The Land of Broken Roads

The dryads looked at him with mixed expressions, some confused and curious, others concerned. He gazed back, wondering how much of his inner horror was showing on his face.

“Dear Dirt, I see you are troubled. Please tell us why,” said Home, in a voice that was probably meant to sound tender, but didn’t. Not quite.

“I’m… Well, I’m not sure how to say it. I guess…” he said, momentarily losing his ability to speak. Guilt burned him. He wanted to weep. “I’m afraid. I think I did something horrible a long time ago and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“What do you think you might have done, since you do not remember?” asked Home.

“Broke the world. Harmed the gods. Put humans on the path to extinction. I think it’s all my fault. I can’t… I’m scared, Home. Everyone. I’m scared of what I did,” said Dirt, loudly. He couldn’t control the volume of his speech and his words came out unevenly. “I don’t want to know anymore. I can’t face it.”

Dirt looked at his friends, so many of them, all eager to console him now that they knew he was troubled. But all that eagerness looked desolate to him, since he knew they didn’t really understand. Couldn’t. They knew nothing of pain and very little of fear. They lived lives of unbroken joy, dancing in worlds he couldn’t perceive. What could they know of guilt?

Home wrapped him in a slow hug, resting his face against her shoulder, and he began to feel relieved. His body, his creature, knew the feeling of comfort even if his mind couldn’t justify it. She felt perfectly lifelike, from the tickling strands of her green hair to the softness of her wooden flesh, even the bones underneath it. It wasn’t easy, he knew, putting so much detail into a dryad. She might not understand, but she was sincere, and she really did love him. That was worth something.

“I do not know how to comfort you. What else can you tell me of what you are experiencing?” she said.

“It’s guilt,” he admitted quietly. “I feel guilty. It’ll go away eventually. I just don’t know if it should, because what if I deserve it?”

Callius patted Dirt’s head and said, “Would it help if we gave you something else to think about?”

Dirt grinned slightly, despite himself. What silly creatures they were, he thought. They really had no idea what to do with him. They were like a bunch of humans trying to figure out why a bird was angry.

Dawn said, “Guilt is the pain of regretting your own actions, but you don’t remember what you did, right? So you shouldn’t feel any guilt. It doesn’t make sense. You can stop now.”

That got a tiny chuckle out of him, more of a snort. “It doesn’t work that way, but thanks. I’m starting to feel better, though.”

“Let’s walk until you have recovered, and then we’ll give you something else to think about. Perhaps we can come back here another time,” said Callius.

“Oh, I definitely want to come back. I still want to read all those scrolls and look through all this stuff. And see the rest of the building,” said Dirt. “As much as I can before Father lets me and Socks meet again. I think it’ll only be a few days.”

“Come, then,” said Callius, taking Dirt’s hand and pulling him away from Home.

Starwatcher took his other hand. “I am close,” she said. “Come to me.” She was thicker now than when they first met and it reminded him of a plumpish girl he’d briefly talked to in Ogena. Her face was still about the same, though, and her hand didn’t feel any different from the rest. He wondered if she wanted to have another footrace, like she had so many times before.

Callius and Starwatcher led him out of the wide doorway of the schola and onto the old marble pathway. He let his lights wink out behind him and felt the tiny trickle of mana cease. They walked while holding hands and swinging their arms like the children of Ogena did, and it helped him soothe away the turmoil inside him. Partially, anyway. Enough to keep it off his face.

Before they stepped off the path and into the ferns, Dirt stopped and rolled up his pant legs up past his knees. They were already getting dirty around the hem, but since the dryads had made so many tunics, skirts, or shorts for themselves, he felt awkward just stripping like he might otherwise have done.

The walk was increasingly adventurous the farther they went, with all the dryads walking at differing speeds or showing variety in some other way. Some played games with each other, racing around at top speed and filling the air with laughter. It lent the forest a very different atmosphere than he was used to. The trees tended to be quiet unless they were talking to him and preferred to walk behind him instead of in front. At least, that’s how it had been before. Usually. Now they were everywhere, acting like the crowds of children Dirt had met in Ogena.

He wondered if they would age alongside him, all their dryads growing up the same speed he did, or if they would prefer to stay as children. And now that he thought about it, would he actually grow? Mother had said his ‘time’ was one of the things he’d lost in the void, so did that mean he’d get more? Would he grow up a second time? Or stay this size forever? Or just fall over dead any day now, since he’d already been old before?

