The change between Woodedge and Harnwood was a gradual thing, like falling into a slumber; it moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar gently. The common Woodedge trees, burnwoods, shadewoods, bladewoods, the harks and the fretberries, slowly vanishing. A gradual softening of the light, a slight darkening of the air. A thickening of the trees as they became more aged. The bracket fungus getting bigger and more gnarled and old, the vegetation stranger, moss thicker, until eventually Woodedge was gone and you were in Harnwood, which was like Woodedge but in a dream where you are a child. Everything is bigger than it should be, and it makes you uncomfortable.
To move from Harnwood to Wyrdwood is more like being plunged into icy water and half drowned, waking on a strange riverbank where nothing is as you knew it and you are constantly aware you are not of this new place. There is no gradual change of the plant life, no gradual expansion of the girth of trees, no slow move from gentle dapple to gloaming. One moment you are in Harnwood, feet constantly fighting for balance against the roots and trapvines hiding beneath the leaf litter.
Harnwood simply stops, as if there is some barrier where the great cloudtrees, the forest gods of Crua, have said: “No further, this is our domain,” and Harnwood has bowed down to these giants of wood and leaf and done their bidding. The ground of Wyrdwood is free of leaf litter, it is a vast and ongoing plain. Studding the plains, separated by up to a day’s walk, are the great trunks of the cloudtrees which reach up and up and up until even some of the lowest branches are lost in the clouds that obscure their canopies.
It is never day in Wyrdwood, apart from in those few places where treefall has scarred it. Wyrdwood moves between a darkness so total it feels physical, and a pale imitation of day, more like the moment in the second eight just before the light dips under the horizon, a golden-brown dimness.
It is easy to look upon Wyrdwood and believe nothing could live there. But, of course, this is an illusion that quickly fades. What looks like a lack of leaf litter is not, only that the cloudtrees, these monuments of wood and bark, have the smallest leaves of any of Crua’s flora, more like tiny silvery pins than actual leaves. They cover the floor in a thick carpet that smells vaguely of mint. Cahan had heard the dead leaves could be brewed to make a pleasant tea, though he had never tried it. Plants grew there, of course. They looked like small things, creeping out of the litter, low to the ground. Mushrooms, everywhere – it seemed there was nowhere on Crua they did not grow – and then in the dim light were the shadowy shapes of bushes with large, flat, drab-green leaves that grew far taller than any person, but looked diminutive in the setting of Wyrdwood. Cahan knew from experience that those large, dark-green leaves were defended by long and wicked thorns.
Sound faded, no chirps or howls, only the occasional mournful low “hooo” of some beast he was unfamiliar with. But the more you listened the more you heard. It was not that there were no creatures living here, it was simply that they were quieter, as if awed into hushed tones by the great trees.
“I feel strange,” whispered Udinny, “as if I have shrunk.”
“It is normal,” he told her as they walked slowly towards the vast wall of the cloudtree root.
“Do we go around that?” she said, pointing at the root. Cahan shook his shaggy head.
“No, there is no telling how far it runs.”
“What do we do then?” said Udinny as they approached the root, its wood black, the bark smooth and warm to the touch. It was as tall as five people standing on each other’s shoulders.
“We go over.” He went down on one knee and let his pack fall to the floor. Removing rope and a small grappling hook.
“This does not look enjoyable,” said Udinny.
“There are old nubs, from where side roots have broken off,” he pointed at the wounds on the root, “you can use them as footholds while you climb.”
“I suspect our speed is going to slow to a stop if we have to climb roots all the way through the forest.”
“We will not,” he said, “most cloudtree roots are buried deeply. The tree this is attached to,” he pointed along the root, “must have moved a little, pulling the root out of the ground.”
“How did the child get over this?” Cahan shrugged but Segur answered the monk’s question, growling and hissing at a spot at the bottom of the root where there was a tunnel, dug by some animal.
“He didn’t,” said Cahan, “he was probably small enough to go under it. Orits will have dug that, they are plentiful in Wyrdwood. They nest in the bracket fungi.”
“I have heard orits eat people,” said Udinny, staring at the hole as Segur vanished into it.
“Given the chance, but they are slow and only prey on what is easily caught.” Udinny hmmed to herself, evidently displeased with his answer. He whirled the grapple around his head and threw it up and over the great root. Once it had caught he tested it, leaning back and putting his full weight on it to make sure the hold was good. “You go first, Udinny.”
“Why me?” said the monk.
“Because it will be easier for me to catch you if the grapple does not hold, than for you to catch me.” She nodded at that and took the rope. Usually he had found that skinny, wiry people were good climbers but Udinny was the exception to the rule. She made climbing the root look like an impossible task, one of the great labours of the old ones. Finally, with much grunting and the odd yelp, she was standing on top of the root. Looking proud of herself, though he had no idea why.
It took him only a few moments to get up onto the root. The monk squinted at him. “I thought you had been a thief?” he said to her.
“Yes,” said Udinny, “but everything valuable in the spire cities is on the lowest levels. There was little climbing involved.” She stared out into Wyrdwood. “I did not expect it to look so empty,” she said, “or to be so quiet.”
“It is quiet,” he told her, “but not empty.” She turned back to him, looking a little alarmed. “Can you get down alone, or do you want me to go first so I can catch you if you fall?”
“I am not entirely incapable, Forester,” said the monk. She threw the rope over and, before he could stop her, began to lower herself down. The grapple, still set for a rope on the other side, came loose and Udinny fell to the ground, landing with a thump and a groan, knocking all the air out of herself.
“You are a little incapable, though, monk,” he said from the top of the root. He was sure Udinny would have liked to come back with some retort but she was struggling to breath. Segur helped her by licking her face as Cahan climbed down. By the time he was at the bottom the monk was standing again. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head.
