A Story No One Knows

     Well, maybe Xiremed had deliberately overlooked how carefully the Krawk was choosing his words. Since that incident with the not-so-Broken Toy Sailboat, he'd been eager for a new kind of adventure—the kind the cursed temples and trapped ruins of Mystery Island’s jungles couldn't offer—and now that his chance had come, he wasn't all that inclined to question the seemingly good fortune that landed in his lap.

     It was Eventide Demerix who found the note, scribbled on the flyleaf of a copy of Witch Hunting Techniques that was so old and tattered it had forgotten it used to be a hardback:

     To hear a story no one knows, come to me in the Woods: Follow the trail behind the Apothecary southeast until Kreludor rises, then turn inward and search the sky for a falling star. When you see it, you'll know what to do next.

     For weeks, she abandoned her usual evening pursuits in favour of researching the strange message. She tracked down the flighty Shoyru who sold the book to them and the Blumaroo who sold it to him, but then the trail went cold. After that, she spent all her time trying to figure out who could have penned the strange invitation. A story no one knows? Was such a thing even possible? She’d Neomailed Head Archivist Finneus who had replied back with a curt Tell me if you find out, and then a few days later followed up with a less curt No, really, tell me if you find out.

     Before that second message, Demerix was prepared to let the mystery go as a brief fixation that had occupied her for another stretch of Mystery Island’s endless summer. Neopians, after all, scrawled strange messages in books all the time, and in the not-nearly-rare-enough cases where those scrawlings were truly magical or mysterious, they always seemed to turn out to be the bad kind of magical or mysterious. But something about the archivist’s curiosity got the message so firmly lodged in Demerix’s imagination that instead of letting it go she'd shown the inscription to Xiremed.

     And now here they were, standing at the southern edge of the Haunted Woods, trying to figure out exactly where the Apothecary used to stand. All the old maps suggested the shop used to be where the Esophagor was now, but that seemed impossible to the two Usuls because clearly the Esophagor had never once bothered to move.

     Unfortunately for them, the Esophagor was in a particularly hungry mood, and rather than bothering with quests it was just, if the sounds coming through the clump of trees just north of them were to be believed, devouring its visitors.

     That should have been the first hint that things were especially strange in the Haunted Woods, but Demerix was too focused on the creases on her map fragment, trying to figure out if they were trail lines that could help them locate the right path or ordinary wear on the old parchment, to really notice the sounds, and Xiremed was too busy looking impatiently over her shoulder.

     “We should just pick one,” he said at last.

     “You mean like…at random?” The idea of doing anything unmethodically was anathema to Demerix, and in the late afternoon light her Eventide colours paled nearly to Xiremed’s sunrise Pastels.

     “It'll be dark soon. Kreludor rises at sunset when it’s full, so if we want to be on the path when it comes up, we need to get moving now.”

     Demerix grumbled and turned the map in her hands. She wondered if a proper Spooky Map might have the right path on it and considered retreating back to the stalls of the Haunted Marketplace where they'd spent the early part of the day stocking up on secondhand books that rarely made it to Mystery Island, but Xiremed was right—it was almost dusk.

     “Well,” she said, biting her lip and turning the map again. “Southeast. We could try this path, I think, and if this is a curve and not just a—Xir! Where are you going?”

     Her brother had bounded toward one of the yawning trailheads. “Just come on! If it's going the wrong way, we’ll just come back and try another one!”

     Both being avid readers of stories, Demerix and Xiremed knew that paths through the Haunted Woods could be tricky. Changeable. Malevolent.

     They knew it, but at that precise moment, caught up in the lure of adventure and afraid they'd lose their chance, neither of them thought it.

     Demerix folded the map into the pocket of her Stuffed Satchel and followed after him.

     The trail Xiremed had chosen led straight south though, and after a few minutes of picking their way over protruding roots and around knee-high boulders, the twins turned back.

     But there was no longer a trail behind them.

     The Haunted Woods had closed in around them.

     “I guess we’ve just gotta go—” Xiremed turned to continue along the way they'd been going only to find that the path ahead was gone too.

     Around them there was only forest: looming, skeletal trees with swaying branches, roots that seemed to wriggle in the dusky shadows, rocks with frowning, scowling faces. They could still faintly hear the Esophagor’s bellowing, but now it seemed to come from all directions at once, and the more they tried to turn toward the sound, the dizzier they became.

     “I suppose it’s part of the charm,” Demerix said. “Can’t have a proper adventure in the Haunted Woods without getting lost out here, right?”

     Xiremed wanted to agree with her, but the thought playing over and over again in his head at that precise moment was that no one got lost in the Woods in any of his favourite adventure stories, and he seriously doubted that was a coincidence given that all his favourite stories ended with everyone whole, healthy, and still the same colour and species they'd been when they started out.

     Suddenly, reaching the mysterious note-writer was much more important than it had been when they set out.

     “Okay, so…what do we do now?” Xiremed asked. He was grateful it was Demerix with him. She could be too meticulous sometimes, like the days he had shelf-reorganizing duty in the shop and wanted him to do everything to her terribly precise standards, but in a moment like this, her deliberateness and thoughtfulness would find paths—figurative paths, anyway—he couldn't see.

