Work Text:
Avery was a precocious child. Not content to stay inside the large european boarding school, he roamed the grounds, venturing deep into the forest on the week-ends and spent free time between classes venturing through dusty shelves in the library, combing through the most esoteric books he could find. Though it was in the books that he first discovered them, it was in the forest that he first really encountered them: the common woodland faerie.
The boy, no more than twelve or thirteen, was tromping through the woods on a sunny Saturday afternoon, frowning thoughtfully at his compass and the gridlines on a hand-drawn map of the forest in his hands. He had spent many weekends like this, alone in the forest with his tools. Pulling a pencil from his pocket, Avery shaded in another square on the map. No faerie rings in this cubicle.
He knew they were here somewhere. He’d heard them, at night when he was up far too late reading books. Little giggles, the whizzing of miniature wings, and sometimes, when he looked out the window, he could see tiny shapes flitting around on the grounds. By the time he’d managed to slip out of school, though, they would be gone.
The sun managed to peek brightly through a few gaps between the leafy foliage overhead, but for the most part, the forest was dim and cool. Dead leaves slowly moldered underfoot, decaying into dirt.
Next cubicle.
Avery soldiered on, shuffling quietly through the leaves and low-hanging branches. A faerie circle, a ring of mushrooms, was, according to the books, a sure sign of a faerie. It would disappear in days, but if you managed to find one, you might just find a faerie. And finding a faerie was exactly what Avery intended to do.
After a few more hours of fruitless searching, he finally stumbled onto one – nearly literally. He’d been fighting his way out of a particularly brambly bush and almost tripped straight into it, coming inches shy of crushing a mushroom underfoot. The faeries wouldn’t have liked that.
At first, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. He’d found a faerie ring. It had almost seemed like a fantasy – something you searched for but never actually found, like the gold at the end of a rainbow. He blinked, staring at the circle.
Well, he supposed, time to wait for a faerie.
#
Avery was slumped against a tree, drowsing. The musky scent of the forest was caressing his face, and the still coolness of the air was luring him to sleep. It was getting dark, but now that’d he’d actually found the faerie circle, Avery was loathe to leave it. The faerie would come sooner or later, he figured. It would have to.
His eyelids drooped. Perhaps a nap. He had walked quite a bit today, and he would wake up if a faerie came, surely. The bark of the tree behind him was soft and spongy, almost like a bed. His eyes slipped shut, and Avery fell asleep.
#
Avery woke to the sound of a giggle. It was impossible to tell how long he had been asleep. The forest was dark – not the dim, cool dark of before, but a mysterious, eerie dark of the kind one always read about. The kind with trolls and robbers and witches with poisoned apples in them. The forest had become dangerous.
There it was again – a tiny, high-pitched laugh. Avery rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Hello?”
There was no answer.
Avery stood, and took a step toward the ring of mushrooms. A mistake.
A snare caught around his foot, hoisting the boy far into the air. Avery yelped, dropping his things onto the ground below, and looked to see what had got him. A sort of rope made of green branches was wound around his ankle, dangling him from a tree branch above.
A scurrying below him caught his attention and Avery looked back at the ground. His compass, map, and pencil were gone, and he caught a brief flash of movement darting behind a tree. Another giggle ricocheted around, bouncing off tree trunks. Avery frowned, stern. Faeries.