The Legend of Noctewood

Through the thickets and brambles of a dark and mysterious wood, seeps the whispers of a legend.

It rides on the wind, drips like blood, lingers like a sickness.

It’s murmured beneath worn, tattered cloaks. Exchanged in furtive tone over small and crackling fires. Slipped through the spaces between barely opened doors like early morning mist. Always hushed and hurried, low and tense. And never too loud after nightfall.

Those who were born on the very ground that nourishes and protects the trees know to never get close enough to smell the heady scent of the honeysuckle that grows along the edge of them, every centimeter of the wood outlined by this strange and otherworldly flower. Not a gentle yellow but a lurid violet. And in the belly of every bud, an inky black. Inviting in the way that pricks at a human’s curiosity - not unlike the thorns sprouting from the thick, vibrant green stems of the flower would - until it becomes a crescendo.

Those who travel into the quiet town beside the wood never stay longer than a night. Some leave before the sun has set.

For in this quiet town beside the wood where legend acts as chains, lies a secret burrowed deep. Deeper than the roots of the tallest, eldest trees.

Deeper, even, than the generations of malice and terror held captive and immortal in almost every heart of its townspeople.

Yes, Malvella was a place best ignored. Forgotten.

And while its people have aged, faded, and died - gone back to the dirt they so feared - the legend it birthed never will.

It begins with a girl too curious for her own good.

And the first brave enough to look the wood in the eye and invite it over for tea.

———————————————————————

Reyla had grown up with folktales her whole life. A soft murmur always slithering along the fissures of her brain like a haunting.

Don’t go near the wood, the monster will snatch you and make you dinner.

Don’t pluck the honeysuckle, it’s bewitched to entrance you and send you to your death.

Don’t look into the tops of the trees, something will follow you home.

And while she knew monsters were real in the neighboring forests that touched Noctewood, had been warned against them frequently, she had always been more wary of the ones who watched her from behind filmy pane glass windows. Dull, unblinking eyes that followed her everywhere she went.

When her mother died many years ago, it had felt as though the veil of protection Reyla had been shrouded in her whole life had dissolved. Sunk deep into the earth her mother had been buried in.

Her mother had always told her to never believe the whispers of the town. The nursery rhymes and bedtime stories meant to scare the children. To keep them obedient and well within the rotting heart of Malvella. It was harder to smell disease when one had been sleeping beside it for so long.

She’d wondered aloud incessantly as a little girl as to why they didn’t just leave. Why her mother always did so much for a town, stayed for a town, that did nothing for her in return.

Her mother had always told her the same thing. Every time. That it was their job to protect the trees. The surrounding earth. Gaia. That it wasn’t Her fault the people mistrusted Her wood. That it was their calling, their divine purpose to help the people. To help heal them.

Help them and you help Gaia, little one. Her mother had always tapped her nose whenever she’d called her that. You help yourself.

Reyla, as a little girl, had often been awoken by her mother in the middle of the night, when the moon was at its brightest and fullest. Giggles and soft reminders to cling to the shadows trailing behind them as they snuck to the edge of Noctewood to place their offerings. To give their thanks for its protection. For Gaia.

They would burn herbs and leave them overnight. As well as healing tonics, brewed teas, and small animal bones found and kept after their passing.

And every morning, when the sun had only just started to peek through the dense and rustling mass of dark emeralds and jades that was the wood, she’d hug the dying shadows like her mother had taught her and venture back down to where tall, rustling grass met the messy tangle of honeysuckle. To one of the larger slabs of nearly submerged, moss-covered rock on which her and her mother always left their offerings.

She’d find it empty every time. Only a single moonflower left in their place. The color of a clear night sky. Whenever she’d pick it up and spin it slowly, the stars had seemed to move. Like a slow, lazy river. Like a little piece of the night sky had been plucked and trapped inside the flower.

She’d kept them in a wooden boxed she’d carved and made herself. They never wilted or died. She’d take them out and run her thumb along the petals of them nearly every night before bed, wondering if perhaps the monster in the wood wasn’t one at all.

