Maggie feels guilty. And annoyed. And angry. At 11yrs old she’s a querulous soul with a perpetual frown that prefers practical over fashionable and has no time for any silliness. Especially if it gets her in trouble. She has neither the time nor patience to be shut down by anyone who thinks they’re right, against all evidence to the contrary, and adults seem determined to lump all children into one group. Unacceptable.
She’s not very creative, hates riddles and puzzles, doesn’t enjoy hard work or anything physically demanding, and she prefers learning functional information that will help in daily life instead of pointless trivia. She does enjoy learning for what’s that worth.
She wears a thick blue cotton cloak with a hood, the hood pulled up to hide her brown hair wrapped in twin braids, a white button-down blouse, brown wool skirt, cotton socks, and leather laced leather shoes. Those are the basics of the approved journey wear that her family can provide. Underneath she has a pair of warm leggings, just in case, a single pocket leather travel bag with three plastic store bags, a pair of polyester work gloves, two oat bars, and two sandwich bags. She’s got her grandma’s sun metal star burst charm on a spare leather thong around her neck.
It's not that she doesn't trust her family but she knows that she'll need more than just a travel cloak, a “wand”, and a children’s book to overnight in the woods. Supposedly the woods aren’t that thick and they’ll be able to trade and barter in the town beyond, but that still leaves a day or two in the woods. She's not sure what to do with the stick or the book of nursery rhymes but feels that they're connected. She hadn't been given food, matches or a flashlight. Is she supposed to turn her cloak into a lean-to? She knows that everyone is supposed to meet up at 4am at the front of the school, but she also knows that that's new. In the olden days, or so her parents and grandparents told her, they’d sneak out at different times and wander through the woods on their own. Supposedly they’d finished their Journey and decided to come back instead of just being stuck in the village.
She knows they're not supposed to go into the woods before 11pm, that’s another rule of the Night Trip, so she hopped a fence and is hiding behind the tree in Martin's lawn to avoid detection. She's heard enough stories of the elders going into the woods with a compass and a fire starter, and she's been told many times of how grateful she should be for the cloak and a wand, and she knows everyone who shows up will get in trouble if found taking the Night Trip on their own instead of meeting up with the other townsfolk to have one last get together before the children are shepherded across the road to the Whispering Field, but Tradition. Strange how the older generations are so intent on telling the latest generation how they’d never manage then doing everything they can to make rules to stop them from even trying.
Maggie watches as Elira and Candace casually approach one another from opposite ends of the road before converging at the crossroad before the center point of the Whispering Field, a long clear expanse of grass and dried irrigation channels that separate the town from the forest. As they move to meet at the crossroad Maggie checks what she can see of them against herself and feels nausea and concern. They're both wearing the same cloak. And their cloaks match hers. There's no uniform and every family is supposed to work independently for their Offering. Outside sponsorship is illegal! Not just frowned upon: there are laws against stacking the deck for or against an Offering. The rules are changing, true, but enough that they're not disqualified? Doubtful.
The rules are simple. Or they were. Offerings are children no older than 12 and no younger than 9 who will go on a Journey that begins with a Night Trip. The Night Trip has to be made over the Whispering Field and into the woods. Offerings have to wear clothing similar to what the first Offerings wore. That means cotton, wool, and leather. Button-down shirts for everyone, long skirts if you have long hair, short pants for those with short hair, leather shoes and usually leather or twine ties. Long hair has to be worn in two braids wrapped around the head as best as one can. Short hair has to be parted and combed down. Families are allowed to “gift” three items. For Maggie these are the cloak, “wand”, and book of nursery rhymes.
Offerings are technically allowed to bring their own items, as long as anything not worn doesn’t surpass a count of ten. Maggie hoped her gloves counted as extra items because 1) they’re a polyester-cotton blend, and 2) she seriously doubts that her ancestors had work gloves. Heavy leather gloves for super difficult work, but not lightweight comfortable gloves. Her reasoning is her leather travel bag counts as one item if it violates the rules of being a worn item, the pair of gloves count as two gloves, there’s two cereal bars, two shop bags, two sandwich bags and two cereal bars. Her grandma’s charm on a thong should count as a worn piece of jewellery, her leggings hopefully count as long underwear, which her ancestors would have worn, and she’s more than willing to argue her point. What she’s done is legal and to the letter and the heart of the rules if her parents were allowed flint and steel as their two items. No way did early Offerings have steel yet!
