Rosie & The Forest King (3 of 9)
Through The Woods
IN THE MORNING Rosie woke to find a hare on her sleeping bag. He moved when she moved, hopping up and hiding behind a small snowdrift where he all but disappeared.
“Good morning, Mr. Hare,” she said happily.
“No. No. That’s my species,” he said, perturbed. “My name is Dan Smith.”
She blinked at him.
“What?” He asked. “It's a perfectly good name.”
“Yes, but I thought it would simpler. Something like Flopsy.”
“Hares are not simple,” he scolded her. “And ‘Flopsy’ is not a name. It's an adjective. I think you are confusing me with a rabbit again.”
“Sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes.
“Technically,” he added, “it’s Daniel Smith. But everyone calls me Dan.”
“Everyone—including your hare friends who don’t tend to speak?” she asked, amused.
“Precisely.”
“Well, good morning, Dan,” she said, and he seemed pleased as punch.
“What is your name?” Dan asked. “And I assume the species is human?”
“Roselyn,” she said. “But most people call me Rosie. My mother called me Red.”
“Why did she call you that?”
“I have no idea,” Rosie said. “I guess because roses are red and my name is based on a rose?”
“Perhaps,” Dan said thoughtfully. “But roses can be pink, yellow, or white. You could’ve been ‘Miss Yellow’ had a different color come to her mind when giving you this nickname. Speaking of which—do you think a nickname is a nickname for a Nicholas name?”
“I have no idea,” Rosie said.
“These are the questions I ponder,” Dan replied, as if burdened with great wisdom. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a copy of The Merchant of Venice on you, by chance?”
“Afraid not,” Rosie said. “I’m sorry to say I have no copies of any Shakespeare on me.”
“That’s a shame,” Dan sighed.
“Well, Mr. Smith, it’s time to break camp.”
“Ahem,” he said. “I’m not trying to be pretentious, but it’s Doctor Smith.”
“Oh!” Rosie said. “Forgive me, Doctor Smith. What’s your doctorate in?”
“Shakespeare,” he said, bounding off to find some grass to eat.
“Of course it is,” Rosie said, shaking her head. “Well, first things first.”
She sang Ring Around the Rosie again, but this time in a minor key. The magic reversed itself, and the fire quietly dissipated.
She closed the endless music box, tucked it away, and checked on her food. It still smelled freshly baked—and it was still warm. She hummed Over the River between mouthfuls of bread and peanut butter, washing each bite down with a generous helping of water from her canteen.
When she was done drinking, she gave the canteen a shake. Running low.
She sang:
Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water…
—but she stopped singing before anyone fell down.
Rosie waited. The air shimmered faintly, then stilled. She shook the canteen again, satisfied with the result.
She looked around and finally spotted the hare chewing grass between little piles of snow.
“Will you be accompanying me today, Dan?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Sorry, Rosie—I have many things to do. Grasses to find, grasses to eat, grasses to feel beneath my feet.”
And without another word, he hopped off to do… whatever it is that hares do.
Rosie shrugged and gathered her things. She untied Autumn, hitched him back to the sleigh, and soon they were underway—crossing the last stretch of field before it gave way to a gnarly forest that smelled faintly of moss and mildew, as though the canopy above never let the place fully dry.
By ten in the morning, she was deep in the forest and came upon a fork in the road with a signpost at its center. The left-pointing sign read: This Way.
The right-pointing one: That Way.
Hmmm, Rosie thought. If I go that way, it leads away from where I should go. So this way must be the path I need.
She turned left at the fork and went merrily on her way, stopping for lunch around noon—a slice of sausage and a piece of bread with grape jelly. Once she was full and Autumn had rooted up some grass from beneath the snow, they set off again… only to arrive at another fork in the road.
It looked exactly the same.
“This way again, I guess,” she said, but paused, uneasy.
There were sleigh tracks heading left—but none heading right.
Had she somehow returned to the same spot? That couldn’t be. She’d traveled for hours. Had she misunderstood the signs?
“Maybe that way leads to Grandmother’s house, and this way takes me back.”
To test the theory, she smeared a dab of grape jelly on the right-hand sign—That Way—then turned right into the untouched snow, confident she had solved the riddle.
But two hours later… she was back.
The same fork.
The same signs.
And a spot of purple jelly on the sign that read That Way.
“I’m going in circles!”
