Beau Forest

• Alayna Walsh, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2021

I’m Cleo, Jade, my best friend came over, and I just moved houses, so I gave her the best tour ever showing her every nook and cranny of the house. I saved the best for last, the library. The library was like the Beauty and the Beast library from the Beast's castle, but not as big and dusty.
As I was showing Jade around the library, I tripped over a stack of books and fell into a bookcase. The back of my head was bleeding but I didn't say anything. I followed Jade's gaze and there was a tunnel the bookcase had opened to. It was pitch black, I grabbed Jade's hand and we walked in.
I checked my watch and it had been twenty minutes since we started walking, my head was killing me. Jade yanked my arm, and we were at a gate. The gate was more like a wall, it was black and dusty, it seemed impossible to get into. When I looked closer, I could see something like a little black button. Jade smashed it.
BANG! The gate slowly opened. I looked over at Jade, flabbergasted. Before our eyes was a forest. But this forest had fairies, elves, unicorns, pixies and so much more. Before we could process all of it, fairies came and flew us away. “I’m Issibel, welcome to Beau Forest!” A fairy squeaked. “You would look great in sage green,” she said pointing to me, and then she pointed to Jade “you would look great in lilac!” The fairies dressed us up in exquisite dresses. Then they flew us away again. There was a table filled with everything that you could possibly think of. I looked around, the trees had all sorts of food on them.
We sat down and ate so much we thought we might puke. Jade had been too distracted to see me grab my head and lose my balance. I turned to Jade and whispered, “Isn’t this a bit weird, should we be trusting them?” “It's fine, stop worrying.” All of a sudden, I felt something on my head, they noticed that my head was bleeding. They flew me to a table and started doing something to my head, it was stinging for a moment. My head felt great. I looked down at my watch and it was five o’clock. My family was getting back at five o’clock. I jumped up, “I’m so sorry we love it here but I have to go now, we will visit again. You have all been so kind.” I grabbed Jade’s hand and was explaining as we ran. The fairies picked us up and flew us to get there faster, we shouted “Goodbye!” and ran to the end of the tunnel. We were back in the library, we looked at each other and laughed, we agreed it would be our secret. We went back there all the time. From that day we had a perfect home away from home.