The Forest Gods' Reign Read online

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  When our punishments had finally been lifted and it was summer, the four of us decided to go back into the woods. But this time we were prepared, more or less. Armed with wooden toy swords and a compass, we strode across the street while our parents were working, or maybe shopping, but it didn’t really matter to us as long as they weren’t watching.

  “Ready?” Zach asked nervously, halting just outside the forest. Even our fearless leader seemed to doubt himself for once. Connor’s signature goofy smile was absent for probably only the second time in his entire life, and Luke was just biting his lip and dragging his foot through a small spot of mud. Nevertheless, the three of us ignored the fear tugging at the back of our minds and reluctantly nodded in unison.

  Zach let out a shaky sigh and stepped past the first tree. We stopped and looked for monsters both to the right and left of ourselves, as if we were crossing a busy street. I heard Connor take a deep breath in relief, and then we stepped past the second tree. Again, we stopped to look for monsters, and again we saw nothing but pine trees, lush grass, and silver mist. Slowly but surely, we made our way through the thick brush, paving our own trail. We were undisturbed except for the occasional call of a bird … and the random bloodcurdling screams, which made all four of us stop in our tracks every single time we heard one. We could only hope that the shouts didn’t belong to anyone we knew.

  Suddenly I heard an awful crunch to my left, and Connor screamed. A high-pitched, girly scream. I couldn’t help but laugh. Zach and Luke quickly joined in as I said, pointing to Connor, “You scream like a girl!”

  Connor was frowning, and his hazel eyes looked very upset as he defended himself. “I just stepped on a skeleton! I bet you would be screaming too.” Zach, Luke, and I then glanced down at Connor’s red Converse shoes where a bunch of old, cracked bones lay next to a skull, covered in leaves and grass and cobwebs. The decomposed body had obviously been there a very long time.

  Noticing the same thing I had, Luke snorted and shook his head. Zach apparently took this as a sign that everything was okay, and he was about to step forward when someone, or rather, something popped out in front of us. We all jumped. It was the same half-boy, half-goat who had almost gotten us killed before.

  “You guys came back here?” He sounded amazed and wore a shocked expression on his face, his bushy eyebrows raised in perfect parabolas. He narrowed his brown eyes and continued, “Gods, you four are tough. I like that. I can’t even believe you escaped the Minotaur. And my screaming didn’t scare you at all?”

  Zach shook his head in amazement and confusion. “No! What’s a Minotaur? Wait—what are you anyway?”

  The half-goat gasped and covered his mouth with his dirty hands, appearing moderately offended. “My name is Pan. I’m a satyr, of course. Haven’t you ever heard of them? We live all around here.”

  Luke snickered. “Pan? What kind of name is that?” I quickly punched him in the arm to keep him from saying something that might get us killed, but Luke just laughed harder, his bright eyes shining.

  Connor sighed and said, “Ignore him,” but I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh as well.

  Meanwhile, Pan the satyr frowned and ruffled the mop of curly brown hair on the top of his head. “Sounds like you freaks need to study your Greek history.”

  Not too far off in the distance, we heard the crackling sound of branches, and the four of us turned to see a giant, dark-brown wild boar race past, followed by a gleaming white horse with wings. Simultaneously, a flock of giant birds with metallic wings took to the skies, making bewildered screeches that sounded like nails being dragged across a chalkboard. This time we didn’t even stop to think about what in the world these powerful beasts were; Zach, Luke, Connor, and I were already becoming accustomed to the mystical forest. But the creatures had obviously been spooked by something, and we didn’t want to stick around to see what had scared them.

  Pan looked down at the wooden swords in our hands, obviously thinking a similar thought, then whispered, “I like you four, so I’m going to help you get out of here while you still have the chance. And if you plan on coming back in here again, bring some real weapons or else you will be killed.” He gave us a very serious look. “I mean it.” Then the strange satyr waved his arms at us and we turned around and quickly but silently jogged out of the forest along the same winding path we had created on the way in.

