4. Amelie
Amelie
F ood over fairy tale was the survivalist’s choice.
So I crept up to the door, careful of my feet and the branches cracking under them.
As I approached the door, the vines disintegrated right before my eyes, as if they were never there.
Before I connected my fist to the decrepit wood, the door creaked open.
I waited to see if someone would poke their head out to peek at their visitor, but no one did.
I pushed the door open a little further to see a small candle flickering, illuminating the small meal on the table.
“Hello?” Eerie silence crawled over my skin. The air in the Forest felt light and tingly, like finely milled glitter raining down. I first noticed it when I emerged from the river and magic soaked up the water right out of my clothes.
A warm breeze rushed in behind me, like my shadow friend from the journey here was following me inside.
Not a breath to be heard, so I closed the door behind me and quietly stepped in to inspect.
Rugs covered every inch of the floors. There was no particular theme.
Hundreds of colors threaded through them.
They were beautiful pieces that needed a loving touch of cleaning.
If the owner didn’t murder me in the morning, I’d offer to take the rugs to the creek and clean them in return for their hospitality.
The walls weren’t in horrible shape, but they showed the cottage’s age. Dust covered every surface besides the dining table. The sitting room had a lumpy couch in the dead center of it. It looked to be covered in empty potato sacks, soiled and filthy.
I called out again, “Hello? I promise I come meaning no harm. Your cottage is lovely but I don’t want to intrude!”
I waited again for a response, but was quickly assured that I was, in fact, talking to myself and whatever magic roamed the Forest. Making my way to the table to inspect the food I saw in the window, I tore a small piece of bread from the loaf and pondered if eating magical food would be a bad way to die.
I decided it wasn’t and popped it in my mouth.
The flavor exploded on my tongue, tasting better than any bread I’d ever had back home.
Better than just fresh bread. It had a nutty, vanilla flavor, and it was so soft it was nearly dissolving on my tongue.
Was fresh bread supposed to melt in your mouth?
I was lucky to not crack a tooth on the leftovers we received in our rations.
No amount of willpower could keep me from devouring the rest of the loaf, jam, and cheese.
I might have exploded at the unfamiliar quantity of food that was about to settle in my stomach, but I couldn’t find a single part of my soul that cared.
The food was incredible. Exhaustion crawled through my body.
I was fading at the table, my eyes threatening to close right here.
Then, my feet moved without command from my mind.
Something was guiding me into a room with another smaller candle flickering on the bedside table.
The rest of the cottage was old and unkempt, but not this room.
This room looked freshly cleaned, with a beautiful quilt splayed over the bed.
It was warmer in here than it was in the first part of the house.
Again, without my brain controlling my movement, something tucked me in under the quilt, and my head rested on a pillow so soft I wasn’t sure any human was worthy of lying on it.
I snuggled the quilt under my chin and breathed in the smell of cinnamon as I dipped into the pillow.
A small wisp of air breezed past my cheek. It took everything I had to pry my eyes open, but just a peek showed me a mug on the end table next to the bed. Steam floated around my nose, suggesting the smell of berries and caramel.
Tea.
The Lord and his guards were always drinking tea leading up to their nightly drunk-fests, but the village people were never allowed. Women were only given the birth control tea. We were told that our lesser bodies wouldn’t be able to handle any other kind.
I sat up to take a sip, fully accepting the magic that was clearly watching and taking care of me. It was like drinking moonlight, soft and sleepy. I felt it course through each singular vein.
Only a few sips later, my eyes fluttered shut as I faded into a sleep filled with hopes and dreams. Just like usual. Except this time, I wasn’t sure what the world would look like when I woke up in the morning.
It was the best night of sleep I’d ever had.
A warm blanket of sunlight passed over my cheek, and for a moment I allowed it before I shot to a seated position.
Unnervingly aware of waking up in someone’s home, in a bed that some…
thing made up for me. The mug of tea was nowhere in sight.
I sat at attention, expecting the blood to rush to the wounds on my face, but it never came.