It had never filled her with worry or fear. The moonflowers left overnight, the legend of Malvella. She had known fairies lived within their realm, had known they weren’t the only woodland creatures known to leave gifts for those who still practiced the ways of old. The ways of Gaia.

No, she had never felt that frosted shiver down her back at receiving her gifts or standing at the edge of the wood. Had never felt that hollowed out dread and horror like she had the night her mother died.

The night the monster killed her.

Or so she had thought. So she had been told.

Reyla had been sleeping. Dreaming of a time long passed. Where monsters never existed, witches were revered and welcomed, and dragons roamed the wood free and unbothered.

She’d awoken in the middle of the night to an incessant knocking at her door, feeling groggy and dehydrated, vision blurred and disoriented when she’d opened her eyes.

The Elder of Malvella, the town’s chosen leader, had been the one to tell her. To bring her to her mother’s mangled corpse beneath the pale light of the moon. Reyla’s knees had buckled beneath her at the sight, a strangled, broken sob ripping from her throat.

The monster of the wood it was, child. The terrible, terrible beast.

And for a second, a brief, lightning strike of a moment, she had seen a madman’s glee in the hazy, dull grey of his eyes.

She had stopped visiting the neighboring town’s apothecary for herbs to help when the townspeople became sick after that.

Her mother had been unconditionally kind. Giving even when she had nothing left to offer. The one everyone went to when they fell ill. She turned no one away.

Reyla, after her mother’s death, no longer cared whether they lived or died. Had never really cared.

Not a single one of them had attended her mother’s burial. No one had given Reyla their condolences. Not even so much as a sympathetic glance.

At the age of seventeen, Reyla had planted her first ill-natured belief: that the people of Malvella could go to the deepest, darkest, most unrelenting pits of the world below.

They could all burn.

She had even planned to leave the town for good the night after the burial when her mother’s gentle voice had drifted in like a soothing, lapping wave along the shore of her mind.

They’d leech the earth dry, little one.

The earth her mother had loved so dearly. The earth Reyla, since early childhood, had loved so dearly in turn. It had always been the townspeople and their fear, their poisonous mistrust of the trees around them, that had been ugly. Not Gaia and her abundant growth. Not Noctewood.

She couldn’t leave.

For her mother and for Gaia, she would stay.

And even if the people of Malvella didn’t deserve her protection, she would find the monster of Noctewood.

And she would kill it.

———————————————————————

She’s found it.

A faceless, towering, tree-like creature with branches for arms that end in sharpened points like blades where hands and fingers should be. They drag behind it as it lumbers aimlessly along the moss and vines in the dark depth of Noctewood.

She feels a consuming, greedy vengeance take over her senses. After two years of not being able to find the monster that had killed her mother, she finally has.

Her dagger is flying through the air and landing in the center of its bark chest before she’s even cognizant of her body in motion. Aiming for where she assumes, if it has one, its heart rests.

It drops with a muted thud and does not move again.

She’s killed the monster that took her mother from her.

And instead of feeling relief or gratification, Reyla frowns. A disillusionment, a worry, swallowing her up like a first meal.

This was too easy, her mind whispers warily.

As she makes her way to it, bends over it and removes the dagger, the monster begins to shrink in size. Gentle, human-like features appear where it was once bare. Reyla jumps back, eyes going wide. But curiosity keeps her from running.

Keeps her moving closer once more as the monster of before turns into a Treeling. A docile woodland creature. A distant cousin of the fairies.

Reyla feels the first fracture in the foundation of her reality form.

Feels guilt rush in like a storm cloud as she reaches into the satchel slung over her shoulder and fishes out the tin where she keeps her sprigs of fresh rosemary. Takes one out with a trembling hand and places it over the woodland creature’s heart. Like her mother had taught her when they’d collected bones from departed animals.

Reyla is about to whisper a blessing, an apology, over the creature’s body when she hears a rustle to her left, followed by the breaking of a branch.

She’s upright in an instance, heartbeat quickening, dagger raised and ready, as her eyes scan the area.

The trees are eerily silent as Reyla’s breath puffs out about her in white translucence.