  We returned to our respective houses unnoticed, and I immediately walked to the computer that sat on a desk in my living room to do exactly what one would expect a brainiac like me to do. I searched for Greek history on Google, with no luck finding anything pertaining to what the four of us had seen in the mysterious forest, until I clicked on a link for Greek mythology.

  It was then that I realized that everything adults believed was a lie—religion, monsters, and a whole lot of science. I wrote earlier that one of the reasons we survived was because we were young, young enough to still believe that monsters were real. Even though we didn’t know it, we were prepared for the unexpected in a way that older people weren’t.

  However, it wasn’t until much later that the four of us realized our true role in the future of the forest … and in saving the world. Though there are plenty of other stories I could have told, this book (as well as the one following it) is a record of those particular events, the most important ones. I figured someone would want to know the truth eventually.

  Chapter 2:

  OUR FIRST KILL

  For three years now, the four of us nine-year-olds had been going in and out of the woods without being harmed, other than a couple of scratches from tree branches and undergrowth and whatnot. We had convinced all of our parents to buy us pocketknives when they finally realized they couldn’t keep us out of the forest, but we had mostly been staying out of the way of the monsters hidden in there. Our running and tree-climbing skills were excellent as a result of this. It’s safe to say that we had become much more accustomed to the ways of living in the forest, and we had even begun to split up and wander alone, communicating with expensive waterproof walkie-talkies which we had automatically deemed the best birthday presents ever.

  Over the years, we learned to tell direction and approximate time by looking at the shadows and the moss on the north sides of the trees, and we had almost the entire forest mapped out in our heads, which was a hell of a lot of land, mind you. We even knew the hangout areas for the different breeds of monsters, as well as for our friends, the nymphs and satyrs, specifically Pan.

  However, Pan wasn’t just a satyr but also the god of the wild, as I had found out from researching Greek myths online and from recalling mysterious dreams. Strangely, for three whole years, our good friend had never told us himself. Naturally I wondered why Pan was keeping his immortality a secret, so one day, when the subject came up, I decided to ask him.

  I was walking alone along one of the paths we had blazed, heading north toward the center of the forest and keeping a close eye out for any movements in the bushes or in the trees. (You never knew when a monster might pop out to kill you, after all.) Suddenly, the black walkie-talkie attached to a belt loop on my blue jeans crackled to life. I grinned when I heard Zach’s breathless voice say, “Connor’s making a run for it! Heading south toward the meadow. Over.”

  We were in the middle of playing our invented game, which we liked to call reverse hide-and-seek. One of us hid anywhere inside the woods, while the other three of us split up to find the hidden one, communicating only by walkie-talkie. However, the person in hiding also had a walkie-talkie to listen in on the conversation, and he could make a run for it and hide again if one of the seekers was getting too close. One round of our game could take hours to finish, depending on how good someone hid—and how often the seekers had to change their course to avoid being attacked by some mythical creature. I was the best one of us at hiding, because I was nimble and quick and could climb trees easier than the boys, and Zach, Luke, and Connor
would often give up after a couple of hours.

  Quickly, I ran forward, knowing that the meadow was not too far ahead of where I was, meaning that Connor was running straight toward me from the opposite end of the forest. I knew I could catch him before he tried to hide again, and so I ran on the uneven path as fast as I could, trying not to trip. Breathing hard, I saw the sun’s rays just barely shining through the treetops before I ran out into the open, and then Connor was running at me head-on, his white shirt and jeans covered in dust and small green leaves. He caught my eye and threw back his head in anguish, knowing he had been caught, and the soft glow of sunlight glinted off his sandy-blond hair as he slowed to a stop.

  Zach ran up behind Connor and stopped next to him, breathing a sigh of relief. I grinned and checked my watch as I joked, “Only took us half an hour. Was Connor hiding on the east side of the hill again?” Zach nodded and laughed, while Connor just frowned at me. But it wasn’t my fault he needed to be more creative with his hiding places.

