Chapter 3
Tall Tales from a Tall Boy
Luke
All those stories about the Witch in the Woods that my pops used to tell me had to be true, I thought, now that I'd seen her myself. Man, what a lady she was, that Witch Princess. There definitely wasn't another girl around like her. I hadn't gotten a scolding like that since I accidentally got Luna soaking wet when I was stomping in puddles in grade school! There was something kind of familiar about her wicked-awesome silver hair and her voice, but I let it go. Hazy memories weren't anything to get too caught up in, after all; there were way more important things to focus on.
I slammed the door open and then promptly closed with a huge grin on my face. "Pops!" I shouted, and almost burst out laughing when the old man nearly jumped out of his skin with the combined noise of my entrance and yelling. Chief – I swear that dog was nearly as old as me, if not Bo, by that point – just raised his big head from where he had been sleeping alongside the register and lazily opened an eye at me before laying down. Pops had probably been dozing off at the register again, waiting for me to get home. I felt a little bad, it had been dark out for a couple hours now I was sure, but it was nice to know that my dad was always looking out for me. "Did you know there really is a Witch in the Woods!" I asked with my eyebrows raised high while I rushed over and slapped my hands down on the counter.
"Hah." My dad said dryly. "Yea. A real scary old green lady hiding out in the woods." He rubbed at the sleep in his eyes and his stool squeaked loudly across the floor as he stood up. He cracked his back loudly and let out a little grunt.
My eyebrows knitted together at that. The Witch Princess definitely wasn't old or green. "Nuhuh. She's not like that at all. She's, like, super beautiful, with long silver hair and these weird poofy shorts. And a cute little witch hat and tiny cape. OH! And sassy." I put my fists on my hips and squared myself up with my dad. Had he really told me all those stories about a Witch just to scare me? He really hadn't seen her? I mean the guy had been going into the woods way longer than I had been, and I just didn't get the feeling that the Princess was new around these parts. It didn't strike me as possible that my dad could spend so much time in the woods over the years and never have encountered her. My mind was working on overtime and I felt like I was spinning in circles or standing outside during a typhoon.
Pops looked up at me through his bushy blue eyebrows. I'd gotten a lot taller in the three years since I turned 16 and I actually stood a few inches above my old man now, not to mention I had my work boots on. "Son. You fell asleep in the woods again, didn't you?" He stared at me expectantly and I tried to hold his gaze seriously long enough to prove him wrong. I brought my eyebrows down in a scowl, then started accidentally holding my breath. He kept looking at me levelly, holding his expression. It wasn't much longer before the air whooshed out of me and I gave a defeated nod; my face had gone all pink. There was seriously no way to win in a stare down with that guy. "Don't take your dreams so seriously, Luke. There's dinner in the fridge."
"Wasn't a stupid dream…" I muttered dejectedly and walked over to the fridge to pull out the dinner that my empty stomach was rumbling for. My dad gave me a warm clap to the upper arm before heading off to bed and leaving me to my own devices. I mean, it wasn't a dream. Was it? There was no way I could have dreamed up someone as totally cool as the Witch Princess was. Not to mention sassy and commanding. Nah, that was way out of the range of my imagination. Kind of girly for my imagination, really. My dreams were way more full of dinosaurs and explosions and awesome stuff like battle axes. Not that babes were necessarily uncommon in my dreams, but if I'd dreamt her up she probably wouldn't have scolded me like someone's mom.
The next day was a new one, my general outlook on life. There's something great about the way people tend to forget the little stuff with the passage of a day and start fresh each morning. So I rose with the sun – like I almost always did since I'd messed up the curtains that one time and pops never got me new ones – and got ready for my day. Zombie-Bo and grumpy-dad weren't long in joining me as I knocked around the kitchen getting ready. I packed up my own lunch this time, instead of forgetting, and strapped my axe to my side. I chattered my way through breakfast to my unresponsive table mates, like always, and then rushed out the door to spend my day off in the forest.
After a few hours of gathering up lumber, I settled down on the stump of a tree to eat my lunch. The sun was high above me now, but the leaves of the trees blocked most of the light. Little golden dust motes and specks of pollen floated around. I made a game out of trying to see where they got off to, but I always seemed to lose track. It occurred to me then that I could go looking for the Princess again, just to prove my dad wrong, so I wiped my brown and took off deeper into the forest.
The sun kept steadily on its path over my head and it wasn't long before I felt like I was walking in circles. There was a reason I was one of the only people who didn't get lost in the woods and it wasn't because I was lucky. I knew this place like the back of my hand and I had a great sense of direction; something was off. The trees started to repeat as I walked, the rocks appeared in the same positions, and the fungi growing on the edge of the path were the same. Something wasn't right, but when I turned and walked back I would find myself where I ought to have been by going forward. I rubbed the back of my head and dug the tip of my boot into the ground. I definitely wasn't lost, I had been paying too much attention. Plus I hadn't fallen asleep this time. After a little while longer, I gave up and went home in a foul mood. Getting out of the forest didn't pose a problem.
I scrunched a smile onto my face before I walked through the door to the carpentry and greeted Bo and pops. They were in the kitchen and my dad was cooking up… something. "Hey, Luke, have you met Kasey?" Bo asked cheerfully. The squinty look of confusion that I made as I joined him at the table was enough to prompt him to continue. "There's a new farmer in town, Kasey! He moved into that little house on the path to the forest and he's been running around all day asking people about "bells". I think he's a super nice guy, he brought me a snack when I was working on the bridge yesterday." Bo's face lit up with a little smile and I couldn't help but smile back. I knew Bo was a good judge of character and he was basically my brother, if he liked someone then I knew that I would too.
"Hey if you think he's cool I can't help but believe that he must be. Kasey's gotta be crazy awesome if thinks he's gonna do anything with that run down place on the path though. Man, good luck to him." Our chatter then degraded into speculation about how long Kasey would last in that house, which we knew full well was practically falling down, before he came to us for a repair. I wondered aloud how a farmer would do when Craig's daughter had left town not even a month ago to look for a solution to our poor soil and my pops told us some old legend about the goddess's bells. Despite the meandering path of the talk, I never brought up the strangeness of the forest path seeming to rewrite itself that day. It seemed to me that dad and Bo wouldn't take me seriously, and I wasn't in a mood to be told I was telling tall tales again.
Author's Note: Trying to reveal some more of Luke's character in this chapter. Developing his daily mannerisms, social interactions, and doing some subtle plot movement/foreshadowing. Let me know what you think - please leave a review! Your comments are indispensable.