The crowd had grown overwhelmingly silent. One never would
have guessed that the night before they had all been celebrating loudly and
drinking heavily. I suppose it’s to be expected, they are about see off ten
souls whom they will never remember again.
We call it
the Tithe, a gathering from all ten of the human villages outside the Elven
Forrest every ten years. Agreed upon many years past, it was meant to renew the
contract of unity between the Elves and the last of humanity. For two days
straight men, women and children from all the villages and the Elves would congregate
to feast, drink and laugh together almost non-stop. On the third-day, however,
an oppressive silence descended.
Long ago
the fleeing remnants of humanity had signed a contract with the Elves. Humanity
would be protected by Elvinkind and able to use resources from the Feyish
forests. As per the terms of the
contract, once every decade ten people would be led to the heart of the elven
forests. There they would become one with the forest and be forgotten by all
but the Elves. The children of the villages sometimes called it the Forgetful
Forest.
The Tithes
of each village came in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it was a brave soul who
gave himself freely to the forest so that no one else in his village had to be
taken. Sometimes it was a poor sod trying to redeem his family’s honor. Sometimes
it was a criminal who was sent into the forest in chains. And then there is me,
the unwanted bastard daughter of a traitor and a demon.
The great
elven horns began to bellow, signifying it was time. A dense fog wound around
the mighty trees changing the familiar forest into an alien landscape. At every
tithe this mysterious transformation took place. At least that is what I
overheard a couple of drunken old men claim. The fog felt unnatural, as if it
would consume us whole when we entered the forest. It would...
As soon as
the horns stopped blasting, the mist began to lift slightly outside the forest
entrance. Not a minute after, an elven man appeared among the trees. He was
wearing a simple looking robe, much like the ones we had been given to wear.
The main difference, however, was that his was covered almost completely in
branches and leaves. He seemed old for an elf; his hair was grey unlike the
snow white hair of the elves I had seen at the festival. His skin had too many
wrinkles for an elf as well. He had to be greater than a few hundred years old.
Some of the
other Tithes gave their final embraces to their loved ones. A few merely cried.
One began saluting his village like a fool. No one from my village would be
seeing me off; none had even stayed for the third day. I would shed no tears, I
would have no one to embrace. I was already forgotten.
The ancient
elven man began leading us through the forest entrance. As I looked back to where the crowd had been,
all I could see was the unnatural fog covering the entrance once more.
We walked
for at least an hour, though none of us were certain since the fog made it
impossible to see the sun. Only the elven man’s direction kept us from bumping
into the trees that seemed to loom out of nowhere. Finally, he stopped at a
clearing where the fog was far less dense. Turning to us, he said that we had
reached the end of our journey and that each Tithe should find a place to rest
and reflect upon our lives. He began to leave but stopped before he reached the
densest patch of fog. “You shall remember everything before you are forgotten.”
With these words he vanished into the fog.
The ten of
us begin to spread out in the clearing and find a place to sit. We are all
foreign to each other so there is no point in sitting together. I find a nice
enough looking space between two roots of a rather large tree. It is not the
most comfortable spot I’ve felt, but it beats the block of wood that they
called my bed at the cottage I lived in back in my village. Sitting down I
begin to think on the elf’s words. I reach up to feel the stump where my right
horn use to be.
My village clung to the very edge of forest.
We lived not far from the ruins of an old human town that had been destroyed by
the demons during the war hundreds of years ago. We were close enough that our
village would often send excursions to the ruins to bring whatever was found to
the village and then trade it with the other villages.
Like all the villages, we were
small, maybe a couple hundred people or so. I never really counted. I never saw
many people in the first place. The village leaders had always kept me isolated
in a small house at the edge of the town. They gave me my share of the
village’s rations sent by the elves, but villagers never stayed longer than necessary.
I was prohibited from entering the village during the day, but I could walk
freely at night provided I never awoke anyone. If anyone was awake at night he
or she would avoid me anyways. I was the village’s demon, in horns, sharp teeth
and eyes of red only.
One night a group of kids I had
never seen before didn’t avoid me on my nightly walk. Instead they threw rocks
at me. After one of the rocks hit me in the head and brought me to the ground,
two of the boys held me down. Another boy came forward, holding a hammer and
chisel. I never found out who they were or why they did it.