  We sat down on an old fallen pine tree situated at the west edge of the sunny meadow, waiting for Luke to meet us. The last time I had heard from him was when he was in the west part of the woods, searching for Connor near the river, so it took him a while to reach us. Eventually he walked out of the trees behind us, breathing heavily and using a long tree branch he had whittled into a spear as a walking stick.

  “I didn’t realize how far away this meadow is from the river,” Luke complained, smoothing out his black hair. Zach shrugged dismissively, ending the conversation there.

  Luke was about to sit down next to me on the log when we heard an extremely loud, panicky wail that only Pan could have made coming from behind us, inside the tree line. We leaped to our feet, facing the trees, Connor, Zach, and I with our sharpened pocketknives open, and Luke with his spear poised above his head, ready to attack if need be. We probably should have run away, like we usually did, but we also wanted to save our friend, assuming he really was in danger. As I mentioned before, we were too brave and too curious for our own good.

  But the danger wasn’t in front of us—it was above. The four of us looked up just in time to see a large birdlike creature spiraling down from the cloudless blue sky. It was a harpy, a monster with the head and torso of a woman, but also with the dark wings, tail, and talons of a huge bird. A snarl on her face, the harpy flew down toward us, her rough, sharp talons outstretched. Connor, Zach, and I turned to sprint away, but Connor tripped and fell, screaming helplessly. With a grunt, Luke instinctively chucked his spear into the air at the harpy, just as she swooped down to grab the fallen Connor, and it stuck in one of her leathery wings with a loud thunk. She screeched and fell back into the wind, her long black hair blowing wildly around her pale face. But somehow she managed to stay in the air and continued her dive toward us, aiming for Luke’s head now.

  I gulped, abruptly realizing that this harpy was not going to give up the fight so easily. She was perhaps the monster who came the closest to killing us in the three whole years of our being in the forest. But there was also no way to outrun her, since the quick and powerful harpy was obviously not bothered very much by the wound Luke had inflicted upon her. Plus, she would certainly be able to trap at least one of us kids in those spiky talons of hers and carry him away while the rest ran for cover. This meant that we had no choice but to fight back for the first time, to kill the monster before she could kill one of us.

  Connor gasped beside me as I threw my small black pocketknife up at the monster in determination, and it made a deep cut on one of the harpy’s feet, just above a claw before falling to the grass about eight feet in front of me. Following my lead, Zach threw his red pocketknife at the harpy, and then Connor did the same. Zach’s pocketknife struck the harpy in the head, right on her cheek, and Connor’s slashed her neck.

  Using Zach and Connor’s attack as a distraction, I dove for my knife just in case the harpy would continue her own attack and desperately hoped the boys’ pocketknives wouldn’t cut me as they fell back down to earth. I grabbed the blade with my left hand as I stood up, but just then, the harpy hit the ground in front of Zach and Connor with a big thump.

  I stood staring at her with the guys as the harpy gave short, uneven gasps for air and slowly bled out in front of us. Monster blood—golden, with an unusual tinge of green—flowed steadily from the four wounds we had inflicted upon her and created tiny streams along the creases in her leathery wings, but still she did not give up the fight. Using her shredded wings and curled talons as leverage, the harpy pushed herself toward us, a cold glare in her dark, beady eyes. Panting, the three boys and I started to back away from the monster, retreating to the trees, and I wondered what kind of grudge she had against us. Whatever it was, it was obviously very strong.

  Finally, the beautiful beast shuddered one last time and was still. It was eerily silent for a moment, but then the harpy suddenly crumbled to dust, disappearing into the soil without a trace. The four of us had just killed our first monster, and I had a strong feeling that it would not be our last.

  “Well, she’ll be in the Underworld by now, I expect,” said Pan quietly, walking out into the sunlight from behind a tree. My human friends and I jumped, too focused on the dying harpy to notice him trot over.

