Chapter 5

Sometime the Stars Themselves Must Be Denied

Luke

The days seemed to drag on for a while there. After I finished gathering wood in the forest I would venture deeper in, hoping to see the Witch again. But the path wound around itself in circles ever since the first day that I met her. I walked straight on the path all the way to her that first time; now it seemed like the trail didn't connect to her at all. I just couldn't get her out of my head. There was something about the long silver hair, the bright yellow eyes, that crazy outfit from the pointy hat and poofy shorts down to the thigh-high tights that I definitely didn't make up on my own. So nearly every day I would look, and each time I tried to find her I would fail. I began to wonder if somehow she really was a figment of my imagination, and when I never found her a second time I decided that I wouldn't tell anyone else about our encounter. People called me stupid often enough, and I didn't feel like giving them something more to pick on me about when I was telling the truth.

Summer was in full swing by the time I finally met Kasey. My previous interaction with him was limited to walking past his house on the way to the forest, and over the months his little plot of land had slowly woken up; green had sprouted up in the dusty fields and the more obvious disrepair of the buildings had been patched up. Bo talked a lot about how nice the guy was, how he would bring him snacks while he was working on repairing things around town. It seemed like everyone in the peninsula had become friends with the guy but me! Granted, I was pretty much spending dawn through dusk hidden away in the woods at that point.

He moved loudly through the forest, maintaining a decently paced jog. It was a little unnerving to be honest. The only people with keys to the forest gate were pops and I anyway, since so many people had gotten lost over the years. I swung my axe through the air a few times, loosening up again after I'd sat down awhile for my lunch break, and waited for him to cross my path.

"Yo! Didn't think I'd be seeing anyone else out here today!" I called cheerily, resting my axe upon my shoulder. The dude looked remarkably average, he wore run of the mill clothes with some work gloves and had shaggy brown hair. He needed something extra, like my bandana and necklace were for me. "I don't think we've met." I offered with a smile.

"I'm Kasey, I just moved out to Harmonica Town to start a farm at the beginning of the spring." He said with a small wave, relaxing into a comfortable slouch with one hand on his hip. This dude just exuded cool, I had no idea how though.

"The name's Luke! I'm the best around with an axe." I declared with a grin.

"So do you know anything about there being a Witch out in these woods? There's a rumor going around that she stole something pretty important to the peninsula." Kasey really got right to the point.

"A Witch? ..." I said slowly. The gears in my head turned. Of course I believed in the Witch, but I didn't know there were any other rumors about her aside from the scary stories my pops liked to tell. I decided it would be better off not to stoke this guy's curiosity though. I mean I was the best at navigating the forest after all, and I hadn't been able to find her for a season and a half! I smiled then, knowing what I would say. "Can't say I know one; I'm just out here to collect lumber for the carpentry." Playing dumb was easy.

"Oh." Kasey said, the slight smirk he wore flattening for a short moment. "Well anyway, I was talking to Dale to get the key and he said to let you know you ought to come home if I see you."

"Man that guy is always worried about nothing. I ain't gonna get lost." I said with a groan, swinging my axe down off of my shoulder and slipping it back into my belt. "Oughta go check in with him though, I guess. Later!" I gave Kasey a little wave and headed off down the forest trail to head back home. Pops would never tell me that he was worrying lately, but he knew I'd come home if someone else asked me to. I guess he was right to though, I had basically been spending all my time in the forest. Not that that was particularly strange, but typically I took a few days off to hang around the shop and help with the simple stuff. I wasn't very skilled at the detail work, not like Bo at least, but I was the fastest at cutting out the basic shapes for furniture and sanding them down. So I walked home, taking my time and mulling over my encounter with Kasey. I would have wished him luck in finding the Witch, but I didn't. I wasn't sure if it was because I didn't think he could do it or because I didn't want him to find her first.