“Rosemary for remembrance,” a disembodied voice echoes about the wood. Deep and feminine. A touch of curiosity stained into the syllables. Reyla doesn’t move, keeps her body still, coiled in anticipation. Only her gaze flickers left and right. Low and high.

She sees no one. Nothing. She remembers her mother telling her of creatures that could walk among them unseen.

“A habit learned by your mother?”

Reyla’s entire body twitches in surprise, her fingers going slack around her dagger unbidden.

And before her brain can catch up to her heart, her mouth is moving.

“You…” it comes out on a strained exhale. Barely above a whisper. “Did you know my mother?”

Her eyes are now frantically searching the forest in front of her.

She waits for a response, breath held tightly so as to make sure she catches even the lightest noise.

Neither comes.

———————————————————————

She’s using one of her favored hunting methods: a glamor potion and doll made of hay. From the witch who lives in a tucked away hut at the edge of the neighboring town. Reyla visits her every month, always bringing her fresh lavender and herbs from her garden as gifts. As gratitude for always supplying her what she needs to help kill the monsters she hunted.

The potion she uses to catch this particular one turns the doll into a ‘real’ child. A lost, abandoned child. This monster’s favorite meal.

Ever since her first kill years ago, since she realized there wasn’t just one monster in the wood and the attacks on the town became more frequent, she’s taken to naming them. The one she’s hunting today is an Occisor.

Occisors are even taller than Nocetwalkers - the name she’d given for the turned Treeling of her first kill - and far wider in girth. They look not unlike an ogre. But where ogres have only one eye, an Occisor has three. And where an ogre’s skin is as brown and leathery as her satchel, Occisor’s skin is papery and thin. Flaking off and exposing rotted flesh with every step they take. They never live too long but they are the most violent. The most active. The most grisly of murders are nearly always the result of an Occisor attack.

She’s hidden herself well within a redberry bush nestled against a wide oak tree within Noctewood.

She’s been waiting no more than an hour, the child crying in the middle of the clearing she’s found like its spell asked of it. A cry of despair. A cry of the vulnerable.

After another half hour or so, something emerges from the shadows.

Reyla readies herself, dagger in hand. She’s dipped it in poison today. It was the only way to kill Occisors. A poison-dipped dagger right in its middle eye.

But when the monster steps into the dimly sunlit clearing, it isn’t a monster at all.

Reyla’s mouth drops open.

A dormant memory awakens in her mind, a dream that had felt far too real. A dream of monsters, magic, and…

Dragons.

She’s in such a state of shock she doesn’t realize she’s crawled out of her hiding place.

The dragon before her is smaller than her mind had pictured. She’d always imagined them dwarfing trees, heads grazing against clouds.

This one is the size of her small house, its scales the color of a spring violet. Two enormous charcoal wings are tucked at the center of it, so big even folded that they drape over the visible side of the dragon’s body. Its maw is long and slender, with large, iris-less eyes the color of midnight. There’s a set of twin bleached bone horns jutting out in perfect unison from the top of its head, and a curving row of matching spikes trailing down its back and ending at the tip of its curled tail.

Its curled tail that wraps around the wailing glamor child and lifts it. Reyla watches, body struck motionless, as its midnight eyes flash murky white. Watches as the child turns back to hay, tendrils of it drifting to the forest floor.

“I do hope you didn’t spend too much on that. Though, with the way your cheeks are always so rosy after a visit with your darling witch, perhaps you didn’t use coin as payment at all.”

It’s the voice from months ago. The one who spoke of her mother.

Reyla can’t speak. Can’t even process that this dragon has apparently been watching her. That it’s making fun of her.

A dragon.

“You’re a dragon.”

Because she’s in shock and in all her twenty-six years of life she has never once found herself face to face with one. They were older than legend. Meant to be extinct. For centuries.

Reyla thinks she sees amusement glitter in the inky black of its eyes.

“Such keen eyes you have, dear rosemary girl. I see why you’re the one your town has chosen as their protector.”

Reyla shakes herself from her stupor, indignation coloring her pale cheeks.

“My name is not ‘rosemary girl’ and they didn’t choose me.” She scowls.

