Rules: Read the excerpt below. Then VOTE with your choice on how you think the story should continue.
The Enchantress of Tanglewood -- Part I
No one goes in the Tanglewood. But Tarynn dared, and she would come to
regret it.
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| (Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay) |
Mushroom hunters are an odd bunch. Part amateur mycologists, they can
rattle off scientific names and quote cryptic ecological literature. Part
forest rangers, they traverse difficult terrain as if born there. And part
secret agent, they engage in espionage to find the clandestine mushroom hunting
grounds of others while keeping their own secret.
It was this last quality that drove Tarynn to explore the forbidden
forest. The first Fall rains had come. Prime time for chanterelle hunting in
the drizzly woods of Oregon's Coastal Range. Cantharellus cibarius was
easy to spot – a perky orange-yellow poking up out of the mossy and drab brown
forest floor, its fluted stem rising several inches to a vaguely-oyster shaped
cap. And if she was lucky, she might even come across king boletes.
The decades were replete with stories of missing hunters and hikers who
wandered into the Tanglewood. Of bizarre and gruesome screams from its depths.
Of strange mists that seemed to transport those who entered its margins. And
children's tales of witches and devils wandering its dense foliage. But the
lure of those delicately delicious fungi, sautéed in a bit of butter or put
into a cream sauce, and her own personal patch to harvest, was more than enough
impetus to challenge the spirits of the wood.
There were no trails. And after several hours of climbing over downed
fir trees and wading through thickets of sword fern and wild rhododendron,
Tarynn found herself lost. Worse, the day was waning fast. She had the distinct
feeling of being watched with increasingly predatory eyes as the quiet woods
seemed to close in on her.
Tarynn stopped and drank the last of her water, the hair standing up on
the back of her neck. She turned at the crack of a branch. "Hello?"
she called out. Only silence answered. Long shadows grew in the waning light
filtering through the thick forest canopy and bramble.
Then the shadows moved. There was no breeze, yet the leaves fluttered.
The limbs bent. The woods came alive as if a tempest roared.
Terror gripped her. She ran, but within minutes was stopped by a
thicket so dense she would have to crawl and squeeze to get through.
Tarynn turned, her pulse beating in her neck, and faced a sight she
could hardly comprehend.
A fog formed around the thicket and coalesced around limb and leaf. The
corpus of an entity emerged, its long limbs reticulating from downed wood. Its
skin and breasts were composed of the bark of trunks. Its long hair was formed of
moss and lichen. Then it opened its eyes -- portals of darkness that swallowed
Tarynn's attention. With words that spoke with the whisper of wind through the
canopy, it said, "You have trespassed," and reached toward Tarynn.
How should Tarynn react?
- Fight for her life
- Appeal to the entity
- Make a run for it
- Cast a Wiccan spell
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