The Woman in the Woods

The seven set out on the dirt trail that led from the front of the cabin, through the forest and into Silver Lakes park. Kurt, Brandon and Madison had traversed its paths so many times over the last few days that finding their way through the dense foliage proved no difficulty, even as their surroundings became dim, tainted in a greenish hue by the leafy canopy of the Red Pines blotting out the sun. For Trent and Gavin, the first portion looked familiar; they’d run it just that morning. Chloe recognized some of it too from her earlier excursions to Zaffre Falls.

The only one who had no idea where they were or where they were going was, unsurprisingly, Amber. Unfortunately, in her haste to get out the door, she’d wound up leading the party. That wasn’t a problem in the beginning, the path was relatively straight and well-trodden, until it split where the monolithic, pointed rock stood, the stone marked by moss and red dye that resembled faded blood. Left or right. Right or Left. It was a 50-50 chance of being correct but she couldn't afford to be wrong again. These losers were already laughing at her far too much.

Instead, she chose a third option, bending down and picking up a twig. “We’re meant to be gathering firewood, so I say we start here.”

“Nice try,” Madison smirked as she paused in front of the blonde, the others gathering around too. “But, you’ll be gathering wood for the fire for the campsite, so you should gather wood from around there, unless you want to haul everything back along the trail every time.”

“Besides, for a fire, we’ll need something bigger than that,” Trent noted, looking around and grabbing a suitable stick for demonstration, a thick log almost as long as his forearm. “Something like this is more what we’ll need.”

“What?” Amber’s face drooped. “You want me to carry sticks like that? You men should be doing all the carrying. It’s unreasonable to expect me to haul bundles of heavy logs around.”

“Oh, you’re not that feeble,” Madison argued before Kurt or Brandon could offer to swap places with her. “I’ve seen you help literally throw another girl on to a tower. You’re plenty strong.”

“Tsk, fine,” Amber acquiesced with a roll of her eyes. “But I still say you guys tricked me. No one told me I signed up for the heavy, dirty manual labor.”

“Duly noted,” Brandon said, nodding towards the split in the path. “Now let’s get going. Remember, the sooner we finish this job, the sooner you get to play whatever game you want.”

“Don’t worry,” Kurt added, valiantly taking the lead. “I know the way.”

“Such a gentleman,” Amber cooed, falling in line beside him. “Not like some _boys _around here.”

She shot a derisive glare over her shoulder at Gavin, who held up his hands in exasperation, having done absolutely nothing to warrant the look.

Her comment elicited a chuckle from Kurt. Earlier in the week, walking beside this cute, fit cheerleader, he definitely would have made a lewd comment and hit on her. Even if her personality was overbearing, it wouldn’t have stopped him from nailing her, at least once. Why don’t you, he thought, remembering Victoria had given him free reign to do whatever and whoever he wanted. But Amber had gotten on Victoria’s nerves, so he wasn’t sure what his potential girlfriend might think about him choosing Amber. She might see it as a direct insult, to get back at her for not giving him a direct answer. Then again, he continued to argue with himself, Victoria had insisted she wouldn’t get mad, no matter what.

Before he could decide, Chloe interrupted his thoughts with a question.

“Hey Kurt, I wanted to ask the last time we came this way, but I was a bit distracted by Ashley running back to the cabin, but, that stone, is it important?” Chloe asked from just behind him. “It guess it’s a landmark, but it looks quite old.”

“Oh it is,” Kurt agreed, tilting his head thoughtfully as he found the relevant memory filled away in his brain. “Most of the history I know about it comes from ghost stories I heard at Ranger camp so I'm not sure how accurate they are, but it goes something like this: A long time ago, before the first clans came to settle this area, there were many stones just like that one, and they formed a circle.”

“Oh, like a druid’s circle?” Gavin remarked, having been listening curiously.

“What’s that?” Brandon asked with a frown. He knew of druids as cloaked, sinister old men from movies, but he had idea what they had to do with circles or stones.

“Stonehenge is probably the most famous, because of it’s size, but these things exist all over the world. In Europe at least, they’re usually attributed to druids,” Gavin revealed, even as everyone’s attention turned to him. Being the center of attention, and a source of information, might have made him uncomfortable, once upon a time, but being strapped to a chair and made to watch a girl he once called his friend suck the cock of the bastard who put him there had put ‘uncomfortable’ into perspective. “They’re thought to be places of worship, or burial grounds, or both, and on the one’s they’ve excavated, they’ve usually found burial tokens or the ashes of the deceased.”

“Ew, gross,” Amber said, looking down at her feet. “So, I could be walking on someone right now?”

“That would probably fit with the idea that the Vikings were here long before anyone else,” Madison mused.