“I have a question. Are you all going to make your dryads grow up at the same speed as me?” he asked no one in particular. “What about when Marina comes? Will some of you be adults around her?”

Callius was the one who answered. “At first, we all wanted our dryads to be like you. But now we understand that humans at different ages have different roles in society and interact with each other in different ways, and it is more complicated. What do you prefer?”

Dirt had to think about that for a moment. How would he have viewed Callius if he was an old man, or Dawn if she was a little girl, younger than him? Or any combination other than what they were now? “I was about to say, you should be whatever best fits how you think of yourself. But then I remembered most of you are thousands of years old and I don’t want to be surrounded by only old people.”

Callius laughed. “Just because I am comfortably past three thousand years old does not mean I view myself as old. There’s a small chance you’re older than me, anyway. Maybe I should be a little shorter.”

“Really?”

“Sure. We didn’t live as long when the Gardener was here, and we were lesser beings than we are now. I don’t know how old I was when she ceased to be among us,” said Callius. He squeezed Dirt’s hand and added, “Consider this when you are tempted to feel guilty again, by the way. Even if you did something worthy of guilt, it wasn’t all bad, was it?”

Dirt nodded. “The wolves, either. Father mentioned once that the gods limited them, too. I think the world would be less wonderful without you and them in it. But on the other hand, I didn’t know what goblins and gryphons were when I first saw them, so they didn’t exist back then either, and they’re horrible. Goblins are, anyway. And all the other nasty things Socks and I keep running into. I guess what I need to do is figure out what I did before I spend any more time feeling bad about it.”

Behind him, Home said, “Dirt, how do you view me now?”

He turned and found her in adult form. The skirt she had on didn’t go all the way around anymore and looked like more of a long loincloth, tied in the back. Her childish face had filled out into one full of patient grace, with features of angular beauty that still seemed motherly, like a sculpture. All of her looked like a sculpture, round and feminine. She seemed about average height for a woman, a head taller than he was, maybe a little more. Dirt smiled and said, “Honestly, about the same. It suits you.”

“Come, embrace me, dear Dirt. I am curious,” she said, holding out her arms.

Dirt let go of Callius and Starwatcher’s hands and hugged her. His head rested against her bosom, on the flat space between her breasts and her chin. She still smelled the same, that gentle earthy, plant smell, and her body was the cool temperature of the air and soil. She was not a mother or a big sister, but she was not unlike those things.

He stepped back and looked her over once again, then said, “It suits you perfectly. I like it.”

Home smiled in a way that was more girlish than womanly, with a hint of mischief in her eye. “You look different from up here,” she said. “I can see how messy your hair is.”

“What?” he said, feeling it to decide how bad it was. Callius laughed.

“I will fetch a comb later, and you will bathe,” said Home.

A bath might be nice, but Dirt had a sinking feeling that Marina had been telling them things, things he’d rather not have them know.

“I guess. Let’s keep going for now, though,” he said.

They led him to Starwatcher’s tree, which was one of the closest to the schola. Tooth’s tree was the only one closer, and he was nowhere to be seen. Her roots twisted into a recognizable swirling shape, at least most of them did, and she’d said it was a coincidence but he didn’t completely believe her.

“You have reached me. Now it is time to go up,” she said. Her eyes had an eagerness in them that didn’t make it to her voice.

“Oh no, I’m not doing this again!” he said. “I’m feeling a lot better already. I don’t need to do that to recover.”

Callius laughed again. “I knew he’d say that. No, silly, we’re not going to try and kill you. It’s time to show you what’s in the branches.”

“Oh, you mentioned something like that a long time ago. So there’s something other than just birds?” asked Dirt.

“It was not the Mother of Wolves who gave us your language like she did her pups. Nor was it you we learned from. The physical process of speaking, yes, but the words themselves? You’ll have to go up if you want to find out,” said Callius. “I’ll come so I can catch you if you fall and the others will be waiting at the top.”

All around him, the dryads popped right out of existence, vanishing instantly without so much as a wave goodbye. It seemed like it should make a sound when they did that, but it didn’t.

Starwatcher’s dryad didn’t disappear. Instead, it went completely inert as she withdrew her control of it. Dirt glanced at her mind and found her already working to create a winding set of steps to ascend her trunk.

And just like that, the forest was how it had been at first. If he didn’t look at the schola behind him, there weren’t many other buildings around. The scenery was as flat and empty as it had been that first day. An ocean of dark green ferns, broken only by the impossibly giant tree trunks. The air grew still without anyone speaking, the silence growing until it encircled him like a blanket. Overhead, the gentle dappled greens of the canopy still hid the entire sky, letting not a single ray of sunshine through. The forest was eternal again. Quiet and sacred.

