The Land of Broken Roads

The dryads gave him a moment to gather himself and calm down, which he did, slowly. The pain in his chest took a long time to fade, because each time he thought he was regaining control, he imagined the smell of the pup’s fur or some such thing and it came back.

It wasn’t goodbye. Not yet.. If Mother wanted to be rid of him, she wouldn’t have given him a way back. He just had to be worthy to run with wolves. And either he or Socks would learn how to speak with their minds from a long way away, and then they could be together again, at least partially.

Mother had said once that the strongest human who ever lived was just a little more powerful than Socks was. Well, that was several days ago, before he learned to make fire or lift things with his mind. But even so, all Dirt had to do was become the strongest person who ever lived. He gripped his knife, hanging against his ribs. He could do it.

“What are you thinking about, friend?” asked the male. “We judge from your face that you are deep in thought.”

“I’m just thinking about needing to be stronger. I think I can do it. I bet I can. Once I know where to start.”

“What is that object you are holding?”

Dirt looked at the sheath. “Oh, this? Here, it’s…” He drew the blade and held it forward for them to look at, laying across his palms. “It’s a knife. I found it on a dead human a long way from here. Humans made this. It’s for cutting. Watch.”

He swung at the nearest fern and sliced a frond stem, easy as air. The dryads all winced and leaned back. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“We are surprised at how easily it severed,” said the female with short hair, who kept close by. Most dryads weren’t talking, but she was. She looked up at the Home’s branches, impossibly high overhead.

Dirt looked up, wondering if she spotted something. Then he realized what she was thinking and said, “Oh, don’t worry. Even if I could reach that high, I could never cut one of your branches. Or a root. You’re all way too thick and solid.”

They all went still, which told him they were thinking that over without even having to look at their minds. Their thoughts were occupied with things other than making their dryads blink, which got a little grin out of him. To think they had body language that wasn’t from copying him!

Home snapped out of it first, blinking and subtly shifting her weight to look more alive. She said, “Will you walk with me?”

“Of course,” he said. He put his knife away and took her offered hand. Did she think humans held hands any time they walked anywhere? And for that matter, did they?

She led him back toward the house, and the others followed. Once there, she let go of his hand and traced her fingers on the outside corner, a straight log that looked like it was helping hold the roof up, but probably wasn’t.

“Please strike this with your knife.”

Ah. Well, he could do that. He stepped up to it, drew the knife, and took a swing. It smacked the log with a softer clunk than he wanted and twisted awkwardly, flipping itself out of his hand. There was a brief moment of panic where he realized it was spinning toward him in the air, but his reflexes got him out of the way and it fell silently into the black soil.

“Sorry, I’m not very good at that yet,” he said with heart pounding and a flush of embarrassment heating his cheeks.

Home didn’t reply to that. She leaned in to examine the little mark he’d made in the gray bark. The dryads froze again, but only Home and a few others at first. From there Dirt watched it ripple outward, only a few seconds at a time for each dryad as they passed it along.

Dirt picked up his knife and held it more tightly. If he was honest with himself, he had no idea how to fight with it. Absolutely none. He’d imagined himself just swinging and slicing through things as necessary, but it turned out it wasn’t that easy. He glanced side-eyed at Home, wondering if he could ask her to let him practice and hack up the log.

“Why do you need to cut?” asked the male.

“Because of goblins and gryphons and things like that. Everything is trying to kill me. And, well, actually, are you going to be with me a lot? Talking? I noticed that it’s mostly Home, and you, and her,” said Dirt, pointing at the short-haired female.

“Yes, if that pleases you. The Mother of Wolves said that humans associate more frequently with those of the same sex. Most of us are female, although the difference is much less meaningful for us than for you, so I will remain nearby to put you at ease,” said the male.

Looking past him at the others, Dirt could only spot one or two more that he thought might be male too, out of the hundred or so watching him. But they weren’t crowding in as close and half of their shape was hidden by the ferns, so he couldn’t really be sure.

“Then can you translate your name into words? And where are you, by the way? Where’s your tree?” asked Dirt.

