.

“Lilly!” Leaf shouted. It did not seem like he could move anything save his fingers. “Foxy, get me out of this. I have to get to her!”

“Okay, alright, just hold tight.”

I looked more closely at where his neck and wrist met the tree. I could not see any empty space. I traced my fingers along the connection and Leaf giggled— told me to stop tickling him. My head suddenly felt light. I thought I was going to fall out of the tree.

“What’s takin’ ya? You gonna get me out now?”

I clung to the tree as I pulled away from him. Lilly was not far away, in the exact same position. They weren’t stuck in the tree. They were trees.

“How the hell is that even possible...”

“Foxy?”

“Right, um...” I turned back to face Leaf and his dark, expectant eyes. “Look, maybe...maybe you and Lilly should just stay where you guys are...for now.”

His face blanked. “What?”

“It’s just...It’s dangerous right now, Leaf, and I can’t guarantee that if I got you and your sister out that you guys would be safe.”

“So you won’t help us?”

“Leaf, it’s not like that. I want to, but—”

“You won’t.” Leaf glared at me until I couldn’t look at him. “Who needs you then? Miss Elizabeth will be here soon, I bet. She’ll help.”

I wasn’t even sure if Kat was still...

“Leaf—”

“Just get outta here, you rotten old fox!” Leaf shouted. “If you aren’t going to help us then just go away!”

I dug my nails into the tree. I could see Meadow again, lying quiet and bleeding in my arms. She would have been better off inside that flower. I should have never helped her. I should have left her alone.

“You guys will be safer here,” I repeated.

I looked back to Lilly’s tree. It seemed to lead up perfectly to a second story opening in the cabin. Couldn’t be a coincidence. I debated trying my luck jumping through tree branches to get there when I looked down and saw that Tusk was gone.

“Probably not a good sign.”

“Stop talkin’ to yourself. It’s weird,” Leaf grumbled.

“I’ll find your mom and put a stop to this,” I said, climbing back down the tree. “I promise.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Leaf let his head hang again. “Dumb ol’ fox. Gust was right all along about you.”

I scanned the trees as I reached the ground. No dark, grunting shadows. Not even his putrid smell remained. A low rumble told me the storm was still going on somewhere beyond the canopy of thick tree limbs.

I tried to keep my eye on everything at once while making my way to the tree beside the cabin. If this witch really did have the knowledge to control nature, then any of these trees, flowers, even the grass at my feet could come out and attack me at any given moment. I cut down a few ferns and other tall grasses along the way, just in case.

“You’re a real jerk, fox!” Leaf shouted as I made my climb up his sister’s tree. “A big fat jerk!”

“I know,” I said, under my breath.

I must have been a pretty good climber before all this. I scaled the tree like it was second nature. When I passed Lilly’s legs, I paused and pressed my face close against the tree. “Don’t be scared, Lilly. You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

“Don’t talk to my sister!” Leaf hollered.

I looked across the small glade towards him. He had to be at least a dozen meters away. There was no way he could have heard me.

“How did you hear me!?”

“Where’s Kat?!”

I looked away from him again. “She’s... She’s looking for everyone else over on the other side of the house.”

“Liar!” he shouted. “You killed her, didn’t you?! You killed her and you came here to kill our mom!”

“That’s not...”

No. No more talking. If I stay any longer, something will happen to them. You have to go, Alex, you have to go right now.

“Yeah, go on, run!” he cried after me as I scaled the rest of the tree. “I wish you had never came here! This is all your fault!”

I stopped climbing. I dug my claws into the tree. “My fault!?” I shouted back. “I’m the only one here because your mom nearly killed everyone else! Do you get that, Leaf? She’s killing everyone! Kat, Mutt, Stallion, Mr. Copper, your dad! And if I have to kill her to make her stop then that’s what I’m going to do.”

I knew I had to stop this. He was just a kid, he wasn’t going to understand. This wasn’t helping.

I knew that, but I could not stop.

“You can be as mad as you want, but don’t you dare say this is my fault. You have no idea what these damn people have put me through— what they put my friends through. If you want to blame someone, blame them! Blame the witches who think they can toy around with people’s lives and think that they can have control over them! It’s because of them that it has gotten as fucked as it is. It’s because of them that everything I ever fucking cared about is being ripped away from me!”

I was losing my grip on the tree. I couldn’t see well through the tears. I racked my nails down the trunk and listened to it snap and splinter away with little resistance.

“I’m the only one left who is trying to fix the mess they started. So don’t you dare say that it’s my fault.”

Of course, Leaf said nothing back. I could not see his face from this distance. I wiped my eyes and prepared to climb again.

“We’re sorry, Foxy,” a voice echoed from inside the tree. “Leaf is just scared.”

Lilly’s legs remained still. Barefoot, like Meadow’s. If what I was doing to her tree was hurting her, she did not voice it.

“It’s alright,” I sighed as I dug my claws in and climbed. “Don’t be sorry for being scared.”

“You saw Meadow?!” Leaf called out. “Where is she?”

It did not take me long to reach the wide hole that must have been blown into the side of the house. Inside was more foreign than anything I had seen yet. Tall grass that covered the walls entirely. Colorful flowers that grew from vines stretched across the ceiling. There were no remnants of the bedroom I had first woken up in, like the furniture had all been eaten away.

“Foxy?” Lilly called out from the tree.

I turned back to the glade; Leaf was no more than a dark blemish in the tree. “After this is over you can get mad at me, beat me, kill me, or whatever you want. But until then, believe in me. I will make this right.”

I turned away and proceeded into the room. There was something already eating to get inside me. Something that kept me from thinking of seeing the cold, lifeless faces of Meadow and her father. Though my body felt new and refreshed, this something was pulling away at me, at whatever was left of me.

I had to hurry and see this to the end, before that something was finished. There would be nothing left when it was done.