The Dogwood Tree

    James Aterton grinned unrepentantly at the shrieking of his nanny, Ava, as she waddled down the stately steps of his father's country mansion. A hefty woman in her late forties, Ava had been James nurse, surrogate mother, and only friend for as long as he could remember. The frizzy older woman held a permanent place in his heart, but like all little boys, he felt little guilt for giving her the slip, escaping to explore the wonderful, filthy countryside. He ran without direction, without thought; soaring through the dewy morning grass with carefree abandon, his high-pitched laughter echoing into the rolling hills, his joy unhidden.   
    It was some hours later when James, his expensive suit muddied and torn, found himself thoroughly lost. Getting lost wasn't part of his adventure. James felt another sharp, stabbing hunger pain as he tried to slide under the thick, thorny branches of a Locust tree and felt a thorn slash into the think skin of his face. Biting his lip against the building pressure behind his eyes and the heavy lump in his throat, James wrenched his wiry young body out from under the tree and sprang quickly towards the end of the thick, dark forest. Disoriented by the streams of blinding sunlight, he clipped his shoulder on the edge of a crumbling barn, and fell onto the muddy ground grimacing in pain.
    He suddenly found himself on the edge of someone's property, his hurts momentarily forgotten as he gazed around curiously. A comfortable, aging white house rose in the distance alongside a rusty metal barn. Several large tree's were littered over the property, all of them missing several branches. James thought they looked hauntingly lonely, but most of all the one farthest from him. The dead, gray bark rose in a nearly straight line, all but the topmost branch broken and missing. At it's peak was a small flat space, where a burst of the greenest grass he'd ever seen trailed over the edges.
    So caught up in the strange beauty of that tree James almost missed the dark, huddled lump at the base of one of the few whole trees, a young, flowering white Dogwood. It was the most extraordinary thing: a stretch of vibrantly green grass circled the tree in stark relief against the crackling, yellow-brown grass that filled the rest of the yard. He squinted at the lump under the tree, freezing in surprise when the dark, coarse folds of a hood fell backwards to reveal a young girl of unreal beauty. Dominating her pale face were huge eyes, so dark as to be black, heartbreaking in their sorrow and mesmerizing with a palpable, unwavering determination. Waves of the girl's hair, as black as her eyes, floated about the straight column of her neck, and clasped in her hand was a glass candle holder, smoke lifting into her face from a dark green candle.
    James frowned; there was absolutely no breeze where he lay no more than a hundred yards from her and that long, straight black hair of hers was still blowing gently in some breeze. As her small red lips started moving in words he couldn't hear, James felt the air around him shiver almost electrically. The hair on his arms rose, and a shiver ran down his spine. He felt utterly and completely powerless to either move or look away from her. She threw a folded piece of paper into the flickering flame of the candle, and the fire burst into a huge, blue arc. Incredulous, he watched the glass candle holder splinter in her hands, flying off in a bevy of shining specks that seemed to pause midair, framing her solemn, passionate face. She lifted her eyes to the sky, and James found himself doing the same, watching the air expectantly.
    Later, he would think he had been hallucinating, because out of absolutely nowhere appeared a pure-white hawk. It screamed a single note, flew straight over her head, and winked out of sight after not ten feet. A brilliant smile lit the girl's pale face, and she reverently buried the remains of the candle holder with hands that should have been cut to pieces, but were untouched. As she rose, he realized the huge, folding black material was a cloak. A cloak! Who was this girl? She swept that long, dark hair over her shoulder as she turned, and he caught a glimpse of a medium-sized perfectly crescent scar near the back of her neck. He was so shocked, so utterly confused and disbelieving, that not even the sight of that emerald green grass shifting back to a dying yellow-brown as she walked away from the Dogwood surprised him.
    She leapt unto a fading deck clumsily, and suddenly glanced around speculatively before slipping back inside the white house. James didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until he felt a building pain deep in his chest, and air rushed out of him. He lay there in the spiky grass and mud for what seemed hours, his mind consumed with what he had accidentally  witnessed.
    So help me God, he promised himself, I will never speak of this to another human being as long as I live.