The boy turned in a circle, then faced Dirt again. “I am at a distance of twenty-eight connections, but I do not know where. My name is the cycling of substances in the air for which there are no words, as reflected in the workings of dream and spirit upon the mana world and returning to the physical in accordance with specific geometric regularities.”

Dirt’s mind went blank. He thought maybe he could translate it, but there was no chance. He had no idea what any of that meant. “How about if I call you Callius? It’s the only human name I know, and it’s for a male.”

“What does it mean?” asked the boy.

“I don’t know, but it was the name of the dead human who used to have this knife. Me and Socks found his body yesterday,” said Dirt. Gods in Glory, only yesterday? It felt like ages ago already. Another pang of heartache hit him, but he quickly pushed it away before it got worse.

“Then to you, I shall be Callius,” said Callius. He grinned rather than smiled, with a hint of mischief that Dirt couldn’t quite nail down but which he found himself mirroring, as if they two now shared some amusing secret.

“My name will be easier,” said the other female. “It means Dawn.”

“Okay, Dawn. You have short hair, so you’d get more sunlight on your face in the morning, and that’s how I’ll remember. How about you, Home? What does your name mean? Your real one?”

Home seemed like she’d had time to prepare her answer, because there was hardly a moment of consideration before she said, “No part of my name can be communicated in words without changing its meaning to the point of dishonesty.”

Dirt paused. “Your name is more complicated than Callius’s?”

“No, not more complicated, but more removed from physical perception. I like the name Home, however, since it describes what I am. A home for the things above and one tiny creature beneath,” she said.

“I’m… Wait, what are the things above?” Dirt asked, looking up. He saw nothing but the branches and canopy, unreachably high, calm and bright with the sun behind them.

Home smiled. The edges of her mouth twisted into an expression of amusement, the first he’d seen from her. “You will learn when you can climb me and see for yourself.”

“Climb you? I don’t think I could ever do that. There’s no way.”

Callius said, “If you want, we can throw you. You’ll have to find your own way back down.”

Dirt chuckled, mostly from amazement at how quickly they were learning to act human. “Okay, I have to ask. Did you have jokes and humor before, or did you learn that to talk with me?”

Dawn said, “We had humor before. Everything with a mind has humor.”

“Really? What are some tree jokes?”

Home said, “I fear they would be above you now, but perhaps some other day.”

Dirt looked up at the canopy again. Was that a joke? There was no way. The subtlety of language required for that was impossible. Wasn’t it? He looked around at all the dryads, trying to gauge from their expressions whether they knew. He couldn’t tell.

A hoarse scream from the back of the crowd of dryads split the air and Dirt turned toward the source, insides turning to ice. It was followed by another, then another, snarling howls, rough and bestial. He knew the sound, although it was so unexpected it took him a minute to realize. Goblins, attacking.

He couldn’t see what was happening, and reflexively stepped backward. Remembering to look with his mind, he found six of them, their thoughts ferocious and wild, driven by hunger and instinct more than reason.

A green goblin head shot ten paces into the air, spraying drops of red blood as it spun.

“Dirt, come, see. Your food is ready,” said Home, placid as ever. None of the dryads seemed concerned in the slightest.

He swallowed, knees watery, and turned away from the screaming. He gripped his knife, ears and mind alert in case one got close.

Home led him to the door of his house and asked, “May I come inside with you?”

A ripping sound, punctuated with countless cracking bones, pushed him through the doorway. “Yes, please come in, and anyone else who wants to,” he said. Dirt watched goblin minds vanish one by one as they screamed in hatred at the dryads calmly killing them. Effortlessly.

Only Home, Callius, and Dawn came in, their steps easy and graceful. The trees had absolutely no regard for goblins at all. None. They weren’t even an annoyance. That made him feel both more and less safe at the same time, somehow.

Home directed him toward the water basin. On the wall above it, he found a lump of viscous yellow liquid as big as both his fists held together, slowly oozing from a small hole.

Home gestured and said, “Please, eat it. It should be close to complete nutrition for you. We are still processing what we have learned, but this is adequate for now.”

