Hollow

(TW- The subject matter touches on difficult themes). It is long, but I hope you find it worth the read.

Deep within the forest a cottage slumped against a tree.

Smoke curling weakly from the crumbling tumble-stone chimney.

The sagging moss-clad thatch supported on groaning warped beams

A desolate home that long ago said goodbye to dreams.

The all-pervasive charcoal scent.

Its timbers groan in discontent,

The rafters bowed, the lintel bent.

A place where others rarely went. Or that is how it seems.

Within that drafty hovel dwelt a father and his child.

A daughter, fair in form and thought, and in her manner mild.

The mother now a memory from many moons ago.

In her ghostly shadow the little girl was forced to grow.

Her father gnarled and carved from oak,

And like the turf-kiln that he'd stoke,

The smouldering flame he would choke.

For certain things were never spoke, of what went on below.

Near the door, her father's axe propped against the fireplace.

Upon his creaking chair he rocks, the axe's hunger braced.

Heavy head with razor edge on a shaft of seasoned ash.

Unfeeling tool of blackened steel, merciless as the lash.

Beneath a window crossed with lead,

A sackcloth mattress for her bed.

The stale straw smell of mouldered bread.

A childhood halted and instead thrown on by fate's blind thrash.

Each day before dawn awoke, the woodsman left in the dark

To hew the trunks condemned to die, breaking limbs stripped of bark.

The little girl, left alone, mindful to complete her chores:

Gather eggs and milk the goat, clean the pots and sweep the floors,

Separate the curds from the whey,

Soap and scrub clothing's stains away,

No idle moment left for play,

Keeping house the entire day, till his boots are back indoors.

One morning bright when dappled light bled through the canopy

The air grew soft with the droning flight of the bumblebee.

With a basket clasped in her arms she set out from her home,

And dancing freely in the green her feet began to roam.

Gathering mushrooms she did sing.

The herbs she plucked as fresh as spring,

Yet did not spot the toadstool ring.

The threshold crossed; she stepped within a copse on mossy loam.

All at once the golden sunlight flooded into her soul

Filling up the hairline cracks, smoothing out and making whole.

Bluebells kissed her open palms and she knew she was adored.

Imagination soaring high and innocence restored.

A village of her own depicts

Buildings of stones and pebble 'bricks'

And peopled them with folk of sticks.

Their lives and loves and happy tricks all in perfect accord.

Watching from the arching bough cloaked in leaves and morning dew,

The fairy grinned with famished mirth, leaning out limbs askew.

Around the child, the sweetest haze formed from naivety.

Shining with fae inspired subtle wild creativity.

Thus, heedlessly the girl played on

Enchanted with a silent song,

Unwittingly was fed upon.

Yet ever did it nudge along her spirit floating free.

At the turning of the day and the failing of the light,

Awaking from her game, surrounded by encroaching night.

Led on by wisps through twisted roots and branches homeward bound,

But on return the cottage was in total darkness found.

The door, it opened with a groan

The unseen chair let out a moan

A crunching grind of knucklebone

And then that broken baritone, an icy anger sound.

Where had she been till so late? An answer was demanded,

Wilfully ignoring what had father had commanded!

As candles lit, in his strong grasp she saw her broken toys.

She'd learn the cost of dalliance with feckless village boys!

Intimidated by his frame,

He called her by her mother's name.

Subdued with guilt that held no blame,

Yet flinching backwards just the same as startled by the noise.

So, from that night the potent fright had left the child subdued.

As they resumed the numbing toil, the stagnant peace renewed.

Soon returned the daydreams lure of idle thoughts unbidden,

Powerless to fend them off as if by night-hag ridden.

Back daily to the glade she'd stride,

And to the twig-jacks there confide.

Suspicious that his daughter lied,

One morning on the cottage spied from the tree line, hidden.

Like the fawn, into the woods unguarded she did frolic.

Imagining pastoral scenes both blissful and bucolic.

The paradise she'd made with love to help her playmates thrive

Was peopled not with inert sticks, but things that were alive!

Marvelled at their brittle dances,

Mimicked their heroic stances,

Sharing with them happy glances.

Unknowing what fast advances, and all too soon arrive.

Upon approach her father's temper turned to bitter rage.

No feeble plea could stop his wrath, nor protest could assuage.

Her frail constructions kicked and crushed. Twigs snapped beneath his heels.

He swung the axe in violent arcs, deaf to his child's appeals.

Each tree that stood as sentinel,

The axe bit deep until it fell.

Every thud a final knell.

Then with an open-fisted yell, two sharp blows raising weals.

Like rabid bear back to its lair his wretched child he dragged.

Within the timbered mildewed walls, in misery she sagged.

