Chapter 7 - Enchanted Forest

Rivers of anxiety and fear crashed through me.

I knew I was unlucky, but getting stuck in an enchanted forest really beats anything my life threw at me before.

Why now, though?

I've walked the forest for a dozen years, and this has never happened before. No hunter in my village had gone into the forest hunting and never came back out.

Was I to be the first?

Thought of never returning and what would happen to me plagued my mind, making me panic and hyperventilate.

I had to get back. I needed to get back. It wasn't an option for me to get lost here forever.

Shadows seemed to move all around me as I shakily continued my journey. I kept looking all around me, frightened some creature of darkness would pop out and maul me.

I wouldn't even mind the bear. At least a bear was something I recognized and knew. In an enchanted forest, anything could be out there.

Enchanted forests were rare to come across, or at least you didn't hear about them often. It was either because most who went into an enchanted forest never came out or because they really were just that uncommon.

Considering I've pathed many paths into the forest next to my home, it was unlikely it was an enchanted forest. What might have happened was the forest temporarily transformed into a magical one?

Now thinking about it, no hunter, or even warrior, dared to enter the forest during the winter. Having a home right next to it, I would know. Not even the domesticated dogs and cats would wander in.

The forest, during the winter, was avoided.

There could be a reasonable explanation, like it's because it's a terrible time to hunt animals, but I could recall a conversation I overheard once.

"It's winter. Do you really want to risk going into that forest now?" Someone asks.

"Yes. I mistakenly forgot to smoke my meats this fall, so all my meats I was preserving have gone bad. I need to go get more food for my family." Another response.

"Just ask someone for food. It's not worth going into that forest. You'll die, I tell you."

"I don't want to be a bother to someone and take their hard earned food. I'll just go hunt some. I doubt I'll die. We go hunting in the forest all the time."

"When was the last time you saw someone hunt in the winter?"

There was a moment of silence as the other person was thinking.

"I can't recall. I'm sure people do it, though." The person answers, sounding unsure of himself.

The other sighs. "The last time someone went hunting in the forest during winter, they never came back. That was decades ago."

"Decades ago, you say? Well, why hasn't anyone else tried it since then?"

"It's a curse to hunt in the winter. Before that person, there were others. They would enter the forest and weeks later come out on the verge of death. It was only after that one went missing that we decided subconsciously to never hunt in the winter again. It's basically taboo for most of us."

There was another long stretch of silence.

"So I shouldn't risk going hunting for the survival of my family?" The hunter asked.

"No. I'll give you enough food to feed your family through winter. I have plenty of preserved meat to share." The other person responded.

That's when the convo ended. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but anything regarding the forest in the winter was ear catching. Something you could not, not listen to.

Thinking back to that conversation, it suddenly started to make more sense. If the forest became enchanted during the winter season, of course, people would get lost and probably die after entering, and that's why people would also avoid going into the forest.

I slapped my forehead and groaned in annoyance. Why didn't I remember the unspoken law of my town? Never to hunt in the winter.

It's as if my whole brain decided to jump ship with all these rash decisions I was making recently. 

Hunting in the forest. In winter? I was begging to get lost for a few weeks, if not forever.

Previous hunters who survived hunting in the winter forest left behind journals that were open for all to read at the library.

Being curious once, I took a peek at what one of those hunters had to say.

The journal, for the most part, was in good condition, but a few pages had scribbled words as if the writer were in a desperate hurry. Those were the pages describing their winter hunting trip.

Remembering back to what those pages said, it was pretty vague. Something along the lines of

"I got lost. What felt like hours turned out to be days, and by the time I returned back home, it had been a few weeks. My sense of time was nonexistent in that forest. I wasn't even able to bring anything back with me. All I managed to hunt, I ate to keep myself alive."

Very vague but descriptive enough now that I knew exactly what they were talking about. I, too, lost my sense of time and got lost. Physically and mentally.

Who knows how many days I've truly been out here. I felt like it's only been five days, but really, it could already have been seven days.

I couldn't quite recall much of when I was in my foggy state of mind a few days prior to today. What felt like hours could have been a few days of me walking, endlessly and tiredly, trying to find my way back home.

I would never know until I got back.

My steps become hurried, my energy ever flowing, keeping my feet going, as I desperately follow my compass guide.

Even as the sky darkened, telling me night was falling, I continued, with quickened steps, seeking frantically for my town to show beyond the treeline.

When it came to the point where I could no longer see what the compass in my hand read, I stopped. 

My breathing is rapid and heavy. Coming out staggered and uneven. The hot breath showing in the crisp cold air surrounding me. Adrenaline helped to make it so that I couldn't feel the intense burn in my lungs.

My heart is pounding loudly in my ears. Racing away inside my chest. Bringing my hand to my heart, I feel it thump hard inside me. Filled with fear, anxiety, and panic.

I looked around me, in the dark. Everything was a shadow. The snow glowed as snow does, with the minuscule amount of light, but it no longer felt comforting.

Now, it was dangerous. The snow, undisturbed by any prints, besides my own, or even fallen branches, said everything. It was whispering to me, telling me it was going to consume my soul.

Backing myself against a tree, I stood there, my knees trembling. If I was cold, I did not know.

I was trembling from fear, sweat building up underneath, soaking into my clothes. Even if I overheated, I was not going to take the fur coat off.

Instead, I slipped down the tree, sitting in the snow, clenching the coat tight around me. Not from the cold, but for the comfort the coat gave.

It felt like a security blanket. The only thing in this harsh forest is that it is capable of keeping me safe.

I continued to sit there, against the tree, my knees to my chest, shaking.

Sitting there and continuously looking out around me, I could see things moving in the shadows. Each time I did, my muscles would tense.

Thinking back to the deer, I wondered if it was being cautious and afraid of me in that grove or if it was being cautious and afraid of something else entirely.

Right now, sitting here, I think I knew what the deer was truly fearful of. It wasn't me. It was the forest.