16

The flower was radiant. It shone and glimmered under the sun, and lured in all who beheld its beauty, filling them with a temptation - a strong desire - an undeniable urge to pluck it, take it for themselves. Its golden petals shone like polished wood, and its stem stood strong, rooted in the fertile soil.

But the flower was a trap. For those who touched it - those who dared to place their hands upon its deceptively fragile figure - would meet an immediate demise from which they could never return. They would undergo a transformation so complete, it could not be undone. 

The boy had been watching the flower for some time now. He did not like flowers. He especially did not like picking flowers. But this one - this one was strange. It gleamed at him, called to him, whispered in his ear, and he did not like that. 

For the little boy, it was a suspicious thing. Still, he was compelled to stay, to watch it. It was like the early moments of wakefulness, when your subconscious battles with the wakeful mind, and waves of awareness are dwarfed by sleep, back and forth, until finally wakefulness prevails and one could leave behind the clutches of sleep. 

And so he had been standing there, watching the flower for some time now, his mind doing battle with its treacherous lure. 

It was broken only when someone else arrived. Another traveler, going by the road - another person who had heard its call, a poor soul trudging towards their doom with no idea of what awaited her. 

At first the boy did not see her, so entranced was he by this flower, so focused was he on the battle he was waging in his head. But then she came into view, and he noticed her, though he continued on with the battle, unable to speak, unable to move. And then she reached, her fingers outstretched towards the flower, and he wanted to scream, No! Don't touch it! - because certainly something was very wrong about this strange golden flower. 

His body did not follow his command, and the woman bent down to pluck the terrible little thing. 

As soon as her fingers touched the flower, a burst of light swaddled her, and a terrified scream - a horrible, guttural thing which broke the flower's hold on him and startled him nearly out of his mind - filled the serene forest air. 

He closed his eyes shut tightly, and when he opened them again, the woman was frozen in place, her entire body now the same polished golden as the flower. 

Gold. The woman had been turned into gold.

He reached out, curious, but thought better of it. Running off the same way he had come - off towards the village, never to travel so far out again - he tried to make sense of what he had witnessed. But there was no making sense of this treacherous magic. He had left too early.

Had he stayed, he would had seen.

He would have seen the two women - hair down to the ground, bodies bulging in unnatural ways under their thin garments.

He would have seen them approach the flower - the golden woman - and chitter happily at the sight.

He would have seen them begin to drag her away - away, into a nearby cave, and into the darkness within.

And, if he had been brave enough to follow them, he would have seen them put her in the biggest crucible he had ever seen in his life, and he would have seen the woman turned to liquid gold, poured into small molds - turned into dozens of pure gold bars.

Perhaps, he would have been able to make sense of it, after all, and he might have even been able to warn the wandering adventurer. The one who could have saved them all from the evil that had been brewing, and which would come to terrorize every living creature among them.

Perhaps, perhaps.

So much, in the end, rests upon the courage of the smallest of us.