The Red Forest Part 1/2

"Your Majesty!" A knight bursts into the king's private office; his loud and insistent voice interrupting his work. The knight stops short when he sees the kings face and shrinks back into a salute to await permission to speak. The king was never good at being polite when protocol is broken so when he speaks his irritation is hardly concealed.

"Why don't we try that again? Step back out of my office and knock. When I am ready I will acknowledge you and then we can discuss whatever you thought was important enough to come into my workspace without authorization. Understood?"

"Yes, your Majesty." The knight bows his head further and backs out of the room and closes the door behind her. The king takes his time rolling and sealing letters that are ready to be sent to the ravens keeper before he allows the knight to enter.

"My king, I have a report from your scouts in The Redwoods. There was as shift in portal magic. They gathered at the fountains and watched as the fountain spit a girl out into this world. She matches your description; they are saying she's back." Excitement and panic streak through the King. It was to soon for her to be back; to soon. His head begins to throb with the warning signs of a headache.

"Send word North, I want her found and brought to me immediately. We can't have them getting to her first." The knight leaves without another word and the king is left to set the rest of the plan into motion. "To soon" he thought, "This is too soon. They aren't ready." He was not ready. Fate was not on his side yet and he knew it. He had to find a way. No one could know; not yet.

# # #

Warmth. That is the first thing Alexandra registers when she wakes up heat from the sun.

A gentle, warm breeze kisses her face and shoulders; carrying the sour smell of the ocean with it; not the sweet smell of pine trees. The wind shifts before she can be sure, but the difference already awakening her senses. She sits up in a rush, her hair falling into her face as she tries to regain control of her panicking brain.

Alexandra sweeps her hair out of her face and looks around for anything familiar. Anything that could lead her back into town, but she is shocked to find that nothing is the same. The grass is taller and thicker. The trees are no longer tall pine trees but old thick oak and willow trees with vibrant red leaves, swaying in calming waves. The whole place felt alive. So real Alex could barely breath, barely think. Wherever she was, it was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen in Virginia.

She tells herself she's dreaming. Squeezes her eyes shut and prepares to see Mary's face when she opens them again but it's still the towering trees and bright sun. The sun high up in the sky just like the moon had been at the fountains the night before. Just like it had been when she had sat down on the cold stone edge and stared into the water. Just as it had been when those hands with the to long fingers and tightly stretched skin reached out and pulled her down into the water. Alexandra instinctively reaches for her wrist, wincing at the spot where they had grabbed her. Rings of almost indefinable hand prints cover the lower part of her right arm, but these aren't bruises or scratches. They are burns. Angry looking, blistering burns that might just scar. Fear filled her heart. What in the fields of hell had happened to her?

With a deep painful breath Alexandra tries to stand quietly only finding herself back on the ground, out if breath. "Damn bruising", she thought to herself, she needed to get moving before night fell. She didn't want to be stranded out here in the open, alone at night with no clue where she is. With one final try she manages to get standing and takes a better look at her arm. It was not as bad as she originally thought. Only in the spots where the hands had over-lapped several times had blisters formed. Spots where there had only been one or two hands were just like bad sunburns.

Turning back to her surroundings Alexandra scared and excited and nervous all at the same time. She didn't know where she was or what she was going to do but as she looked around at the open meadow, the restored fountains, and the giant trees. She somehow knew she was in the right place, she could just feel it in her blood.

Alexandra studies the trees. Nothing about this place is familiar. Not the shape of the clearing or the size of it. Not the fountains or the tall trees and grass. This whole place screams foreign. Somewhere in the depths of her stomach she begins to feel an urgency. A need to move, to get away from here, but the question remained; which way? Make the wrong decision and she could die in these woods. Before she could talk herself out of it she hikes her skirts up enough to move through the thick grass and plows forward; determination written across her face.

When she reaches the boundary where grass turns to trees and bushes, the wind catches her hair she pauses. Looking up at the canopy of thick red leaves she pushes forward knowing in her heart she's not dreaming. She would never learn anything if she stayed here out of fear. Life was full of risks ans she knew that sometimes you had to take them "Deep breath and into the woods you go." She thought to herself before stepping forward.

She wasn't sure what she'd find; happiness, destruction, sorrow, or all of the above but as she walked she didn't feel worry. Her mind was swept away in the motion of the forest. In some ways it is like a living being in the way the branches sway and pull on each other but never separating, never letting sunlight in for more than a second. The leaves were dense making it hard to tell how long it had been once the sun had passed its apex. She knew just how long it and been when the heat gave way to warm air and the warm air to increasingly colder air. The red leaves turning blue as the temperature dropped. "At least the moon is out tonight", she thought, "I'm not completely alone out here."

Just as she says this she comes across another clearing. The moon is nearly full and just above the top of the trees. The sky was clear and dark except for the millions of stars that spilled across it. The clearing was beautiful, the grass grew wild here with tall sun flowers growing randomly across the meadow, their flowers heads closing up. As Alexandra looked over the meadow her heart skipped a beat, but not from the view. Two people stood across the way. One was farther away, still hidden in the shadows, but Alex could tell she was maybe 40, and short; 5 foot tops. The other one was definitely male. He wore a black cloak, but it didn't hide his broad shoulders. He was tall too; at least 6 feet but she couldn't get any more details with his back turned to her.

