There was a time in early August when the bramble bushes were weighed down with fruit and children could finally reach out with their pudgy fingers, rewarded for their patience in tolerating the word “no” ten months out of the drawn-out year. Picked at the wrong time, perhaps a day or two late, and one was met with a fruit wholly inedible. I never had a problem with unripeness; the berries I chose always seemed to be cloying with their own flavor.
In the summertime, the heat turned sour in West Virginia, but autumn wasn’t terribly far away. The Brick Wood turned on its own time. Always a bit early. Always a bit too cold. I liked to read novels in a clearing there, spreading out my mother’s quilt and absently plucking at the dark fruit until the pads of my fingers turned the color of aged wine.
The day I ran amuck with Jill Lark, I was engaged in a similar activity. I’d left my phone at home, which angered my mother, but I deemed it necessary for my own semblance of peace and power. If I had it with me, I might have checked the time of day or had a call from my mother, asking me to scurry back to the ancient house in the woods where we lived. I did not. The light was dying, drowning in the gaps of the horizon with deep shades of peach and apricot. I turned the final pages of Carmilla and allowed myself to lie in the company of the rustling yellow and green oak leaves when an ear-shattering noise split the forest straight down the center.
At first, I mistook the high-pitched screeching for a fox pup. Then I heard that same shrill voice, undeniably closer, start to form words and curses in every language and diction imaginable.
There was a small moment of mental deliberation, a brief self-analysis of the possibility of insanity, before a figure shrouded in the forest’s natural shadows briefly dimmed the sunlight spilling down on where I sat, appearing and disappearing. It was a girl.
Then another individual appeared—a gentleman with a long coat made of an ivy-like material that didn’t readily grow in the southern part of the state—who seemed to be responsible for my cozy reading spot becoming terribly uncomfortable in an astonishingly brief period of time. A violent scuffle ensued between the two, consisting overwhelmingly of an obnoxious amount of verbal disparaging and unfiltered rage. The creatures kicked up bouts of rotting leaves in their mutual display of hatred, uncovering the mildew and insects taking residence between a thick layer of botanical rot, and instantly becoming recognizable as “other.”
I always liked to think that I had the Wood’s favor. It made me feel better about most things. Where I stood on the existence of fae and their magical nuance was never a serious question: They were there, or they weren’t.
It would be very easy to sit and do nothing, but I didn’t have the audacity within me to not help the girl.
There was a sword resting across a knotting of nearby branches, so I plucked it. When the faerie girl, who couldn’t have been much older than I was, screamed and bared her teeth at her captor, I swung. I was a fencer of sorts, not particularly good at what I did, but I could do it. The man attempted to parry with his rapier, but the forest had granted me with two blessings that day—one offensive and the other a brief interlude of surprise.
He was quick on his feet, blocking a series of blows as if I was an irritating insect. His weapon was lighter than mine, finding easy ways to slip through my attempts to advance as I cried out in growing frustration; what I could contribute were haphazard hits that only ever landed half the time. When I knocked the strange man off his feet, I can confidently attest to the fact that I was more shocked than he was. I suppose I was meant to kill him–I’m sure that’s what he meant to do to me–but I didn’t have the stomach. Before I could decide, he scurried off, leaving me and my indecisive nature alone and abandoned. All went quiet. Then it was my turn to scream.
—
My hair was sopping, nightingale colored locks falling in unattractive clumps and pooling on the linoleum table at the diner I’d selected for us. After I’d escaped the duel, there was a slick green liquid all over my clothes and skin that smelled of honey wine. I’d tried to wash it off, but the smell remained.
And then there was the girl. Jill Lark, she called herself.
Now in the diner, Jill asked if I had any real talent with the art of sword fighting. I told her I wasn’t familiar. One of us was in fact good at other things. Excessive lying and deception, perhaps almost in a pathological sense.
Pushing aside the hot chocolate with powdered dregs at the bottom, I leaned over the table, inspecting the lazy glamor she had coated herself in. Purple hair tied back with a thin piece of twine she’d taken from a bundle of lavender hanging above my door. Gray eyes and pale pink lips that puckered into a small heart when she was plotting. It all looked fine. Acutely the same, but I struggled to unsee her pollen dusted lashes and knifelike ears. Danger of the most attractive and magnetic sort.
Georgia Hope writes queer fantasy with a southern gothic twist and essays that break down the turbulent relationship between adolescence and academia. Currently a high school senior in the state of Texas, her idea of a good time is exploring haunted small towns with a notebook, camera, and a large cup of iced coffee. When she’s not making her readers cry, you can find her gathering more bizarre lore for her next story or having an existential crisis on her Instagram page @georgiainabook.
Featured image by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash.