Frustrated, Rosie stepped down and examined the trail. Sleigh tracks went left. Sleigh tracks went right.
“I can’t go left. I can’t go right. And I can’t go backward. So what’s left?”
She stared for a moment… then smiled.
“Forward.”
Rosie stepped around the sign and into the trees. Only a few feet in, she found a third path—narrow, overgrown, and utterly unmarked.
“Not this way or that way. Just the right way.”
She checked her basket. Supplies were still plentiful, but she’d lost nearly the whole day. Still—there was no sense sulking when there was cake magic.
Clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap—she clapped a steady rhythm, and her hands began to glow.
Then she sang:
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker man, Bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it and prick it and mark it with B, Put it in the oven for a girl named Rosie.
A cake shimmered into her hands. She cut a slice, ate it happily, and tucked the rest into her dwindling basket of goodies.
From deep in the woods, yellow eyes watched her, a wide grin forming, teeth glinting in the dim light.
Once Rosie decided to simply go forward, she made good progress through the forest. The scenery began to change—subtle shifts in color, bark, and air—and she chided herself for not noticing the repetition earlier in the day.
That evening, she made camp once more. She unhitched Autumn, performed her small ritual to conjure a safe fire, and used her music box to keep Over the River playing softly in the background. The melody wrapped the campsite in warmth.
She watched in quiet fascination as Dan Smith—the hare—hopped up onto the foot of her sleeping bag, circled once, and settled in to sleep.
Rosie smiled, tucked herself in, and drifted off into a dreamy slumber filled with apple pie and vanilla ice cream.
Rosie awoke to the sound of Autumn screaming.
She bolted upright from her sleeping bag.
In the firelight, she saw Autumn rearing, kicking at something—something large and dark. Then her dapple-grey mare turned and fled, galloping back along the trail they had come.
The black shape lunged after her, blurring past Rosie in a streak of muscle and shadow. As it passed, it turned its head.
Yellow eyes gleamed.
Fangs flashed.
Its red tongue lolled as it ran.
A wolf.
Rosie’s breath caught, but she forced herself to sing:
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row…
Immediately, thorns erupted from the ground. Brambles tangled, twisting into a wall that sprang up between her and the wolf. She kept singing, over and over, weaving the barrier into a cage.
The wolf yelped once—then again—as the thorns tore at its fur. But it was too fast, too nimble. It leapt free, breaking through a gap in the thicket, and tore off down the trail after Autumn.
“Autumn!" she cried. “No—NO!”
She fell to her knees, sobbing. There was nothing she could do. No rhyme she knew, no magic strong enough to chase down a wolf—not even One, Two, Buckle My Shoe could make her run that fast.
Her only hope was that Autumn could outrun it.
Or kick it.
Or lose it in the trees.
A single wolf, even one that size, shouldn’t be able to take down a strong, dapple-grey mare… but she wasn’t sure.
So she waited.
She sat by the fire, wrapped in her cloak, her music box still playing incessantly.
She didn’t sleep.
And when morning came—
There was no sign of Autumn.
She snapped the music box closed in the morning, gathered her things, including the hooded red cloak, hefted her backpack, and headed deeper into the woods, leaving the sleigh behind.
"I wonder what happened to Dan," she said as she trudged in the snow. Then, quieter, she said, "I wonder if the wolf got him."
She shuddered at the thought. Dan seemed like such a nice and kind and sophisticated hare, even if he was particular in his ways.
She walked, feeling without purpose, heading down the trail, and for the first time she neither sang nor hummed Over the River.
Two hours she walked in silence and then she spoke to herself.
"Why am I going to Grandmother's anyway?" she asked. "I've never met her. I've only seen her picture. I don't even know if she'll be nice to me."
She continued walking.
"I miss Mom and Dad," she said. "I wish we were having Thanksgiving together."
She heard a sound and turned to look back at the trail, hoping for Autumn to appear. But there was nothing.
"I hope she cooks a great big turkey and there is stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce, but not that jelly kind that's shaped like a can."
Her stomach growled.
She stopped, opened her basket, and had another piece of sausage, but it was a small piece, just in case. A bite of her last cinnamon roll followed, along with a drink of water.
But there was no singing, no humming. She simply did not feel like it.
Paralleling her in the woods was a dark shape with yellow eyes, but this time there was no grin. It was more like a snarl.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.