[untitled] short story

I must have been six or seven at the time, and Brownie camp was one of the highlights of my summer. My cabin was right beside the Enchanted Forest, and it truly was enchanted. I could feel the fae welcoming me when I rang the bell on the tree with the face before stepping through the archway covered in plastic roses, but I could never see them like everyone else. I remember everyone else gathering around in a small cluster and being completely enraptured by these tiny beings flying around, while I would feign excitement. I don’t know what they all saw, but all I saw was specks of dust flying around in the sun. 

On Friday, our last day before we went back home, we had a party celebrating everything we had done and to say goodbye to everyone leaving to Guides next year. We listened to hit songs like Call Me Maybe, ate food that isn’t usually served at a camp, and had disco lights flashing all over the wall. Another thing was the games we played, such as tag, pin the ears on the mickey, and limbo. The limbo stick we used had been found near the edge of the Enchanted Forest and had no bark, but was well-carved by woodlice and termites. The stick was nicknamed the Brownie Stick, possibly because there were carvings of the Brownie Elf, which was my patrol, hidden within all the squiggles. Everyone was laughing while we partied until it was time for mug-up and bed, then we all slowly drifted off to sleep with the sounds of the ocean in the background and the feeling of adrenaline wearing off like chalk in the rain. 

It was almost noon when everyone had packed up and the leaders were making lunch. My Brownie group was playing in the yard, some people were looking over the bushes to the Enchanted Forest, some were looking at the nature house building, and a few were just talking on the deck. I was standing on the grass near the blackberry bushes holding the Brownie Stick in my right hand, looking at all the different carvings and trying to find shapes in the channels of wood. I looked up and down the stick, holding it at different angles and rotating it to try and find more shapes. I must have heard a bird, because I looked up from my intense staring contest with the stick and looked around in the trees and bushes, trying to find the source of what I might have heard. Instead, I saw a transparent white elf almost as tall as I was running by the large wall of blackberry bushes that bordered most of the Enchanted Forest. I was stunned for a second, this was a real actual elf! I shook myself out of my daze and tried to run to it, but I could barely move my legs.

“Wait!” I called out to it, trying to catch it’s attention. The elf halted in its tracks and looked back at me, then reached out it’s hand, grabbed the stick, and pulled me towards it. I stumbled towards it and the thorny bushes that I was falling towards, but was caught by the elf, who had turned into a pale blue-skinned person with an Edwardian era wrap cape and multiple pouches on a belt that seemed to be made of a blue and pink fish scale leather. Without saying a word, they picked me up on their back and signed to me to continue holding the stick, then started running again.

 Upon closer inspection, the elf’s skin and muscles were somewhat translucent, revealing their organs and bones working together to keep this being whose back I was clinging to alive. Then I screamed. We were running right towards the blackberry bushes at full force, without any signs of stopping. My scream was acknowledged only by a squeeze to my ankle, then we sped up. I flinched, expecting my life to be ended by running through so many spiny bushes, but the branches never came. I was never ripped to shreds, my last memories wouldn’t be of my body being left behind in chunks, I was alive. Though it seemed like that wouldn’t be true for long, because where I had been brought looked as though it had seen many deaths, none of them quick or painless.

The place I had been brought to was huge, big enough to easily fit two large houses side by side and still have plenty of space. Everything was black, the walls were black marble, the floors were black wood, and the silver-speckled ceiling was darker than any black I had ever seen before. Even the bookshelves that lined up in perfect rows were black, with black leather-bound books that probably had black paper, and black sconces every two meters that held black oil lamps with glowing white fire. There were also bright red floor-to-ceiling windows casting a warm red glow over everything, and glowing gold paper cranes flying around in flocks. I was carried through a sea of bookshelves and seating areas, then the elf and I reached the end of the bookshelves and I was put back on the ground. 

There was a stage almost fifteen feet tall with nothing on it, save for a giant glass case right in the middle. Inside that case was a giant blade, made of silver and carved so ornately it was difficult to fathom the idea of someone doing this by hand, but nothing else. Just the blade, not even a handle. It seemed to be a scythe blade suspended in midair inside this glass case, all alone within this giant library. Then I noticed someone spinning above it, another elf, hanging from a hoop suspended from the ceiling and just. Spinning. Nothing else. They were wearing a blue gown that flew outwards while this second elf spun around and around, never seeming to get dizzy. 

My wonder quickly ended when I was restrained and the Brownie Stick was snatched from my hands. Someone put a black silk blindfold over my eyes and sliced my neck, letting some blood drip down my neck before wiping it off with a piece of something that felt like paper. I had a robe put on over my clothing, then another two robes were put on me, and finally someone put a corseted bodice and skirt on top of the three robes and tightened the laces. I didn’t know what I was ready for, but I knew I was ready. I could feel myself being escorted up a ramp, then placed in a spot where I was forced into a kneeling position and my blindfold removed. I was about twenty feet above the stage on a platform just barely big enough to fit me, and I watched from above as the scythe blade was removed from its case and the Brownie Stick was escorted up the staircase at the front of the stage- but something was different. Instead of being the warm yellowish wood that I recognised, it was red. Dark red. With my blood. I felt sick, this isn’t the adventure I had hoped for when I saw this elf running by the Enchanted Forest not even four hours ago. The elf on the hoop was being lowered and while they passed by my platform, I saw that they looked like me, a young girl of about ten with black and white hair. But their face looked like it was made of porcelain and painted like a clown, with black triangles, circles, and teardrops.

The hoop was lowered all the way to the ground, and when it did, the person of about ten went through the ageing process that usually takes over eighty years in two seconds, leaving them as a pile of dust and a blue robe. That blue robe was all that was left of them. I was hit with the realisation that I was going to take their place. The rest of my life would be suspended from a hoop, then dying unceremoniously as just another person who spun from the ceiling. 

I still think about that first day I knew would be my last, sometimes it helps soothe the pain of the hoop in the back of my neck. I’m committed to my duty until another young kid stumbles across the stick that changes their fate and ends their life, while making them temporarily immortal.