"This should be a quick job for you Nathanial. She is young and weak. Two swings with your knifes and she'll be done for, you know what to do after that. Understand?" the woman's voice carries across to Alexandra, stern and demanding. Alex watches as she hands the male figure a thin paper, the wind nearly pulling it out of he hands.

"Yes madam but who is she?" his voice is deep as he responds. He sounds young and mature. Alex watches as he backed away from the woman and farther into the moon light. His cloak is pulled close to his neck and his hood is up. Alexandra watches from twenty feet away as his cloak sways to the left and silver flashes.

"It is not your place to question me boy. I expect you back in the keep within two days. Any longer and I will send the twins after you; you know how excited they get when they get to hunt. This mission is time sensitive. Remember your training and don't screw around." She raises a hand to his cheek.

"Do not question me again. You have two days Nathanial. Find the redhead and kill her," She slapped the piece paper into his chest. "then get your ass back home" with two quick pats on his cheek she's gone. Disappearing into the darkness of the trees behind her without a sound. It dawned on Alexandra just then exactly what they had been talking about. They were talking about killing someone.

Fear spreads thorough her veins, attempting to freeze her limbs but it doesn't work. Quietly and as quickly as possible she backs away. Shakily she continues walking; now in a new direction and thinks about their words. She wasn't even sure she heard them correctly nut she was still terrified. They were the first people she had seen all day. "I have to be making this up" This thought didn't ease her fear. Every sound made her heart beat faster. As time passed the hair on the back of her neck rises, as if someone was watching her. Anxiety tightens her chest. She can barely breath.

"Someone's watching you." A voice whispers in the back of her head and the temperature drops; her breath coming out in buffs of warm mist.

Whatever's out there, she can feel it as if it was breathing down her neck. A twig snaps to her, she whirls but nothing's there. Someone laughs, a deep and throaty.

She runs. Hair flying, dress in her hands; she runs. She could barely breath with her bruised abdomen, but she pushes through it, pushes through the black spots in her vision. Foots steps ring out behind her; two people, three people, five? She can't tell. Narrowly missing a low hanging branch, she focuses on what's in front of her. Trees, she only sees trees.

"Damn it!" Alexandra curses, half out of her mind, hands on her head she comes to a stop. "There had been no one following me." She tells herself, ashamed of loosing control so easily. She has no idea where she is, which direction she should go. No internal compass telling her which way would lead her to safety. She is completely and utterly lost. Anxiety threatening to cripple her mental ability.

Alexandra's stomach twists, hunger and emotions fighting for dominance. She wished to collapse. To fall to her knees and scream. Scream until there is no air left in her lungs. Until her throat is raw. The feelings of hopelessness so strong she couldn't breathe, couldn't think past being lost. "In, out. In, out." She thought to herself, slowly the fog in her head began to clear. "Which way? Left? Right? Backwards?" Her throat is so dry it feels like sand paper and she finds herself glad she hadn't screamed "Just pick a damn direction Alex, come on, you aren't a five-year-old lost in Walmart." Alexandra sighs aloud. She shuffles forward, past tree after tree until finally she glimpses stone. A wall, as she comes to realize when she gets closer. Thirty-feet high and made entirely of stone. Not stone blocks but raw jutting stone. As if it had been pulled straight out of the ground by some kind of magnetic pull.

Exhaustion and hunger threaten to pull apart what is left of her stress capacity. Slowly Alexandra follows the wall, the stone smooth against her finger tips. She doesn't let's go of the wall until she comes to a large metal gate. This gate reaches higher then the wall itself, a thick metal chain connects its two sides. Where bars had been welded together long streaks of rust stained the metal from where proper seals hadn't held.

Alexandra steps out in front of the gate, expecting to see a guard or people milling about instead she's met with building's, facing toward the gate. Another line of buildings backs up against the wall on either side of the gate. Beyond the rows of building's, she could see a fountain and merchant carts, but she didn't hear anything.

The gate screeches as she pushes it forward. Alex yanks her hands back, expecting the noise to alert someone but no one stirs. No doors open; no lights come on. She pushes on the gate with both hands, the chain clinking through the bars and thumping loudly to the ground. She steps through the gate and into the town. The smell of sewage and rotting food much stronger on this side of the wall.

There was no escaping the smell and the farther she walked the stronger it got. She would have sworn the smell was clinging to her clothes; she could almost see it. From windows and roof tops hung clothes lines. Many of the street level buildings were occupied by small stores whose windows had metal bars worked into the glass so that they were stronger. Harder to break. Some of the stores had signs hanging above them with images suggesting what they were. When she turns down another street, Alexandra is happy to find people laughing and talking in front of a three-story building. Four or five of them total, all swaying happily to some beat only they could hear, others leaning silently against the wall. No one so much as blinked in her direction as she walks through the small crowd and through the door way. Inside she finds a simple room with many tables, a bar, and two stairs cases leading up into the second floor. All the tables were full, 5 or 6 people sitting at each. Many tables had card games, or an odd form of what looked like dominos being played. As she made her way to the bar some of the men's eyes found their way away from the games in front of them long enough to look at her. Even the few women in the room take a moment to look at her curiously before turning away.