And then her brain returns to her, a hundred questions clamoring up her throat. Her mouth chooses one for her.

“How have I never seen you before?”

“How indeed,” the dragon hums, its massive head tilting as it peers down at Reyla. “Where do you keep the flowers I’ve left for you, Reyla?”

Shadow sweeps in like a sudden cloud and envelops the dragon, obscuring it from view. A powerful gust of wind follows, knocking Reyla off her feet. Coughing, she scrambles to get back up.

And when the cloud clears, light filtering in once more, the dragon is gone.

In the center of the widest ray of sunlight sneaking in through the top of the wood lay a single onyx moonflower. Familiar to her as the palm of her hand. Constellations shimmer like silver liquid along its petals.

Reyla feels the second crack in the foundation of her reality form. Branching out like a thousand hairline fractures.

———————————————————————

It’s weeks later, far into nightfall, when she follows that familiar, ever-present tug toward Noctewood again, mind on the dragon she’d stumbled upon.

She finds herself at the edge of the dark wood and brushes her knuckles down a tangle of honeysuckle, a thorn nicking and drawing blood along her index finger. It wells up into a clean little drop. Reyla, as if in a trance, watches it trickle and trail slowly down the back of her hand, curving over the bone of her wrist.

Something slithers inside her mind, heated and sliding like silk. Like the gossamer caress of a lover. A sensuality to it that echoes inside her like a tremble.

Lick it clean.

So she bends to do just that.

And that’s when someone slams into her. When the someone - a man - puts his hand roughly over her mouth so she can’t scream. He’s pawing at the front of her shirt when she feels a frigid burst of wind. She gulps in a frantic inhale as he’s flown off of her, her mouth suddenly free, and tasting of honeysuckle. Sharp and cloying. Bursting on her tongue like a not yet ripe fruit.

She hurries to get back on her feet, her mind spinning, movements jerky and uncoordinated, and watches a woman she’s never seen before slip from the darkness of Noctewood. Her eyes are the same vivid purple as the honeysuckle that had magically parted for her, and Reyla knows this only because they seem to be glowing. Midnight hair spills down the woman’s back like the very shadows she came from, catching on the moonlight.

She can’t move, is frozen in shock, as she watches the woman slink closer to the man. Reyla, eyes focusing, can now see that it’s the stablehand of Malvella. A shiver shoots down her neck. His eyes have always followed her more closely than the rest.

Her gaze darts back to the woman, sees her chin jerk down and to the left - one quick, hard motion, and hears an accompanying wet snap of bone. A gurgle. A thud.

Reyla wretches. Her body folding, middle caving in on itself without her permission.

Her hands are on her knees and she’s coughing, stomach bile dripping from her bottom lip, eyes stinging, before she realizes there’s a hand at her back, rubbing soothing circles into the cotton of her shirt.

She swipes at her mouth and lurches away from it. From her. From the soft, warm touch. Her body had wanted to press into it. Had wanted to be very suddenly consumed by it. It unmoors Reyla so viscerally that she stumbles backward.

“Did you - sweet Gaia, did you just kill him?”

“Yes,” the woman replies. Simply. Without remorse or hesitation. Something like recognition tickles at the back of her addled brain but Reyla feels a dry heave crawl up her throat and can think of nothing but the sound of the stablehand’s neck snapping.

She jerks her head back and forth, unable to process this. Unable to understand what was happening. She hears herself speaking. Doesn’t recognize her own voice. “I had it handled! I could have - you didn’t have to mur - ! ”

The woman cuts her off, words as ice cold as the burst of wind she’d felt moments ago. The taste of honeysuckle still lingers like a syrup at the back of her throat. “He wouldn’t have stopped.”

“How do you - ”

“He’s been planning to violate you, harm you, for years. Since you were little.”

Reyla feels the ground start to tilt, feels as though she might slide off the edge of reality and into nothingness.

She might prefer that.

“How,” she starts in a tremulous voice, “would you know that?”

“Because I read his mind.”

“Because you read his mind,” Reyla repeats, blinking rapidly.

“I think you should sit down, Reyla.”

