Flash Fiction #2: Dark Wood

The man swung his axe, lodging his blade in the tree. With a grunt he pulled it out and struck again. Suddenly as he buried his axe into the tree, he felt his blade strike stone. The man pulled out his axe and examined the chip he had made. There was no stone, but a darker sort of wood within the tree.

He poked at the dark wood with a branch, it didn’t feel like wood, and there were strange carvings that no axe could make on the dark wood. Some of it was a mossy red. Perhaps if he choped away other bits of the tree, he could find out what was inside. He marked higher up on the tree and continued to hew. He found more dark wood but it was protruding out further then before.

Curiosity overtook him, and he started to cut feverishly. Every time his axe struck the stony wood, he cut elsewhere until he could cut no more. His axe blade broke, he ran for home to get his spare. His wife looked on incredulously as he burst through the door, grabbed his axe, and ran out again without a word. Night fell, he cut even though he could not see what he was striking. In the middle of the night he collapsed from exhaustion.

Morning broke, he looked upon the tree. It was no longer a tree. He had never seen anything like it, no not in the whole of Brittany

Ellen ran - she could not look back. The branches lashed and whipped her face, but a greater lashing, and a larger whip waited for her if she got caught. Her feet flew forward pulling her further away from the town. She was ahead of the angry mob, but their sounds overtook her in flight. The salutation of their raging shouts, fueled her resolve quickening her pace.

But she knew not where she was going. She was a leaf in the whirlwind of the forest. They must not catch her, or the treasure she had stolen. In the darkness of dusk Ellen could see a clearing up ahead, she burst towards it. She broke through the curtain of the trees gazing upon the stony stage.

The symetry of the twin stairs let her know what she must do. She clawed at the ground, tearing earth from earth. The roar of the vigilant mob frightened her, there was no reason for why they had not discovered her.

She quickly placed the treasure into the hole and without hesitation heaped the dirt she had displace back upon it. Suddenly the barren ground shook and blades of grass prickled through the dirt. Ellen cried out in alarm, and the furious mob closed in.

Ellen never spoke, though they hurt her for days. The treasure was nowhere to be found, and the earth was undisturbed throughout the sepulcher. But the grass upon the ground she entrusted it’s care to, still manifests gratitude.