“This far in land?” Chloe shook her head. “And I don’t think Vikings had druids. They were more of a Celtic thing. Remember that ancestry thing we had to do for History where they made us look up our ancestors? That was a fucking nightmare for me, since my Dad said a lot of his side of the family came from Scotland and Ireland. I remember reading about the druids briefly when I was researching that.”

“I don’t really know one way or the other. I’ve never actually seen a druid circle in real life,” Gavin scratched his head as he let out a soft chuckle of embarrassment. “I’ve only seen them in games, haunted by wraiths and plague maidens.”

“Yeah, they tended to be part of ghost stories when I heard about them. The most common one suggested that they were built for pagan worship, I guess those would be your Vikings,” he noted towards Madison. “But holy men came and tore them down. The old gods weren’t happy about that and whipped up a storm, until they stopped, leaving that last stone. The god wasn’t sated though, until each and every man had been slaughtered for their transgression.”

“S-slaughter?” Amber winced and looked around at the darkness, the veiled, ominous mystery lurking in the unknown, the opaque, dense wilderness of the brush and trees. “But, it’s just a story…”

“Well, so they say, but sometimes, when the wind blows, you can see the demonic, pagan god, lurking, prowling,” he leaned his head in close to hers, teasing her with his breath upon her ear as much as the words themselves. “looking for a ****, young mortal to devour as sacrifice.”

Right on cue, a breeze blew past, sending a shiver down Amber’s spine. She squealed and closed her eyes, swatting Kurt away. He straightened up and laughed, remembering how the tale had terrified the campers at the Ranger retreat too. The others laughed as well, which Amber didn’t take too kindly to, swearing and huffing as she folded her arms tight over her medium breasts. She might even have stormed off, if she wasn’t worried about getting lost, and, although she’d never admit it, being eaten by a hungry, vengeful specter.

“Relax,” Kurt consoled her. “They actually used to say that it was a fertility goddess that was worshiped, so, in truth, she’d probably be doing a whole different kind of devouring.”

“’In truth’?” Chloe snorted. “There weren’t any holy men to tear down the stones.” The others looked at her blankly, prompting her to ask, “Don’t any of you pay attention on Founder’s Day?”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. Usually the religious men formed the literate, learned elite, but the Bishop clan that followed Titus and Ryker made up the educated healers of the town,” Gavin recalled. “I’m guessing there must have been a priest or a minister among one of the families to carry out the last rites in town after they settled, but no way one man tore down all those stones.”

“No, it was probably the Smiths and the Wynwicks,” Madison agreed. “They’re the ones who dug up the mountain to mine for ore and gather timber. Most of these trees aren’t even that old,” she noted, reaching out and stroking the lower gray-brown bark of one. “A lot of them were planted after the land was donated to the park.”

“How the hell do you guys know all this stuff?” Trent rubbed his head, his underutilized brain struggling to retain all the new information about local history. “I can barely remember my locker combination.”

“Easy,” Amber sneered. “They’re all geeks and nerds.”

“Maybe, but I think it’s pretty cool,” Brandon stood up for them, least of all because one of those geeks and nerds was his sister. “This town has a rich and fascinating history that I only wish I could remember even half of what these guys know.”

“Hold up,” Kurt called out, stopping Amber from walking on down the trail, unknowingly towards Zaffre Falls. He gestured to another path, slightly less walked and more overgrown that struck off from their current track. “The camp site is this way.”

“Well, if we’re supposed to be gathering wood for the fire at the campsite, there’s no point walking all the way there just to double back in search of firewood,” Gavin suggested thoughtfully. “We should start gathering here and work our way towards the site.”

“That’s a good idea,” Trent agreed, slapping him on the shoulder.

“Yeah, really smart, man,” Brandon added.

“It saves me some work, so I’m happy to go along with that,” Chloe beamed at one of her oldest friends.

“If you guys are content to do that, then we’ll go on ahead,” Kurt announced, taking charge as best he could. He could only imagine the scolding he’d get from Heather if he managed to lose her friends in the woods…again. “Just try not to deviate too far from this path. It’s pretty straightforward from here to there, but you can easily end up lost if you just go wandering off.”

“Okay, got it,” Chloe assured him.

“Bye guys,” Madison waved and smiled as she, her brother and Kurt left the other four at the mouth of the trail. “I don’t envy you, having to put up with…” She pointed at Amber, shielding her finger with the palm of her other hand and hiding the gesture from the girl in question. “…you know who.”

“I know you’re pointing at me!” Amber growled. “I’m not stupid.”

“Could have fooled me,” Chloe muttered under her breath, but Madison didn’t say anything, instead, brandishing a smile at the blonde cheerleader briefly before running off to catch up with the men.