“Only my pride,” she dusted the tiny pinleaves off her robes. “Let us get on, unless you wish to bask in my humiliation further.”
“It is tempting,” he said, “but we have a child to find.” With that they set off into Wyrdwood. As they walked through the gloom signs of life became more apparent. The strange constructions of the orits, angular, soft-looking towers. Though they were not soft, they were hard to the touch. Orits made them by chewing up dead wood and then regurgitating the pulp, slowly building these towers over many years. What purpose they served no one knew. He watched Udinny marvel at them, then marvel even more when they came to their first cloudtree trunk, and how long it took for them to walk around the base.
“Does this thing never end?” she said.
“I measured one out once,” he told her, “over three thousand paces to walk all the way around.”
“That is half the distance from your farm to Harn,” said the monk. She stopped and looked up. The huge trunk was ringed with giant bracket fungi that stuck out like steps. The bark itself was thick, prized by carvers throughout Crua. It grew upon the trunk in creases and whorls, almost like writing. It was not hard to imagine the cloudtrees had been graffitied by some ancient and massive race. Their size made them seem impossible, and it fired the imagination. Udinny was looking up the trunk, and stepped back, fear on her face. “It is falling!” she shouted, starting to run. Cahan grabbed her.
“It is not. It is an illusion created by looking up at it. The cloudtrees are so tall your mind cannot understand, it makes you dizzy and because you know your feet are on the floor and you are not moving, you think the tree is falling. We are quite safe.” The monk did not look convinced, but they carried on their way and the tree did not fall and it was not mentioned again.
They saw their first orits later that day. Strange-looking creatures. Four legs, encased in hard shells, extended from the round, gleaming shell of their body. They came in every colour you could imagine, reds and blues and blacks. These ones were a deep purple. Their sensory organs, a ball of tentacles located on top of their round shells, were never still and the four tentacles beneath their bodies were just as restless, picking up objects from the leaf litter and transporting them to the hard mouthparts hidden beneath the shell. They moved in an odd, stumbling way. Almost like they were constantly falling and trying to keep their balance. But Cahan knew they could move efficiently if they wanted. Should they choose to pursue they were relentless, not quick, but never tiring – though they were seldom interested in people unless you interfered with them.
They decided to take a wide route around the orits.
“They do not look dangerous,” said Udinny. “They are no taller than your knees. I had thought they were bigger.”
“Some are,” Cahan told her, “these are gatherers, the protectors are larger but I don’t see any of them. Even gatherers’ legs end in sharp spikes and the shells are hard as rock, they can spray a liquid which burns the skin.” There was a strange noise, like someone playing a horn badly, and Cahan pointed at a group of orits attacking one of their own number.
“What are they doing?”
“That one must be wounded, they drive away the wounded and the sick. Those ones are often dangerous, stumbling lost around the forest and striking out at anything close.”
“You are very talkative, today,” said Udinny as they carefully made their way around the foraging orits, making sure they went the opposite way to the wounded creature. It was true what Udinny said, he was speaking more than he had in years. Partly because he was becoming used to the monk, but also because this deep into the forest his cowl was more apparent to him. It had lain almost dormant in Woodedge and Harnwood, but now it felt like it was moving beneath his skin, trying to escape. Its voice a constant whisper on the edge of his perception, words he could not quite make out. The orit in particular seemed to set it off, and they saw many more of them in many different colours. At one point Udinny stopped to watch a line of them walking straight up a cloudtree and vanishing into a hole in one of the huge brown and white bracket fungi. As they stood there the whispering in his mind became louder, clearer.
… need you need you need me…
So he talked, spoke of the orit, of coming to Wyrdwood to hide when he had felt unwelcome in the world of people. Not only because he was clanless, but because of the cowl, though he did not speak of the cowl to Udinny.
Night came.
So sudden and complete, it was as if someone had put a bag over their heads. Udinny, who was a little ahead of Cahan, stopped dead. He did the same.
“Cahan?” she said, her voice trembling.
“Here, Udinny,” he told her. In that moment they could have been the only two living creatures in existence, the darkness was so total, and so silent. It was not hard to imagine that the creatures who lived here, and experienced this every time the light set, were still surprised by the totality of each night.
“I am scared, Cahan,” said the monk. “It is too dark. I do not know how or where to move. This is what it must be like to be dead.”
“Wait a moment, Udinny,” he smiled to himself, for unlike the monk he knew what was to come. “You are about to receive a gift few will ever have.”
“If you mean the forest will glow, I have seen it in Harnwood, every night.”
“Not like this, Udinny,” he said, and smiled in the darkness, “not like this.”
The forest exploded.
It was the lightshow of Harnwood, but amplified by a thousand. Light running up the trunks of the cloudtrees, light running across the forest floor. Flying creatures zipping through the air leaving bright lines that slowly faded into the black. Huge clouds of flying things gathered together, only to erupt into great flowers of colour when disturbed by predators. Far above larger creatures floated, bright tendrils hanging down, either as warning or as a lure. So much life that had been hidden during the gloom of the day was now before them, a pulsing, twisting rainbow of constant effervescence so bright they could see the wonder on each other’s faces.
“Truly, though I have met with a fear on this journey like few other times in my life,” said Udinny, staring up, “I think Ranya blessed me when she placed my feet on the path we share, Cahan Du-Nahere.”
“Well, it is beautiful right enough, and look,” he pointed ahead of them. Running through the leaf litter as clear as if they had been painted onto the floor, was a line of footprints.
“We are not camping yet, then,” said Udinny, the grin on her face distorted by the ever shifting and changing colours of the forest light.
“No we are not, we follow the child and sleep when we can walk no more.”