The Wood

In the heart of a powerful land lay a sleepy little town of no genuine importance,

which was unknown to any person of prominence.

The town was only one square lined with small shops and a few lanes,

and in this town children ran along streets and pressed noses against panes.

Attached to its skirt was countryside even quieter,

that babbled with brooks and with animal clatter.

The people of the town were entranced by the serenity.

They were always whispering their conversations and muffling their hilarity.

At the very stitch of the town was the beginning of an ominous grove,

here the people of the town never strode.

As much as the town was small and insignificant,

the wood on the edge of this town was vast and infamous.

The forest sprawled dark webs over most of the land,

casting long deep shadows that only decay could withstand.

Deep among the trees where the thicket grows thickest.

Contained in small knoll there was a figure most wicked.

In the knoll not a sound could be heard, the air was musty and sour,

and the cold overcame any warmth or power.

Not a thing could be seen because the trees were so compressed,

and the light could not break in so the darkness was immense.

It was in this forest where the tale begins,

a tale of desperate souls and of sins.

There once were three lone travelers that got lost in the night,

and came upon the knoll unaware of their blight.

The first was a tall man of very great stature.

The second was ill tempered and ruthless in nature.

The third was humble and went where they commanded,

he followed them loyally and never reprimanded.

The three travelers got lost in the forest’s webbed vines,

and soon had taken to their many wines.

Fast they went into uneasy sleep.

When around them rose a fog dreary and deep.

It surrounded the three travelers without sound or clue,

and the travelers awoke in the middle of the night covered in dew.

That is when the first traveler saw the hooded figure,

and cowered backwards with a tremor.

The figure that lived in the knoll was most feared.

His pattern of destruction was very unclear.

The people he left untouched in his wake,

counted themselves lucky at their narrow escape.

Wherever he went, people whispered their fate,

Because their fate was death and death was his name.

At first the strong traveler put up a fight.

He valiantly gambled away his only life.

The first traveler though proud and highly acclaimed,

had no humility and no reason for praise.

His heart did not prove good nor true,

and so he died a death in his due.

Like many before him strong and proud,

He fell from great heights to the hard ground.

The two travelers watched in horror as their companion fell,

And death turned the second traveler, who feared the depths of hell.

The second traveler was not brave like the first, but he sly.

He sought to outsmart death and planned not to die.

The second traveler knew of nothing but greed,

so he thought he understood death’s needs.

He asked death what he wanted in return for his soul,

and so he bargained his life with the foul ghoul.

Death was not thwarted and so was not deceived,

and he claimed the second traveler with just as much ease.

The last traveler watched as the man was stripped of his every thought, plan, and memory.

His mind was lost to the forest and the second traveler died of insanity.

Death turned to the third traveler, who saw no hope.

The strong and the clever died, and he was nothing like those.

The third traveler looked death in the eyes prepared for the worst,

and death reluctantly spoke these admonishing words.

“You who are humble,

Do not see with your own eyes.

That you who accepts me,

Forever deserve what is life.”

Then death vanished and the third traveler was left behind.

He did not fear death, because he thought death was kind.

The traveler grew old and came back to this knoll,

But never again did he see the hooded ghoul.

The traveler still walks in the wood very late,

But death never comes for him and he is doomed to sit there and wait.