The Woods: Continued

The sun woke him. It was the first time in his life he could say that and he wasn’t enjoying the experience.

It was a small cabin. His parents got the bedroom. His sister got the couch. And he got a sleeping bag on the floor, where the morning sun shot molten hot beams of light directly into his face. Emily was snoring on the couch. Who knew such a little person could make so much noise?

He couldn’t sleep anyway. The floor was hard and between the sun and his sonorous sister, he just decided he was better off getting up. Pulling on a pair of jeans and grabbed yesterday’s t-shirt. It’s not like there was anyone to impress in the middle of nowhere and he didn’t feel like rooting around in the bags for something clean.

No one was awake yet and there didn’t seem much point to bothering anyone else. He quietly opened the door and stepped out into ‘nature’ as his mother insisted on calling it. All he saw was a bunch of dirt and trees in the glaringly bright morning sun.

What was there to do out here anyway?

He looked back at the cabin, wondering whether he should go back in and then decided against it. Certainly, the woods were preferable to his sister’s snoring. He decided on a walk, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and set off into the woods.

He found a path and followed it as it wound through the trees. His mother was sort of right, he grudgingly acknowledged. It was pretty peaceful. And the sunlight that had been so painful by the cabin now filtered softly through the trees, landing in emerald puddles at his feet. He listened to the twittering of birds he couldn’t identify. He even tried to chase a few rabbits, thinking maybe Emily might want one, but that only got him scratched up by the trees on either side of the path. After he tripped on a fallen log and fell into the dirt, he decided to stick to the path.

Groaning slightly, pitying his poor bruised knees, he rolled over and dusted off his jeans. He was about to get up, but at that moment, he could have sworn he heard laughter. A quiet snickering was coming from somewhere to his right, from just behind an old yew tree.

Rising slowly, he walked over to it as quietly as he could.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking maybe he was still sleeping, but when he opened them the vision was still there. The little man, no more than ten inches tall, continued to laugh at him, tugging on his long white beard the whole time. His blue eyes twinkled as he laughed.

Finally, he took off his peaked red cap, winked and swiftly disappeared. He didn’t run away or jump into the tree. He just disappeared.

From far away, Derek heard a voice.

“You should be more careful next time, lad.”

He knew now that he must have been seeing things. Gnomes and elves and fairies don’t exist, he told himself. It must be too much sunshine, he thought. Or maybe it was a hunger-induced hallucination, he considered, as his stomach rumbled. Either way, he walked just a little bit faster on his way back to the cabin.

******

His nose told him he’d reached the cabin before his eyes did. Derek couldn’t see it through the thick line of trees, but the smell of bacon wafting through the air was loud and clear.

Predictably, Emily was running in circles around the cabin, trying to say hello to every flower and tree in the vicinity, as his mom fried up some bacon and eggs in the tiny kitchen corner of the cabin. The door was wide open

“Hey, there, sleepyhead,” his mom called as he meandered out of the woods. “I didn’t know you in the habit of getting up so early.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he mumbled gruffly, plopping down at the picnic table.

He traced the wooden grooves with a fingertip as he waited for his mom to finish breakfast. She walked carefully, carrying three plates waitress-style, one in each hand with a third one in the crook of her elbow. Carefully, she set them down on the table and went back for silverware.

“Come sit down and have some breakfast, sweetie!” she called, emerging from the dimness of the cabin again.

Emily, who had been engrossed in a conversation with a clump of daisies, politely said goodbye and leaped over to the picnic table. They ate in silence, or almost silence, since Em was loudly humming out the theme song to her favorite show.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked.

“Your father’s still sleeping,” she told him. “And when he wakes up, he said he’s going to be focusing on his novel, so you two should leave him alone.”

Soon, the plates were empty and the bellies full.

“What are you going to do today, Em?” their mom asked brightly.

Emily focused seriously for a moment before answering.

“I’m going to explore the forest,” she said.

“That sounds lovely,” Mom said. “I think I’ll stick around here and get some reading done.”

Derek frowned. Something about that didn’t sound right, he thought, as his mom piled up the plates and began carrying them back into the kitchen.

“Derek,” she called, from the depths of the cabin. “Would you please look after your sister when she’s playing in the woods? I’m sure you guys will have tons of fun together.”

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled. “Not like I had anything better to do.”

She grabbed his hand, dragging him into the forest behind her.

“We’re gonna have fun today,” she chirped, practically skipping.

“Yeah,” he echoed grimly. “Tons.”

Once they’d entered the forest, there were so many flowers to greet and play with, so many new dark corners to discover, so many new trees to climb, that she soon let go of his hand.

“Don’t go too far,” he called to the small fleeting form. “Stay where I can see you.”

“Yup!”

She’d found a tree to climb and this statement was made from about five feet up.

Glad for a minute of stillness, he sat down at the base of the tree, waiting for his little monkey of a sister to come down.