This is a short story I had to write for school. The only requirements were the length (which I went over a bit) and that it had to include the dialogue "I been there. I didn't want to go, but I been there." Enjoy and tell me what you think please!

Aras

Like many abandoned houses, the house in the woods in Dorenson was plagued by broken windows and wandering ivy and weeds that clambered through the garden, threatening to strangle the few wildflowers that dared to grow there. Although I worked at Bridlewood, an estate house not far from the woods, I had never been to the abandoned house. Sometimes when I heard a story about it, I would try to imagine it in my head, but I never gave it much thought until Molly told me a secret one day. She said that the house wasn’t empty at all, that it had never been haunted, had never been home to a ghost or a witch, as I’d sometimes heard children claim. She said, as we washed the night’s dishes together, that the house wasn’t difficult to find and she told me the trick to finding it that so many schoolchildren yearned to know. She said that she was only telling me this because she couldn’t keep the secret to herself. She said that I mustn’t tell a soul. She said there was a man living in the house. A woodsman, a recluse, and like the mysterious hero in a fairy tale, he was only waiting for a princess to come seek him out, to bring him out of his cave and into society. His name, she said, was Aras.

I don’t know why the story struck me, but it did. All night long, I dreamt of the lonely woodsman Aras, living each day without speaking, without loving, without dreaming, thinking only of necessities like food to eat and a bed to sleep in because he had nothing else. And in my dream, I went to him. I went to him and cared for him and he loved me from the moment he saw me. Like in a fairy tale.

The following day, I hurried through my chores and put on my cloak and hood, slipping through the night and into the woods, following Molly’s instructions. And there I found the house slouched between the trees, just as she’d told me I would. But it wasn’t so sad as she’d said. In fact, I didn’t think it sad at all. The moths and the birds hovered around it, sparkling in the fractures of dusty light that had broken through the treetops. They were like fairies and the woods were like a storybook and I felt sure that the man inside fit just as seamlessly into my vision. He would be rugged but handsome, brash in his manners but kind in his heart. He would be perfect. I knew he would. I dreamt it.

* * * *

Lying in the field behind the Bridlewood house, my apron knotted between my hands and my eyes upon the stars, I sighed and let Rafe take one of my hands, squeezing it between his red, chafed fingers. He leaned down and kissed my forehead. His lips were dry. I didn’t say anything.

“All right, Violet?” he murmured and I nodded.

“All right.”

“Pretty rotten day though, yeah?”

I shrugged. “I d’know.”

“I think Johnny dodged some bits from the kitchen again, the bloody swine . . .” Rafe cursed, shaking his head. “Cook blamed me. I’ll sock’m next time, I will. ‘E can’t be doin’ that unless ‘e leaves me outta it and cuts the shine. I don’t know why ‘e risks it anyways. Meself, I’d only be dodgin’ if I ‘ad a place like yours, Vi, upstairs where all the treasures’re ‘iding- the candlesticks, the jewels, the tick-tock clocks. Make a fortune off that, I could.”

He cuddled up next to me, wrapping his arm around my waist. When he tried to lower his hand, I shook my head. He tried this every night now, it seemed.

“Not ‘til you marry me, John Rafferty,” I said without hesitation and he groaned.

“Christ, Vi . . . Ain’t I been with you long enough for you t’know I ain’t leavin’? My ‘eart’s bleedin’ for you, it t’is. D’you believe me?”

I mumbled a noise between a squeak and a yes and he took that to be my assent, I think, though he didn’t try anything more. He’d been at the Bridlewood house longer than I had. He knew more about the woods, I felt sure, though I’d never asked him about it. Although I wanted to ask him about Aras, I wasn’t sure that I ought to so instead I only asked of the house.

“’Ave you ever been there?” I asked him and he nodded.

