…And two seconds turned to four before the tiny figure of a frightful child slipped away from where he had been peering out behind the loosely hinged cottage door. His dark eyes squinted through the dim light that illuminated his round face, heaving a sigh of relief once he recognized his closest friend to be the assailant of his beaten bedroom window, up on the second story of the quaint wooden hovel in which he lived. His hands still clung to the side of the door; it gently creaked from the hinges caked in rust, as it hung slightly crooked in the doorway.
‘My, Darcy?’
From behind the dingy iron lantern, a boy not much older than the one before him stood, with one hand carrying the handle of the lantern, and a collection of rocks and stones still dusted with dirt in his other fist. A toothy grin crossed the boys’ lips, pushing his cheeks below his eyes which made the smudgy birthmark he had that much more prominent. Blowing the stray golden hairs away from his face, he greeted the other,
‘Oh, Bucky!’ Darcy promptly dropped his fistfull of stones with the residue leaving his palm coated in dirt, ‘you were asleep, is that true?’
‘I was! You should be as well- you could have broken my window, you know. And then we would have both been in trouble!’
They squabbled before the simple cottage, cobbled together by many different types of wooden planks as if it were a patchwork quilt. The walls were wrapped with moss and vines of jasmine that just began to cease their blooms for the season. The roof was thatched and just recently tidied up; a single stone chimney stuck out through the roof from the inside of the hovel, being the only masonry throughout the tiny cottage. Below them, missing stepping-stones left dips in the dirt path to the most beautiful garden that hugged the walls of the home tightly. The surrounding greenery and the occasional cricket listened in on the boys bickering, the pale light of the white moon and the twinkling of the stars posed as their stage lights.
‘I had thought,’ Darcy huffed, ‘we had agreed to adventure out tonight!’
‘Well…’
‘ ‘Well’ what? I surely hope you did not forget, did you?’
‘I did not!’ Bucky whispered back hastily. His little paws turned to fists as he threw his hands down in defiance,‘I simply changed my mind.’
‘But why? You love to go stargazing with me, what is so different about tonight that you would leave me waiting?’ the golden child questioned the other, and the little boy stumbled over his words.
‘I do love stargazing with you, I truly do! But, oh, you know very, very well that we would never hear the end of it if we are found to have gone into those woods- let alone discovered to be up so late at night!’
Darcy crossed his arms, blowing a raspberry, ‘You know that those stories they tell are complete nonsense! Tales for small children to keep them home. We have seen all of the stars the hamlet has to offer us, why not search for more?’
‘Because,’ Bucky fussed back, ‘I would much rather see tomorrow morning, much more than I care to see the stars!’
The oldest dropped his shoulders clearly frustrated. With his free hand blackened with dirt, he placed it upon the fair childs’ shoulder, ‘I know you are worried, I do! But we will be safe if we are together- there is nothing that may keep us apart.’ he reassured him. Bucky responded with a nervous shift of his legs.
They continued to fuss, and to fight, before the littlest one was convinced once again to accompany his friend to the forest. They had settled upon a deal: They would go into the Deep Wood, as it was called, hand in hand as one rather than two… But return to slumber swiftly at the first sight of the moon, as Bucky requested.
So the two children snuck through the gaggle of little homes that made up the hamlet in which they lived. It sat squarely in the middle of a wide, open field with mounds that mimicked the gentle waves of the ocean, dwarfed by the great wooded mountains surrounding them that covered the town with swarms of festive-colored leaves every autumn season. As they crept across the paths of chipped rocks from the decades of residents treading upon them, the dead leaves crunched below betraying the two children. And each time, the boys would stand still and look around them to make sure none had heard them. They slipped past the neighboring homes, with not a light inside. Past the old farmhouse with the barn full of wheat to last the encroaching winter, and finally past the little red schoolhouse, with its chipped paint in uneven hues from the coats upon coats of color that was redone every beginning of March.
Darkness devoured all they saw when they reached the edge of the Deep Wood. The blanket of leaves above shaded the forest floor from the rays of moonlight, swaying in the soft wind that chilled each child; every hair on their arms standing up straight. It whispered sly greetings into the ears of the two boys, as they stood staring at a small opening framed by jutting twigs and long branches that seemed to beckon them into the trees, like a crowd of arms welcoming them inside.
Darcy held with him his lamp in one hand, and his beloved friend in the other. Bucky grasped onto the eldests’ hand as hard as his soft hands could squeeze; their breaths puffed clouds through the breeze.
‘Darcy? Oh, what if we get lost?’ Bucky spoke up suddenly, before the golden child could make the first step into the darkness, ‘ so lost in fact, that we may never make it back?’
‘If we walk as straight as an arrow, we may walk straight back out again. Soon enough to have our parents wake us up in the morning.’he responded, so sure of himself.
The fair child smiled a sweet smile, and Darcy smiled right back. The trust they shared made them certain that all would be right and good in their journey. Holding on tightly to one another, they began their stroll under the blanket of branches that swallowed them into their evergreen throat.