Hi, friends! I wanted to give myself a little warm-up to the main story with a moment in the story’s history. Considering my recent enjoyment of Labyrinth of the Faun, I wanted to take an impromptu stab at the fairy tale structure. Enjoy!
Tonight’s Writing Music: Bruno Coulais, Coraline
Once upon a time, there was a girl who had two brothers: one elder, and one younger. They lived with their parents in a forest filled with wild things in a vast house built of secrets and fear. No window allowed a view into the house from the outside. The brick walls were so unpleasant no vine wanted to climb them. The house, named Crow’s Nest for reasons which will later be revealed to you, looked out upon the forest with its mirrors eyes as if it loathed its own surroundings, but had nowhere else to go.
It was the perfect place for to live if you were an explorer, which is just what the girl and her brothers deemed themselves to be.
Not that they could all explore at once. Being that rarest of sorts known as sensible children, they knew it best to take turns with each dangerous task involved with an explore. One was required to distract the parents, be it helping poorly with chores, hiding the day’s cooking rations, or—the riskiest option—asking incessant questions about the world beyond the trees.
Only the girl dared do this. Why must my hair be black? What are those things that fly above us without flapping? Angel talks too much, can we eat him? I want go riding into the forest like Papa does. What are those loud noises outside the trees? Where does Papa go when he rides on Sean? When can I read the big papers Papa brings home with the food?
Often the questions would drive the mother to tears in a hand towel, to screams with a spoon, or to both. The girl learned to run and hide in the Crow’s Nest, very well, and very fast.
After the Distractor came the Watcher. This child must study the witchy trees and starved fingers for any signs of the Devil’s eyes, for to be caught by the Devil’s servants is certain death. They do not appear often in the day, but the children have seen them from their bedroom window when the sun has not yet woken, and the world is violet and sparkling with frost: small and yellow as the marbles they kept in their playroom. But those eyes never turned away. Those eyes stared upon their house. Those eyes stalked the innocent, flying down to strike any helpless rabbit or mouse foolish enough to cross the bare yard. The children’s book called them “owls,” but to their parents, they were nothing but servants to the worst Evil.
And no child wanted to be caught by the worst Evil.
So the third wore a dark green blanket they fashioned into a cloak and carried a knife. This was the Insider, crawling among the trees to carve little arrows near the grass line. Every found hoof print of Sean’s marked another clue to the living labyrinth around them, another tree marked to help them uncover the mysteries of distant rumbles and high-flying creatures, of where food came from, and clothes, and books, and maybe, just maybe, other children.
Oh, to see other children! The girl and her brothers often talked late into the night of their dreams of new friends, what they might look like and the games they could play.
So when the Silver Man emerged from the forest one wintry morning, the children were very curious, indeed.
Word Count: 563. Woohoo!
While I know 50k won’t happen, my goal is to write 500+ words every day through the month of November–enough to have a solid start on my next novella. So, I’ll see you tomorrow! xxxxx
Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!
Jean Lee's World 