In Another Forest

Calla’s mother knocked gently on the door frame before calling into the darkened room. The only light came from the hallway behind her and a small lamp that shone on the small desk.

Calla was bent over a piece of paper while sitting on her chair. It was pink. She wasn’t the biggest fan of pink, but all the other girls seemed to be drowning in it.

“I just wanted you to know that I signed you up for this young artists club. They meet tonight. I’ll bring you over after supper.”

Calla turned to face her mother with wide eyes. “What if I don’t want to go?”

“Just try one or two meetings and if you don’t like it stop going to them. You have the time, especially now that schools are out until September, and I think you’ll like it. What are you working on?” Before she could reply her mother entered her room completely and took a peek at the open sketchbook in front of Calla before she could cover it with her arms. Her mother looked confused.

“Is that that one guy from that movie? The one about Olympic sprinting? What’s it called? The Wind at my Back?”

Calla nodded quietly. Her face was growing hot.

“That’s different.” She said. “Do you like him?”

She nodded again. All the girls liked that character. They all said he was hot. She couldn’t see it, but she went along with it.

She was only drawing him because the week before some girls from her class had grabbed her sketchbook away and flipped through it, laughing. They saw all of the fairies, wolves, and strange creatures she drew. “Omg, she’s so immature.” “Look at the little fairy child.” Their words all burned through her eardrums directly into her memory.

“Imagine that. My girl is interested in a boy. Soon enough you will be all grown up and going to college.” She thought for a moment. “I hope you don’t stop drawing those other characters and creatures and things. I liked seeing them.”

“I won’t.” She said quietly. This was a lie. She wanted nothing more than to go back to drawing her wolf, mannequin, air spirit, and others. She just also wanted to draw some more mature subjects like the man she was drawing then. She refused to be childish anymore.

She sighed and pulled herself away from the book, taking her pen and working on a bit of shading near his nose. It wasn’t quite working. She didn’t usually try drawing such realistic faces. She wouldn’t get it without a break. “I think I’m going to go for a walk before supper.”

Her mother looked back as she left the room. “Okay. Just don’t be too long.”

“I won’t.”

When she was alone she quickly changed from the grey shirt she had gotten covered in dark graphite and charcoal, into a deep red shirt, then she walked through the house. She waved to her mother who was in the kitchen. Then she walked through the house.

All she was going to do was walk down a short trail near her house and back. It started by walking down her street for about ten minutes until she saw the gap in the forest where she knew the trail to be. No one was around aside from her and her mother. Her father had been on a long trip to work. Many of the other families had gone out to camp or were having exciting day trips to the city. It felt like she was the only one left in the world.

It was better that way. She didn’t have a desire to bump into anyone. All she wanted was some quiet time to herself.

As she turned to start walking down the trail it was almost as though she had passed through into another world. Instead of dark asphalt and near little houses, she found herself surrounded by green. Green leaves appeared to spare and rays of sunlight pushed back. Short green ferns and bushes lined the trail. A smile passed across her lips.

The only sounds around her were the rustle of leaves as a cold breeze blew through the trees and the chattering of birds and one noisy squirrel. This was her quiet place.

As she kept walking she began to think about how to do better with the shading of her picture. Maybe she had to go at it from a different direction, but she didn’t know what other direction there was. This was so much different from her normal style of stylized characters. She had never been good at this other style. That was why she had never drawn much in it.

She stopped about halfway down the path, frowning to herself. The other kids in this young artists group were probably all good at realistic drawing. Maybe she would take the portrait she was working on to the meeting and ask for advice. She smiled softly as she imagined how it would go.

There was a small clearing where she stopped where wildflowers grew. Some people who lived nearby maintained it so that the grass didn't grow too long and one could appreciate the flowers. There was even a bench. All the flowers that grew locally could be found there pretty much. Irises, forget-me-nots, wild roses, trillium. It could be found there.

As Calla was imagining how the meeting would go, she looked down for long enough that she saw it. She wasn’t into botany, however, one flower she knew didn’t grow around her town was lilies. In the middle of the wildflowers, a single flower stood up straight and tall. It was a lily-shaped kind of like a cup with a wide rim meant for easy pouring.

It was bright orange, or was it red? She couldn’t quite tell. Her imaginings were lost as she walked up to the strange flower. It looks almost like it was made of fire. It was beautiful. She reached for the stem to snap it so she could take the flower with her and maybe draw it later. She could also look up what kind of flower this was. She was curious.

Only it didn’t happen how she thought it would. As soon as she felt the stem crack under her fingers she felt hot. This feeling grew worse until she was in pain. She shut her eyes tight as the summer sun had become too much.

Then she felt as though she were falling into nothingness. She didn’t know how much time had passed before she had felt a soft, unfamiliar coolness beneath her, and above her a warm breeze. It was as though she had been caught in a magic storm and whisked away to another world just like one of the stories that had inspired the characters she used to draw as a child. Those stories were impossible though. There were no other worlds aside from her own unless she wanted to believe in Heaven and Hell like her grandmother.

She could tell that something bad had happened, and if it wasn’t magic then the only thing she could think about was something related to her mind. The aunt from her class a few years ago had a stroke. Was that how a stroke felt? Like burning?

“Um, excuse me.” a soft voice asked. “Are you okay?”

She tried to open her eyes. She was still sore from what had just happened. She was scared. It felt like she was floating. She didn’t know how bad things were for her. She was scared that she wouldn’t be able to do anything.

But then her eyes fluttered open and she let out a scream. Standing over her was the largest wolf she had ever seen. He had inky black fur that appeared to release dark embers of shadow into the speckled light beneath the canopy of the trees. The embers faded away into nothing. The wolf had large red eyes and he opened his mouth revealing large sharp teeth.

At the sound of her scream, the wolf tilted his head. “Are you hurt?”