Aka

She said they were monsters

These creatures… weren’t monsters.

Monsters don’t… they don’t live in villages with neat little lots and pens for animals.

Monsters don’t cower… and cry for their mommies as they face the scary witch with a knife.

Monsters don’t desperately throw themselves at impenetrable magical barriers. Drawing blood and bruising their bodies in their attempts to reach the crying children.

Right?

My hand shook, sweat making the knife I held slippery. The spell on the knife was already activated, and the runes glowed a sickly green.

The ‘houses’ looked like little huts skillfully hidden and made with shrub and brush. The children looked like hairless pigs with snouts and pointed ears but long bodies like aliens. And the parents were clothed in only loincloths.

She said…

But they’re not.

They weren’t monsters.

The first time I’d seen one of these creatures I’d been eleven.

Soon after Gran adopted me out of the foster care system, I wandered into her root cellar. I’d always been afraid of going there because of the horrible sounds that I sometimes heard when I was close.

That day, I was determined to face my fears.

“Don’t look at me like that, dear,” Gran had said when I gasped and stumbled back from the bodies. “They’re not children. They’re monsters. They eat, breed, murder, and die. Believe me, they don’t deserve your pity. They’d never give you any.”

She was wrong.

Or, more likely, she lied.

I never saw one of them again. Not until now.

From eleven until thirteen, Gran had tried over and over to get me to kill smaller things. Things I knew were animals.

Kittens, rats, mice, cockroaches… 

Eventually, she only brought me things that were already dying.

I could kill them. Eventually. If they were dying and in pain.

But I much preferred our trips to sit outside hospitals or butcher factories. Places where death would happen regardless and all I had to do was direct the energy of death into mana gathering artifacts.

But I could never… hunt for the sole purpose of harvesting.

In her way, Gran was only looking out for me. I knew that.

She wanted me to be powerful. To be able to take care of myself.

Especially as the curse that ate her life away steadily did its job.

I was young but not stupid.

I knew that’s why she’d built the spells that brought me to this place the way she did. So I’d be backed into a corner, and force me to do what she thought was the right way.

I looked at the knife in my hand. The mana stone in its pommel glowed brighter than the runes.

This wasn’t just a choice between being powerful or not.

It meant whether or not I’d ever get to go home. Finish school, hang out with the other girls, marry a hot guy, have a baby or two of my own.

It could mean whether or not I died here.

I…

I’m haunted by not knowing if I dropped the knife because I decided I’d rather die than kill something that wasn’t a monster… 

Or if I’d just been too traumatized by the impact of what I now know.

I ran from that place.

I ran and ran until I saw the white picket fence. House obligingly lifted the fence so I could just run through without looking for the gate.

Once I was safely out of the ominous, horrible forest behind me… safe from the creatures I’d nearly subjugated, killed, and enslaved…

I dropped to my knees and threw up.

Threw up and sobbed. Over and over.

I sat up, my heart racing with the dream that wasn’t a dream.

Choking on tears, I dropped my face into my hands.

It had been ten years since that day but it still distressed me. Usually I could ‘man up’ and hide my emotions.

But not when it sneaks up on me in my dreams, darn it!

And despite my fears, I had survived.

I had a modern house, magically dropped in the middle of a fairy tale forest.

Everything still worked in it because I had spent hours (and all my natural and death mana) preserving everything so nothing broke down.

Everything from my clothes to my gardening tools. 

I even preserved the tv.

Stupidly, it only had a handful of movies I could watch. Because we’d streamed most of them before Gran moved the whole thing here, where there is no streaming.

…I used to listen to them anyway when I worked in the kitchen. Just to hear the voices…

I even had electricity and running water.

Gran used her own death to power the spells that moved my house and amenities here. But with the move, she’d also closed the door to the other world. So anything ‘live’ I didn’t have access to.

…Or she deliberately chose which amenities I could keep and which ones I couldn’t. There was no way to know.

It was worse than not having internet.

