Nicholas bolted out the door of the thatched barn and leapt on top of the wooden fence. The cow was gone. He knew his father would give him a good licking for not latching the gate. He peered over the countryside toward the dark forest—a little less than a kilometer away. He could see Peg, their cow, grazing not too far from the forest edge. He had to catch her before it was too late. Nicholas ran across the field, rope in hand. The cow lifted her head from the grass she was munching on. She saw him coming. She let out a large bellowing moo and jerked her head towards the forest.
“No Peg!” Nicholas called out.
Peg ran. The game they always played when free from the pen. Nicholas was sure she was a pooka or possessed, especially when she headed for the enchanted wood. Nicholas gasped for air, trying to drive her back up the hill, but the cow had other ideas. Peg bolted for the woods.
Nicholas’ legs couldn’t keep up with the hooves of the large cow and he lost sight of her as she entered the trees. Without thinking but fearing his father, Nicholas chased after her, right into the forest. He hardly noticed when the path closed behind him and the trees moved apart in front of him, giving him room to chase after the animal. He kept calling out the cow’s name. He had to find her. No animal, once it enters the enchanted wood, comes out again.
“Peg! Peg!”
A hollow moo beckoned him on through the oaks and cedars, over the tangled vines and prickly bushes. The forest darkened as he ran further in. The trees in the canopy above grouped closer and closer together, hiding sunlight from the forest floor. Nicholas didn’t even notice the sun moving lower into the sky; still frantically chasing the phantom moo that led him deep into the forest. The vines on the ground gathered closer and closer together, covering the fallen leaves of the last year. Nicholas hardly noticed the vines reading out for his leather shod feet.
His momentum ceased with one swift jerk. Nicholas fell. Dry leaves scattered and slid on the dark mossy floor, fluttering into the silent forest. Nicholas was sure he heard laughing.
“Only birds,” he tried to console himself. Nicholas painfully crawled onto his knees and brushed the leaves and soil from off his arms and chest. His right arm was scraped and his chin skinned. The trees loomed overhead, their branches tapping against one another in a strange breeze that never touched Nicholas’ cheeks. The tapping echoed eerily in shaded canopy and the breeze took a sudden downward turn. Nicholas shivered. He looked around himself a few times, and then realized the cow was absolutely gone. Angry, he stood up and brushed off his knees, wiped the blood that formed on his chin and started to head back the way he thought he came.
The trees stood like silent watchers, but now giggling in the wind that mysteriously blew in. The wind wouldn’t comfort the boy. It chilled him. Nicholas tried to push his way back through the forest, but the path no longer stood wide. The trees held close together and to his surprise, seemed to squeeze even closer together as he tried to pass by. Prickly bushes leaned in to scratch him, that had parted earlier.
Nicholas continued to press on, worried that the stories about the wood were true. It was said that any person who entered the forest never came out again. He had made the mistake of chasing his cow inside. He no longer worried about what his father would say if he saw him without the cow. He now worried if he would even see his father again. Nicholas bolted at that thought. He did not want to be lost in the woods.
Running was a trial. It seemed that the trees tried everything to trip him, knock him down with low branches, prick him and otherwise stop him from finding his way back. A tree root surprisingly startled the boy and he fell once again on his face. Nicholas started to cry. Angrily, he stood up and kicked a nearby oak tree. The oak returned the action with a good smack from a swaying branch, one that swayed astonishingly low, and hit Nicholas back onto the leafy earth.
The boy looked up once again from the ground, tears now making rivulets down his face. He was never going to get out. Nicholas could tell now that the sun was setting. It was darker and the canopy overhead could not hide the reddish tint of the clouds. He was lost. Defeated, the boy sat down on the earth and wept.
His weeping became loud sobbing. The birds ceased to sing. The crying echoed in the woods and the air stood still. His crying grew into a miserable wail.
“Stop that noise!” came an irritated voice from above.
Nicholas looked up. In the branches of a large oak sat a boy about his age, holding a set of shepherd’s pipes in his right hand. The boy in the tree held his hands over his ears and scowled, wincing at the noise.
“Why are you bawling so loud?! You’ll wake the whole forest!”
Nicholas wiped his eyes with his dirty palm, leaving trails of soil where his tears had been.
