Mystic Woods Collection #1: Mystic Woods, #1

By Moira Drake

Three fantastical short stories of letting go and new beginnings with a dash of magic revolving around mystical forests and the creatures who call them home.
A princess with an unnerving calling to escape the castle and go into the woods. A scientist and his assistant are in the midst of their experiments when the trees get up and walk away. A fairy does everything she can to stay with her tree, even when all the others have left her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moira Drake
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798224837007

Book preview

Mystic Woods

A Collection of Short Stories

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Moira Drake

Copyright

Published by Moira Drake

Cover Design, Leonardo.Ai

Copyright © 2022, Moira Drake

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Do you like free Stuff? Click here and get a free short story featuring the characters from the novel To Curse A Dragon.

The Forest Called

Princess Dia stirred from her place on the shore of the pond, and reached her hand into the cool water as a large orange and white fish came up and gently nibbled toothlessly on her fingers. There was a breeze in the garden and it swayed the reeds and other plants bordering the pond as well as the other plants and flowering trees in the garden.

The dozen or so fish came out from their hiding places in the plants, and investigated her hand, following the lead of the other one. The fish swilled around her hand, gently buffeting it with the water from their tails as they swam past. They soon lost interest in her once they found out it wasn’t food, and moved off to do their own thing.

Ellen sat on a bench in the garden, seemingly unbothered by the breeze as it rustled her knitting. She watched her charge, the Princess Dia, from the corner of her eye, glancing up every now and then to make sure the princess hadn’t fallen into the pond. It looked to her as if the princess had fallen asleep, lulled by the cool water on the hot summer day and the sound of the damselflies flitting overhead to the lilies blooming on the surface of the pond.

At sixteen and reaching marriageable age, her time with the princess was coming to an end. It wouldn’t be long before she would have to find another family to nanny for. At this point in time she acted more like a companion for the little princess instead of a nanny. She had always been such a good girl, she would miss her. If things went well for the kingdom, she wouldn’t be working out of the castle for too long. She smiled at the thought of more little princes or princesses over her knitting.

It was almost as if the princess could read her mind, for her head snapped up from where she had been resting it on the stones on the edge of the pond. She stared at the garden wall, covered in vines and moss.

Nanny, the princess said. Evan at her age, she had never quit calling her ‘nanny’ instead of by name. What’s on the other side of this wall?

Ellen paused for a moment before answering. The princess had never asked such a thing before, but she guessed it would be all right to answer. Well, there’s a clearing, and then some farmland, then there’s the forest.

The forest... the princess said, but it wasn’t directed to Ellen. More like she had said it to herself while thinking out loud. I would like to go to the forest, she said, this time making sure Ellen knew she was talking to her. We can make a trip of it. It’ll be fun.

No, Princess, it won’t, Ellen said. Firstly, those woods are infected with creatures of the non-humanly sort. And Secondly, although I probably should have made it first, Your father has forbidden it.

When?

Since always. When you were learning to crawl, he made sure I remembered every morning you were not to go into the woods.

The princess sighed. He would have a stupid rule like that. Have you ever been to the woods?

Once, and I’ll never go again. She had had to pass through the forest to reach the castle and the small town when she had applied for the job of royal nanny. And the things she had heard in the forest made her never want to pass through it again. She never saw anything, but she heard things as they passed by her like a winter breeze. Heard the whispers that were in anything but the language she understood, and caught on more than one occasion the scent of something she wanted to follow just to see if it came from something wonderful.

"Fairy tricks. That’s what they are. Trick you