But the cloaks. There’s no way that they hadn’t gotten together to get a bulk discount on either the fabric and have someone sew them all to look the same or they’d all chipped in to purchase them like a uniform. That means other families, multiple, had assisted in her acquiring the cloak. That multiple people, not family, had conspired to affect the outcome of the Journey for Offerings not their own.
Maggie releases a disgusted sigh. To be disqualified because their parents were being overly cautious while bragging about how much more resourceful they are is beyond irritating. If she fails because of their actions she'll never forgive them. She clambers over the short wooden fence, blood boiling as she stalks over to her friends.
"Are we the only ones here?" Elira asks while looking around. She’s absently picking at the fabric of her skirt and Maggie wonders if it’s because she’s itchy or if it’s just nerves.
"Did our parents all buy the same cloak?" Maggie cuts in. "After all their talk about how we probably won't make it through the woods and they sabotage us?"
"I don't think they'd do that on purpose," Candace shrugs while dismissing her concerns with a wave of her hand.
"Well, I'm not happy," Maggie glares, crossing her arms.
"I saw Malcolm and Evan go into the woods earlier," Elira shrugs, trying to sound casual even though she’s still fidgeting.
"It's not time yet!" Maggie shouts before Elira and Candace shush her.
No way is that allowed! The rules of the Night Trip are that you have to cross the Whispering Field into the woods! That means leaving town through the field and you can’t do that until after 11pm. The whole point is to traverse the woods at midnight to 3am. There’s plenty of margin for error or unusual circumstances. Supposedly there’s something about the Whispering Field that causes nightmares and broken dreaming in those who try to cross it at night. Whether that’s the elders giving her a warning that they’ve set up traps of some kind or if there’s something truly unusual about the Whispering Field, Maggie doesn’t know. She avoids the fields year round except for mandatory group activities. The field is weird. It’s a near flat plain with runnels going at intervals across its length in weirdly uniform lines. The field never floods and nothing gets planted there but the grass never grows into those runnels. And there’s never leaves from the forest past the edge of the tree line. The field is always clear. Always green, except for the runnels, and nothing every flows through the runnels.
"Well--" Candace begins.
"The others are coming," Elira gives them a heads up as groups of 9-11yr old children start converging on them.
Everyone gathers around, catching up and comparing their family "gifts". Once they start doing an inventory they learn that they're all wearing the same cloaks and every family has given a "wand". Maggie makes no mention of her travel bag and only one person comments on it but doesn’t ask what’s in it. While they're waiting for the countdown to go into the woods one of the guys that hid in the trees pops out and brazenly waves from across the field. There's grumbling about cheating and getting a head start from the group on the road before one of them separates to address the rest.
"So, first things first," Kally nods gratitude when everyone settles down and focuses on her. "Thank you all that have obeyed the rules and not crossed the Whispering Fields or gone into the woods before 11pm."
A subdued cheer, still loud in the silence but caught and swallowed by a sudden fog.
"We've less than five minutes so we're going to do a quick headcount and then be on our way," Kally nods again and her subordinates, Janice and Jace, tell everyone to form ranks.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Janice stands off to the side to count the rows and Jace gets everyone into straight columns. Seven columns and five rows mark that all 35 Offerings are present at 10:58pm.
"But there's supposed to be at least three boys in the woods already," Maggie stomps her foot in frustration that they could miss something so obvious.
"Maybe the others circled back out of the woods," Elira says reassuringly and Maggie quiets but continues to glare while crossing her arms again.
"Maybe they don't want to get in trouble even though they were already out there?" Candace points out.
"Everyone's breaking the rules today," Maggie grumbles mockingly while following the others across the road and to the ditch on the edge of the Whispering Fields.
Elira and Candace loop their arms around Maggie's arms and try to skip with her across the field. Apparently Maggie’s sulking and refusal to take part make the game that much more exciting. One failed skip and they’re laughing. Elira tries to get Maggie to join while Candace comments on the thickening fog. Another attempt to skip and Elira sighs, looking around while Candace tries her hand at getting Maggie in better spirits. On the third attempt they can barely make each other out of the fog despite being linked, arm in arm. They make it less than 10 feet out of 100 before they stumble from the field and nearly plow Maggie into a tree. Maggie leans back, kicking one foot up to brace against the tree but her leg hits air and they stumble to a stop. She didn’t mind her friends playing their games but there was no reason to force her to participate. She did mind almost being brained against a tree.
