Creative, but not necessarily concise.
I don’t know if I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I know I’ve always had a lot to say—and a big imagination. Creative writing is a great way to exercise your mind. I still have the first story I remember writing. I wrote it by hand and then nervously waited in the hallway while my mom typed it on the typewriter. My teacher wasn’t as excited about it as I had hoped, but I thought it was a great story. It was about unicorns, pegasus, or maybe both – anyway. I stuck to creative reading and gave up the writing part soon after. No one cared what I had to say; who would care what I wrote? Fast forward through a few once-in-a-lifetime world events for this millennial, and here I am with my own blog.
tl;dr Time has gone by, perspectives have changed, and well… what do I have to lose?
This is one of my story ideas and the first I’ve shared with anyone. It’s super rough. I’ve written the beginning about 15 times. The original opening is about 13 pages. The ending I wrote for a creative writing course I took at ASU. In this course, I studied the novels, writings, and teachings of Stephen King. The writing assignment had a maximum word count, and we were to try to emulate a certain style from King. For my ending, I focused on the imagery King can express with the least amount of words. My inspiration for this imagery came from the ax scene in his novel Misery. (If you want to see the full analysis lmk!) I’ve expanded it since I originally wrote it to add more detail, but who knows what will make the final cut?
I can’t promise I’ll update this regularly. Maybe when I’ve made significant enough changes to my working draft, I’ll come back in and edit it, but for now – this is just a taste. I’m looking forward to the day I come back to this post with a link to purchase my book. See you in a few years!
Rowan
Flying high over the trees, seeing nothing but the dark green tree tops and the settled dense fog, the raven flew down through a small clearing, landing on the edge of a burnt-out roof. Looking down, he saw her sleeping.
“Caw, caw,” said the raven, jumping down to the sleeping girl. He nuzzled her face and cawed again.
“What it is silly bird?” Rowan said sleepily.
He usually didn’t wake her up. Nudging her more, she finally sat up.
“Munin, did you find something?”
Scratching his head, the girl sat up and looked around the dark cottage. The air was damp, and she shivered as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Placing her hand on the ground where she slept, it felt was cool and mossy, the air slightly smokey. Rowan couldn’t salvage much after the fires. As time when by, she and Munin collected what they could from the other cottages, but there wasn’t much. She set up a small sleeping area in the kitchen corner for herself and her pet Ravin, as it was the only safe place left.
Munin started hopping around more, trying to get her attention. She sat up and watched him fly across the room, landing on her leather bag. The sun sent a weak ray through the burnt-out ceiling, dimly lighting the room. Seeing the fairy dust floating in the sunbeam, Rowan stuck out her hand to touch it. Twirling her hand, watching it glow and shine, she forgot for a moment where she was. Rowan could ignore the burnt smell from the charred roof, the crooked beams and shaky logs holding up what was left. She felt light and golden, the fairy dust giving a slight hallucinogenic effect. Ignoring the cottage crumbling around her, she didn’t notice Munin flying towards her.
The entire village became engulfed in flames that night. The heat and flames pushed everyone out of the village walls, leaving Rowan behind. She had run back to save the spell books and became trapped. Rowan struggled to keep her cottage from completely burning down, using water from their only well. She did what she could on her own.
Munin dropped her leather bag before her, returning her to reality.
“What do you want, Munin? Did you have any luck last night?”
Rowan pulled out a bundle of paper and unrolled it on the dirt floor, using the sun for light. She avoids candles as much as she can, and light bugs have been hard to come to lately. Rowan was running out of paper. She protected the spell books during the fires, but there wasn’t much extra paper left. Rowan could only leave the village walls during the day to strip the trees for the bark to use as paper. It was the only time it was relatively safe. She couldn’t go far, though.
After a while, the forest would repeat itself, shifting and changing around her. Causing her to be disoriented and lost, and she’d find herself back where she started, or sometimes worse, far from her village, putting her at risk of being caught out at night. Smoothing out the innermost paper of the scroll, Rowan looked at Munin and said, “Show me where. Are you sure? It’s the first one we’ve seen, but it’s the same one. Ok, we’ll be ready to go in the morning.”
Over time, Rowan trained Munin to communicate with her. He could fly faster than the forest could change, and if she could find a pattern or rhyme to the changes, she could outsmart Foster’s enchantment and perhaps escape. She was running out of water and needed food. She knew she could escape the clutches of Foster and his wolves.
