The woods outside the small town of Iris,
were a very lonely place almost all year round. Not a soul dared to cross
through it to get anymore, no matter if it came from outside or inside the
small town. People would rather cross the lake by boat to reach the village or
simply take the main road that made a big detour around the woods. After so
much time of this prohibition having settled in in the minds of the people,
they simply didn’t think about it anymore and saw it as one of those things of
nature.
But it wasn’t exactly nature, which barred
everything living from the woods. It was possibly the opposite, something dark
and sneaky that didn’t wanted for people to penetrate the place were it lived.
No birds crossed over those woods or even built nests on those trees. All
animals, from bears to butterflies, avoided that patch of the world as if it
was something automatic and not something they could do something about. Nature
had nothing to do with that chilling place, not at all.
On Iris, people loved life. It was such a
strange thing for first visitors because one would think that living with a
certain fear for so long would be quite a marking experience but it wasn’t at
all. Children there loved to play all day long and the adults were kind people
that loved to greet new souls to their community. They welcomed strangers as if
they were a gift sent by the heavens and would also celebrate for an entire day
if a new citizen was born inside the boundaries of Iris.
The
festivities there were always something to behold: they put small flags of many
colors over every doorway in town and they would sing beautiful old songs all
day long, celebrating life. They also cooked the best food, especially fish,
when a newborn entered their community. They also cooked some sweets that were
specially made according to the tastes of the person being celebrated, meaning
it was also done in birthdays, which were always a very grand occasion in town.
The best part though, was the fact that people
seemed to be having the time of their lives every single day. It didn’t matter
if they were selling products in the markets, fishing on the lake, running
around town or cooking lunch for their family, people in Iris always had a
helping hand for everyone and big smile to top that with. All traders loved to
visit, as they felt doing business there was more like being on a vacation were
everyone is very kind to you. The name was famous in the region and the fact
that the woods were so close, was baffling to so many curious people.
They couldn’t understand how those people in
Iris could be so happy. After all, those tall dark trees and that frozen wind
had a presence that was not easy to ignore when one would travel through the
main road towards Iris. People from the small town had moved the trail further
away from the forest, many times during their history, but the woods seemed to
catch up every time they did that. So every time a particular part of the road
felt colder and simply strange, they rebuilt the road further away from that
place.
That work was normally done in a few days and
it was something that needed to be done every year. But even so, the people
from Iris that worked on the road weren’t even a bit worried about that. Every
year, their town kept being pushed away from the rest of the civilized world.
When the road was first created, the journey to the nearest town could be
achieved in about 10 hours. With all the changes on the road, Iris was now
located 12 hours away from civilization and it kept moving away.
The route through the lake, by boat, was used
my traders mostly. And that road was also altered every few years do to the
fact that the dark woods seemed to be conquering the opposite side of the lake,
little by little, and people now have to change courses a little bit which also
made the trip a little bit longer than before. But people just did what had to
be done and they tried not to think too much about it because there was nothing
they could do, or at least that was the general opinion.
A couple of experts in biology and other
fields had studied the woods from the outside. Of course, most of these people
came from other towns and they would go to Iris at least once to study the
forest from there. The problem was that they were the only people not to be welcome
in town, asked very politely to leave after spending one night in town. People
usually agreed to do it in order for them no to cause any sort of unpleasant
mood among the normally chilled population of Iris.
Not many findings had been done by the very
few experts that found the dark woods to be a fascinating anomaly in nature.
The fact that no life could be detected there was strange enough, no matter if
it was on the trees, the soil, the air or even the water that existed in the
form of puddles. But even stranger was the fact that every single person that
got too close to the forest, and lived to tell the story, would always tell
others about a presence that was strong among those trees. There was something
there but no one could really say what it was, if it was something at all.
Of course, the people of Iris were not very
big on any of those stories. The few people from town that had grown any
interest in the woods, no matter how fleeting, would be asked to live the
village and never come back. That seemed a little bit too hard but the fact
remained that Iris was not a town where being curious was rewarded in any way.
They lived a quiet peaceful life between a lake, some mountains and the main
road; they didn’t really need to ask the world for anything else.
That of course included the answers that so
few had asked for but that no one was apparently willing to give. The only
possible way to get a proper answer was to enter the woods themselves but even
among people from other parts of the world, that was a crazy idea. All studies
qualifies that place as dangerous and unstable, because of the road thing, so
why would anyone try to enter to find answers to questions that no one really
is begging for? One thing is wondering, the other is demanding an answer.
Only a handful of people had done that, demand
an answer from the forest. And the fact was that none of them remained to tell
others why they asked themselves that dreadful question. That is because all of
them, a group of ten or less, had walked into the forest and had never
returned. When that happened, no one really asked for an explanation or for
their bodies to be buried or anything like that. Not even their families wanted
to know anything more that what was a fact.
Those people were part of the mystery of the
woods and every time of them had entered the forest, it seemed that year was
one of especially big growth for that space as such. Trees seemed to get
thicker trunks and the cold air seemed to become even colder. It was a very
scary thing to think about and that was probably why people just kept ignoring
those facts and the conversation over all. They didn’t want to confront the
reality of the situation they faced every day, so they compensate it with joy
and optimism, as they didn’t have anything else to go for them.
In about twenty years, a young woman will
realize a very dreadful fact that people in Iris will again accept as one of
those things that happen and no one can do anything about it. She will reveal
to her people that the road will be cut off because they won’t be able to push
it further away from the woods. The trees will grow on the trail and the town
of Iris will be cut off from civilization, same from the lakeside. They will be
prisoners of the forest. And one day, they will all disappear because of it.
And even then, they won’t say a word because that’s they way they are.