Pointing with his sneering axe, pacing back and forth he swirled.

Suggesting without saying that she'd join the adult world.

When sun acquiesced to night's dome

They knew not they were not alone.

The fairy stalked them to their home

And peeling from the shadowed gloam, vengeance to be unfurled.

It crept inside breaching through the walls of wattled plaster

And lay a curse upon the axe to betray its master.

Upon the sleeping weeping child it wove a glamour charm,

To henceforth know only bliss and no longer seeing harm.

One would discover when they woke

The cost of crossing the Good Folk.

A prank that is no idle joke.

The wasps nest you should never poke or else forfeit the arm.

The next morn the woodsman left but by dusk had not returned.

Fading rays gave way to gloom yet the girl was not concerned,

For she held court in her manse with a host of tiny guests.

Their bodies healed to new-growth sprigs, fresh lichen at their chests.

The Fae that craft them from the briar,

Now clad in its moonlight attire,

Engulfed the room in faint foxfire.

Its voice a lilting honey lyre accompanied their jests.

So it was that five times more the moon chased away the sun.

Playing with vernal elan what the fairy had begun.

Twig-jacks followed in her wake, bringing gifts and combing hair,

All beneath its unblinking, never flinching, sleepless stare.

Each time upon the witching hour,

Presaged by scent of elderflower,

The room transformed by fey power.

Rafters morphed to bridle-bower where stood a wild night-mare.

And like a kit nestles in the comfort of its drey,

Unnoticed and un-noted went her father's own delay.

The woodsman he had left in haste still angry at his daughter.

Hands clenching as he dwelt on the lesson he had taught her.

A madness overcame his sense,

Aggrieved by the perceived offence.

The axe-shaft in his hands felt tense.

His blood demanded recompense, marking trees for slaughter.

Drunk upon a lust unearthly sunk deep behind his eyes,

He lurched toward a willow tree to cut it down to size.

Splintering, the trunk collapsed like it were a rotten hulk.

Falling on the woodsman's leg, trapping him beneath its bulk.

In his agony left howling.

Crushing fracture, blood soon fouling.

Thirsty screams then strangled yowling.

Fever as a wolf came prowling and slowly round him skulk.

Shivering in pain and shock and fading from exposure,

Reluctantly he raised the axe, gasping for composure.

Hysterically, with crunching strikes, the broken limb he hacked.

Then cried in desperation as the faithless handle cracked.

His trembling hand the head did clasp

Resuming that most morbid task

Frenzied bludgeon butchering fast

Till with a final tortured gasp the fleshy mooring snapped.

Tottering on hands and knees through hostile ground he scrambled

Till the cottage hove in sight and to the door he shambled.

Behind him a bloodied trail, as across the stoop he crawled,

Writhing stricken to his bed and suffering there he sprawled.

He cried out to his child for aid.

She answered not, just gently swayed,

Nor any movement to him made.

Flailing faintly where he was splayed and for swift succour called.

Gradually pleading groans softened slowly into silence,

Replaced by the sickly-sweet putrid smell of violence.

For the glamour had forbade evil she could not perceive,

Living in the Fae created endless realm of make-believe.

Just for her it made this palace

From aurora borealis.

Blind and deaf to mortal malice.

Drinking from an empty chalice, and empty plates receive.

In the depths of snowy winter close to the cusp of Yule,

With no sign of the woodsman or his goods of needed fuel,

The villagers sent a party off to investigate,

Trudging out to the cottage, found it in a sorry state.

Door hung loosely, hinges broken,

To the elements was open.

A vile stench that did betoken

Those who could not be awoken, for they had come too late.

Stains of gore leading to a corpse by predators defiled,

Another by the window, an emaciated child.

One body told a story of a torment so obscene,

But the girl by comparison might almost seem serene.

In perished clothes and ivy dressed

Arms clutched tightly across her breast

A doll of twigs there firmly pressed

No more to grow to be her best nor see what might have been.

Their frosted breath hung as a haze in the still, doleful air.

Reverential pity reigned holding hands with hushed despair.

Outside echoed the callous lament of a cawing rook.

Turning to leave they spied a heap stashed in a cluttered nook;

A box they found, the lid they pried

And saw something was hid inside

That left those stout folk horrified.

Through anguished tears they softly sighed by candle, bell and book.

From the eaves a white fox flees blending with the frozen ground.

Lost in trees, a shrill bark echoes. An eldritch laughing sound.

First flakes from a blizzard fall warning of impending snow.

Sunset scattered on the drifts drowning all in sanguine glow.

They pondered in unsettled gloom

Her tiny life cut short too soon

To unsaid thought they did attune,

A mercy that this little bloom had left this place of woe.