Seven in the Wood

I am never going to finish this.

Petrova lived with her seven brothers and sisters in a forest. The forest was dark, and deep, and most of the trees looked odd in some way, with knotted limbs or faces. Sometimes they sprouted fruit while still holding blossoms, apparently confused about the seasons. At nights, the trees would whisper things best not heard, and chuckle darkly amongst themselves. Every morning the earth around their roots was disturbed, hinting at walking nights.

There were more animals than usual in this forest, and birds lived in every tree.
The creatures were often a little strange too, with winged squirrels and horned deer. The ground creatures avoided the trees as much as possible, not an easy task. The birds never seemed quite at ease on their perches, and were much less brightly colored than usual specimens. All the feathers were very short, perhaps to prevent them catching on the twisted branches.

The animals were very shy of humans, and Petrova, although quiet and peaceful, found it impossible to catch them for food. She usually ended up with eggs and plants, a situation that did not please her younger siblings very much. She brought home dead deer sometimes, huge things with disturbing gashes ripped out of their sides. She never went near those corpses except at noon, fearing the attackers, whatever they may have been. She had never seen anything bigger than the deer; this worried Petrova more than it calmed her.

This forest was very dense, with only one clearing. This is where the eight lived together in a ramshackle cottage. Mushrooms grew all around the cottage, a lucky state of affairs. The children, curiously enough, loved to eat these mushrooms as much as they hated all other vegetables, chomping them down at all times of the day. Although Petrova was not exactly sure what the mushrooms were, she figured that nobody had gotten ill from them yet; so she did nothing to curb their appetites. So far, her plan had worked perfectly.

The family, that is, Petrova and her younger siblings, had lost their parents years ago, and Petrova had been the sole nurturer and provider ever since. The children were half-wild, despite all of Petrova’s best efforts, and ranged about like feral cats. It was a miracle that she could keep them clothed. So Petrova did the best she could, wiping the noses when she could catch the little ones, and feeding them on the meager diet that was all she could provide.

Petrova herself was tall and dark-haired, with a permanent worry line worn into her forehead. She had very little time for herself. Her hair was knotty and her nails filthy. She rose before dawn ever day, fetching firewood and foraging for food. She was very thin and very pale. She looked far older than she should.

She loved her brothers and sisters, though, and did not mind her burden too much. She wished for someone to talk to, though, someone for company. The children had never stayed around long enough to pick up more than the basics of talking and spoke seldom. They preferred to mime what they wanted, apparently finding it to make more sense.

This ragtag family, however, did have one thing in common. All eight had extraordinary voices. Every night they would meet silently in the clearing and sing wordlessly into the night. At such times, Petrova could almost close her eyes and picture that they were a normal family, one with a mother and father. Always, though, the concert ended along with Petrova’s wishful thinking. It was the only break from reality she allowed herself.

They had lived there as long as anyone could remember, and Petrova knew that they would probably live there forever. She barely remembered her father-a stern, unsmiling man dressed in black-and could not, to her dismay, remember their mother at all. She wondered, sometimes, in those rare moments of rest, why her memory was so poor. She presumed, superstitiously, that it had something to do with the forest’s strange atmosphere. Other times she would blame it on those mushrooms and ban her charges from eating them. They would sulk so much that Petrova always relented and allowed them to eat the strange fungus again.

Their clothing was very poorly made; there were bolts of fabric locked up in a metal box in the house, but no clothing. Therefore, the unskilled Petrova was forced to make them herself. The clothes resembled sails when she had completed them; stiff and uncomfortable, with ungainly stitches stampeding crookedly up the sides. She hated both making the ugly things and wearing them; another reminder of her inability to watch over their little family properly. Her hands were too thick from life to hold the delicate needles well.

Cleaning, however, gave Petrova a sense of control in her life, so she scoured the cottage every day. This was no east task, with a dirt floor, but she attacked the job anyways. One might think that she was projecting her misery in life onto the cottage. One certainly might think that. Whatever the reason, the cottage was spotless on the inside.

On the outside, however, was a completely different story. Every bird in the forest had marked it, and its logs were scored by thousands of claw marks. Petrova tried inexpertly to fix these weaknesses. She spent many sleepless nights listening to the things outside assail the house, wondering with terror whether the next one would rip through. They never went outside after their singing concerts. Their voices seemed to make the wilder creatures of the forest angry; this was when they always assaulted the house. Petrova sometimes thought, half-seriously, that the monsters must not appreciate fine music. It is a curious fact that Petrova almost never made jokes, but when she did, they ended up being correct.


A magician eventually finds them and Petrova turns out to be a golem, if I remember correctly.