What Lies in the Woods

by Kate Alice Marshall

We knew it was fantasy, that we were just pretending, but we wished we weren’t. We tried to believe, filled with the sense that if only we could conquer our doubt, we could make it true. We would find the door in the woods, the world in the back of the wardrobe, the dragon’s egg left nestled in the loam. We knew the world was cruel and dirty and dull, and it was all so brutally unfair that we refused to accept it. There was magic in the world. We only had to find it.

To believe is to hold dear, to cherish, to claim as a truth more fundamental than fact.

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?” Ethan said. “You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it—that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”