The girls in the village know not to seek out the one who lives in the shadows. They don’t know why, only hearing the whispers of their mothers from the cradle-side, cautionary murmurs as they took their first steps, and shouts of warning as they bounded towards the forest for the first time. These words of deterrence are age-worn and time-honored, as old as any ancestor a girl might remember.
“Don’t talk to strangers,” Avie whispered as she skipped through fields towards the wood at the edge of the town. “That leads to dangers.” She paused in her skipping, pleased with her couplet. “Don’t ask bad questions, just take suggestions?” She shook her head. “Only comes rubble from looking for trouble.” Skipping resumed. “Just make sure to stay away, or your life you’ll have to pay.” She reached the edge of the wood.
“Those are some pretty rhymes. What do they mean?” a voice echoed to her from beyond the trees.
Avie startled, heart beating to the rhythm of her couplets. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“And why not?”
“I… don’t know. I’m just not.”
A sigh echoed through the trees. “I need a little more to work with than that.”
“I can’t even see you, so I don’t trust you. I’m leaving.”
A plain leather boot stepped from behind a tree, then another, revealing an older girl wearing a traveler’s cloak and muddied jeans. “Scared?” the girl asked, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
“You don’t look particularly… shadow-y,” Avie admitted. “I guess I can stay.”
“So,” the girl pressed on. “Why aren’t you supposed to talk to me?”
“You come from the forest. The dark one filled with shadows. My mother says you’re dangerous.”
“How would she know?”
“Her mother told her.”
“And her mother before her said the same?”
“I suppose,” Avie responded quietly. “But they must have told me for a reason.” She paused. “Mustn’t they have?”
“Well,” the traveler offered, “I’m certainly not old enough to have ever met your great-grandmother, am I?”
Avie shook her head once again, her chin lowering to her chest.
“Then she couldn’t know if I’m dangerous or not.” The girl’s eyes stayed frozen in a pre-planned, confident smirk but they twitched as she spoke, as if her own words hurt her. “Do you know what I think? I think these villagers, these mothers you speak of, are afraid of the dark and the unknown. Are you?”
“No,” Avie stated, taking a couple of steps toward the tree line.
“Good.” Avie felt the girl’s hand grip her own, firmer than any hand she’d ever felt, and the shadows engulfed her.
The girls of the village know not to seek out the one who lives in the shadows. And those bold enough to ask questions have never come back.
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