The woman moves closer, arm outstretched, and Reyla jerks backward, eyes wild.

“I never told you my name.”

The woman speaks to her like she’s a caged animal. Or a slow child. “You asked me how you’ve never seen me before. Have you not listened to my voice?”

It hits Reyla like a sack of stone.

“You - you’re part human, too?”

And then darkness swallows her.

———————————————————————

When it spits her back out again, she’s in her bed, damp with sweat, and still in the clothes she was wearing the day before. Her dream sticks to her brain like tree sap as she presses the heels of her palms into her eyes.

Her dreams had been filled with the woman…the dragon…the shapeshifter? Reyla didn’t know what to call her. Only knows, remembers, that she had been beautiful.

That she’d dreaming of her mouth, her teeth, her hands; all of it blurry and distorted, and Reyla shoots up with a groan, shaking the images from her mind. Pushing down the want behind her navel.

Her head is pounding.

And then the previous night catches up to her, nearly flattens her with its heaviness, and she’s sprinting, barefoot and bed-raggled, to the edge of the wood, ignoring the shouts from various townsfolk she passes and nearly knocks over in her haste.

A wild, malevolent thought curls around her mind like a lingering smoke.

Maybe one of them will break a bone in their fall.

She shakes this thought away, too.

Sweating once more and panting, she searches frantically for any sign of a body and finds none.

Finds instead, another moonflower.

When she picks it up, intent on crushing it, a voice whispers in her mind.

Her voice. The same one she’d heard the night before. The one that had told her to lick the blood from her wrist.

Find me where the redberries grow.

So angry and confused it’s nearly dizzying, Reyla stomps forward, right through the dense mass of honeysuckle, paying no mind to the thorns slashing and slicing her skin.

When she finds her she’s in her human form, and a small, distant part of Reyla sags in disappointment. While her beauty as a human was undeniable, Reyla had found the dragon rather magnificent.

Not that she’d be saying any of that out loud.

She walks right up to the woman, who she can see now is much older than her, and doesn’t stop until she feels a surprised exhale against her mouth, the smell of freshly picked mint on the woman’s breath.

It distracts her only for a second.

“I keep them in a box I made specifically for them. The moonflowers. I learned the honoring of passed souls with rosemary and a blessing from my mother, yes. And the town I live in is not the town I wish to die in and I hope to one day watch it turn to ash.”

She’s breathless by the time she finishes, and before the woman can respond, an odd gleam in her dark brown eyes (so very different from the midnight of the dragon’s), Reyla continues.

“I deserve to know your name.”

The woman’s dark brow quirks upward, amusement touching the corners of her mouth. She’s looking at Reyla like something she’s been coveting for years and Reyla swallows. Realizing how true that might actually be.

She thinks the older woman will once again avoid answering her when she nods, seemingly deeming Reyla worthy of this knowledge. Reyla barely resists the urge to scream at her.

“Malora,” the woman says.

Malora, her mind echoes.

And she doesn’t know if it’s the flower still in her hand, unharmed by the way her fist had closed around it on her journey here. Doesn’t know if it’s the way the dark brown of Malora’s eyes turn a lighter, almost golden honey beneath the fluttering sunlight above them. Doesn’t know if maybe it’s just pure insanity.

But instead of cutting at the woman with her anger, she holds out her hand. The one not rubbing rote circles in the soft flesh of the moonflower’s petals.

Malora’s eyes move from the moonflower in her right hand to the left one she has extended, brow furrowed before one raises, inquisitive in nature.

And then Malora reaches up and slots her hand inside Reyla’s, delicate, slender fingers wrapping firmly around her own. Malora’s thumb makes a slow swipe along the slope of Reyla’s knuckles and her body reacts without her permission, as it seems prone to doing around this woman. She lets out a rush of breath, eyes fluttering as she looks at their joined hands, gaze tracing the pretty blue of Malora’s veins.

She finds her eyes again.

“Thank you for saving me.”

And then, quieter. “Thank you for the moonflowers.”

Something loosens in the older woman’s gaze, a gentleness spreading out along her features like latticework.

