Forest Mage

Can a man fall asleep walking? I’m not sure, but it is possible to waken by jolting into a tree. I shook my head, and for a moment I could not remember where I was or what I was doing there. Then Clove nudged me from behind, and I recalled my task. We had not strayed far from the deer trail. I went back to it, and trudged on. I used every trick I knew to keep myself alert. I bit my lip. I scratched the back of my neck. I forced myself to walk with my eyes open very wide. Such antics kept me awake and moving, but it was devilishly hard to focus on trying to find marks of a trail. I saw nothing for a long time, and cursed my luck, wondering if in my sleepiness I’d missed some key clue. Then I saw the unmistakable mark of three muddy fingers on a tree trunk. Someone had paused there and steadied himself. I tottered on, yawning. That hand mark meant something more than the fact they had passed this way. My mind chewed the thought slowly. I decided it meant they were getting tired.

The nature of the forest was changing. The woods right above the cemetery were of fairly young trees interspersed with large charred stumps and fire-scarred giants. Clove and I came now to the edge of that old burn, and in a dozen paces the open, airy forest of deciduous trees abruptly gave way to something darker and more ancient. The underbrush dwindled and gave way. The crowded trees that competed for space and survival had no place in this cathedral of giants. The forest floor became a deep carpet of moss. A few broad-leaved plants and ferns broke the floor, and occasionally the long, crookedly sprawling and fiercely thorned canes of demon’s club sprouted like strange forest cacti.

Previously, Clove had had to shoulder his way along the narrow path. Now we were dwarfed. The trunks of the trees were columns that held up a distant sky. The giants were widely spaced, and I could not reach the lowest branch on any of them. Their leafy limbs began far overhead and reached out to mingle in a canopy that, when their leaves were fully developed, would completely block the light. I had never walked in such a forest, and the magic’s sleepy spell was abruptly dispersed by a jolt of genuine and deeply felt fear. I’d recognized these giants of trees. They were the same as those at the end of the road. I halted where I stood and stared all around me. The vista of thick columnar trunks extended in all directions. I had no name for the trees; I’d never seen them anywhere else. The upper reaches of their trunks were mottled in color, from green to reddish-brown. But down here, at my height, the surface of their bark was ropy, as if the trunks were braided tendrils rather than a single stem. The roots that radiated out from the trees raised hummocks in the forest floor. Their fallen leaves from last autumn made deep leafy beds of humus among the tangling roots. The rich smell of healthy rot filled my nostrils.

The silence in that place was a pressure I felt in my ears, and between one heartbeat and the next, I suddenly acknowledged a thing I had always known but never fully realized. Trees were alive. The colossi that surrounded me were not the work of man or the earth’s bones of stone. They were living creatures, each one begun from a tiny seed, and older, far older than anything I could imagine. The thought sent a sudden shiver up my spine, and suddenly I needed to see the sky and feel moving air on my face. But the trees hemmed me round and closed me in. I glimpsed an area that seemed more light and open and made directly for it, heedless of leaving the deer trail that was now only a winding indentation through the mossy earth.

My area of light marked where one of the giants had half fallen. It leaned at an angle, its roots torn from the earth, and its bare branches pushing half a dozen fellow trees aside. Its falling had opened a window to the sky; spring sunlight reached the mossy forest floor. In that irregular patch of light, several young trees had sprung up. I would have said they were large, old trees if I had seen them growing in Old Thares. Among these giants, they seemed like saplings. And fastened to one of the saplings I found the corpse I had been pursuing.

I had seen only his coffin when we buried him. It was a shock to find him such a young man, little more than a boy, really. He sat with his back to the tree, his head fallen forward on his chest and his face covered by a sheaf of yellow hair. But for the discoloration of his skin, he might have simply fallen asleep there. His hands, darkened by death, lay in his lap. He looked at peace.

I stared at him, and wondered what I had feared I would find. The Specks had not stripped his body. They had not cut his limbs away or in any way dishonored him that I could see. They had simply carried him all this way, only to set him down against a tree.

The shafts of spring sunlight falling from far above illuminated him as if he were god-touched. Tiny insects danced above him in a flickering cloud of gossamer wings. Behind me, Clove snorted impatiently. I glanced back at my horse, and at the roll of soiled canvas and old rope he carried. Suddenly it seemed that I would be the one disturbing the rest of the dead. A man spoke beside me. “Please, sir. Don’t bother him. He is peaceful now.”