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“Honey, why don’t you go play outside? It’s a nice day today!”
“Okay Mom!”
“Don’t go too far, okay?”
“I won’t!”
Darcy wandered outside and looked around for something to do. Another girl around her age that she didn’t recognize was walking down the street.
“Hello there! I’m Darcy! What’s your name?”
“Oh… Sylvie.”
“Wanna play together?”
The other girl - Sylvie - glanced over her shoulder. “Sure! Do you know any fun places to hide?”
Sylvie had an interesting accent that Darcy had never heard before in all of her long ten years. It sounded nice. “Oh yeah, totally!” Darcy giggled excitedly and headed off into woods behind her house. “This way! Me an’ my dad built a secret treehouse in the woods!” She could hear Sylvie following her. A glance over confirmed that the other girl was keeping pace with her, and Darcy giggled more before reaching over to grab the other girl’s hand. Sylvie seemed to stiffen briefly, but quickly reciprocated the hold, and a small smile crept over her face.
After a brisk five minute run through the woods, the two girls arrived at a decent looking treehouse about ten feet up in a large oak tree. It wasn’t super impressive, but Darcy was proud of it. It was basically a five foot by five foot by five foot cube with a rope ladder hanging down from a hole in the floor, and windows on the three sides that weren’t attached to the oak tree.
Darcy grabbed the rope ladder and held it steady. “Here, head on up!” A brilliant smile crossed Darcy’s face as Sylvie climbed up the ladder, a small smile back on her own face. Darcy headed up after Sylvie and found the other girl staring out the window in the direction they had come, brow furrowed slightly and mouth in a thin line.
“Um… is something wrong?”
Sylvie glanced back at Darcy and her shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “I was being chased by bad people before I ran into you. I’m worried they might find me again.”
Darcy scoffed confidently and waved her hand. “Nobody knows about this place except me and Dad. And Mom. Oh, also Teddy and Anya. But they’re my best friends. They won’t tell!”
Sylvie giggled softly at that, and relaxed a bit more. “Thank you for trusting me enough to bring me here.”
Darcy giggled in reply. “I like you, you seem nice! An’ I wanna be your friend!” Her face widened back to the brilliant smile she had been wearing before.
Sylvie giggled more in response. “I think I would like to be your friend too.”
“Do you have many friends? I only have Teddy and Anya.”
Sylvie winced and turned away. “No, you would be the first. I was… Different from the other kids, and they tended to stay away from me.”
Darcy proceeded to gape at her before puffing up angrily. “Well don’t worry! I’ll always be your friend!”
Sylvie gasped at that and glanced back over at Darcy, eyes widening in surprise at the serious look on her new friend’s face as tears tried to push their way out of her eyes.
Darcy pouted slightly at her before pulling the other girl into a hug. “I’ll always be your friend,” she repeated quietly into Sylvie’s ear as Sylvie slowly returned the hug before breaking down in her new friend’s arms.
“I… I don’t know how long I can stay here.” Sylvie’s voice was quiet and uneasy, and rough from crying. “I’m not sure what they will do to try and find me.”
Darcy frowned, worry wrinkling her brow as she asked, “Would they kill someone?”
The two friends exchanged a glance before Sylvie quietly replied. “I saw them kill someone, right before I escaped and came here.”
Darcy paled at the information. “I need to go warn my parents!”
Sylvie glanced out the window and gasped. “I don’t think you can.”
Darcy followed Sylvie’s gaze out the window and her eyes went wide. In the distance, the ground and trees were steadily disappearing, emptiness quickly encroaching on the treehouse.
“What do we do!?”
Sylvie tore her gaze from the quickly vanishing horizon line and turned to Darcy, panic in her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
Darcy hesitated a moment as she looked out the window before nodding sharply, certainty and worry playing across her face in equal measure. A soft humming started up behind her and she turned to find a strange golden glow in the shape of a doorway.
“Follow me!”
Sylvie ran into the golden glow and vanished. Darcy hesitated a moment longer, but then she saw the branches of her oak tree beginning to disappear and dashed into the golden glow after Sylvie.
Everything changed. It was… Magical. Darcy found herself outside a huge golden building that looked a bit like an organ she had seen at a church her parents had dragged her to one time. Around her was a huge city full of fancy buildings, also seemingly made of gold.
Sylvie was excitedly looking around, a large smile on her face. “Here, follow me!” She ran off down the street, away from the large building.
Darcy took another moment to look around in wonder before following after Sylvie. “What happened? Where are we?”
Sylvie giggled ahead of her and called back, “I took us to my home! My Father has this great big apple tree and I thought we could go get a snack since we are here! Her apples are delicious!”
Darcy began giggling as well and caught up with her friend, once again grabbing Sylvie’s hand. Sylvie squeezed her hand in reply and led her through the streets before guiding them both through an alleyway and into some woods. “We will have to get past Father’s guards, but they are easy to evade. Just keep a hold of my hand.”
“Your father has guards on an apple tree? Why?”
“Honestly I don’t know, he insists to me that they are special somehow, but I really doubt he will miss a couple.”
The two girls started giggling more before Sylvie slowed them, a smile across her face as she held a finger to her lips. Darcy immediately nodded and quieted her giggling, her own excited smile appearing.
As they navigated the fancy guards with weird staves, Darcy had to hold in more giggles. The ‘guards’ were terrible. Darcy could have sworn that a few of them looked directly at the girls and then just kept going.
They eventually arrived at a huge apple tree, bigger than any tree Darcy had ever seen. A lady was turned away from them, somehow having climbed up into the tree and was going around, picking ripe apples and dropping them into a basket down below.
Sylvie put her finger over her lips again as they quietly snuck out of the woods and over to the basket, grabbing an apple each out of it before quickly moving back to the forest edge. Darcy glanced back at the lady, who was now turned which allowed them to see her face. Darcy didn’t think the woman had spotted them, but a smile was playing across her lips.
The girls bit into their apples, and it was the most delicious thing Darcy had ever eaten. It’s skin was a soft gold, like a lot of things here, but inside it looked like any other apple. Not that she was paying attention to that. Darcy was too busy devouring the apple as quickly as possible, not having realized just how hungry she was before biting into it. It was refreshing. After they had both finished their apples, Sylvie looking like she had been just as hungry as Darcy from how quickly she devoured her own, Darcy quietly asked her friend, “who is that?”
Sylvie quickly followed the direction of Darcy’s finger, pointed at the lady up in the tree. “Oh, that's Idunn. She looks after Yggdrasil, the tree. She’s nice!”
Darcy glanced behind them in the direction of the guards and then nervously asked, “We are safe from the bad people, right?”
In the distance, the ground was vanishing just like it had been when they were in the treehouse. A shocked gasp told Darcy that Sylvie saw it too.
They both stared at the world vanishing closer and closer before they were torn from their shock by a gentle feminine voice speaking up right behind them. “Here’s two more for the road, girls. Seems like you’ll need them.”
Both girls whirled around at the voice to find the tree lady, Idunn, offering them her basket with two more of the golden apples in it.
Idunn smiled kindly as Darcy took the basket with wide eyes, before waving her hands quickly in a shooing motion. “Go on, you need to get out of here! And stay safe.”
After Idunn delivered a quick kiss to each of the girls' foreheads, Sylvie pulled out a rectangular thing and did something with it. Another golden glow appeared and the two girls thanked Idunn quickly before Sylvie grabbed Darcy’s hand and they ran into the golden glow together.