For the first two years, I’d had absolutely no one to talk to. While the isolation pressed down on me, strangling me, made me desperate… I struggled every day to fill the fridge and freezer with food.

I’d been an overweight teenager when I started. By the end of two years, after the food ran out and I was living off of what I could find, I’d dropped to well below healthy weight.

So while I never had to worry about being too hot or cold, everything about my survival had been about finding food.

And crying myself to sleep while hugging my teddy bear.

Wishing it could hug back.

Maybe food would’ve been easier if Gran had kept seeds instead of buying already started plants every year for her garden? I don’t know.

What I do know is if I hadn’t been given a ‘nudge’ the third year, I’m pretty sure I would’ve finally died of starvation.

I remember that day.

When everything changed again.

It was after I found my net (made from old blankets and preserved so nothing could tear it) strewn across the rock bed next to the river.

Instead of coming home with fish, I had to untangle the net. Then find a way to set it so wild animals or trolls or whatever couldn’t pull it out again.

I’d broken down into tears and simply took the thing home. Dumping it on the kitchen floor for House to worry about while I cried myself to sleep in Gran’s armchair.

That was when the first basket appeared.

It was beautiful, the flexible kind made of fibers. And it was filled with some sort of nutty bread, cheese, and fruit.

I cried again.

The baskets didn’t come every day. But they came enough that I didn’t starve that winter.

After the second basket, I started putting them back where I found them and it became an exchange.

And just before spring, the basket was full of seeds.

Seeds in packets made of some sort of thin animal skin and crudely painted drawings of what they were supposed to be.

Corn, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets…

I went running for Gran’s gardening books.

The next basket came with two baby goats, male and female.

I didn’t know who was out there and who was kind enough to help me.

I didn’t care.

I was just so overwhelmingly grateful for the food. And for the evidence that I wasn’t the only person left in the world.

I yelled ‘thank you’s!’ at the dark forest and went to work doing everything I could to use these new resources.

It wasn’t until the next year that I found out who my saviors were.

I was in the garden that day.

Since I’d done a lot to learn how to garden the year before, and I was no longer starving every single day, I’d started experimenting.

Before coming here, I was taking music lessons.

I could play the guitar and Gran’s piano well enough that I could figure out any piece of music we had lying around… and we had a lot lying around because I’d gotten into a compulsive habit of snagging any music I could get my hands on.

Anyway, someone told me once that plants grew better when you sang to them.

So I was out there with my guitar. Awkwardly strumming through chords while I tried to follow some music and sing under my breath.

Then I glanced up, down, and double-take.

The pig-snouted creature was leaning on a tree outside the fence line. The only tree close to the picket fence. 

The way the fence was quivering, I knew House had already given him a warning. ‘Stay away or else! Grrr!’

In one super long fingered hand, was a basket.

He didn’t say a word. He just met my eyes, put the basket down, and walked away.

“Thank you!” I called. A little belatedly.

That was how I got to know the local goblin tribe. A tribe I thought would’ve moved. Since they were so close to the scary witch who might one day eat them and their kids. 

The first day Chief Croix showed himself he said nothing.

Now, year ten, half the tribe still hates and fears me but I get regular visitors and occasional invitations to come to the village. And goblin children are surprisingly enthusiastic gabbers.

The worst part, the lonely part, was over.

I’d not only survived but I was also happy.

Remembering all of that, I could finally wipe away my tears and throw my legs out of bed.

If I couldn’t sleep because of the stupid nightmares, I could at least get up. I had potions to make, music and storytelling practice to do, a garden to tend, and goats to feed.

Life couldn’t get much better.

“House,” I said as I pulled my hair up out of my face. “Could you get out two of the potion pots? The big ones? And lay out all the ingredients for a cure-all? I’m going DND today and making a health potion.” I made a face. “Think I can make it taste good this time?”

House moved the books on my shelf in a shrug.

“No,” I sighed. “You’re right. Better not risk it. Fourth Wife is still sporting red dots. I’m just lucky she thinks it’s pretty.”

The floor shuddered with House’s silent laugh and I left my room.