Callius clapped him on the back and pushed him forward. “Go, friend Dirt. You can take as many rests as you want.”

“I’m going,” said Dirt. “Actually, why can’t you take me up there with root travel?”

“Because we don’t want to,” said Callius.

“Any reason why?”

“Nope! Let’s go.”

Dirt sighed sarcastically and hopped onto the nearest pale gray root and ran up to the trunk, enjoying how his bare feet slapped on the flat bark. He remembered that, too. Did that even count as nostalgia? Especially today, when he’d been nostalgic about things buried for thousands of years? Why not. Sure it did. It was a day for nostalgia, recent or otherwise.

Dirt kept the mana cycling inside as he hurried up the stairs, hundreds and hundreds of them winding around and around Starwatcher’s trunk. They were fairly regular this time, and closer together so it wasn’t a struggle. Still, he kept a careful eye out for some trick. The height started making him nervous around two hundred paces up, when he stopped being quite so sure he’d be able to land uninjured, if he had to.

It’s not that he didn’t trust the dryads, not quite. It’s just that their idea of helping him didn’t always coincide with his. So he slowed a bit, stepping carefully and listening for sounds in Starwatcher’s trunk that might indicate she was about to do something sudden.

Fortunately, the mana made the actual walking a lot easier. The higher up he got, the closer the trees looked to each other. Down on the ground, they were hundreds of paces apart, a huge distance, but up here, the same effect that made everything small when it was far away seemed to shrink them too.

Callius said nothing, just followed him closely. Close enough to grab him if he slipped. And if they both fell together, then who knew what the dryad would do? Turn into a giant fluffy bed before they hit the ground? Grow wings and fly like a bird? He was almost tempted to fall and find out. Almost. He didn’t want to find out the plan was for him to shatter every bone in his body. For his benefit, of course.

Halfway up, the forest seemed unrecognizable. The tree trunks looked thin now, clumped together like a friendly little grove. He could make out separate groups of leaves and trace the branches that stretched everywhere across the sky. Where one tree’s branches met another, they wove together, sharing the space and brushing gently in the high winds that never made it down below the canopy.

Surprisingly, the air got warmer the higher he went, not colder. That was the opposite of going up a mountain. It stayed just as humid, though, and by the time he was three-quarters the way up, his shirt was starting to get drenched in sweat.

Time for a rest, he decided. A steady flow of mana kept his legs moving and energized, but it was still effort, and it was getting tiring. He turned and sat, then pulled his damp shirt off over his head and set it on a stair.

“You’re leaking a lot of water,” said Callius.

“It’s sweat. It happens when I get too hot, or exercise too hard,” said Dirt.

Callius smirked. “I know. I can also tell you all the substances it helps purge from your body.”

“Really? Like what? Salt and water?”

“More than that. Perhaps the most surprising thing would be metal. There is a tiny amount of metal, more than one kind, in your sweat.”

“Metal? Really?” asked Dirt, looking at the clear drops of it on his forearms.

“Really. Zinc, copper, iron, lead, and two others that don’t have names in your language. Those are the most prominent ones,” said Callius. “Here, let me take that shirt. It’s not drying out any time soon.”

Dirt wrung it out, curious to see if any liquid would drip out. None did. He handed it to Callius, who acted like he was tossing it down, but it disappeared before it left his fingers. “We’ll leave it in your house.”

“Which one?”

“Which one do you want to use?”

“Would Home be offended if I wanted to use my old villa?”

“Friend Dirt, what do you think my answer is going to be?”

“Well, I just don’t want her to be sad. But I want to sleep in my villa tonight.”

“Then so it shall be,” said Callius. He ran a finger across Dirt’s forehead, then licked the sweat off his fingertip. “Mmm, metal,” he said.

“Is that a joke? Do I really have metal in my sweat?”

“No and yes.”

“Does Socks have it in his?”

“Socks doesn’t sweat, but his urine is similar to yours.”

Dirt tried to remember. “I thought he did, after I sat in one place for a long time.”

“Maybe, but it wasn’t sweat.”

“How do you know?” asked Dirt.

“Because we would have detected it on his fur, either when he sheds or when we touch him. We would smell it evaporating or see it in his pawprints. The Mother of Wolves will not let us analyze one of her pups properly, so we infer more than we can verify. But I am certain he does not sweat. He cools himself by panting,” said Callius.