I waited for a creak in the floor or the hum of a human in the ho me with me.
It was so quiet you could hear a mouse and his family eating breakfast in the walls.
The room I slept in last night was spotless. There was a chest I didn’t notice before sitting at the end of the bed, a desk with books stacked on it, paper with an ink pen in the center, and a new mug of tea steaming on the edge.
I was no fresh ear to the tales of this Forest, but this was just downright bizarre.
The dark magic I was told about often included the snatching and eating of children, gremlins that sucked your soul from you and leaving only your body in its wake, cursed Witches that were out for revenge and trees that told horror stories when you got too close to them.
So far, this dark magic had made me a delicious late night snack, two cups of aromatic tea, made up a bed for me, then cleaned the room and arranged furniture in it. The only thing it hasn’t done for me was….
Nope, it did that, too.
A fresh change of clothes awaited me at the end of the bed. New, freshly shined boots sat on the floor.
Changing, and deciding to see if it was magic or just an extremely sneaky living thing in here, I sheepishly emerged from the bedroom, but I stopped dead in my tracks..
The dilapidated cottage was no longer the mess it had been when I arrived last night.
Each of the rugs was now bright with their original colors of thread.
The porcelain sink was glimmering under a fresh polish.
There was no dust caking the walls or holes letting in a draft, and the couch had gone from being wrapped in literal potato sacks to a stunning cowhide.
Blankets and quilts draped neatly over the back of it.
Twine laced through the rafters. Glowing orbs hung lazily above, washing the room with an airy morning light.
Fresh plants hung in the corner, filling at least ten pots.
The greenery inside no longer came from overgrown vines that invaded the cottage through the window.
Instead, these plants seemed strategically placed, invited to live here. I felt invited too.
On the table, there was another smorgasbord of meats and cheeses, jams and sliced bread, pastries covered in white frosting, and so much fruit!
Every fruit I’d tasted, and at least ten that I hadn’t.
Tildan would have gone feral for this. He loved when Wren brought home extra berries, his little cheeks always stained purple and red afterward.
I swallowed back my tears at the thought of my brothers. All I could hope was that they were safe.
Deciding to wait for another person to emerge before I ate their breakfast, I continued investigating.
Wanting to know if the interior facelift extended to the exterior, I strolled outside. The beauty of the Forest took my breath away, right before I lost my footing off the new porch of the cottage.
It was dark last night, sure, and I was likely delirious in some capacity, too, but I would’ve remembered this. This was new.
Off the porch was a short walkway lined with big, flat rocks.
There was a small amount of grass surrounding the perimeter of the cottage.
Beautiful arrangements of flowers grew wildly against the house in handcrafted flower beds.
Some hung from the windows. Others grew straight from the ground.
Large mushrooms protected the back of the cottage. Much like the ones from my dreams.
A few grew to my knees, others were as tall as me, and a few were competing with the fir trees in height. It was magnificent.
Further back behind the cottage was an endless abyss of dense Forest. In front, though, the small pond with the frogs from last night was now a large pond with more frogs, fish, and glowing wings on magical dragonflies.
It started at the creek that flowed from the fork in the river all the way around the front of the cottage and back to a small, two-tiered waterfall.
A small, grassy bridge, laced with more of the twine and glowing orbs wrapped around the railing. The bridge allowed a person to cross from the Forest to the cottage. It was as if every fairy tale I’d ever dreamed up had become a reality right outside. I pinched myself to make sure it was real.
Well, that didn’t feel great.
It was real, all of it. But my dreams often felt real too.
The brightest greens I’d ever seen surrounded the cottage—the trees, the grass, the bushes—paired with hazy, warm sunlight and trickling blue-green water. Words hardly did justice to the beauty and life that now breathed around the cottage. There was no other word than enchanting to describe it.
Need not be afraid, for we know you will not bring harm to us
You will not harm us, we will not harm you
The words from last night whispered in the wind again, but this time it sounded like less of a threat. How could someone hurt something so pristine? The Forest deserved to be known as enchanted, not evil like the villagers made it out to be.