     For a moment, she considered the Woods around them. “You know, I was thinking. The Apothecary’s been gone for years, and the Woods are always changing, so it’s likely the path from the note doesn't even exist anymore. It's also sort of strange, thinking about it the whole note, that one of those directions is so specific, and the rest is so…fanciful. I didn’t think much about it before, but I wonder—I wonder if the specifics might not matter as much as the intent? Lots of magic works that way, I think.” Demerix wasn't a sorceress, at least as far as she knew, but she’d always been especially drawn to stories about magic.

     Xiremed waited for his sister’s mind to continue working.

     “Southeast, then. Through the trees. But—Xir, can you go first? It’ll be dark in a few minutes, and all these roots…”

     Xiremed smiled. “Yeah, I’ll go first. Wait. Which way is southeast?”

     Demerix closed her eyes and tried to focus on the Esophagor’s sounds. A moment later, she pointed. “That way. I think. I guess we’ll know for sure when Kreludor rises, but I think that way.

     Nodding, Xiremed moved in the direction she pointed.

     Picking their way through the deep Woods was much more tedious than the path had been. In the fading light, Xiremed could hardly see the boulders waiting to trip them, let alone the roots that blended into the dark soil. His light coat reflected some of the sun’s last light, which helped, but he kept a paw outstretched, ready to catch Demerix if she tripped.

     When the edge of Kreludor finally appeared over the trees, they stopped.

     “Turn inward,” Demerix muttered, spinning in a circle. “That didn't make any sense when I thought we'd be following a path, but…” She scanned the trees around them.

     “But it makes sense now?”

     She nodded slowly. “If we were following a path, if the precise location mattered, then inward would have to be a specific direction, which doesn't make any sense. But if the directions are about intentions, then inward could mean… Turn inward and search the sky for a falling star,” she repeated. “Hmmm. Inward. Oh!”

     Scuttling over roots she couldn’t see, Demerix moved a few paces away, pointing up at branches illuminated by Kreludor’s light. “Inward! The branches, they're all pointing to one spot, and I bet—yes!”

     Xiremed followed her into a small clearing. “Are you sure they're not just pointing everywhere?”

     “Magic has a logic of its own.”

     It didn't seem like logic at all to Xiremed—the whole thing seemed as nonsensical as an Asparagus Usul—but he trusted Demerix and searched the sky anyway.

     “Aren’t those just faerie trails?” Xiremed asked.

     Demerix scrunched up her face. Her sight wasn't as good as her brother’s—she spent too much time with her eyes pressed close to books—but she too could see the streaks of multicoloured lights across the sky. Air faeries, mostly, darting around Neopia on faerie business.

     Xiremed laughed.

     “What?” Demerix asked.

     “I was just thinking about how funny it would be to be given a faerie quest out here.”

     Demerix "When you see it, you’ll know what to do,” she repeated. “Well, strange note-writer, I certainly don't know what to do next!”

     “Maybe if we wait?”

     Demerix fixed him with a stare. “Out here? In the Woods? Just…wait?”

     Xiremed looked around them. “This is going to sound…odd, but…it seems safer here than back in the Haunted Woods proper. I mean, we both heard the Esophagor and what if Eliv Thade’s come out of his castle or the Meepits are up to something or—”

     “Meepits are always up to something,” Demerix said.

     “You know what I mean. Enacting their latest terrible plot. It seems—it seems nice out here. And if we wait it out, maybe the paths will come back and we can find our way out of here. The sun will come up. Eventually. I hope. Besides, I know your bag is loaded down with supplies.”

     “Emergency supplies.”

     “You didn't bring any sleeping bags?”

     “Spardel Print ones. They’re adorable!” As the words tumbled out of Demerix’s mouth, she realized they certainly wouldn’t help her cause. “This is a terrible idea.”

     But the words of the strange note repeated through her thoughts. You’ll know what to do next

     Magic had its own logic, and if this was, indeed, magic…maybe they were safe here, for the night.

     “Xir?”

     “Yeah?”

     “I have graham crackers and marshmallows too,” she confessed.

     “I bought you a present in the Marketplace,” Xiremed confessed. “I meant for it to be a Day of Giving present, but if we’re going to do this—stay out here until the stars come out and we can find our way back, I suppose we might as well pass the time with a new ghost story?” He retrieved a small, thin book from his Explorer Backpack and handed it to his sister.

     Spooky Usul Stories.

     One of the few books in Neopia Demerix hadn't laid her paws on.

     “Xir!” She crashed into him, squeezing tight.

     “I. Can’t. Breathe.”

     “Sorry! Sorry, I just— Funny how things work out this way, isn’t it?”

     The twins passed the long hours of Halloween night deep in the Haunted Woods taking turns reading scary stories to each other, protected by the strange magic of the flyleaf note they’d found half a world away. Neither of them was surprised to find that not a single story in the book, though many featured Usuls in the Woods, was like their night.

     When dawn finally broke and they made their way out of the Woods and back to the boat of a certain Krawk, they found him quite disgruntled that they hadn't perished they way he expected, but he begrudgingly sailed them home nonetheless.

     Demerix spent the voyage drafting a reply to Finneus at the Archives:

     Yes, Head Archivist, it is possible to hear a story no one else had. Well, not literally hear, but come to know. In that sense, it is entirely possible with the right kind of magic. But I think the magic’s ruined if you share the story with those who weren't there, to begin with, so you'll just have to take my word for this: There are new stories out there, but only if you live them.

          The End.