Not two minutes after they left, and the quartet has begun scouring the ground for sticks and logs for burning, Amber began to audibly and repeatedly lament her lot in the preparations. “It’s too hot” she decried, moments before insisting “it’s too dark, I can’t see”. Stopping entirely, she folded her arms across her chest and refused to budge. “These clothes are too nice for me to work in. I don’t want to get them all sweaty.”

Chloe looked over her skirt and blouse combo, acknowledging, if even only to herself, that it was a rather cute outfit, and fashionable as was to be expected of the cheerleading squad. And the girl wasn’t wrong. The heavy cluster of closely planted trees blotted out the sun directly but did nothing to cool the air itself so even after only a few minutes of work all of the teens were beginning to sweat. But Amber was the only one complaining. The other three were getting on with the job.

“Come on Amber,” Trent tried to encourage her. “Brandon won’t let you play any games if you don’t try and help out.”

“Fiiiiine.” She sighed, and lazily looked around the ground. As she bent down to pick up another thin twig, she said, “I don’t see why we can’t just cut down one of these trees and burn it.”

“Because these trees are protected,” Gavin explained, even if he got the sense that he was wasting his breath. “You can’t just cut them down, but you can pick up and burn anything that naturally broke off, like branches.”

“And, in case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t have anything to cut them down with,” Chloe reminded her.

“Ugh, and now my hands are dirty,” she whined, upon seeing the slightly brown tinge that the soil had colored her fingers. Turning her gaze on Gavin, she said, “you. You can pick up any sticks I see.”

“It’ll go a lot faster if we all pick up our own sticks,” he insisted.

“No, it won’t, I can be looking for the next one while you’re picking it up,” she said, determined to be smarter than him at something. “Like that one. Get that stick.”

Irritated, Gavin complied reluctantly because arguing with her wasn’t getting him anywhere. But when he looked where she was pointing, he couldn’t see anything remotely like a stick or a log that she could possibly expect him to lift. Just a large, moss covered branch that had fallen from one of the trees almost completely intact.

“Where?” he asked, looking around at her.

“Right there!” she pointed again. “Do you need stronger glasses?”

Furrowing his brow, he looked again, only then realizing that she meant the impossibly oversized branch that was longer than his body and as thick as his head. He didn’t even try, positive that it would be far too big for him to carry by himself and a monumental waste of time even if he did enlist Trent to help him haul the thing up to the campsite. In the time it would take to move it, they could probably have the job finished from smaller, more manageable sticks and logs.

“I can’t carry that,” he protested.

“God, you’re useless,” Amber moaned as she tugged at her blouse, flapping the fabric to blow air underneath her clothes, though the heat was so intense it did little to cool her moist skin. “And it’s still so goddamn hot. I should be sunning myself by the lake, or on Heather’s deck. Not out here gathering sticks for some stupid fire.”

“The fire isn’t dumb,” Trent argued, his voice taking on an airy tone as he thought ahead. “I think it’ll be pretty awesome, after the party has started to wind down, and the sun is going down, to sit around the campfire and relax.”

“And are you planning to sunbathe naked?” Chloe asked, imagining that the cheerleader hadn’t brought any spare clothes. Though even if the answer was ‘yes’, Chloe wouldn’t have been surprised.

“No, I’m wearing my bikini beneath my clothes,” Amber revealed.

“Then can’t you just take off your clothes and wear it now while you work?” Trent suggested.

“I…don’t want to…” Amber said, strangely, uncharacteristically shy.

“Huh?” Trent frowned. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t want _him _perving on me,” Amber told the black teen, glancing sideways at Gavin briefly to indicate who she was talking about, though it had been plainly obvious.

“Then maybe I should take my top off too,” Chloe offered with a smirk. “I’m not wearing a bikini, but I guarantee no one will be looking at you.”

An amused smile formed on the lips of both Gavin and Trent, as they pictured the big titted redhead, bare breasted in the forest, like a woodland nymph. Unfortunately, Amber only saw their wide grins and assumed they were laughing at her expense, which happened to be the last straw in her relatively light load.

“You guys are all a bunch of bastards!” she shouted, stamping her foot before storming off through the trees and out of sight.

“I think we hurt her feelings,” Gavin mused, his irritation fading. As difficult as Amber could be, his mother had always taught him to be conscientious and compassionate, and the thought that he had been disrespectful to the young girl upset him more than anything Amber had done.

“Serves her right for how she keeps taking shots at you,” Chloe replied defensively. She knew well how bitchy girls could be, and the worst were the girls who could dish it out but couldn’t take it. However, she probably wouldn’t have taken it so personally had Amber not so clearly set her sights on Gavin as her target.

“Still, Kurt warned us not to go off on our own,” Trent noted as he shoved his bundle of sticks into Gavin’s arms. “I’d better go and bring her back.”