If tales are told to frighten the innocent, then let this be a warning.  Nothing is ever as it seems.  In fact, quite the opposite, in the case of a young druid named Winnie.

 

I’ll spare you the details of her youth, suffice it to say that she was born by parents of the earth, reared by the community as well as her family and followed in the footsteps of those that went before her without question.  Although still quite young, Winnie had become well respected by her community.

 

And so now you may wish to form a vision in your mind’s eye of the diminutive druid.   A small elf, was she…not so tiny as some, but still small and lithe and somewhat durable.  Not exactly graceful but neither clumsy…moreover sturdy, one might say. She has bright green eyes that could look through you if not past you, but eyes that possess an unspoken sadness, which brings me to the crux of this writ.

 

While life in her community was quiet, into every still night creeps a monster or two.  There came a time in her life that she was to be married to a well respected druid man named Fawn.  As his name implied, Fawn was a gentle creature, a man who communed as well with the animals as Winnie did with nature herself.  The two seemed to compliment each other in every way and so it seemed only natural that the two be wed.

 

Upon the evening before the great wedding feast, when all the preparations had been seen to and her family had retired for the night, Winnie grew anxious.  Too excited to sleep, Winnie decided to take a walk through the forest that surrounded her village, hoping to gain some peace from the flora and fauna that she loved.  And so she set out, her cloak pulled tight around her, shielding her from the cool night air. 

 

As she wandered, deep in thought, she found herself nearing a clearing in the woods.  She could smell the acrid scent of burning logs and spied the glow of a fire.  As she got closer she could hear voices rising and falling in the crisp night air.  She stopped behind an old chestnut tree, well hidden in the shadows, and strained her eyes to see what was before her.  Her eyes widened slowly as she adjusted to the light of the fire, then opened in shock as she tried to make sense of what she saw. 

 

Let it be said here that Winnie was not a naive child, though one of her faults had often been to see only good where there was sometimes evil.  For that she had been chastised from time to time by her elders.  She had heard stories of druids such as herself that had fallen from grace or who had chosen to follow a path of evil rather than good, but those tales had been lost on Winnie.  In her mind, that which she had not observed simply did not exist.  She remained oblivious to warnings that might involve any mistrust or deviance.  That is perhaps why her life took such an awkward turn, for when the veil of simplicity is removed from one’s eyes, the monsters that lurk in the shadows become all too real and all too apparent.

 

Around the fire were at least a dozen eleven beings, all dancing with wild abandon and chanting loudly. Beneath the din a steady beat was throbbing, spurring the dancers on to an almost frenzied state.  In the flickering flames she could see that some, the men, it seemed,  had their faces painted with markings that resembled a raccoon’s face, the dark eye patches framing their even darker eyes. Their bare chests glistened as they danced fervently.   The women, it appeared, had crowns made from leaves that adorned their heads, but little else covered their bodies as they writhed in time to the chants and rhythms of the drum.

 

As the noise reached its peak, the circle of creatures broke, making way for a man who wore a deer mask on his head.  Winnie couldn’t see much of his face as it was obscured by the snout of the animal, but she could see the creature’s eyes…not deer’s eyes, but eleven eyes that peered out, piercing through the darkness…wild eyes that sought out something, almost as if it was prey.

 

The drums continued to beat heavily, but the chanting had ceased.  The raccoon men formed a line on either side of the deer man.  The women, still writhing, fell at the deer man’s feet, their hands slithering upwards over his calves, towards his thighs.  Suddenly the beat of the drum changed, faster now, like the heartbeat of an animal being pursued.  The women continued their ministrations while the men lifted something high above their heads, passing it from one to the next, down the line, until it reached the deer man himself.  The drum beat stopped abruptly as the deer man turned to take the bundle from the last two raccoon men who supported it. 

 

Winnie gasped as the deer man turned to the fire once again and began to speak.  The words he spoke were familiar to her, a blessing of sorts that she had learned as a child.  But some of the words were wrong, she thought to herself.  Instead of a blessing celebrating life, the deer man had turned it into a curse of death.  He lowered his head and the bundle and the women at his feet arose to take the bundle from him.  They stepped back and arranged the bundle almost lovingly on the ground and tore away the cloth that had covered it.  Winnie stood horrified to see the shape of a woman beneath the cloths, naked and screaming for mercy with every ounce of her being.

