Forbidden Forest

Ruthernglan (One of the border villages), Nothern Province, Lanir.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

There was no light except for the beacon on the turret of the famous castle of Ruthernglan. The torrential rain had doused the torches on the giant wall. It made the whole Rutherglan inconspicuous.

The downpour continued to beat down the roofs. Once in a while, the booming thunder quaked the weakest huts. Nonetheless, it wasn't even close to the horror spreading outside the wall.

The flash of lightenings once in a while exposed the golden-brown wheat farmland outside the village wall. The wheat grass and the grains giggled violently because of the tempest, adding more pandemonium. At the far end of the farmland, giant tropical trees that were trying to reach the sky violently swayed in wind. The lightning had made them look like an army of giant beasts, marching towards the village to devour each and every Lanirs.

Horror, that was what that night was about...

Suddenly, another bolt of lightning flashed. This time, it exposed the lonely oak tree in the middle of that wheat farmland. There was a small hut-like treehouse on that oak tree. It was a vulnerable place to spend that pitch-black night. Nonetheless, a sylphlike figure was standing by the window of the treehouse.

It was a girl; a girl who looked delicate yet alluring from head to toe. Her gleaming brown eyes were so focused on the light shining on top of the Ruthernglan castle. The heavy wind that entered the treehouse through the window brutally pushed her thick dark brown braid behind. But it wasn't enough to waver her focus. She didn't move an inch from there.

One could simply be fooled into trusting her if she claimed herself as the moon goddess who had just visited to witness the tempest. Her name too supported the idea.

Diana... the goddess of the woods, fertility, chastity, wild animals and the moon. It might be her father's mistake to name her Diana. She ended up acquiring most of the qualities the goddess was known for. In the end, her father wasn't very happy with the results.

The girl grew up in a village where everyone hated forests and the wild was an exemption. She not only loved the wild but also wanted to protect them. The villagers' deeply rooted hatred towards the forest that bordered their country tortured her soul day and night. In the end, it made her into a rebel.

'They'll tear your body, drink your blood then eat you!', this was a rhyme she learned in her school many years ago. But there was not even a single piece of evidence to prove their claims.

The granny who lived at the end of the street never forgets to warn the villagers of the cruel beasts which lived on the other side of this forest. She used to say that the cruellest were the wolves. There were stories of the wolves that can turn into humans!

Diana never believed in these stories.

"Beasts? Monsters? Why don't you tell them to show their heads?" this had always been her comment on those stories.

The speculations went so far as claiming that the wolves had their kingdom beyond this forest. People also mentioned that the king of this imaginary kingdom was a devil himself. What pained Diana the most was that the stupid Lanir king believed this myth.

It would have been fine if he stopped there. He had created an army to deal with these non-existent werewolves. The hunters, that's what the people called them.

What a waste of human power?

The so-called hunters who settled down in the bordering villagers were designated to kill each and every innocent creature that stepped out of the woods. Deers, monkeys, and wild boars. They even shot down the tiny little blue birds which chirp in the morning.

When she was little, Diana saw them hunting down an exquisite beautiful white deer. She saw its black fawn running back into the forest. It was the most traumatic incident ever in her life. As a human being, she understood the pain and fear of those hunted animals; as a motherless child, she understood the despair of that fawn that ran back into the forest, when the hunters slaughtered its mother.

"What did the deer do wrong?" she directly questioned the Ruthernglan knight fifteen years ago on the day of that incident. The knight only gave her a death stare. Her questions remained unanswered, and more questions continued to pile up in her mind.

It was obvious that hunters thirsted for blood! There was no other explanation for their acts. Diana hated those hunters and disliked those unkind, dull-witted, superstitious Ruthernglaners who believed in this fallacy!

Therefore, she had to rebel. She had her ways to rebel.

A few months ago, she pulled a prank on that petrifying knight who lived in the castle of Ruthernglan. It wasn't trivial to ignore. She sneaked into the castle, and draw an ostrich on the sleeping man's head using black ink she found on his study table. It couldn't satisfy her. She hated this knight so much that she drew more birds to his face. At last, she wrote on his bald hit, "I'm nothing but a jester."

Diana did not leave a trace. But somehow, the knight discovered that it was her work. He wanted to punish her but before he could, her father came in between the two and begged him to let her live. At last, the knight let her go so the people would respect him more. Instead, they took her father for an investigation. He reprimanded her father for three weeks. Afterwards, he was asked to apologize on behalf of Diana. No man's pride would withstand such shame. Diana knew that too. She expected that her father might kill her when he returned.

But that wasn't what happened. It was more than that. Diana's father didn't punish her for her escapades. He simply abandoned her.