The Will-O-Wisps

My mother had told me, before I left, what would happen. Well, actually she told me three outcomes that might happen and my little sister Moko added about five more from behind her skirts. But didn't care if I got eaten by monsters, or lost in the desert, or attacked by robbers, or arrested by soldiers, or anything else; I had made up my mind.
         Eventually she seemed to see my determination, either in my eyes or in my silence. She quieted Moko with a wave of her hand, plucked the traditional spikes from around my head, and went outside without a word to snap them in two and throw them into the river.
         It was all done. I was not her daughter anymore.
         Moko watched as I packed, and followed me as I walked through the village to the bridge marking the entrance into the maze of soft wooden paths that wound through the canopy of the old forest and led away from home. If I had looked back, I'm sure I would have seen her standing in the spray from the falls, watching me. But I was only looking forward from then on.

         I decided to head north, to see the huge mountains I'd heard traders talk of when I was little. I had never seen a mountain before, and the thought of them interested me. Even now, I've still never seen one of those great pillars of stone that hold up the sky, but I imagine them like the trees in the great rainforest-too big to comprehend and as old as the land itself. Indomitable.
         As I walked through those ancient trees along paths increasingly unfamiliar, I thought about the road beyond my feet. It was a three day journey to the northern border of the woods, but I had my shortcuts. I was confident I could make it out in only two. From there, I would cross the marshland that separated the tropic midland on Wilderness from the arctic north. And once in the mountains, I was free to do as I pleased.
         The realization of what I had finally done for myself washed over me, sweeping up my feet and pushing me faster through the leaves and flowers surrounding me. I let my fingertips drag along the silky smooth petals of orchids and lilies and a hundred other kinds of blooms. I was sucked into a whirlpool of pure elation.

         The first night in my new nomadic life was spent in a makeshift nest along the side of a canopy bridge. I had crossed twice the distance a normal traveler through the forest could, due to my joyous youthful energy and my skill at shortcutting through tree branches instead of following the snaking, looping bridges.
         The work hadn't quite worn away all of my mental strength, and I couldn't sleep. I found myself remembering the last time I had spent the night alone in the forest. It was during the last night of my test as a tamer. The next day should have been my time of glory, but was my hour of failure.
         It was the age old tradition that, when children from my--the village turned fourteen, they had one week in the forest on their own to catch an ochu sprout. The little spider-like flower bud they caught would be theirs to raise and tame, until it became a full grown ochu and the child became a full fledged ochu tamer. After fourteen years of training, the test was a cinch. No one failed. No one except me, that is.
         I took the test at fourteen like everyone else did. I went out brimming with confidence. Ochu sprouts were friendly by nature and easy to catch. But whenever I chanced upon one or a group of them in the leaves, the scurried away as if I was a monster. I tried everything, cooing and coaxing, traps, even flat out chasing them. But the week crumbled away from under me before I knew it, leaving me an outcast.
         My mother convinced the villagers to let me try again. They agreed. The end result was the same. No sprout would come within ten feet of me. Even so, my mother refused to give up. She tried to goad me into going out a third time, and then a fourth. She desperately clung to me for two years, trying to delay the inevitable. But I could never stay there after that. It was the Village of Ochu Tamers, and I was only a girl.

         As dusk fell on the end of the second day, I could tell I was nearing the border of the forest. The space between trees was greater, the trees themselves were younger, smaller and when I leaned over the edge of the bridge I was on, I could see the ground. It looked wet and squishy. I decided to wait until morning to take my first step on it.
         That night I slept without dreams and woke up refreshed and excited to be traversing new territory. It would be the first time I had ever left the rainforest. According to the traders I had listened to when I was tiny, the swamp was as different from the forest as a place could get, except for maybe a desert. The land at nocturne swamp was flat, the horizon only broken by stunted bushes and trees that would seem like child's play to me. The whole area was swimming in knee-deep water, with only a few islands floating at ankle-deep. I was preparing myself for an alien world, and when I reached the abrupt stop in the trees and saw the view stretching out before me, I wasn't disappointed.
         The sun was shining down brightly, more than I was used to growing up in constant shade, making the brownish, reddish, blackish colors seem muted by light. The sky, unblocked by trees, was the largest thing I'd ever seen; I was a pinprick in the world under that mass of light, unbroken blue. I squinted to catch a glimpse of my mountains where the strange land met the strange sky, but I saw nothing. Nocturne Swamp seemed to go on forever.
         I ran two at a time down the stairs letting me off the canopy bridges I had lived my whole life on and didn't hesitate to wade into the mucky water of my next adventure. I've always regretted never looking back. I've always hated myself for not becoming a coward at that moment, for not choosing instead to turn around and head south to the farming villages that had back then sounded so boring next to the majesty of the mountains. But no matter how much I wince at the memory, it stays the same. I walked into Nocturne Swamp, and I sealed my fate.

         I had neglected to bring any sort of compass, so I wandered in what I assumed was a straight line pointing north until sundown, when I realized I had a few problems. Consistent with the methods of youth, I had also neglected to get many key bits of information before waltzing out into the world like nothing could go wrong. It would take a month at least to get completely through the swamp, so great was its size and so easy it was to get lost within its sameness, but I had no idea how I was going to sleep in knee-deep water. The fall of night brought with it a chilly wind, and I shivered as I marched aimlessly on, searching for someplace dry where I could rest.
         The sun rose, and I still hadn't found even a square foot of earth fit for human habitation. I was wet, cold, physically and mentally drained--my vision swam in front of my eyes, as if it too, was drenched from the muddy swamp water. All I could think of to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other until either the left or the right stepped on something helpful. Perhaps not the best of plans, but all an exhausted teenaged girl in a foreign land could think of on her own. I walked all that day and still found no place to rest and no proof I wasn't walking in circles. On my second night in the swamp, the stars came out to see me fall desperately asleep on my back in a pile of thick weeds, my hair floating around me were it was consumed by the mire. They winked in laughter.