About a week and a half later I found myself off into the forest at night. I'd been spending less time in the forest lately, trying to help out more around the carpentry and keep my dad from worrying over nothing. In the end I grew pretty restless and Kasey had come into the carpentry to return the key to the forest to my pops. Not only had my pops insisted that Kasey keep the key, Kasey had said that he'd found what he was looking for. I'd followed Kasey outside when he left the shop and asked if he'd found the Witch – he had.

Something about that had just eaten at me for the next couple days. The Witch Princess had to have let Kasey find her, there was no way that a newcomer could navigate those woods as well as me. But why him? I nearly sulked, which is rather uncharacteristic of me. So after a long day of prepping shingles and repairing peoples' roofs from the recent wave of monsoons, I took off into the night. The sky was clear and the air was comfortably warm. I walked into the forest feeling a certain type of uncomfortable, though I'm not sure if it was with myself or what. This time I was going to make it to the Witch – if Kasey could do it then there was no doubt in my mind that I could.

The minutes passed, blending together as the moon made its slow arch across the sky, and it wasn't long before I was discouraged. It was happening again, just like it had been for months. The forest trail was bending back and overlapping itself in inexplicable ways. The same sets of trees and rocks were overlapping into an infinite recombination of the same features. This was really damaging my easy confidence, I didn't feel myself at all. My frustration grew and grew until I finally gave up and decided to climb a tree instead. If she didn't want to be found then fine. But I wasn't going to just leave. If she wanted me to get out of her forest then she could come make me herself. I settled in high up in the tall oak tree and rested against the trunk, looking up to the stars. Sometimes I wondered what was out there, where human hands could never reach. Pops liked to tell me that's where the spirits went when they left our world, but it just seemed too cold. I couldn't imagine myself liking it out there, let alone my mom.

My mom was really something else. She was beautiful, and I really mean that, but more than that she wasn't the kind of mom who just stayed in the house all day and made dinner. In fact, she was the only woman in town who didn't wear a skirt. Mom had this awesome light bluish hair and wore an orange bandana like a headband, the one that my pops still wears around his neck now. Actually, it was my mom who gave me the flame bandanas that I still wear now. She gave everybody something when she was around, physical or not, that's what my dad always says.

We would spend entire days in the forest together, collecting mushrooms and identifying leaves and chasing birds. Sometimes, when the darkness fell, and we'd already improvised a dinner out of all the berries and fungus we'd found, we didn't head home. Instead, my mom helped me climb one of the big oaks in the forest and we waited for the moon to rise and the stars to come out. I'll always remember what she told me, while she held me close for one of the last times. "The best thing you can ever do for yourself and the people around you is to be happy. You smile is your greatest shield and your greatest weapon. If you can love yourself for who you are then no one can ever hurt your happiness." It was something I always tried my hardest to live by. We picked out constellations and when I started to yawn she got us down from the tree and carried me home when I fell asleep.

I didn't know it at the time, and I didn't really understand what had happened for a few years after the fact, but my mom had always had a weak heart. She was a very active woman and really very strong; she was the one who collected the lumber for my dad's carpentry before me. But her heart just couldn't keep up with the rest of her. My pops always said it was because she gave too much of it away to all of us. One day, it just stopped. I was six.

Looking up at the stars that night, frustrated that some lady in the woods didn't want me to find her, I was reminded of my mom. I knew that someone like my mom wouldn't let that get to her. My mom wouldn't want to see me acting like this; I was bigger than my frustration with whatever was going on in that stranger's head. My mom's smile would never falter, she would just wish the girl good luck and keep going on with her life. No, the stars weren't a place for my mom's spirit. My mom would have to live in the sun, where it was warm and she could give life to the world every day.

Author's Note: A rival appears? DUN DUN DUN! I hope you enjoyed the chapter and that Luke didn't get too OOC in remembering his mom, but he is understandably frustrated with being unable to find the Witch again, especially knowing that some other guy has succeeded. Please review! I'm getting kind of nervous with no reviews on this story and so many chapters already. (Yea, I know the chapters are short and I upload them two at a time on a weekly basis, but I am putting my own personal time into planning and revising these after all.)