The place where she stood was a local phenomenon. No one had any memory of a time when it was not there. It was obviously man made yet no one in living memory knew what man had made it or when.

The old Sierra prospectors used to spin yarns about a star that had fallen on a nearby mountain long ago. They said, “The Injuns,” as they called the local First People, had them told them that the place was somehow linked to that event although none could say exactly what the connection was.

Throughout the ages the stories faded into the same obscurity that had consumed their tellers until no one remained who remembered that there was a such a place or that the forest was enchanted or why a falling star might be responsible. Lately substantial rainfall was not predictable in that area and the forest suffered frequent droughts.

On the far side of the well a small stream bubbled up from the nearby rocks and meandered a few hundred yards downhill. That was where the deer and bears, squirrels and the others came to drink all hours of the day and night. They never seemed bothered by the streams' odd glow.

The people who lived in the area would describe the animals' behavior as odd compared to animals in other parts of the valley. They stared at humans directly in the eye as though they were trying to tell them something but of course, they never spoke. But there was more to suggest they were different.

Only last winter a hunter told about the prize buck he had shot for food for the upcoming freezing months. Just after the magnificent creature crashed to the snowy forest floor he lifted his head and looked the hunter straight in the eye.

The man swore to all who would listen that the bucks' eyes flickered and turned from brown to sickening yellow with vertical pupils just like a cats' eyes; then he dropped his head back to the ground and his whole body faded away into nothingness.

All that was left of him was a spent bullet lying on the sticky red snow that had been indented by his body when it had fallen.

The hunters' friends had no trouble believing the story about a disappearing deer. They too had similar stories of their own if they were fool enough to do the telling.

Occasionally one of them hunting in the forest alone had for just a fleeting moment spotted an animal shape that would fade then disappear from sight. But none was willing to discuss such apparitions.

Even the littlest animals in that forest; chipmunks and mice had odd behaviors. Flitting like birds from place to place, changing colors, flickering their cat's eyes. Often as if just for fun, they would look directly into the eyes of the person who might happen to be watching them, then disappear.

The old couple had visited the valley often but they had never heard of the stories. They had no idea that the forest was enchanted or befouled or whatever it was that had brought them to the well. Had they known they would surely never have come.

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