“It bothers me that you already know more about the physical world than I do, and I live here,” said Dirt jovially.

Callius snorted and gave him a good-natured smirk. “Look down. Can you see Starwatcher’s dryad down there?”

Dirt leaned over, just barely, and looked down. It was a long, long, way down. Far enough down he put a hand on Callius to keep his balance, just in case. “Nope.”

“Exactly. You are very small. Now come on, we’re almost there.”

They stood and kept going. It was only two or three hundred paces now, close enough Dirt thought he could start to make out individual leaves. They were probably huge, but it was still a long way up. There wasn’t much else to see yet, other than a vast network of branches. And as badly as he wanted to keep his neck craned upward, he had to look at the steps or risk missing one and slipping. And finding out what Callius’ emergency plan was.

He looked with his mind-sight and froze in his tracks. There was something up there. Something plural. Things. And they weren’t trees, or even plants. They were something else, their minds full of patterns and flows and streams rather than discrete observations or ideas. And they were having fun. They were playing, whatever they were.

That was enough to get Dirt moving. He practically raced the rest of the way up, mana flowing freely and all his focus going to making sure his feet landed squarely where they should. Before he knew it, he reached the end of the steps and stepped out onto a branch, the lowest one, just as wide as the roots so far below.

Too far down to make out, now that he looked. The dark green of the ferns camouflaged the forest floor and made it look like it didn’t exist at all. It was more unnerving than when he saw the open blue sky for the first time. It reminded him of the night sky but without any stars.

“Higher up,” said Callius. “We’re not there yet.”

There was at least another hundred paces of tree above him, but from here, at this angle, he saw spots of blue peeking in between the leaves. They were bigger than he was, wide and round and full, with a series of small points jutting out.

The mysterious minds seemed to have taken notice of him, but he was only guessing that was the case. They had a sense of anticipation to them.

Up they climbed, sometimes using steps and sometimes hopping from branch to branch or simply climbing. The foliage got smaller and thicker the higher they went, making it easier for Dirt to keep scrambling upward.

They ascended until Dirt’s head poked up from the highest crowning leaves and they could go no higher. The sky was brilliant overhead, the sun startlingly bright against the deep blue. He’d never seen anything like the canopy, which rose and fell all around like immense hills with no hint of the cavernous emptiness beneath them. It was serene, but not somber and sacred like the forest floor. There was motion up here, vibrant activity.

One slip and he’d fall so far he could take a nap before he hit the ground, but it didn’t seem that way. It seemed like he’d found a whole other world and he could climb out and race across the leaves to find new horizons. And honestly, maybe he could. The leaf stalks were as thick as his arm.

The birds were having no trouble, certainly. There were birds everywhere, mostly little noisy white ones that chirped and darted around with great excitement. A flock of larger ones in the distance flew over the forest in a V pattern. Another surprise was the variety of insects. One crawled across a leaf near his hand, smaller than a fingernail, and several more flew on wobbling paths nearby. None of the minds he was looking for belonged to birds or bugs, though. Now that he thought about it, the feeling of activity the place had had more to do with the mysterious invisible minds than the chirping birds.

“Do you see them yet?” asked Callius, popping up so close to Dirt the dryad’s hair tickled his cheek.

“See what? I see a bunch of minds, but nothing with my eyes. What are they? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

One was larger than the rest, full of countless threading pathways, all rushing through and around each other like a vibrant knot of pure being. Dirt couldn’t tell if he was looking at one long, tangled stream of thought, or hundreds all messed up together. There was absolutely nothing he recognized.

“Look closer. They might be hard to see,” said Callius.

“What am I looking for?”

“Elementals.”

The large mind reached out to him, but instead of a mental connection, or something heard with his ears, he felt an electric shock. It tickled his mana vessel, reacting with the mana he still held inside him. A ripple appeared in the air around him, and for a moment he was terrified that it was the great eye again, but it wasn’t. Gray fog, so thin and pale Dirt wasn’t quite sure what it was, filled in the ripples and from one moment to the next, a huge face appeared directly above him. A woman’s face, round, with wide eyes. She opened her mouth and a rush of wind washed over him, not strong enough to shake him out of the tree, but strong enough he held on tighter.

“We’ve been wondering this whole time how you two would communicate. She lives mostly in the world of magic, like us. Good luck,” said Callius. He circled around to the other side of last thin branch, turned his feet into hands to hold on better, and relaxed to watch.