"What was that?" Maggie hisses, livid before the near impact nevermind nearly being brained.
Maggie glares at Elira on her right to see nothing but fog and her raised arm. Irritated she swings her head to the left to glare at Candace but she's gone too. Maggie hesitantly lowers her arms. She’s not sure if this is another joke they’re playing but she can’t focus enough to be angry when she searches for and can’t find the tree she’d nearly run into. She’s sure it was there. It’d come up so suddenly. She tried to brace her foot against it and it was still there. The second her foot should have hit it’d gone through instead and suddenly the tree was gone. But where’d it go? Oh. Oh, no.
Maggie’s gotten turned around in her search. She “curses” her foolishness, calling herself an idiot in a vicious whisper while crouching and checking the ground in an attempt to find sign of her friends or the illusion. Noticing an irregularity she ducks down and feels more than hears something go over her head. She stiffens but doesn’t freeze and crouch runs at an angle to the path she assumes the object had taken overhead in an effort to get away. She’s lost, surrounded by mist, her friends have disappeared, and there’s no visibility. Is this Ally in the Tunnels or Talia in the Dead Fields?
"Be calm, be quiet and mark your surroundings," she whispers to herself, hoping the fog muffles her words.
She tries to recall the story of Ally in the Tunnels, a tale of a girl wandering into tunnels with her friends and finding herself in a sewer connected to a crypt. The lessons of the story are to keep an eye out for landmarks, leave yourself clues, and don’t shout out or the Others will get you. The Others were fear, panic, madness and small scrabbling creatures with no eyes and sharp claws and teeth.
She'd already spoken out in anger after losing her temper, so that's the first two rules broken. She drops into a squat looking at the grass of the Whispering Fields and sees that this isn't the field of grass and dry water channels. She's standing on overgrown weeds and dead grass. Is this still Ally in the Tunnels or Talia in the Dead Fields? If this is Ally in the Tunnels she wouldn’t be able to make out any marks she leaves in all this fog.
If this is Talia in the Dead Fields she needs to find weeping roots or choking roots. Or anything really smelly. She’ll need a way to smell like a corpse or to resemble the wandering dead. In a pinch she could always try to soil herself but she'd really, really rather not. As she's trying to figure out what the trick or lesson is she peeks up to see the fog gone and others roaming around looking lost and confused. And injured. Either more people have made it to the tree line than she sees or they've sent so many back to the village.
She's nearly halfway across the field. But she hadn't moved that far at all. Less than 10ft away Elira is stumbling around, her hair, usually in a ponytail, but should be in twin tails, is a loose frizzy mass with dirt and grass in it, her thick blue cloak that matches Maggie's is thin and threadbare, and she doesn't appear to notice that her surroundings have changed. Or maybe they hadn't and she'd watched as everyone else disappeared. She resembled the wandering dead with her expression of loss and confusion, but is it an act or did she witness something?
Maggie turns her attention back to the ground. She was caught off-guard last time, but next time she’ll be ready! Looking around she spots three different clusters of thin dark leaves. She digs them up, getting one white bulb that weeps cloudy white, one purple bulb that weeps clear and one white bulb that weeps clear. She’s not sure if the clear liquid is really clear or if it’s yellow. The moon is exceptionally bright for some reason. When she’d gone outside there was a decent amount of cloud cover. Did that clear up already. She opens her travel bag, pulling out one of the shop bags she’d grabbed and tucking the bulbs inside before tying the straps of the shop bag to the strap of her travel bag. She's not going to be caught unprepared again! Well, for the things she prepared for. Riddles and puzzles don't count.
Maggie stands up, straightening her clothes and clearing her throat. She goes to adjust her hood and it's down. No, wait. She looks down and sees she's wearing a thick light blue cloak the twin of Elira's. Oh, it's not threadbare, it's just pale. Ooh, and soft. Maggie spends a few seconds to pet the light blue velvet. She attempts to shrug to resettle the cloak and nods in appreciation of its weight. Then she remembers that she's on her Journey and hastily walks towards the tree line. She’s once again surprised at how clear and bright everything is and looks up to see three full moons. But tonight was supposed to be a waning crescent. They’d be in the woods on a new moon. And there’s only supposed to be one moon! Maybe this is like the disappearing tree and the moons aren’t actually there.
