The Lost Girl ✨Once Upon A Time✨

Chapter Six

   "I'm in." She sighed after the boy, allowing her eyes to linger on each mossy root and still bright leaf that settled beneath her toes. If she traced each step, following behind the boy's disappearing footprints, then she could let the rage spread like a rash over any calculating, rational thoughts that bounced around in her brain. They could fade into the anger and stale memories that stained her face.

   In truth, Wren didn't find the forest all that horrible. Deadly as it may have been, there was a quaint familiarness to it. The air smelled like autumn and magic and petrichor, only slightly tainted with danger. And though shadows danced and shrouded them in an artificial dusk, the greens and browns varied into a rainbow of scenery. The anticipation in her blood every time she passed a twist or turn or feet snapped a branch was starting to become a comfort. Here she could finally let feelings run unchecked, let the too-perfect forest where no cobwebs would catch in her hair, but poisons could surround her take over her thoughts. The chill crept through her sweater, sending a rush of an idea to her brain.

   "I still want my jacket back... and my knife!" 

   Wren had despised the blade for a time. It wasn't hers truthfully, it belonged to her father, her brother, someone her grandpa deemed worthy of holding it. Wren had tried everything to get rid of it, from hiding it away in a drawer long forgotten to offering it to an eager Mick, but she could never peel her thoughts away from it. If she was a heroine she'd be able to use it. If she was a villain it'd be part of her backstory. Instead, it just sat on her desk, resigning Wren yet again to the fact that she was not fictitious. 

   The knife became hers the second she brought story to life, the second magic became real. She had needed it for the journey ahead.

   She kicked at a rock in her path. "Are you even listening? I said I'm in. Where are we going?" She hugged her arms, silently loathing the chase, and shadow creatures, and Pan for her susceptibility to the elements. 

   "Prove it." Chilton's unmistakable accent called out, but not from the depths of the forest Wren had been following him into.  

   "Wha-"

   "Prove it."  

   Wren spun to face the boy, but it was too late. His arms shot up and looped around her shoulder. The sting of anxiety, of his cold fingertips against her sweater, was almost worse than the air being knocked out of her lungs. It was like dying to the ocean all over again. Wren's leg was struck out from beneath her and for a second she was falling once more. For a second she was convinced that it was another magic trick. The waves would bloom around her with red and she would go dark until some other horrible trial.

   When her back hit the ground and pain shot from her vertebrae to her skull, it wasn't afloat in a pool of death. 

   Wren gasped, trying to let air back into her body enough to scream or stand (either one would have gotten her point across). She couldn't bring herself to move, not to cringe at the cold mud and leaves sticking in her hair, or to peel her gaze away from Chilton's boots. Even trying to settle upon a thought hurt.

   "Not so tough when you can't disappear, eh?" The lost boy kicked at the girl's shoulder with a cruel humor. 

   The girl struggled and whined through a bloodied lip. An attempt to sit up only managed to shift her gaze to the boy's grin beneath the ironic hat. 

   "You are wearing shoes." Wren retorted. The response hadn't been the one she had hoped for amongst jumbled thoughts. Her face went red.

   "Aw, come on! I didn't clobber you that bad. You're not concussed."