Welcome to the second week of the Spring Writing Challenge!
You all did so well with your stories last week! There were so many interesting and unique ways you interpreted the prompt. It’s now the second week, so it’s time to do it again! Will your story take place in the past? In space? Underground? Whatever you decide, we can’t wait to see how you use this prompt.
So, without further ado, here’s your next prompt!
Week One Prompt – The Setting Prompt
Write a story that takes place in a
Forbidden Garden
Wait…what’s a setting prompt?
A setting prompt is a prompt that takes place in a specific setting. It doesn’t matter who’s there, what happens, or what’s said. The only thing that matters is that your story must take place in a forbidden garden.
Before you start writing, we have some important rules for you to follow.
Writing Rules
1. Please keep the content of the stories you post to a PG rating. Please avoid real curse words. Violence/fighting should be limited and purposeful. Please do not include any spice.
2. Your story must be 1,000 words or less, and must contain the prompt to be counted for the challenge. You’re not required to post it in order to “win” the challenge, but if you want it to count for your team, your story must be posted by Sunday at 11:59 PM ET, and you must include your team name.
Remember to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and post your story as an “answer” to this question. 🙂 You’re all doing such a great job!
Happy Writing!
Team 1! Sorry if there are typos or grammar mistakes, I’m posting this a minute before the deadline haha <3
When my brother became king, he sealed all entrances to the palace garden. He put his best guards around the perimeter and ordered anyone who strayed close to the entrance to be arrested.
My brother was only in that garden for minutes on the fateful day he watched my parents die, but his eyes are now hollow, his once chocolate brown hair streaked with gray. He told me, and I honestly can’t recall if he has spoken to me since, that he would die before letting another person set foot in that garden.
I pull my hood tighter around my head as the frigid wind bites my cheeks. I have no desire to be the reason for my brother’s death, but my need for answers is becoming suffocating.
Tonight, the moon hides behind the clouds, helping me stay undetected. I zig-zag between the shrubbery that once lined the path to the garden. The guards around the perimeter have become more lax with the rotations since no one has yet tried to break in.
I hide behind a bush and count sixty seconds between when a guard disappears around the corner and another one comes into view. I try to relax my muscles while I wait for the next thirty-second gap. When no guards are in view, I run towards the garden hedge and push off the ground to jump. In the split second I’m in the air, I realize the hedge is taller than I remember. I ungracefully land somewhere in the middle, grasping wildly for purchase.
I’ve almost managed to make it almost to the top when the next guard rounds the corner. My traitorous body freezes in fear, fingers going slack. The guard doesn’t see me until he’s right below my perch. I watch my presence register on his face, but manage to keep my grip. I swing my legs over to the other side as the guard opens his mouth to sound an alarm.
I hit the ground ungracefully, rolling onto my back. Then I’m up and running. I’m not sure if the guards will try to chase me, but I’m not taking any chances.
As a child, I found gardens tedious and stuffy due to the parties of that sort my parents hosted here. Now, I wished I’d spent more time in the garden as I blindlessly race through it.
After putting a good distance between me and where I climbed over the wall, I pause to catch my breath. The palace garden is essentially a maze, somewhere designed for people to become lost in.
For the first time, the layout seems sinister, not romantic. A chill creeps down my spine as I take in my surroundings. The tall hedges are healthy and pruned, even though my brother had the gardeners relocated after his declaration. The leaves are so green they appear black, and instead of the colorful flowers I remember, glowing silver blossoms adorn the hedges.
What happened here?
The flowers start to slowly grow, their petals reaching toward me. I back away, blinking. And that’s when the music registers.
I’d thought it was the wind in my ears as I ran, but there’s a haunting melody floating through the air. It seems to grow louder after I acknowledge it.
Ignoring the fear in my gut, I start following the sound. I’m here for answers, and this impossible song seems like a good start.
I always try to be brave, but this garden is haunting. Vines strewn the ground, and some are splattered with red. All I can think about is my parents and how they spent their last moments here. Was it quick? Were they scared? I feel nauseous.
The music is now so loud it’s almost deafening. It doesn’t occur to me to think about how I know exactly which path to follow, and how the music seems to be tethered to me, reeling me in.
Suddenly, I come to a clearing. In the center, was something that tugged at a childhood memory. A wishing well.
I approach the well in a daze, ears ringing and eyes stinging from the blindly bright flowers. I came here as a child several times, but only made a wish once.
“Careful,” my parents had said. “The well can only hold so many of your wishes before it takes in return.”
I lean over the edge, a terrible feeling crawling up my throat, causing my earlier nausea to return. The water in the well is splashing about, and there, in the waves, I can make out the resemblances of my parents’ faces.
