The gate was imposing, enormous, and decrepit. Moss, the ever-present indicator of those ancient things forgotten by the modern world, clung to the wooden frame like a woman embracing her husband just back from the war. The metal hinges, seeped in rust, reflected the sun like a pool of dried blood. This lone sentinel stood quietly, guarding its secret, awaiting the day when the world would remember it.

The key, heavy, old, and rusted, carefully crafted by a long-forgotten locksmith under the orders of the fairy king Bjornicadru hung heavy on the chain of the explorer.

Slowly the key turned in the lock, the gears turning for the first time in millennia,

“GRAK! CRUNG! PRAG,” screamed the gears as the centuries of dust and rust broke off.

Pushing with all the strength that he had in him on the wind-torn gate, George stepped through and paused for a moment. This was not what he had expected.

The musty stench of rotting vegetation and stagnant water assaulted him, covering him in a cloud of stink that, retching, he could taste. Gnarled wood from dead trees jutted out of the unkempt grass and shrubs like the random teeth of a retired street fighter, uneven and at random.

The flowers, for which the garden had once been famous for, were all withered and long dead from centuries of neglect. Rotten vegetation covered the walls surrounding the gate, giving it less of a “garden of the Fairy King” feeling and more of an “impending doom because you walked into the garden of the Grim Reaper” vibe.

Chills ran down his body uncontrollably as he tried to will his body to step further into the garden despite the growing compulsion to forget his mission and flee for his life; everything here was either sinister of dead, so how long would it be before he also was lost to time and forgotten.

“No,” he whispered silently to himself and whatever was making the rustling within the bushes to his right, “I am on a mission of vital importance. I must see if it is here.”

The bush, misshapen and brown, seemed to be closer to him. Was he seeing things? Had the pressure of exploring finally caught up with him and given him a case of insanity?

He shook his head to get the cobwebs of potential insanity out, and stepped through the threshold, hesitating for a moment to catch his breath. He had always been prone to “flights of fancy” and, according to his childhood imaginary friend Bobo Jam-Butterpot III, had an overactive imagination.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Maybe, this was another case like when he fought the local vampire lord who turned out to just be an albino recluse. Maybe.

It didn’t really matter though, because ever since he had found the key at the black market, which, surprisingly WASN’T frequented by people dressed only in black, he had been obsessed with finding the Fairy Garden. It had been lost to myth, and if he could prove that fairies had actually existed at one point then maybe, just maybe, he would be able to also prove that some magicians practiced real magic, and weren’t all charlatans. Maybe

It had taken him weeks to find where, according to all of the stories, the garden of the Fairy King had been. Countless hours spent pouring over what everyone else called “fairy tales” but that he now knew were historically accurate tales for clues so that he could geolocate where it would be.

And now, he had found it! And also now, he was being stared at by what might-or-might-not-be a living anthropomorphic shrub.

“It’s not polite to stare, you know. Quite rude, actually. I am George, nice to meet you.”

He nervously held out his hand for a polite handshake, just like he had been taught to do by his father.

“Crack, Creak, Crack, Snap” replied the shrub, indignantly.

“I, uh, I am a human explorer, most famous explorer in my school. What is your name?” His hand, still extended, slumped down to his side.

“Crack, Crack, Snap” whispered the thing as it inched closer to him. How could something that didn’t have feet be getting closer to him?

He stepped to the left gingerly, hoping to get some distance between himself and the ever-encroaching plant-thing, and stepped on his own foot, tumbling face down into the muck and the mire. His mouth filled with sludge as he finally heard what might be a word come out of the plant-thing

“Cuuurse.”

He spat as much of the filth out his mouth and struggled unsuccessfully to get up

“Curse? No, I’m not allowed to curse. Once I said the F word and had to wash my mouth out with soap. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Nannie only had liquid dish soap. So, no. I’m not going to curse.”

The woody thickness of a branch wrapped itself around his arm and, with a firm tug, pulled him out of the mud and dumped him violently in the meter tall grass.

“Cuuuuuurseeee, sssssstuuuupiiiid,” swept through the plant thing like a breeze through a willow tree.

“Hey now, that’s not nice. I went through a lot of effort to find this place, and all that you do is tell me to say swear words and then insult me. How dare you! I’ve been nothing but nice!”

Fuming in anger, he decided to leave and return at another time, but, once again, his legs were not working.

Plant-thing grabbed his arm.

“Leeeeaaaaafff, cuuuuurssseeee ssstuuuuppiiid,” it hissed at him.

And that was when he noticed it, a shiny reflective flash of the sun on the plant thing’s branch. Except that “branch” wasn’t really the correct word for what it was. “Arm” was the accurate term for what a person would wear something shiny, like a watch.

Overwhelmed by the realization of the fact that Plant-Thing didn’t begin its life as a plant, George slumped into the mud.

“Fuuu…”