A/N: Hello to all you Spirited Away fans out there! This is my first fanfic so show some mercy on me!! I'm unsure of the quality of this story so I'd much appreciate it if you folks would be kind enough to review after you've read. Any comments, constructive criticisms and suggestions are most welcome, for I wish to create a story that is excellent to not only read, but write as well. (i.e I need comments so I know people are reading it :p) If something doesn't make sense, then let me know that as well and I'll explain it at the beginning of the next chapter. So what are you waiting for? ENJOY!!
DISCLAIMER: Spirited way is not mine, however any characters which you do not recognise ARE mine. Also, the poem used is not mine either, but an excerpt from someone else's. J
CHAPTER 1 : The Fall
Something was different in the forest that day.
Nahira felt it the very moment that she moved under the cover of the leaves above and they blocked out the harsh rays of the sun. There was a feeling of anxiousness and fretfulness, almost as if the forest was trying to make a difficult decision. The usual lone deer that often accompanied her into the trees was missing, making her journey to the centre an unusually lonely one.
To pass the time, she recited a piece from a poem to herself in sing-song fashion, over and over.
"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes."
Presently she reached a clearing which told her she had arrived. The great maidenhair tree before her was the centerpiece of the forest, and although it was not the tallest or the mightiest, it had a certain aura about it that exuded some form of power. Nahira had been drawn to it from the first day she had seen it, 9 years ago, when she had ripped out the weeds which had choked its roots from the ground.
She approached its base, and its gnarled branches twisted above her like the arms of a friendly giant. She stroked the grey bark, and gently placed a small foot in a depression in the trunk not far from the ground.
"Grandpa, what is the matter today? I feel as if there is something wrong," She said as she pulled herself up onto her favourite branch.
The tree, of course, did not reply, but Nahira fancied that its leaves rustled a little in the stillness. She swung her legs over the edge of the branch and began to swing them back and forth, once again singing to herself. She was still doing this when the branch fell.
Well that's what it felt like to her anyway.
One minute she was sitting peacefully, the next she was falling. She didn't know where, however, because despite the fact that the ground wasn't far away, she never reached it. Instead, she continued to fall through it. Just when she thought the fall would never end, her limbs sprawled around her as her rear struck solid ground. But it wasn't the right ground…
She looked around, thinking herself knocked out and dreaming. Her surroundings were unfamiliar and there was a strange figure standing next to her. She shrieked in surprise, crawling backwards in an ungainly fashion to escape. When it didn't make an attempt to pursue her, she stood up. Ignoring the sticks she could feel in her hair and in her clothes, she approached the strange figure. It still made no movement, and upon closer inspection she realised it was made of stone – it was a statue of a froggish creature, albeit a fairly gruesome one. Its features were twisted into a hideous grin and it squatted like it was guarding something. Nahira frowned, and in frustration at not knowing where she was, she lashed out at the ugly statue by kicking it fair on the chin. This, of course, was a ridiculously silly thing to do, and Nahira hopped around clutching at her foot, which was shoeless. She never wore shoes when she went into the forest – she felt it was like wearing shoes into someone's house. In all her hopping and muttering, she didn't notice the huge tunnel until she was right in it. When she felt the darkness and coolness descend, she opened her eyes, which she'd squeezed shut in pain. She panicked at this moment, and looked back to still see the ugly statue grinning at her, daring her to go on. So go on she did.
'I must've fallen pretty hard on the ground to be having a dream like this…' She thought to herself, 'But it seems strange that I fell. I've never fallen from a tree before…'
She felt the sun again and realised she'd reached the end of the tunnel. She had emerged onto a vast grassy plain, where the long green grass was swaying and small brightly coloured butterflies flitted from one flower to the next in almost sickening loveliness.
'I like this dream less and less…"
She walked on and up a hill, crossing a dried up river bed, and she noticed that the sun was setting. She thought she heard a trickle of water behind her as she passed the river, but when she turned to look it was still as dry as it was when she crossed it.
Over the rise, much to her astonishment, she found there was a large establishment of stalls and buildings in the valley. It looked deserted, but she raced towards, determined to find someone and figure out where exactly she was. She'd begun to think that maybe she'd not fallen out of the tree and passed out and was dreaming, but perhaps she'd merely fallen into a passageway to this hidden world, beneath the forest.
There was a tantalising smell in the air, which told Nahira that there was food somewhere in this abandoned place. Despite not feeling hungry at all, she knew that where there was food, there were people.
"Hello? Hello!? Is there somebody there..?" She called as she ran through the many rows of stalls.
The smell grew closer and closer, but she just couldn't pinpoint where it was. She came to the end of the stalls, and ran up some stairs which led to long bridge across a beautifully clear expanse of water. Past the bridge was a huge bathhouse, something that Nahira thought was strange. People rarely used bathhouses anymore, yet this one seemed to be in operation. There was smoky clouds pumping out of various chimneys and she decided that once she taken a look around a bit, she'd go there. So she ran onto the bridge.
She lent over the edge of the bridge, and coughed violently as steam from a train passing below blew up into her face.
"I wonder where that goes," She said to herself, and concluding that it must be a dream after all, for trains couldn't travel across water like that, skipped across the rest of the bridge. It was getting dark rapidly by this time, and Nahira was worried that something might happen to her sleeping body if she stayed asleep for too long. Maybe the fall had been so hard that she was in a coma, and with no mother and a drunkard for a father, she worried that there would be no one to find her and that she'd be forced to stay in this dream for a long time.
"Better not do anything stupid," She thought.
Nahira began to feel very cold. She was frightened all of a sudden, like the dream had become a reality to her. Her imagination ran wild, and all kinds of beings began to appear around her, fading into view like… like ghosts.
Two small men with a funny frog faces and a pointy hats came out of the bathhouse and one of them lit the lanterns on the bridge, greeting the shadowy figures that approached. Everything turned bright and colourful, like a circus, and it was at that very moment that all the beings around Nahira came fully into view, suddenly solid and whole. There were many, many strange creatures that she'd never seen before – and clearly none of them were human. She shrieked in surprise and every single one of them turned to look at her.
"HUMAN!!" Gasped one of the frog faced men, and in a frantic flurry, Nahira was swept up in a great race to get off the bridge.
She was dragged along behind a giant spidery thing; one of its spiny legs had tangled in her clothes. She cried out in pain and fell to the ground at the other side of the bridge, and she lay shaking in fear on the ground as a gathering of the strange beings crowded around her. Her knees were scraped red raw from being dragged across the ground, and she felt sticky blood on them as she rolled into a ball. She knew then that it was no dream for she knew that no one ever bled like this in a dream.
"Another one? Another human?" Screeched a voice, and the hubbub of the creatures around her stopped in deathly silence, "Let me see…"
Above her loomed a huge and ancient face. She'd never seen a witch before, but she'd read about them and she knew straight away that this face belonged to a witch. It was the ugliest face she'd ever seen, and she said this out loud before the world faded to black.