 

The woman’s cries seemed to urge the deer man on and so he leapt over the fire, tearing what little clothing that had covered his body away.  He reached down and pulled the screaming woman up to him and held her by the waist, pressing himself into her with one thrust.  Her screams turned into an animal’s howl as she arched her back, trying to tear herself away from the deer man’s grasp, but to no avail, as he merely pulled her closer, digging his fingers into her soft flesh as he continued to thrust into her.   Winnie watched as the woman’s body went limp and shuddered as he lifted her feet from the ground and forced her legs around his waist.  In one last attempt to free herself, the woman flailed her arms at the man, scratching and clawing madly at his face.  It was then that the world as Winnie knew it changed forever, for beneath the deer mask was a face she recognized, the face of her fiancé, Fawn.

 

The world went slightly askew to Winnie at that moment and she heard a scream, but not a scream from the woman that seemed to be attached to Fawn.  This scream came from her own throat, a deep guttural, primal scream…one that raised the awareness of the crowd of elves.  They stood still, so still that for a moment it was difficult to detect that they were even there, until Winnie heard Fawn’s captive sobbing.  Winnie tried to step backwards into the shadows, but it was as if her feet were entangled in a root and she couldn’t move.  She looked directly at Fawn and he at her, his eyes wide in disbelief.  She had seen…Winnie had discovered his secret.

 

He looked down at the quivering woman and shook his head from side to side slowly at first.  Winnie watched as he lifted his head slowly and looked again in her direction, only this time, the face of Fawn had changed.  No longer did she see wide eyed surprise, but a wild glare.  He bared his teeth revealing fangs sharper than any wolf and as he opened his mouth, Winnie heard a growl that sent shivers up her spine.  He threw his head back and howled and with one fluid motion pulled the woman upwards so they were face to face.  He glanced again towards Winnie and reared his head to and fro then swiftly buried his face into the woman’s neck.  Winnie heard an unmistakable gurgle as the woman tried to scream once more, but found that she could only manage a rather wet gush as the man before her tore away at her neck, taking her windpipe between his teeth and piercing it with his sharp fangs.

 

There is little more to say about what transpired in that clearing that cool autumn night, except that the innocence of two women was lost in the space of one instant.  Fawn dropped the body to the ground and himself, fell to the ground on all fours while the men and women around him began their chant again, this time slower and more deliberate, as if uttering some sort of prayer to their gods.  Winnie began to loose what little grip she had left on reality as she saw a twisted version of the face of the man she loved hovering above her.   She wretched tasting the blood from his lips as he forced his mouth over hers.   His hard, sweating body forced her to the ground and Winnie momentarily lost consciousness as she struck her head on the roots beneath her.  She fought to regain control, her arms outstretched, frantically looking for anything that might aid her in escaping his grasp.

 

Winnie evaded the monster that sought to tear at her robes.  Her fingers found a hard, thin branch of the tree that towered over them, a branch that had fallen during an unseen storm some nights before.  She grabbed the stick and pummeled the man deer, blindly at first, then with an earnest force that surprised her.  Startled at the onslaught, Fawn reared back on his haunches, covering his head with crossed arms, but Winnie continued her blind attack until the body of Fawn, once the gentle druid, once Winnie’s intended life mate, lay in a pool of blood, his skull crushed by her blows.

 

The rumors of a pack of evil druids can still be heard in the village where Winnie lived.  Stories of a human sacrifice made in the clearing just at the center of the woods on the outskirts of town are still told in hushed tones on cold autumn evenings.  Tales of a man, the leader of these evil ones, who was killed by his betrothed on the night before their wedding, are whispered amongst the elders when other weddings are being planned.  And what of the legend?  What of the young druid Winnie who left her home in utter shame, carrying the very stick that she had used in those dark woods that terrifying evening, who had murdered, who had taken the life of that which she held so dear?  Her story is still left to unfold as she wanders the lands in search of her self, in search of the meaning of her life now that she has fallen from grace, no longer naïve, certainly no longer innocent.  Is she still able to follow the path of good or will the very evil she saw in the clearing that night forever trouble her…forever haunt her.