Princess in the Rough
Chapter 3

Echo

“Will you stop screaming! It may not look like it, but I have ears!” The talking tree shouted at me over my screaming. I stopped screaming long enough to take a deep breath in.

“Good, your done. What is a human like you doing in Hunter’s Arrow Woods?” The tree asked me.

“I don’t know.” I said, my voice an octave higher than usual. How was I acting so calm? I just became Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz! Being taken to another world and all.

“You don’t know? How can you not know, not knowing is knowing what you don’t know, but you need to know.” The talking tree explained. I gave it a confused look.

“Okay… what?”

“You know you don’t know, right?” The tree said slowly, as if I was the confusing one.

“Um, sure. Are you seriously talking to me, or did I hit my head on the way here?”

“Silly girl. Hitting your head would have called all The King’s Men and All The King’s Horses. Hopefully, they would have put you back together again.” The tree smiled. I backed up a little a bit. Watching a tree smile is not something I planned to see in my lifetime. Especially a tree like this.

The tree looked like a normal oak, except for the fact that the bark was a perfect brown, and the trunk was completely smooth with two branches on the side she, or he, or it, used for arms. It looked kind of like the drawings a young child would draw for their parents.

“What is your name, small human?” The tree asked suddenly, it’s smile still present, but it just seemed creepy.

“Um, you’re not going to eat me, are you?” I asked, worried.

“I’m a tree! I eat sugar from photosynthesis, glucose to be exact.”

“Right, how could I be so silly? A tree is talking to me, so how could I assume that the tree’s clearly evident teeth is used to eat small humans like me.”

“Exactly! Now, what is your name?” It’s, sharp teeth inside its mouth was the color of oak wood and the size of my hand.

“Echo Kaya Jones.” I said, backing away even more. I stepped on something on the ground. I turned around and found the book that took me her in the first place, The Fairy Tale Trials.

I picked it up in disbelief. What is it doing here, what am I doing here? How am I here, how is it here? So many questions filled my head, but I had no answers.

“Is that a storybook? I thought there were only a few left in the world! They’re incredibly powerful, anyone would kill to get one.” The tree leaned forward to get a better look at the book.

“You know what it is?” I asked. If it had answers, I wanted to know them.

“Who doesn’t know what it is? This is one of the legendary books that shaped our world!” The tree looked at the book in my hands in awe while I looked at the book with a completely blank expression. It was a book, how could it shape an entire world?

“From the looks of it, it could fit every story that this world is built on. Open it!” It urged me. I opened the leather bound book, but, like last time, it was blank. I flipped through the whole thing, but the only words were the ones on the last page. Taktu mig í heim galdra, I wonder what it meant.

“Take me to the world of magic.” The tree muttered.

“You know what it says?” I asked, shocked.

“Of course I do. I’m an oak tree of the Icelandic variety and that is Icelandic.” It said proudly.

“Um, we’re in Iceland?” I asked, not understanding what the tree was saying.

“No, we’re in the Hunter’s Arrow Woods. The closest kingdom is Forest Majesty, which is north from here. If we were to head east, we would be in the kingdom of Flo. West of here is New Atlantis above the sea with Old Atlantis beneath. South of here is Maleficent’s castle but you don’t want to go there. Oh no.” The tree swung it’s, um, trunk/body/head back in forth, like it was shaking its head no.

“Wait, did you say Maleficent’s castle?” I asked, hoping I had misheard it.

“Yeah, Hunter’s Arrow Woods is the only thing keeping her from storming out of her castle and attacking Forest Majesty directly. She wasn’t invited to the princess’s blessing ceremony, so she cursed the child, the child went missing, just the normal fairy tale drama.” The tree explained.

My head started spinning. Fairy tales? The tree was talking about them like they were real, but then again I’m talking to a tree that could talk back. So maybe the possibility wasn’t too far fetched; still, fairy tales were just stories.

“Are you okay, young, fleshy human? You look the color of snow, like Snow White.” My vision blurred at the name of The Fairest One of All. Black crept from the edges of my vision. No way were fairy tales real.

Eventually, my brain couldn’t handle it anymore, and I blacked out from the stress, surprise, and overall exhaustion.