The Solitary Tree Part 1

Tales of Whispering Oaks

The Solitary Tree

Part 1

By: Chase L. Currie

1434 in the year of our Lord

Autumn

The dark rainy days of Autumn had long come to the realm of Sherwood Forest, and on a good day, Charity Glassleaf would be enjoying the chill but not today. Today the Whispering Hood was fighting for her life.

                Charity paw fell on the tree while her other paw pressed hard against her side. She kept the long dagger in her wound. She knew if she pulled it free she would bleed to death in no time. She couldn’t die, not now, not out here in the wildness.

                She pushed herself from the tree and followed the smell of smoke. She almost didn’t believe there was smoke on the air this far out in the forest. No one lived out here, she thought, but there was the smell, a sweet, warm smell of meat being cooked on an iron stove.

                 Why was someone out here?

What were they doing?

And the more important question were they a part of the Spellcrafter cult she finished hunting an hour ago. She was sure she got them all, it was her duty, and the sole point of her rank as a Whispering Hood.

As a Whispering Hood, she was to hunt and kill anyone practicing magic in the realm; the magic that killed her younger brother, her only brother.

One of his friends talked her brother into playing a game which involved magic, and the game turned deadly. The magic took her brother’s life for the spell the Spellcrafter wanted to cast. The spell needed a soul to be used.

The friend ran away, disappeared, and the next day Charity joined the Hoods giving her word she would find him and kill him.

Charity looked down at her paw painted in a crimson hue of her blood, and all she could think about was how good the meat was going to taste if she lived.

The smoke thickens in the air, and she dropped her black cloak around her wound to hide it. The black cloak and hood with the Royal blue under belly were a clear sign of her rank. It was the only thing all Hoods shared, that in their hatred of magic.

Anyone at first glance would know she was a Hood and not to mess with her.

The pain ran up her side as she stepped around a tree to find an old black tree in front of her eyes. An ash tree with giant roots twisting into the earth, a tree she didn’t think was in the realm anymore. She was sure they were all chopped down to make black bows ages ago, but there was at least one which survived.

But the tree with its dying gray-blue leaves wasn’t what caught Charity off guard; it was the orange door at the bottom and windows building into the trunk of the massive tree. There was a small brick chimney coming out the side with smoke pouring out of it. Someone was home and cooking dinner.

She glanced down at the handle in her side and then back at the door.

Could she risk it?

Did she have a choice? 

Charity stumble forward making her way to the door. She went to knock on it but the world started spinning and her head did the knocking for her paw.