The screaming outside reduced to a single voice, which cut off as it was muffled. Judging from its mind, it was being held down and in pain. Dirt looked away, wondering if they were going to explore its insides like they did with him.

After what had just happened, he didn’t have much appetite, but he wasn’t about to annoy the trees now. He reached for the ball of sap and found it hard and sticky. The whole thing peeled away in one big lump.

The three dryads watched him intently, eager to see his reaction. As were any of the dryads with an angle to look in through the windows or door.

He licked it and was pleased to find that it didn’t taste like leaves. He smiled to let them know, then sank his teeth in. They stuck, but he was able to pull a bite away that quickly dissolved when he chewed it. It tasted mild, slightly sweet like the grubs. It had a bit of the smoothness of raw meat, but none of the boldness of blood. It was probably not made out of goblin. Wrong color, wrong taste.

“This is better than I expected!” he said, taking another bite.

“We are pleased,” said Home. “You must eat it all. There will be more later, and you must eat that as well.”

“Thanks, but I’m not that hungry right now. Can I save it?”

“You must eat it all,” said Home, in exactly the same tone as before. Still, he got the impression she was about to get stern, so he nodded and kept eating.

It didn’t overfill him as much as he’d expected, probably since it melted away into liquid, but by the end he was having a lot less fun with it. His jaw was getting tired from that much chewing, and the dryads didn’t budge a hair’s breadth until he’d finished it all.

“Good. Remember that you must always eat it all,” said Home.

“I’ll remember,” he said. What would they do if he didn’t eat it? Probably hold him down and feed him by force.

It felt odd having three people in his den, like there was something he should be doing, but he couldn’t figure out what. What did human dens look like inside? All he had to go on was the underground part of the city.

“Hey, Home, can you make something like this for everyone? A table and chairs?” Dirt sent Home a mental image of the table he’d cleared away in the big room, surrounded by four chairs. There was enough room in here. She could put it right in the middle. He wasn’t even sure if he’d like chairs more than just sitting on the ground, but it would make this place more human.

“No, you will soon learn to shape wood on your own. Now that you have eaten, come, there is something you must do,” said Home. Callius nodded at the doorway, a twinkle in his eye that promised some kind of mischief. Was he practicing that? It seemed like he was overdoing it now.

Dirt followed them out of the house and tried not to shudder when he saw a couple dryads with bright streaks of blood on their torsos and faces. They were unharmed.

Home led them out along her root, the one his house was attached too, until it was low enough to step onto. From there, she led them back up to her trunk. When she got close enough to touch it, she turned and gestured to her side with her arm.

With a strange repeated gentle popping sound, a lump of wood emerged from her trunk, a little longer than Dirt’s shoulders were across, and flattish on top. Another appeared right next to it, a little higher. Then another.

Stairs. Home was making stairs for him.

“You will ascend these stairs. Take care that you do not fall,” she said.

“This will be for your benefit. Please, friend, trust us and give it total effort,” said Callius, gesturing as well.

Dawn lightly placed her hands on his back and gave him the slightest push imaginable.

Dirt grinned. “Okay, I can do that. I know the word for this and it’s exercise. It will make me strong, right? So how far up do I have to go?”

No answer. He glanced at Home’s mind, but she’d pulled away too much of it already and he couldn’t discern anything useful.

“How far do I have to go?” he asked. “The whole way? Because…”

Looking up made him tired all by itself. It was a long way up. A long way. They were only ten or fifteen paces up from the ground here, and it wasn’t even high enough to mention compared with the branches. The crowd of dryads below gazed up eagerly, all quiet and attentive. He wasn’t getting out of this, was he? He’d just have to go as far as he could and stop there, because he was sure it’d take him more than one day to go all the way up.

Dirt sighed and took the first step, then the second. The stairs were solid enough, and wide enough that if he leaned toward the trunk he didn’t think he’d fall. After ten steps, he looked down, and that was a mistake. It was one thing to be up high on Socks’ back, and quite another when there was nothing below you except the crevice of a joint between two roots.

After twenty steps, he heard that gentle popping sound behind him and when he turned to look, the stairs at the bottom were withdrawing into the trunk at an alarming pace. Dirt turned and ran upward.