“I been there,” he said. “I didn’t want to go, but I been there. Went on a dare, y’see. The lads told me a tale ‘bout a man who lived there, mad as an ‘atter, paintin’ his face white like a doll and reddin’ ‘is lips and stealin’ puppies and babies to cook up for ‘is supper. Been there twice, I ‘ave. Spooky place, that is. Don’t be wanderin’ around there at night, Vi. You might scare yerself ‘alf t’ death. An’ we wouldn’t want that now, would we? No, no. I certainly wouldn’t.”

He put his hand on my cheek and kissed my lips and I nodded quietly, feigning feminine obedience, while inside I was planning when would be the best time to visit the old house again.

* * * * *

There were dishes in the sink. I saw this the next time I went to Aras’s house. Dishes in the sink, a small and scattered assortment of food on the table, wrinkled blankets on the bed. Of course I didn’t dare go inside, but the house was so small that I could see all this from the window. And before I even did that, I stood behind a tree near the house like a little girl waiting for the perfect moment to peek at her Christmas presents. When I was sure that everything around me was still and silent, I crept closer and closer and finally pressed my nose to the window glass. It wasn’t just the dishes and the bedclothes that convinced me that Molly wasn’t lying. It was the energy of the place: the air around the house that drew me closer and shook the treetops, the way the cool glass left a pink kiss on my cheek, the feel of the wood beneath my fingertips, so alive I thought I could feel its pulse. The house couldn’t be abandoned, I decided. It was breathing.

When I left there, I was thinking of him. I knew he had to be real. And after work was through and my nightly chores completed, I met Rafe in the field like always, but I wasn’t really there, I felt. I was deep in my head, thinking of Aras, imagining his arms and his eyes and the shape of his face. I thought he would be tall and thick-shouldered with rough hands and hair the color of straw. A thick beard would cover his lower cheeks and chin, but he would shave it off if his sweetheart asked him. He would be very kind. When I asked Rafe to shave off his mustache once, he chuckled and he squeezed my hand, but he did nothing. Whenever I kissed him, his whiskers scratched my skin and I was left with a pink ring about my mouth. That would never happen with Aras, I felt sure. Aras would shave off his beard for me. And when he kissed me, there would be no pink ring. There would be no scratching. There would only be him. And me. And it would be wonderful.

* * * * *

I told Molly that I’d gone to the house. She bit her lip when I told her. She asked if I’d told anyone else about the house and Aras, but I assured her that I hadn’t. After all, I’d only mentioned it casually to Rafe and I doubted that it meant anything to him. Molly said she was surprised that I’d gone. As she said it, her eyes dropped and her cheeks paled, lightening to the color of milk. But when I asked her if she regretted telling me, she quickly shook her head. She had to tell me, she murmured. She couldn’t bear keeping a secret only to herself, she explained, and I was a very good listener. Molly left for the kitchens then and before she did, she murmured something else, but I didn’t hear it and it didn’t seem to matter, so I never asked and she never repeated it.

* * * * *

I didn’t go back to Aras’s house at all the next week, but I went mad thinking of it. Work was wearisome, as always, and I daydreamed far too much to finish my duties quickly. And then a great fog crept into town, draping everyone and everything in white cotton, and that was why I kept myself at Bridlewood rather than explore the woods again. I was afraid that if I stayed outside too long, the clouds would reach down and smother me or spin me around until I lost my way. I sat at the window a lot, looking down at all trees drowned in thick fog. Once I thought of going to the woods, if only for the chance that I would get lost and have to call out, “Help! Help!” and Aras would come running and find me. He would carry me to the old house, beneath the magical, glowing ceiling of fog and moths and birds and fireflies like fairies. Maybe I would have fallen and a wreath of ivy would have climbed its way onto my head while wildflowers threaded their way into my hair. Aras would think I was some sort of woodland princess. He would take me in and care for me, finding himself besotted in no time at all. And when he realized that I fancied him too, everything would be strung into place. We would marry and I’d move away from Bridlewood. I would never be a maid again. I’d only be his princess.

