Author’s note: This story is based on a line in the song ‘Kids’ by MGMT. the line is; ‘A family of trees wanted to be haunted’. When I heard that I just thought ‘How delightful, there sounds like there is a story behind that’. From what I have read since that line actually refers to the family tree waiting of the next generation … but I think my take is more fun.

Fern sighed heavily and leaned against her mother’s nobbly, hard trunk.

‘Oh mother, nothing ever happens around here,’ she said, shaking her tree nymph limbs in a pleasant breeze.

Her mother said nothing and Fern pulled her spindly roots up out of the ground, creeping back to the dirt road and looking expectantly down the hill.

Nothing.

No one had come this way since the town of Indersmall had burnt to the ground. There was no longer any reason for travellers to pass down the dusty and narrow road when there was a lovely wide, stone road that skirted around the forest and went straight to the capital city of Hammerton.

‘It’s not as if there is any threat of nasty things happening in our lovely wood,’ Fern continued, even though she knew she was largely talking to herself as her mother spent so much time sleeping these days. ‘Why did they have to go and build that new road anyway?’

Her mother surprised her by answering her rhetorical question in her slow and warm tones. ‘The road is flat and wide. They built a sturdy bridge over the river for carts to pass over easily. Why would travellers risk coming into the woods where their wheels could stick in the muddy crossing?’

Fern knew the answer was totally correct and made perfect sense. Yet it didn’t solve her problem. Without the stimulation of traffic through the forest the tree nymphs were becoming so slow they resembled the trees more and more. She needed something to wake them all up.

‘What could I possibly do to bring the humans this way?’ she thought to herself.

In the days when visitors to the wood had been frequent, fern had heard of a copse of trees on the other side of the mountain that was haunted by an evil spirit. Humans didn’t avoid it. In fact they would journey to the thicket especially to be frightened by the thrashings of the trees. What a strange lot those two legged beings were.

And yet Fern needed them.

The birds and squirrels that had made their home in her wood were largely ignored by the other nymphs, or at best, they were seen as a small annoyance. Fern required something truly sensational to wake up her family.

A ghost might attract some curious explorers.

Only there was already a haunted wood for humans to visit.

And where would she find a ghost anyway?

All these ideas where only airy thoughts. Fern had no way of telling the humans her forest had changed in any case.

She sighed again and relocated herself back to the side of her mother, her many roots treading carefully over the spongy ground cover.

The wind had picked up.

Fern enjoyed a good breeze and rustled her soft leaves, all beautiful fiery colours at this time of year. The yellow ones were the first to part with her twiggy fingers and a few golden hued leaves drifted away on the wind.

Gold.

That was something else that humans desired.

If only her leaves really were made of the shiny metal, she was sure they would never be short of a visitor bringing noise and colour and strange scents to their clearings, where the family could gather at the edge of the trees to watch and listen.

Fern dug her roots deeper into the moist soil and twined them around those of an ancient, oak giant.

‘Have your roots encountered any soft yellow minerals?’ she politely asked in her woody language.

The gentle, old lady had never come across such a thing. Her roots went much deeper and much wider than Fern’s own and she promised to spread the question the length and breadth of their home.

‘That will take a while,’ Fern told herself.

She decided to catch some sun on her changing coat and made her way carefully through the undergrowth, weaving deeper into the embrace of the trees.

The first clearing was the smallest, being the closest to the edge of the wood, not far from where the road entered the shade of the canopy. In days gone by travellers had made this their first stop, often just to rest a little while before going on. Only one fire pit marred the soft grass. The black of the coals had long since softened to grey and the grass crept stubbornly into the middle of the fire place to reclaim its ground.

Fern turned over the remaining pieces of charcoal with her roots, looking for anything interesting.

Not so much as a forgotten spoon.

Memories of days gone by flooded into her mind. Although she was still a young tree Nymph, Fern had fifty years of fibrous reflection to sift through.

She recalled she had nearly been spotted here once. A young girl had peered into the surrounding trees and caught her lifting long roots from the soil, ready to move. Of course no one had believed the little girl’s story.

Fern remembered the girl as clearly as if it had been yesterday. Even if she didn’t posses the memory of trees, the young human would have been impossible to forget. The poor little lass had no legs. She had been carried on the back of a small donkey and sat quietly almost the entire time her parents had rested in the clearing. Her cry of astonishment had been the first sound Fern had heard from the human child.

If she hadn’t frozen from fear and instinct, Fern might have been tempted to move again just to hear the girl speak. In her entire existence as a wood nymph she had never heard such a sweet sound as the voice of the tiny little blonde girl urging her parents to look. Even her pleading sounded almost like a song.

But Fern had done as her mother had taught her; closing her eyes and calling on old magic to give her the appearance of an ordinary tree.

Why was it that old laws insisted a tree nymph should never be seen by a human?

As Fern became drowsy from the rays of the sun her thoughts wandered, memories fading and her singularity growing foggy. She started awake and shook her branches, determined not to become as sleepy as her mother.

‘I bet the nymphs of the haunted forest never have time to doze,’ she said aloud. ‘Thrashing trees … I’m sure they would be hard to control.’

And in that instant Fern uncovered the mystery of the haunted wood. It wasn’t ghosts that whipped the trees into a frenzy. It was a wild dance of the nymphs!

‘Those cheeky devils!’ A smile spread across the bark on Fern’s face. ‘If those nymphs see fit to break ancient laws, then why can’t I?’

As for spreading the word of her wood’s new attraction, the old oak had given her an idea.

*

Fern watched the two young men in the clearing. They studied the shadows of the undergrowth from the safety of their camp in the open, grassy land.

‘Do you see it?’ one of them whispered. Surely he was no more than a boy. He couldn’t have passed his twentieth year.

‘No … do you? Do you think it even exists?’ whispered the second lad.

The adventurers looked at one another for reassurance.

‘Fellita said she saw it, and she never lies,’ one boy argued. They looked so much alike that Fern had trouble telling them apart.

‘No matter,’ she thought to herself and let her glamour slip for just a few seconds to give a cheeky wink as soon as the boys looked her way. ‘There was one human so different that she was easy to find.’

As the boys cried their delight and edged closer, Fern thanked the magic of the forest. Deep, wide and ancient roots stretched from one side of her home to the other. But they could go further. Their network could easily dig to connect with lonely trees on a hill, and under bridges and walls, into the capital city, sending a single message in the whispering of wind in leaves until they found the blonde human with no legs and a voice that enchanted angels.

‘Return,’ was the simple message. ‘Return to where we met.’

And Fellita had returned.

She was no longer a child.

Fellita sang for kings and queens and sang in halls where hundreds of people came to hear. Fellita sang of the magic of the forest and never forgot her vision of the spirit of the forest. And Fellita had come. Riding on a calm, white horse, she came to talk with Fern.

One of the humans had reached her position and hesitantly reached out to touch the rough skin of Fern’s face. Though it tickled, she held on to the old magic, keeping her glamour in tact so that all the boy felt was the rough fibre of bark.

Her mother still slept.

Many of her family slept deeply.

Yet it wouldn’t be long before the wood was once again buzzing with life and activity as the curious humans ventured under the canopy searching for the forest nymph.

Fern was still a young nymph. She couldn’t help it if her glamour slipped now and then!