A year later during the time to
choose Tithe from the town, my name was pulled. It would not have surprised me
if my name was the only one in the box. No one in the village would be mourning
this year’s Tithe…
Looking up
from my thoughts, I notice that there are fewer Tithes now than there were
before. Where several Tithes had been, only robes lay draped on the forest
floor. It had already begun.
Nobody was
quite sure what happened when you enter into the heart of the forest, at least
not anyone I had asked at the gatherings the previous nights. Some said that
the trees transformed into monsters and devoured you as you fell into a deep
slumber. (Considering the lack of blood on the robes, I highly doubted this
one.) Some thought that the Elves cooked
the Tithes in a stew and ate them in some sort of pagan ritual. (I doubted this
one for the same reasons as the last.) Some said that you just died and that nothing
special actually happened.
The story
that I found the most interesting, though, was that you became a fey fox.
They’re one of the few animals the Elves never allowed us to hunt, and they
never explained why. Fey foxes are said to be handsome creatures with small
antlers that make flowers bloom wherever they tread. They are thought by some
to bring good luck if they reveal themselves to you. I doubted that part a lot
since a fey fox would come by my house back in the village almost every night.
I was standing outside the ruins of what was
at one time a small village. The wood of the houses had been burnt down by
demon fire hundreds of years prior. A beautiful woman in a rather patchy dress was
in the remains of what was at one time a small hut. A man I couldn’t quite make
out was standing in the hut with the woman, and they embraced. The woman then
turned towards me and waved for me to come over. As I got closer, I realized
that the man had horns.
I open my
eyes with a start, not realizing that I had fallen asleep. Looking around once
more, I realize that I am the only one left in the forest clearing. Once again,
I am alone. The Elf’s words ring through my mind once more. “You shall remember
everything before you are forgotten.” Not long after a flood gate of memories
followed suit.
My
mother was one of the village’s ruin scavengers. She was always away from the
village on excursions outside the forest, and even when she was in the village
she’d often keep to herself. One year, however, she had not gone outside the
village at all. It was the year I was born.
Naturally the people of the village
talked but when I was born, only my red eyes had given away the identity of my
mother’s lover and that would not have been enough for anyone to make
accusations.
My mother had more than just met a
demon, she had fallen in love with him. She would try to meet with him in the
ruins whenever she could get away from the other scavengers. This was my
father, a creature most of the people in the village would have sooner run from
and despised.
I
had only met him once. My mother had made an excuse to take me on an excursion
into the ruins with her when I was four. I remember being scared at first. The
ruins were rather haunting to see, especially at night when we did our
scavenging. I could never quite make out the man’s face in the darkness but his
horns were unmistakable, even in the dark.
It wasn’t until I was six when my
horns and fangs began to grow that the village began to become distraught. The
children who used to play with me would merely run away or make fun of me. Everyone
in the village would avoid me and my mother. They eyed us with more distrust
than if we had both been full-blooded demons.
One day the village chief visited
our hut out of the blue. My mother sent me outside to play by myself. I don’t
remember all of what was said but he and my mother argued for quite a while and
loudly. I remember hearing my name several times so it wasn’t hard to figure
out what the conversation was about. The village chief left in a far fouler
mood than when he had entered, and my mother called me back into the house. After
that argument my mother seemed deep in thought for the next couple of days.
A week later it was nearing time for
Tithes to be chosen from each of the villages. My mother came home later than
she normally did one night with the most sorrowful look I had ever seen on her
face. She embraced me with grandest hug she had ever given me and told to be
strong no matter what. Her words I did not know the true meaning of until the
Tithe time had come around. It was on that morning that I awoke and could not
find her. I later learned that day that she had volunteered to go as the
village’s Tithe. She had only left me a note repeating the words she had told
me on that night. “Stay strong no matter what, my child.”
Tears begin to fall down my
cheek as I remember these and other memories. Looking around once more I notice
a fey fox staring at me from the other end of the clearing. Perhaps it would
not be so bad to be a fox…
The fog thinned to nothing and the sun shone
down upon ten simple robes lying on the grass. A fierce wind swept through the
forest, and leaves began raining from the giant oaks and maples. The wind
twirled the leaves through the clearing and then gently died. No trace of
humanity remained. Not far away a fey fox was having her first litter of kits.
One of the kits was born with only one antler.