         I had been surrounded in my sleep.
         When I woke up, I found myself in a sea of the most disturbing creatures I had ever seen. They were the same color as everything in the swamp, a blackish, grayish, reddish, brownish that no painter could ever properly copy. They were scaly and rough, and their eyes were like large yellow lanterns. Their lips were insanely jagged, so that they didn't need teeth, and their wide mouths were shaped in perpetual smiles. Their heads balanced precariously on bony, starved bodies and they walked on spindly arms, long enough to hold their entire bodies out of the water, if they tucked in their legs. The legs themselves bent backwards from a human's and were as thin as the arms and tipped in thick claws. The horde of them stared at me with unblinking anticipation.
         "Wake you now?" the closest one asked. Its voice was high and raspy.
         "We welcome you our home!" another said brightly. "Follow you us! Much dry! Not like wet, we do." Others urged me to stand and follow, so I wrenched my stiff, sore body from the weeds. My entire back was soaked, along with most of my legs. My feet were numb in my boots. The mass of creatures surged against me, sucking me in like an undertow current, forcing my clumsy feet to stumble along through the underbrush, into the unknown. I was too dazed and tired to resist, especially when they had promised solid ground to rest on.
         An hour later, we reached what looked to be nothing more than a rather large hill, topped with the smallest trees I'd ever seen-the "home" the creatures had spoken of. The hill raised gently above the muck of the swamp, giving a small reprieve from the endless damp. It was like some sort of paradise. The moment my feet were surrounded by air, I thumped down in the dirt and stripped off my boots and socks. My feet smelled disgusting, and looked worse than they smelled. Like large, rotting worms after a big rain.
         "Rest you now? We take you care. We celebrate! For you, we wait long!" one of the creatures, perhaps the first one I'd spoken to--they were all so similar in appearance, I couldn't tell them apart-chirped at me. I hadn't the slightest clue what he meant beyond the first sentence.
         "What-Who-What are you?" I managed to ask.
         "Of Nocturne swamp, the Will-O-Wisps are we. Our eyes the lantern-light, at night, for to guide the wanderers, we do," the nearest replied happily. "But none there is for to lead the Will-O-Wisps, none but you." At this the whole group of them seemed to frown, although it was virtually impossible to read emotion in their hard, scaly faces.
         "But here, she is!" one yelled from far away. Its outburst sent a tidal wave of jabbering through the crowd.
         "She is here!"
         "The Queen, long lives!"
         "We must celebrate, must we!"
         "She is how lovely!"
         "Have long we waited!"
         Their chatter increased in volume and energy until the Will-O-Wisps were thrown into a frenzy: running on either arms or legs, and flailing the limbs they weren't using for movement, screaming and jumping with madness, scratching at each other with their heavy claws. I backed away from their sudden lunacy until I was trapped up against a tree trunk. The pandemonium grew until one Will-O-Wisp in the center of the throng grabbed a smaller one, raised a twig above its head and screamed,
         "CLEANSING! CLEANSING! RUN FOR JOY HE IS CLEAN!"
         Suddenly the twig ignited, and the larger Will-O-Wisp dropped it on the smaller one he was pinning down. The most terrible, unearthly scream I had ever heard tore from the creature as its entire body was immediately engulfed in flame. It ran frantically in circles as it burned alive, and the surrounding Will-O-Wisps laughed maniacally in glee. Within seconded the creature fell to the ground on the verge of horrible death, mobbed by its jeering brethren. When its screams faded away, I could still hear them echoed in my own shriek. 
         As the remains of the sacrificed burned away, the Will-O-Wisps calmed down, and much to my terror, turned their unblinking attention back to me.
         "Celebrate done!" one spoke. "Queen we you make now?"
         "Yes, queen!"
         "Queen!"
         "Queen she is!"
         "I-I can't be y-your queen," I stuttered. I needed to get out of that forsaken swamp and its twisted demons. I only wanted to run away to my mountains, where I could hide in solitude for years if I wanted. The last thing I wanted to do was stay with these terrifying imps in their wasteland, but...
         "Queen, to be, we need you! For to lead us!" the closest Will-O-wisp shouted in my face.
         "Waited, we have!"
         "Queen be, you must!"
         "A leader we need!"
         I could feel the manic energy come pulsing back through them, directed straight at me.  I needed to get out of there, I had to run away, but, but...
         But I was scared of them.
         "I-I'll be...your queen," I choked. Then, when it doomed me, not earlier, when it would save me, but at the perfectly wrong hour, I became the coward I was destined to be.
         The Will-O-Wisps threw up a thundering cheer and proceeded to grab at my hair and clothing with their clawed hands and feet. I screamed and closed my eyes as they shredded cloth and sliced off hair, turning my entire being into tattered rags. When the waves of them subsided, each Will-O-wisp held in its possession a precious scrap of its new queen. They then proceeded to drag me to the top of the hill where a throne of weeds stood for me to preside from. I sat myself miserably on my perch and watched in silence as the Will-O-Wisps yelled and ran in joy, as they send yet another of their kind up in flames, as they made me a scratchy crown of twigs and red berries.
         And I sit there still. Now, my youth shriveled away, the sparkle gone from my eyes, I sit on my prison throne and rule over countless anarchists. I have long since cast aside the remnants of my sorry past. I am known now only by the name given to me by the Will-O-Wisps that day.
         I am the pitiable Queen Willa, forever of Nocturne Swamp.