Rowan started by drawing symbols for things like rivers, ponds, meadows, and trees and then showing them to Munin when they saw them in person. She’d take him for walks outside the village during the day to forage and draw the symbols in the dirt next to whatever it was. Munin caught on quickly, and they started by mapping the village. Once Rowan felt confident in Munin’s skills, they set out to map the forest. Soon the north village walls were covered in charcoal drawings of creeks and streams. The east walls were covered in pictures of dense forests, some with a few big trees and others thick with hundreds of thin trunks. Rowan was starting to figure out the pattern. In the fall, they would tackle the western and southern walls, and then it would be time to go as soon as winter came.
Rowan realized the forest would stop changing as soon as the sun rose. This knowledge proved a massive advantage in the summer with the longer days. Rowan could leave the village more often and go further than usual. Using the last of the paper she had and some charcoal from one of the cottages, Rowan copied the wall maps onto the paper so she could bring them out to explore more. She started foraging wild carrots and garlic, marking down on the map of that area the sun’s location so she could find them again. Rowan found wild blueberries one day, and later, Munin caught a small rodent close to dusk. That was a close one. She almost didn’t return to the village before sundown and, for a quick, fleeting moment, thought she heard the snarl of the wolves.
For a while, things weren’t too bad. Rowan cleaned up one of the other burnt-out cottages enough to use as storage and spent much of her time salvaging what she could from the rest of the village. She tried replanting one of the gardens. However, the creeks and rivers constantly changed under Foster’s spell, and the everlasting weeping tree dried up. The only water she had was what she and Munin could get on their daily outings. Between her cottage, her storage area, and the plaza filled with everything else she could save, Rowan tried to survive the best she could.
She remembers the night it happened. The summer was golden with the fuzzy haze of the diffused sun through the trees. The flowers were in full bloom, and the sweet smell of honeysuckles from the stone wall crept into her nose like a thin smoke. She felt warm and hopeful, knowing this would be a great year. Rowan would turn 16 this winter and become the high priestess as told in the book of their elders. She wasn’t supposed to become the priestess yet, but there was an incident last year during the previous anointing.
The night of Foster’s anointing, he did everything he was supposed to. Except for one thing he took too far. Foster was practicing magic on animals. He had created an everlasting spell on some wolf cubs he found. They wreaked havoc in the forest, and nothing could stop them. No matter how they died, they would be alive again shortly. Savage as ever. Not seeing anything like that, the elders banished Foster from the clan and, more importantly, from the woods. He left quietly, and Rowan was in line to take his place. She had learned the magic from the Book of Spells. She could create crops from seeds instantly, the everlasting tree overflowing with water. The waterways within the cobblestoned village were teeming, supplying all the cottages with fresh water and irrigating their crops and meadows.
No one noticed as the village filled with smoke. The sky was loaded with perfumes, smells of burning artifacts, and flowers from the plaza’s center from the center of the plaza. Rowan saw it first. She was out in the clover meadow collecting the last summer beetles and flower petals. Years later, the village needed to be more sustainable. The everlasting weeping tree had slowed to a trickle that barely fed the lichen and moss. Rowan didn’t have enough water to divert it to the gardens within the walls.
Most of the magic Rowan knew was for healing and blessing and primarily ceremonial. Foster must have known about the anointing ceremony. He must have known the clan was ready to revert to practical magic. Rowan was to be taught the ways of enchantment and protection and how to cast defensive spells. She knows this is why the fires started at her family’s cottage first. He wanted to burn the spell books.
Rowan likes to remember the village before the forest fire. The witches used partly moss-covered dry stone they found to make the wall of their village. Only about 4 feet tall, it was more of a boundary line than a wall. A gate was placed at the south end of the village, carved from a felled tree. Rowan remembered the large fountain in the center of the cobblestone plaza, and directly to the northwest of the fountain, the plaza expanded toward a small cluster of cottages. This is where they used to hold their ceremonies, the Solstice celebrations. There were altars everywhere. Some altars dry various herbs and flowers. Others housed different-sized dried gourds to keep water to be put out during the full moon.
The witches would make mystical moon water each month to use in their positions and spells. There was a big stone slab, about 2 feet by 6 feet, with slight indentations along the length of it, one about every foot. The witches used this table as a group pestle, grinding wheat, seeds, herbs, and flower petals. Rowan loved rubbing the flower petals when she was little, adding them to the moon water to make paints. When the fountain worked, it flowed with cool, fresh water, the most beautiful shade of blue. It reminded her of lapis lazuli, fed by an underground aqueduct. Before reaching the fountain, there was an expansive and breathtaking meadow directly to the east, and about fifteen meters behind it was another cluster of cottages.