“I’m lost. Are you lost in this forest too?” Nicholas sniffed.
The boy laughed, uncovering his ears. “I live here.” They were pointed.
The child elf leapt down. Nicholas stood up and stepped back. He shivered in fright. The elf boy smiled.
“What is your name?” the elf asked.
“Nicholas,” he barely answered. He could hear that laugh again, twittering like nervous birds, giggling like animals he had never heard before. A strange breeze broke through the leaves above and left Nicholas chilled once more.
“Call me Andrew.” The elf boy circled around Nicholas to get a good look.
“I’m bored. Let’s play a game,” Andrew, the elf, declared.
Nicholas knew he would lose any game he played with an elf. Elves lived for centuries and he once heard his father say that the elves of their forest existed before the creation of the world. He swallowed down the lump that was forming in his throat and tried to think of a simple game, perhaps even a way to get out of the forest.
“How about hide-and-go-seek?” the boy suggested.
The elf crinkled up his face and shook his head, “No, that’s too easy. If I didn’t find you right off by you and your noisy feet, the trees would tell me where you were hiding.” The elf circled around him once again and his eyes lit up.
“I know! Let’s tell riddles. I love riddles.”
Nicholas’ face dropped. “I don’t know any riddles.”
Andrew shrugged it off. “Make them up! I’ll go first.” It didn’t take long for the elf to think up a riddle. He cleared his throat and began.
“What has a mouth but never eats, runs but never walks, and babbles all the day but never has anything to say?” The whole forest quieted down for the answer.
Nicholas shifted from one foot to the other feeling quite uncomfortable. The vines crawled closer on the forest floor in amused curling and turning over the rocks and moss for a better position to listen. The prickle-bushes leaned in anxiously, occasionally giggling and pricking nearby trees. The trees seemed to listen intently for the answer to the riddle, sighing in the wind, which had died down mysteriously.
Nicholas pinched his eyes closed to think. He was never good at these games. He tended sheep and cows all day. He fetched water for the wash and cooking from the . . .
“A river!” he cried out.
The elf shrugged and leaned against a cedar, crossing his legs and folding his arms.
“Your turn.”
Nicholas didn’t know what to ask. What did he know? Sheep, cows . . . oh.
“What is cold as death, ever drinking, dressed in mail, never clinking?”
“Awe, pooh. That’s easy, a fish,” Andrew huffed, “Do a hard one.”
“It’s your turn,” Nicholas returned, gaining courage.
Nicholas could hear disapproving moans from the trees around him but they quit with a single glare from the elf.
Satisfied, Andrew cocked his head and spouted by memory, “What comes first on four legs, then two legs, then three legs?”
Nicholas tried to think of several things. Tables, chairs, animals; things that the elf would be familiar with, but in the end he couldn’t figure it out. He started to cry. Andrew covered his ears once again.
“Stop it! Oh please! The sphinx would have devoured you if you had met her!” The trees groaned again in disapproval. Nicholas could feel the canopy of leaves and branches moving in closer to smother him, but the presence of the elf stayed that.
“The answer is a man. Four legs as a baby, two as a young man and three, an old man with a cane.” Andrew scowled, staring at the tear stained child in disgust.
“You really don’t know any riddles do you?”
“No,” Nicholas let out.
Andrew could see tears forming in the boy’s eyes again and ordered, “Don’t start that. If you answer this last riddle, I’ll set you out of the forest. Deal?”
Nicholas’ eyes grew wide, “You can do that?”
“Of course I can, I brought you in here.” Andrew could see Nicholas’ immediate anger for being purposefully led, but nonchalantly tossed it aside.
“I told you I was bored.”
The trees laughed once again, fluttering their leaves like handkerchiefs on a clothes line. Mosquitoes and cabbage butterflies flitted about the mossy forest floor. Vines cured and the prickle bushes tilted their spines upward, waiting for the response.
Nicholas sulked, but he wanted to go home. He looked up at the elf boy and nodded.
“Deal.”
Andrew began, “How do you hide an elephant in a cherry tree?” The elf-boy grinned wide. Nicholas was dumbfounded. Would he never get out of the forest? The trees giggled wickedly in the wind and even the elf boy couldn’t contain himself.
“What’s an elephant?” Nicholas asked.