She makes it into the trees, regrouping with the others that have made it past the field and sees that the others are in various stages of put together or disarray. A group of very pale, very guilty looking boys look haunted and obvious in there dark blue cloaks. No hiding that they’re the ones who snuck into the woods. Everyone else has lighter colored, heavier cloaks after passing through the fog and the field. She smirks before looking around for her friends. She doesn't see Candace so she turns back to the field to wait for Elira who is still shuffling about silently with a few others.
With a roll of her eyes Maggie heads back to the edge of the treeline and hisses Elira’s name. Elira turns to her, eyes wide and tears streaming down her stunned face as she slowly focuses on Maggie. Maggie is taken aback and looks around in confusion, trying to find out why Elira looks so… broken, before her friend races over and embraces her tightly.
“I was so scared,” Elira sobs as Maggie tries to pull bits of junk out of her distraught friend’s hair.
“Why? What happened?” Maggie frowns while trying to straighten Elira’s mane.
“Didn’t you see?” Elira screams and Maggie is now taken aback by the sheer panic she sees.
“See what? There was fog everywhere. I didn’t know if it was like Ally in the Tunnels or if it was Talia in the Dead Fields,” Maggie says clearly, hoping for the answer to the riddle.
“Are you serious?” Keven laughs in derision. “That was Margaret in the Mists of Madness.” A few of the others laugh. “You of all people should’ve gotten that one right.”
Margaret “Maggie” Elm stiffens, growing increasingly uncomfortable. She was named after the heroine of the story despite the fact that they could hardly be more different. The Maggie in the story was a creative bubbly girl who loved puzzles and made riddles but had stumbled between the veils into a world where the souls of the punished fought to get free of a maze to find their places in the afterlife. The mists were designed to feed on the guilt and pride to render travellers humble and open to understanding the mistakes they’ve made in life. Maggie doesn’t know what’s worst, not figuring out the story tied to the Whispering Field or not being creative enough to be driven the least bit mad. At most she was concerned which was concerning in and of itself.
Maggie isn’t sure whether or not she’s mortified or disappointed and moves towards disappointment, lowering her head as the others share the answer and the fact that she wasn’t affected. While she’s wondering what she’s missing the group of boys with darker cloaks slink off deeper into the forest. While the more knowledgeable kids who were prepped with more than just hints of “things might happen” explain the different scenarios the darker cloaks are moved by the watchers further away and deeper into the woods.
“They’re gonna know,” Adrian complains, shaking the hem of his cloak pointedly.
“They’re not gonna know,” Evan rolls his eyes as Martin follows silently.
“What do you mean, ‘they’re not gonna know’, they’ll be able to see that we didn’t cross the field!” Adrian grumbles as Evan continues walking like nothing’s wrong.
“There’s probably plenty of chances for the cloaks to change, by the time we get through the Challenges no one will be able to tell,” Evan says confidently while panic grips his insides.
Martin keeps his silence, stopping and letting the others get ahead of him. He’ll just run back and cross the field, no problem. He turns as Adrian keeps complaining and Evan keeps playing it off, crouch running in an attempt to retrace his footsteps as quickly as possible. A twinge of regret is quickly snuffed out by guilt and panic as the voices of the others drop off rapidly. Hoping he’s going back to the Whispering Field and not just travelling lengthwise through the woods, Martin keeps up his hunched shuffling job. How far had they walked? When will he know when he’s going in the right direction? Did he sprain his ankle? It hurts a little, as do his shoulders and lower back, but maybe things will be alright. The others had said it was Margaret in the Mists so all he had to do was not think and keep walking. Everything would be fine.
The expression on Martin’s face as his head bounces across the floor of the woods shifts from sorrow and guilt to one of distracted relief as it comes to a rest nestled in the roots of a tree. A sigh moves through the area along with sounds of tearing and snapping as the pack of furry, long muzzled bipeds resembling upright wolves fight over the meager offering. The children were in the woods now. If they didn’t mind their manners and keep in heart the stories of their ancestors they’d be joining the forest goblins for dinner.
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