The Twim

Once upon a time, in a world where the ancient magics stirred and monsters were known to walk the earth, there lived a small boy.  He was named Asher after the blessings that brought about his birth.  He lived in the Black Forest with his Grandmother in a tiny village called Dunkelwald, which had only six houses and an aged population.  There were no children to play with.

Asher spent his days playing in the dirt in the fringe of the forest, building bridges and towers out of sticks and stones but he was never allowed to go out of sight of his Grandmother’s little stone cottage.  He had begged and begged to be allowed but she always said no.  The forest was dangerous, she told him, shadows came to life there.

Sometimes at night, Asher gazed into the forest from his bedroom window, tucked away up in the eaves of the house.  The trees grew thickly there, as if guarding secrets within, and Asher could barely see a few feet into the forest.  Sometimes he heard owls far off in the distance and once, a fox with her cubs came creeping through the trees.

On his twelfth birthday, he asked again to be allowed to enter the forest.  It was all he wanted and, he reasoned, he was twelve now, practically grown.  His grandmother sighed and finally relented; she couldn’t keep him a child forever. 

In the morning sunlight, she walked with him to the edge of the forest and gave him a ball of wall and a warning. The wool, she said, was for him to unwind as he went; it would allow him to find his way back.  But she warned him not to eat or drink anything from the woods, no matter how appetising it might seem, as the Black Forest he was about to walk in was only half of this world.

Asher nodded but barely took anything in, so eager was he to be off.  With a final wave, he stepped into the forest and instantly felt he had left his childhood and his known world behind.

Darkness fell with every step he took and although when he turned, he could see the sunlight in the clearing where the village of Dunkelwald lay, it barely reached into the forest as if it had no power in the land of the trees.  Twigs and leaves crackled underfoot as he walked, producing an earthy smell that was both rotten and pleasant at the same time.  The trees thinned out as he walked and he found he was on a narrow track made by an animal.  Far above, the leafy canopy grew thickly, and he felt he was walking in a twilight world.

He clutched the ball of wool tightly and carefully fed it out behind him as he walked.  Turning, he could see the ghostly white wool trailing out behind him like an umbilical cord, connecting him back to life and light.  Reassured, he carried on and now he could hear the sounds of the forest.  Other rustling sounds came from all around him, the hooting of birds, and a strange wheezing bark from far away.  Asher wished he had asked if there were wolves in the forest.  Wolves could be dangerous.

He walked on.  It seemed like a long time had passed and his stomach was beginning to growl with hunger but he still had a quarter of his ball of wool left.  He was just deciding that he had better turn back anyway when he heard distant voices up ahead.

He stopped, shocked.  Were there other people in the forest?  The voices sounded young – they were the voices of other children!  He was about to call out when two children stepped out onto the path ahead of him.  They were too far away to hear what they were saying but he could make out they were a boy and girl, about his age or a little younger, and were holding hands.

”Wait up!” he called, and began to run towards them, unwinding his ball of wool as fast as he could.  They rounded a corner and disappeared and he began to panic that he had lost them but when he finally panted his way to the corner, he saw them sitting on some fallen logs at the side of the path, setting out a picnic.

Asher suddenly felt shy.  He had never spoken to other children before.  What if they thought he was weird?  He approached slowly, carefully, but the boy turned towards him and gestured to the feast in front of him. “Join us,” he said.  The girl laughed, a friendly sound, and beckoned to him, pointing to the log opposite where they sat.  She was spearing up slices of fruit with a fork and it looked delicious. 

Asher hurried over, his eyes fixed now on the picnic.  There was a large slice of cake on a plate next to his log and he was suddenly incredibly hungry.  He had never seen a slice of cake so huge, nor decorated so beautifully with glistening pink icing. Picking up the plate, he sat on the log and sank his fingers into the golden sponge.  Briefly, he heard his Grandmother’s voice in his mind, Some sort of warning about eating in the forest.  But this wasn’t picking a strange mushroom and eating it, it was sharing a picnic with other children!  Besides, it was his birthday.  

He pushed her voice aside and took a bite.  It was the best cake he’d ever eaten – so light and airy and delicately flavoured.  He devoured it then looked up to offer the children his thanks.  And nearly fell off his log in shock.

They were not children.

They were the size of children, and had the voices of children but were far older – perhaps even as old as his Grandmother.  Their faces were wrinkled and slightly grey, as if their skin had taken on the twilight tone of the world they sat in.  The woman’s hair, which he had thought was blonde, was actually a pale grey and she wasn’t using a fork to spear her fruit, but the long steel-like claws that appeared at the ends of her fingers.  The man had the same and he was using his to shred the bark off the log he was sitting on.  When he glanced at Asher, his eyes were large and dark and Asher thought he could see a strange light shining deep within them.

Whatever they were, they weren’t human and Asher now clearly recalled his Gradmother saying that the Black Forest was only half of this world.

He jumped up, almost stumbling over his log, and smiled shakily at the creatures sitting in front of him.  They smiled back, seemingly unaware of his sudden fear, their grins stretched widely in mirrored expressions across their faces.  

“It’s getting late, I must go,” Asher told them, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice.  “Thanks so much for the cake, it was really great,” he added then turned, ball of wool in hand and stumbled back out to the path.  

Hands working furiously, he began to wind his wool back in as he moved as fast as he could without running.  He glanced back once over his shoulder.  They were still sitting on the log.  Their grins though, had spread even wider, impossibly wide, like they might split their faces open, and they were watching him with those strange dark eyes with the hidden lights in the depths.

Asher turned back, relieved.  He’d be out of the forest soon and he would never, ever come back again.  What was he thinking?  Twelve wasn’t grown up!  He wound the wool around his hands then stopped in horror.  The line of wool connecting him to light and home was gone.  The string had been cut.