  “Oh, so now you come out of the tree cover?” Zach asked Pan, annoyed.

  Pan opened his mouth to defend himself, crossed his arms, and objected, “I didn’t have a weapon!”

  Suddenly angry that Pan had kept his secret from us for so long, I frowned and shouted, “You’re the freaking god of the wild! Surely you could have done something! Who was it that told us to carry weapons around all the time anyway? Oh, that’s right, it was you!”

  I took a deep breath, glancing around at the boys. Luke, Connor, and Zach looked surprised that I had lashed out at Pan so uncharacteristically, while Pan just looked hurt. I felt the slightest twinge of shame and remorse, but I pushed the feeling away and looked at him expectantly. Looking back on that moment now, I probably should have held on to those feelings a little longer before they went away forever.

  Pan simply chewed his chapped lips and stayed quiet, as if deciding whether or not to tell us something. It seemed like it had been ages when he finally sighed and admitted, “I don’t have all the powers you may think. I’m not immortal, for one. I’m really more like a … protector of the woods.”

  Connor’s curiosity and impatience got the better of him, and he blurted out before Pan could elaborate, “Well, what about the rest of the gods? What do they do?”

  Luke and Zach also seemed much more attentive to the conversation all of a sudden, and it was not often that someone held their attention for long periods of time. But don’t get me wrong—they were great fun to spend time with, even if they preferred being at the center of attention.

  Pan studied us carefully, and then his brown eyes darted around the edge of the meadow, as if he were looking to make sure we were alone, which was probably a smart thing to do. “The major gods aren’t immortal either. They’re just reincarnated every generation, taking over the bodies of humans. This generation has planted itself here, in the town of the Woods.” He paused, then looked at each one of us in turn, letting this information sink in.

  I glanced at Connor, Luke, and Zach, checking to see if they knew what Pan was really trying to say, but their expressions were blank and slightly confused. I sighed, knowing that the three of them could sometimes be thick-headed and that I was just going to have to put two and two together for them. So I said, “You’re saying that anyone your age who lives here could be a reincarnation, including us?” But it was really more of a statement than a question.

  I already knew the answer, of course, and it was confirmed by Pan eagerly nodding his hairy head. Connor and Zach could do nothing but gasp in surprise as Luke nodded at us while exclaiming, “No way! I bet we are. Why else would we have survived in here?”

  Duh, I thought, rolling my eyes as Zach snorted, a
nd my gaze met Pan’s, lingering as a silent conversation passed between us. I could tell he had a guess as to which god each of us was, and I slowly nodded in agreement with him, sure that his inferences were the same as mine.

  It was quite simple, you see. Just as humans have different personalities, so did the Greek gods. For example, Luke was Poseidon, the god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses. As I mentioned before, Luke had a temper and had always loved the beach, even though he had been there only once. If we let him, Luke would probably fish for hours on end in the river in the northwestern part of the woods.

  Zach was Zeus; it was unarguable. Who else could be so popular as to take control of an entire school in first grade? Just like an experienced politician, he knew the perfect ways to manipulate certain people to get what he wanted. His one ambitious dream was to be the president of the United States someday, and, in my opinion, there was no one better, as long as I was by his side. Zach was optimistic and quite charming most of the time, and some people even went so far as to say that the abnormally good weather in our town often mirrored his mood. No one from outside the forest realized how true that was before then. The elder satyrs and nymphs, I perceived, had had an ulterior obligation three years ago when they permitted Zach, Connor, Luke, and me free reign over their home.

  Connor’s Greek counterpart was Apollo, god of the sun, healing, prophecy, and music. He rose with the sun, waking up at the crack of dawn every day and crashing right when the sun disappeared behind the horizon. Even though he lived in the house next door, he woke me up almost every morning when he started playing his guitar or his flute. Or his saxophone. Or his violin. Or pretty much any instrument you could name.