I reel back, horrified. My legs give way, but the well is pulling me closer again. I fall against its rim, shutting my eyes so I can’t see the water.
In one terrible moment, the melody morphs into a voice.
“Elora. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Joshua Forbes
Team A 🙂
The Forbidden Garden
Once upon a not-so-distant time, in a not-so-enchanted place, a boy was raised with one rule and one rule only. Other than that one, all-important rule, the boy was free to do as he pleased. This is not to say the boy ran wild. On the contrary, he was a remarkably well-mannered young boy, at least by the standards of his kind. He made noise, but never too much. He played outside, but was back before dinner. He washed once a week, but remembered to rinse behind his ears. Occasionally, his parents took the extreme measure of suggesting what he should do. Darling, you really should call your grandmother, his mother might say, or Careful not to track mud, sport, his father might note. Such extreme maxims, rare as they were, proved enough to keep the boy on track. Only once did such subtleties fail, and that was why the boy’s parents made their one and only rule.
The boy’s house was nice, but it was not magical. It had sixteen rooms, which was a very plain number. Even worse it had twenty-two doors, the exact number that a sixteen-room house should have. The house held two adults and had room enough for three children but only held one. All walls stood straight. No floorboards creaked. Everything smelled pleasantly of plum or vanilla, unless the boy cracked the window on the eastern-most of the various sitting rooms, and let in the wild, rambling odor drift in—sweet lavender, succulent honeysuckle, ripe blueberry, humid mint—until the boy’s parents approached and the window was hastily returned to its proper, closed condition.
The boy’s street was similarly proper, at least until the eastern end. To be clear, the street was in a large modern city, certainly bigger than a town, but from the large yards and hanging trees you could almost forget that. His parents called the street a cul-de-sac, which meant the street met a road on one end and no road on the other. Lining the street were houses similar to the boy’s. The boy knew, without having to check, that no floorboard creaked in any house, and that they all kept their eastern-most windows tightly shut. The street had the proper number of adults, and one proper child.
Sometimes the boy’s friends came to visit. They were always surprised at the nice trees, and big yards, and most of all they were surprised that the boy had no rules at all. One rule, the boy would always correct. We cannot go in the Garden. The boy’s friends would tilt their heads, and grin, and invariable they would both end up at the eastern end of the street (the side that did not meet a road), standing before a high wooden fence and a rusted Keep Out sign and the smell of earthy rhubarb.
No one ever had to ask what hid behind the fence. Every child, even the boyest of young boys, simply knew. The other side was Magic. In the winter months, when the rest of the street was dry with bitter winds, the Garden would have snow, the fluffy kind perfect for a snowball. In the summer, when the rest of the street was hot and dry, the trees of the Garden cast shade and drop apples juicier and richer than those in the neat and tidy kitchen. In the fall, while the darkness drained the rest of the street to a lifeless sepia, the trees of the Garden would blaze into fire, would alchemize to gold, would become auburns without names. But in the spring, oh in the spring, then the Garden would bloom. Even across the fence, you could feel the pull, feel the raw life of the Garden in bloom.
It was during spring that the boy’s parents caught him trying to climb the fence. It was during spring that the boy’s parents made their one and only one rule.
You shall not go into the Garden, his mother ruled. Consider it Forbidden.
The boy grew and he considered it so, a piece of enchantment perilously close but precariously out of reach. When he was younger, the boy found it easy to keep the Garden away. He had his trees, and his friends, and his 16 rooms to entertain himself. As the boy got older, he also had the street, and then one day the road, and finally the full, modern city as well. Yet the boy grew bigger and the world grew smaller. Only the Garden stayed the same.
One twilight the young boy, though no longer exactly a young boy, had had enough. He climbed the teetering fence (he tore his clothes). He pushed through the bushes of thorns (he scratched his skin). He broken the one and only rule (he stood in the Garden). He gazed around (and the sky shattered). Blues and purples and violets and fuchsias and rushed across him while above the stars burned out the sky like a spark on parchment until it peeled back so much that he could see the words on the page bleeding out from the pen as it ran dry while running past him like the wind in his lungs feeding that little piece of a little boy’s heart that still beat in his chest that cracked open its lock to set free a firefly who flew lazily through the hole he had punctured and, softly, delicately, flickered out.
Beneath his feet, a rose was crushed. The sunlight cast predictable shadows. The garden smelled of plum. He knew it would never snow there again; the apples would never taste as sweet; the bloom in spring would hold no promise. Standing in that not-so-distant time, in that not-so-enchanted place, he finally understood the sense and practicality of his parent’s one and only rule.
Leaving, he saw a shooting star, and nearly wished the garden had stayed Forbidden, but then he realized it was just a passing plane.