* * * * *

The fog cleared away one night. I woke at twilight, restless, and knowing I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, I went to sit beside my little window in the attic. I blinked once, twice, three times. Once my eyes were adjusted to the darkness, I could see so much green in the grass and trees, it startled me. I shuddered. And then I saw Miss Adeline’s dog outside, romping around the garden and then stopping to eat the head off of an iris or a rose. Miss Adeline had lost him earlier and she’d been upset about it all afternoon. Although I knew it was late and I wasn’t obligated, I quickly slipped on my shoes and tied up my hair and wrapped my blanket around my shoulders.

It only took a few moments to go downstairs and into the garden, but by the time I got there, the little dog Harry was already far into the field. Grabbing the hem of my nightdress, I ran after him through the field and into the woods, which no longer seemed so magical. They were dark now. No sunlight filtered through the treetops, no fairies glistened around my head. But still I chased after Harry, not realizing how far I’d gone until I saw a familiar tree, the one Molly had directed me to, which had a red ribbon wrapped around one of its branches to direct its viewer to Aras’s cabin. I stopped, but Harry didn’t and soon I was after him again. I became so focused on his little white body, speckled with black spots, that I didn’t notice how close I was coming. And then when I finally caught up with him and was just about to scoop him into my arms, my eyes glanced up for just a moment and I saw the abandoned house just ahead of me. It looked heavenly in the moonlight, glowing like a candle in pitch black, and somehow it seemed to mesmerize me. Instantly, I stopped and stared and I didn’t notice when Harry ran around me and back toward Bridlewood. Staring at the house, I realized why it suddenly seemed so illuminated. Because it was illuminated. It was alive. There was a candle just inside the window and many more further in, which I saw as I crept closer. And there was a voice. A male voice. But I couldn’t hear what it was saying because suddenly the blood was pounding so loudly in my ears, I could only hear it and my breath, which came quickly and sporadically and left me clutching tightly at the blanket about my shoulders, squeezing it so hard that my fingers hurt. And then I saw him. There. In the firelight. Through the window, I saw him add a log to the fire and then reach for another candle, which he lit and set on the ground, beside a blanket. He held his hands to the fire. They were cold and I wanted to hold them, to warm them for him. His hair was red, not dark blond as I’d imagined, and he was skinnier too. His arms weren’t made for chopping wood and setting traps. The reality of seeing him though shook away any doubts I might have had thinking of his appearance here and his appearance in my daydreams and imaginings, the fantasy that had kept me so occupied and so contented for so, so very long now. It was Aras. It was really him. I wasn’t a fool to have imagined him in my dreams, because here he was. Aras. My Aras.

But then the blanket beside him moved. At first I thought there was an animal there, perhaps a dog, but then a girl in a white nightdress like my own slipped her head out from beneath the blanket. I knew her instantly. It was Miss Adeline, my mistress. She reached out for Aras’s hand and there was no mistaking the familiarity. He was her beloved. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the scene though I knew that I ought to go. More than anything, I just wanted to see his face. Even if he wasn’t mine, if my daydreams meant nothing to him or anyone, I still wanted to see his face. I’d imagined it so long.

And then he turned. I don’t think I gasped, though I might have. I was numb.

There was Rafe. He looked toward me, but he didn’t see me. He only saw Adeline. He kissed her hand, smiling, but refused her tugging begs and got up to fetch something across the room. My heart went still. This is where he came every night, I realized, after he left me. He was Aras. He always had been. And Molly knew it. She’d wanted to save me. “I thought you ought to know.” That was what she’d mumbled the last time we’d met, the words I thought I hadn’t heard. “I thought you ought to know.”

The fairies were gone now. The leaves in the trees were still and the stars refused to twinkle. The moths were only moths and the house didn’t glow, it burned. And I left them there, as they were. There was nothing else to do but that. I turned and I left them.