Start back again to the present.
Middle is missing
Almost the end – no spoilers
“Where is it? Where is it?”
Rowan ran through the darkness of the dense forest, tripping over exposed tree roots and running through low branches. She could hear the wolves behind her. Rowan has to find the clearing tonight. It’s the only place they can’t follow her. It’s pitch black, and none of the trees are marked; she must be going in the right direction.
“Munin,” shouting to her raven, “the clearing, where is it?”
Trying to use a light-burst potion, Rowan dug inside her leather bag and threw handfuls of broken glass and honey behind her. The wolves hate the light. They can’t be in it.
Her magic hasn’t worked well since she left the village for a few days. She tripped, fell, and broke everything in her leather bag the first night. Looking inside the bag, Rowan saw a broken glass mixed in roots, dried flowers, crystals, mind-altering honey, and enchanted ash collected at the bottom. The plume of smoke that escaped made her a bit dizzy and disoriented. Her raven, Munin, stayed by her side until the effects were gone fighting off water sprites and keeping an eye out for Foster and his wolves.
On the second night, she dreamt vividly about the wolves. Rowan heard their growling and snapping behind her head, their hot breath drifting low like smoke suffocating her. She woke up drenched in sweat, surrounded by nothing but darkness, hearing only the flapping of Munin around her. She tried to go back to sleep the best she could.
As the sun rose and the mist faded from the forest floor, the water sprites attacked Munin as he watched over the sleeping girl. Thinking he was calling her to run and follow him, she quickly packed her gear and took off. The sprites disappeared once they knew Rowan was off her path—disoriented and lost, Rowen and Munin set up camp for another night. Rowan tried using what she could from her bag to make a glow paste to mark the trees in the area. The forest looked the same daily, but she knew it wasn’t. They’d learn by nightfall if they were in a new part of the forest.
Rowan knew there was no use trying to stay up during the night when the forest moved. She couldn’t make any noise or even make a fire. The wolves would track her down instantly. Foster was the only one who could move the forest, and he and his wolves were immune to its effects -floating through the woods at night like ghosts and hunting her down until the sun rose. If she stayed in one spot during the night, the hope was that they’d wake up closer to the clearing.
Rowan knows the portal is on the other side of the clearing, and Foster cannot leave the forest. She might have a chance if she can find a way to travel there at night without getting caught in the move. Munin found this clearing on one of his scouting nights a few months ago, and they’ve been waiting for the time to run ever since.
“Slow down, sweet girl. There’s no reason to run.” Foster’s voice is soothing in her ears. “Why does it make me feel warm?” she thinks.
“I can do this all night, girl. Surrender, join me.”
Under Foster’s spell, the trees and bushes started pulling and grabbing at Rowan’s cloak, leaving strips of clothing on the branches, the twigs scratching at her legs, the branches outstretched and tangled in her hair, slowing her down.
“Stop, let me go!” She screamed at the trees.
Looking behind, she could not see Foster or his wolves, but she knew they were there. Feeling hot breath against her neck, Rowan pulled her cloak over her head. Reaching into her bag, careful not to cut herself on the broken jars, she felt around for anything she could to make an enchantment.
CRACK! The lightning struck behind Rowan, illuminating the forest all around her, and the smoke from the smoldering tree quickly filled her nostrils; Foster had changed the woods again. The fire crawled down the tree and across the forest floor. Pivoting to her right, Rowan tries to find any trail or opening. Crouched under her cloak, she can see the forest edge, and she needs to run for it, with or without Munin. Looking back at Foster, she sees him motion to his wolves, “Go get her.”
Before she can react, the two giant, snarling wolves come bounding towards her, tossing their spittle onto her face, stinging her eyes. As she got up to run, she pulled out a handful of the brown dust, sticky from the honey and specked with broken glass. Chanting rapidly and quietly, “Protection tonight, blinding light,” Rowan blows the dust mix toward the wolves. A vast, dense dust cloud quickly grows between Rowan and Foster’s wolves. The darkness started to take them over, but on Rowan’s side, the light stayed, and she needed it to escape.
“Rowan… Rowan…” She could hear Foster’s voice thundering through the dust cloud.
“Munin, where are you? We have to go!”