Team A
“There once was a forbidden garden. Guarded by an old troll with green, wrinkly skin. When the little children knocked, she would yell- you cannot come in!” Finn huffed and knocked over the troll he set up on the table and it went hurtling to the floor with a thump.
May, a tot with those cute, spiky, toddler-wisp pigtails on top of her head, bent down and picked up the doll, petting its head. Then she put it in her mouth.
Finn sighed.
“May, give me that back.” he said, holding out a hand.
May shook her head no and her mouth hardened into a pout.
“Mine.”
“No, it’s mine. I need something to be Old Lady Crandall.”
“Mine.”
His little sister could be so stubborn.
“Fine. You can play with it. See if I care.”
“Finley.” His mother’s admonishing, but gentle voice carried over from the kitchen where she was cooking. “Be nice to your sister. She’s little.”
“Okay.” He got down to May’s height. “Sorry I was mean.”
“It okay.” She gave Finn a hug and he hugged her back. He couldn’t be cross at her for long. May didn’t understand his frustrations.
His mother set their pasta dinner on the table and Finn was asked to clear up his creation to make room for his plate. He did- tearing down the Lego fence and removing the dandelions he’d placed to represent the neighbour’s flower garden.
He gathered those in his hands.
“You can have them.” he said, and his mother, a slender blonde woman, set his plate on the table, picked up his sister and settled her into her high chair, and then accepted them.
Pasta was good, like usual. Finn liked it very much. What he didn’t like was the way Old Lady Crandall had looked at him as he walked past this morning on his way to school. He always stopped by her fences and always stood on his tippy toes to peek over the fence into her garden. It was real lovely in there- roses and buttercups, stone walkways, even a pond.
He liked the pond, with its splashy fountain and huge koi. He’d sometimes see frogs over the fence too. Most often, he saw Old Lady Crandall. She looked like a prune and she had a voice that scratched when she yelled. She yelled whenever she caught him watching her. She made Finn feel worse than dirt or an ant on the road.
“Finley, what’s wrong? You seem upset.”
“Sorry.”
His mom smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay to have feelings.” she said with a smile.
“Old Lad- Mrs. Crandall hates me. Today she forbid me when I asked to see her fish and garden.” Tears began to spill over, so his mother reached for her napkin and began to dab at his face, cradling him close.
“Maybe I should talk to her.”
“No.” He pleaded with his eyes. “She’ll be more mean when I walk past to school.”
“We’ll see about that. How about we go talk to her together?”
“I don’t know.”
“Some people are mean for lots of reasons. You got upset at May because you were having a bad day. Maybe she’s feeling bad because of her day.”
“Or years.” Finn muttered, a bitter note seeping into his little voice.
His mother patted his head and then directed him to eat his dinner.
The next day was a Saturday, and Finn wasn’t going to school. He was almost glad because he wouldn’t have to see Old Lady Crandall again, but then he remembered Mom’s words. Yes, they were going to see her and talk to her. Big gulp.
He put on one of his Sunday shirts just in case, and brushed his hair real nice. If she thought he was a good boy, could he see the fish?
Only one way to find out.
Finn put on a determined gaze and waved good-bye to his Dad and little sister May. Then he took his mother’s hand and they both walked down the street. Finn’s mom had a soft, warm hand, and a basket of cookies in the other. She said cookies could help anyone remember their manners, and Finn believed her. Unless some people were too cranky for cookies.
His breath hitched as they came into sight of her house, and he had a vivid picture in his head of her scowling face, but she wasn’t in the forbidden garden today.
She must be home.
Finn and his mom came up the driveway beside her car. She was home. Finn gripped his mom’s hand tighter and hid behind her once they were on the doorstep.
The doorbell chimed a beautiful sound, like church bells. What Finn was worried about was the shrill noise that would remind him he was a terrible boy. So, when the door began to open, he wished he was invisible and shut his eyes too, hoping it would work.
“Hello, Mrs. Crandall.” His mother said.
“Cheryl. Your boy’s been trying to ruin my flowers.” She said, fixing Mom and the cookies with a harsh stare that made Finn quake in his sneakers.
“I thought Finn could explain himself if you’d give him a moment.” Mom said, holding out the basket of cookies.
The old lady took them.
“Fine. Speak up, young man. Yes, I see you there.”
Finn stepped out from behind his mother. His eyes threatened to fill with tears.
“I like your garden- I wanted to visit.” He said, and then the tears came.
“Oh. Oh.” The old lady almost dropped the cookies, but managed to bend down a little, so she was looking into Finn’s face.
“You really should have just asked.” She said. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were one of the boys who threw toilet paper at my house last Halloween.”
Finn looked up into the old lady’s face and wiped away his tears.
“It’s okay.” he said.
Then they walked into the garden together.