494 - "Woods Hole"

One of my talented author friends wrote a strange little short story. It's about a man trying to escape a disaster that he was partly responsible for.  He ends up finding a safe haven with a forgiving group from his childhood.  I found the story difficult to undertsand because the central plot point, where the fellow in his childhood meets a mysterious little girl while playing in some deep woods, can be read many different ways.  Is the girl real or an imaginary play-friend?  While she seems friendly enough, she is also prophetic.  Perhaps she is an angel, although the protagonist is not faithful to any religion save for that of his own market share. 

I found the image of the encounter between the boy and the girl compelling enough to attempt an illustration, which you see here.  I took a photograph I shot  locally and rotoscoped it, then painted the characters on top.  I think that the image shares some of the strangeness that the story holds.  It seems just out of kilter to have a little boy playing cowboy deep in the woods and then encountering a little girl playing at tea party with her stuffed bear.  My wife compares it to a reworking of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, since all those things are common themes in Bill Watterson's masterpiece.  The main idea seems plausible, just to me unlikely.  Yet the woods in the story are a magical location, so anything can happen.  At the end of the story, the boy is a man, and he discovers that the girl has never abandoned him, despite his destructive, self-involved lifestyle. 

I have many of the details wrong.  The hole in the woods is in a much denser, coniferous forest.  The boy's favourite play area is under the roots of a massive tree that has tipped over, forming the mouth of a shallow cave.  He is surprised to find the girl there playing at tea.  I did not know how many teacups to depict.  I settled on two and a pot.  If there were three teacups, it would be too obvious that the boy was expected to join the tea party, although reading the story in that vein would have had it that he was.   Spooky!