Work Text
There were monsters in the woods.Mothers told their children not to stray there, and to keep to well the path that led around the trees, lest harm befell them. Fair maidens with any sense of propriety stayed well away. Even farmers driving their cattle to market took the longer route around the market, though it left them weary at the end of the long day. But there were stories about those who were not so sensible. A small boy who wandered into the trees in search of berries came out screaming and sobbing of invisible hands which plucked wildly at his clothes, trying to tear them away from his body. Animals went missing – perhaps taken by wild beasts for certainly there were wolves in the woods, but then where were the bones?Most frightening of all were the tales of young maidens chased from the woods, their hands and knees grazed and bloody, most close to hysteria as they told of tree roots which seemed to move deliberately into their path to trip them and hands which tried to wrench at their feet to pull them deeper into the trees. Of course there were always those prepared to take a risk for devilments’ sake, and for a time local youths dared each other to spend a night at the edge of the woods, staying there alone from the time the sun set until the dawn. For a time, they came to no harm, until the night one unlucky boy awoke to find himself completely bald.Now no-one came to the woods.No-one except for a baker. Even a careful observer might have had to look a few times before they could be sure the bundle on his back was a baby – but then who would be foolhardy enough to bring a baby into these woods? He walked through the trees a fair distance, seeming to know his path well, before he stopped and addressed the empty air.“You have to stop, you know.”Unsurprisingly, the trees failed to answer.“Look, you won. We found the cow as white as milk, the hair as yellow as corn and—and, whatever else it was. You know I could never remember. The point is, we found them. You already had the baby. He’s here. He’s fine. You just have to stop.”He paused as though waiting for a reply. Not even birds broke the silence. “I mean, what do you expect? I can’t exactly bring him out to live out here, can I? You have to be reasonable. There are wolves and—I’m trying to be a good father! It wouldn’t be reasonable.”Still there was no reply, but it felt to the baker as though the temperature in the woods had dropped. The child on his back started to give the hiccupping cough that most parents recognise as the warning sign before a full-throated yell. Anxiously, he jiggled from foot to foot, trying to hold back the inevitable.“People are starting to talk. They’re trying to get up a hunting party to go after the wolves now – they’d have already done it except the Prince says he never wants to go near these woods again. Cows are really valuable. And that poor little kid – you can’t just go tearing cloaks off people’s backs!”He shivered. There was no question now that it had started to grow chilly, and as he squinted up at the sun it seemed to be closer to nightfall than he could account for. As the baby started to wail, he seemed to finally give up hope of a response.“I’m going now,” he told the air. “Everyone’s fine by the way – well, everyone except you I suppose. We’re just—we’re working out howwe’re going on. It’s not quite right yet, and I think maybe we need to share out the housework more equally, but I think it’s going to work out. I just thought you might want to know.”By this time he expected no reply, and gave a resigned sigh as he started back along the path out of the woods. After a short period he stopped, looked puzzled, and chose another path. As the baby he carried stopped crying and began to crow he had plenty of time to reflect that perhaps he might have listened to the stories.There is a small house in the village. It seems like a happy family. The young mother does probably far too much of the housework, the boy milks the cow, the girl hunts for food. But not in the woods. Never in the woods.There are monsters in the woods.