Andrew burst out laughing. “You have to guess. Guess Nicky-boy!” The giggling grew louder.
Nicholas scowled, “I can’t guess if I don’t know what an elephant is.”
“A pachyderm,” the elf snickered.
Nicholas could see the vines twisting in laughter at this horrible private joke.
Nicholas scowled. Andrew danced around him, laughing. The trees giggled even louder.
“Give up? You paint his toenails red! Ha ha ha ha!” The elf danced about the boy, now leaping from tree branch to tree branch. “Get it?! You paint his toenails red!”
The trees swung the elf around the upper canopy, up and through the higher-than-high boughs, over and under lofty branches, in and out the brown and green leaves, until Nicholas grew dizzy from watching such acrobatics.
Nicholas folded his arms and stamped his foot, “That’s not a riddle! You cheated. I deserve another chance.”
A deep boo and several hisses came from the plant life around him. Nicholas didn’t care. It was getting late and he wanted his supper. He watched the elf dance in the trees above him and then swing upside down on a branch not too far from his head.
Hanging there, the elf smiled and spoke as apologetic as an elf could be, “Mortals have no sense of humor. I’m so terribly sorry. I know that wasn’t a riddle, but it was a great joke. Want to hear another one?”
Nicholas only frowned more. “No. I want to go home.”
“Party pooper. Ok. Here is the real riddle. Don’t you mess up or you’ll have to listen to all my elephant jokes until you are eighty-seven.” The elf flipped right side up onto the ground and his face grew serious. The trees sadly creaked in the wind, almost sorry the fun was to end. Nicholas could only guess that they were bored too.
The elf seriously pondered his riddle and at last spoke. “Seven cows go into the barn white as death and come out of the barn brown as bark. What are they?”
Nicholas was sure he had heard this riddle before. He knew about barns and cows, but he did not want to answer hastily. Nicholas sat on the mossy earth and leaned against a tree to think. The strong woodsy scent wafted through the forest, calming his tired heart. The sun had set and the canopy might as well have been confused with a cloudy sky, covering the stars in the darkness. The elf climbed up into the tree and rested on a low branch, waiting for the answer. He settled comfortably and lifted his pipes to his lips.
A low melodic tune flowed down from the trees to Nicholas below, who still pondered the riddle. It was a sad melody that rested on the wind and blew out on the breeze. His eye lids grew heavy. Nicholas was sure he had heard that melody once before. He could also hear his stomach growl and his mind wandered to dinner. Nicholas wondered what his mother had made, and if she would worry because he had not come home. Images of potatoes and meat slid across his mind and thoughts of warm gravy dripping on the plate. Oh, he had to get home. The riddle, he had to solve the . . .
“Bread,” he muttered out loud. He’ll miss his mom’s bread the most. Spread with butter and jam and . . .
Nicholas abruptly sat up. Andrew’s music had stopped. The wind stopped. The trees were silent. He no longer felt tired. Nicholas looked around, then above. The elf was gone. The lousy cheat! He didn’t even stick around to hear the answer. Nicholas then remembered he hadn’t yet figured out the answer. He was about to sit back down when he saw a clear path leading out of the forest.
Without hesitation, Nicholas took it. He first walked carefully, then he stepped more quickly. The path was so clear he decided to make a quick run for it.
Nicholas sprinted down the path, jumping over any root or bush that might have even the slightest urge to trip him. Before he knew it, he could see the trees part in front of him and he was standing out in the starlight. Nicholas raised his arms to the heavens and spun around, laughing and weeping like a freed soul from hell. At once his thoughts directed him homeward and he ran the whole kilometer back to his home on the hill, shouting and jumping. He was out. He was free. He beat the elf.
Nicholas never knew the elf was watching from the forest edge. He never knew the fairies scolded the elf for letting him go. He never knew the elf picked an easy riddle on purpose, a riddle he was sure to guess, if he was hungry enough. He never knew the fairies were waiting to take him into the fairy mound if he guessed wrong. But most of all, he never knew he had guess the answer to the riddle. After all was said and done, the only thing he knew was that he could smell a mile away the one thing he really craved. His mom’s bread. And who’s to say the elf didn’t know that. After all, even elves get hungry sometimes.

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Publication Date: 11-19-2009

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