Reyla’s breath stutters in her chest, something soft blossoming there.

She stomps it out a second later. Tosses it in an unreachable place in her mind, and rips her hand away. Her anger bubbles up inside her chest again like a welcome scald.

“Now tell me who you are and why you’ve been stalking me for over two decades.”

———————————————————————

“I don’t believe you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, have centuries of dust and debris gone and clogged your ears? I said I. Don’t. Believe. You.”

Malora looks truly affronted, head jerking back on her neck like she couldn’t believe Reyla would have the gall. But Reyla is long past tired of feeling so lost. Of feeling like the ground was always moments away from crumbling beneath her feet.

“Careful, child. Don’t presume to know me well enough to insult me and think I won’t return the favor.”

Reyla’s jaw works. “You’ve insulted me enough by lying through your Gaia-damned teeth.”

Malora lets out an unexpected bark of laughter. “Does dear Gaia know how often you take Her name in vain?”

“I’m sure it’s as frequent as your habit of avoiding honesty.”

Reyla sees the immediate shift in Malora’s face, like a shadow pressing in. Dark brown eyes flash midnight, swallow up any remaining color in her irises, and Reyla tries not to take a step backward.

She’s nearly forgotten this woman is far more than human. She’s nearly forgotten she has no idea who she is. What she is.

“I’m growing very tired of your petulance, Reyla.” Malora’s lip curls, looking down at Reyla like a bug in need of squashing. Reyla struggles to stay afloat against the sudden change in energy. The air around them becomes thicker, a little too near suffocating, and Reyla tries not to let panic seize her senses.

“Your kind has always been so disgustingly self-righteous.” The older woman stalks forward, the shadow of the wood following her like a cloak, eyes tinting from deep black to rich aubergine and back again. “Thinking you deserve to know everything, exploit everything, claim everything.” There’s a hiss to her voice now, a resentment bleeding into the syllables, her eyes far away - as if revisiting something in her past - even as they pierce Reyla through. And Reyla, in a blinding, rushing clarity, understands.

“Your kind was mindless with greed then and they’re mindless with greed still. I’ve told you my story. That the ancestors of Malvella banished me to this wood. That - ”

“It’s you.”

Malora stops short, eyes refocusing.

“What?”

“You’re the reason no one ever leaves Malvella.”

Malora’s features twist, a quick and almost unnatural movement, going from confusion and irritation at being interrupted to one devoid of emotion entirely. It sends a shudder down the small of Reyla’s back and she feels her intuition grip her by the shoulder and beg her to leave.

Reyla continues, not able to stop herself or pay heed to her own mind’s warning, breathless with her realization. She doesn’t notice the building darkness encircling the small clearing around her.

“You’re the monster.” Reyla whispers, mind reeling, images and memories connecting together so quickly her skin feels too tight. Feels, once more, like she’s at the edge of reality. Too close to falling. She thinks she feels herself smiling.

Before it slides just as quickly off her face. Her brow pulls at the middle, another growing realization, this one ballooning in her stomach like a noxious gas and tasting fetid on her tongue.

“Are you - are you the one who turns the woodland creatures into mindless killers? Who sends them wandering near the town?” Reyla’s face drains of all color, feels her tottering reality collapse in on her. Feels, very suddenly, like the weak, inconsolable teenager she’d been the night her mother was killed.

“My mother,” she hears herself rasp. It scrapes out of her throat like broken bits of metal.

Malora has gone terrifyingly still.

And then her lips curve upward. An awful, wicked thing. More rictus than smile.

“Oh, my darling girl,” she hums, stepping closer as she shifts fluidly into her dragon form, this time double in size from when she’d first encountered Malora, her voice dropping down into a menacing boom. Reyla’s eyes widen, stumbling back. “You really should be more careful about what you leave as an offering to the wood.”

Sudden shadows billow out like a tidal wave from Malora, climbing up the trees of Noctewood and arching around Reyla like a net. She can only stare in horror, snatched up in a bottomless gaze. Prey caught between the predator’s teeth.

“You might find yourself inside the mouth of an unforgiving God.”

And then blackness comes crashing down.