Week 1 Story: Into the Woods

My dear, do you know,

How a long time ago,

Two poor little children,

Who’s names I don’t know, were stolen away on a fine summer’s day, and left in a wood, as I’ve heard people say.

And when it was night,

So sad was their plight,

The sun it went down,

And the moon gave no light.

They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried,

And the poor little things, they lay down and died.

And when they were dead,

The Robins so red

Brought strawberry-leaves

And over them spread;

And all the day long

They sung them this song:

“Poor babes in the wood! Poor babes in the wood!

And don’t you remember the babes in the wood?”

(Nursery Tale in The Nursery Rhyme Book)

Madie and Brenda at the young age of 12 were the best of friends. They loved to ride their bikes around town and visit new places. However, that is not really something parents want their children doing at 12 years old. Their parents had warned them multiple times of places they were not allowed to go, one of which being the woods. But you know children do the opposite of what their told…

One day Madie and Brenda were walking their bikes around town. They were both feeling sad because their other best friend from school, Allison, had just moved far away. Madie, Brenda, and Allison had been best friends since preschool, so it was hard for them all to be separated as they were. As Madie and Brenda were beginning to turn around and go back to Brenda’s house they ran into Nancy. Nancy was a grade below them in school but they weren’t too fond of her. Nancy asked if they wanted to go with her to the woods to see the fort she had built. Madie and Brenda figured why not go check it out, and give Nancy a chance. Who knows? She could be the third person in their circle since Allison moved, plus they didn’t have anything better to do. 

                                                                          (Woods)

When they got to the woods Madie and Brenda left their bikes by the road since it’d be too hard to walk them throughout the woods. As they are following Nancy, Madie and Brenda began to get a weird feeling. Madie had some red paper in her pocket from school so as they walked she would stick a piece of the paper on a branch on every couple of trees.

As Madie was busy leaving little pieces of paper on trees Brenda was trying to keep up with Nancy. Brenda stopped for a second to wait on Madie because she didn’t want to lose her. When Madie got to Brenda there was no sight of Nancy or her fort. They yelled and yelled for Nancy for hours. Finally, they decided they should try and find their way out to go home. They searched for the small pieces of paper that Madie had left on the tree branches but they could only find a few. They thought maybe the wind had blown the rest off. With no direction on how to get out and with the darkness setting in, they decided to find a safe place to sleep. They found all the sticks they could and attempted to make a barrier of some sort for protection. They shortly realized sticks aren’t going to keep them safe.

Madie and Brenda were both filled with so much sadness and fear that they began to get angry with each other for no reason. “You’re the one that said why not go with Nancy! We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you!” Brenda yelled. “I was just trying to help us get our minds off of Allison moving away! I didn’t know Nancy would leave us here!” Madie exclaimed. The girls just argued and argued until finally they had no more energy. They ended up falling asleep on the moist ground of the woods separated by a few feet due to their fight. Brenda woke up in the middle of the night to Madie screaming! She was being attacked by coyotes! Brenda ran over to help, but Madie kept screaming at her to run. “Run Brenda Run!” Madie managed to yell. So, Brenda did. She ran as hard as she could in the opposite direction of the coyotes. She was so frazzled and hurt from seeing Madie being attacked she didn’t noticed the drop that was coming up. She fell into a stream that was running through the forest, the blow from the fall knocked her unconscious and she drowned in that stream.

                                                                   (Strawberry leaves)

The next morning the birds, frogs, and all the little critters were so shocked to find the two girls. It truly broke all their hearts. As they all stood around and mourned for the young girls the Robins that lived there decided to act. When a Robin dies it is the duty of other Robins to honor them by placing beautiful strawberry leaves on them. The Robins flew to town and gathered some strawberry leaves from a man’s garden they regularly hung out at. They flew back to the woods and laid the leaves on the girls like they were beautiful Red Robins. The little critters then all gathered around the girls and sang peaceful songs to them until they were found by the humans with the shiny badges.

The little critters of the woods declared war that day on the despised coyotes…

Author's Note:

From reading the original tale at the beginning it says that there were two girls that went to the woods that laid down and died. It never explains why they went to the woods or the actual cause of their death. I came up with my version of the story from a childhood memory with one of my best friends. Only in my life we found our way out of the woods from the pieces of paper we marked the trees with. We never did go back to those woods, especially after we told our parents and found out there were coyotes in those woods.

Bibliography:

My story is based off of the Nursery Tale on page 56 called "My Dear Do You Know" in The Nursery Rhyme Book edited by Andrew Lang.