Figures with leafy bodies and wooden faces pinned Yuliko to the ground as they tied her hands behind her back. The rest of her mo’huran had also been pulled down from the flower tops. The figures were quickly and aggressively tying them all up. They also deprived them of their weapons.

The leafy figures moved like people, Yuliko saw, with two legs and two feet. They had skin like bark and their hair was made of ivy vines and decorated with sunflower heads. There were at least ten of them.

Their faces had grotesque exaggerated features. Yuliko worried that perhaps they had been attacked by some sort of ghouls. But why would ghouls be covered in leaves and flowers? Perhaps these were hostile flower spirits?

They wielded dried sunflower stalks that had been de-petaled as clubs. Faydayo was the last to be yanked down back to the ground and subdued by the leafy people. He fought back as they tied him, so they beat him a few times with the heads of their sunflower clubs. The flexibility of the club stalks seemed to add some extra punch to the blows.

Yuliko was stripped of her backframe and belt. One of the flower people rifled through her bag, spilling out her tools and materials. The flower person flicked open her parchment folding fan and fluttered it upon their malformed face.

They spoke to each other in a language that she didn’t understand, but Yuliko noticed that their lips weren’t moving. Then she realized the wooden faces were masks. She looked more closely at their leafy bodies and saw the leaves had been wrapped in place with cordage over bark and wicker armor. Underneath she spotted pinkish-brown flesh tones. These were people disguising themselves as plants.

If her hands had been free, Yuliko would have attempted to use the traveler’s hand signal, so instead Yuliko spoke, “We mean no harm. We are travelers,” she said.

“Apoo cha tu,” the masked person standing over her said, then they whacked her in the stomach with their sunflower club, confirming that the sunflower clubs carried an extra wallop to their strikes.

All the air was knocked out of Yuliko, but they forced her to stand anyway along with all the others. They were then shoved into a line, irregardless of status, with masked sunflower warriors intermittently placed between them.

They were forced to march. Yuliko could not tell what direction they were headed with the canopy of the tallest sunflowers blocking the sky. But the sunflower people leading the way seemed to know exactly where they were going. They continued for a long while with the sunflowers getting ever taller, until reaching a ceiling of about twelve feet tall, with stalks as wide as a man kin thigh.

Eventually, they came to a rocky crag within the meadow that sloped downward between two rock walls. As they walked into the crag, the sunflower stalks were replaced with a wide-open gorge hidden right in the middle of the meadow. There was so much more space than Yuliko would have believed from her view atop the giant sunflower. It was astonishing a place this big was nestled within the meadows unseen. The rock walls grew higher as they descended down the slope.

When they were deep enough in the gorge, wicker huts began appearing built along the rock walls. These huts were much smaller than the huts the Black Glass People built. These were designed for only two or three people. And there were a few people lingering around. The people by the huts were unmasked, and looked very much like Black Glass People, except they were all wearing leafy skirts and wore flowers in their hair.

Yuliko noticed a young woman holding a toddler and she stopped to stare, remembering the time she had seen the flathead woman with the youngling. The toddler looked shy, but curious. Then a masked sunflower warrior slapped her with their flower club in her rear. “Cha tu!” they said. The young woman brought her toddler into her hut and Yuliko moved along with the rest of the captives.

They were walked all the way to the bottom of the gorge where most of the clanspeople had gathered. Yuliko estimated there were perhaps a hundred of them. They were all encircling some sort of wicker construction. Yuliko looked upward and gasped.

Towering overhead, built from the dried sunflower stalks, stood a wicker figure taller than even the biggest sunflowers in the meadow. The figure stood with its knees bowed and its arms held upward like a fork prong. Its face was a giant wooden mask with the same grotesque exaggerated features as their captors’ masks. Antlers made of stalks jutted from the figure’s head, and crowned around the antlers was a wreath of large sunflower discs.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Yuliko barely had time to take in the grandeur of the wicker man construction before she was forced onto her knees with the others in front of the biggest hut. The sunflower warriors formed a semi-circle around their prisoners. A girl with a drum standing next to the hut doorway banged on the instrument rapidly and shouted out, “Machu pakik na Leandrus!”

The curtain covering the doorway was pulled aside and outstepped a man wearing elaborately woven wicker armor bedecked with dried brown sunflower discs. He wore a cape of woven vines, also sporting dried sunflowers. His hair was tied in a long ponytail and upon his head was a withered wreath crown with faded red and yellow petals.

The crowned man strode in front of the line of prisoners, examining them. One sunflower warrior showed the chieftain one of their obsidian ritual blades. After his inspection, the chieftain clapped and said, “Nan kho.” Then one of his grass-skirted subjects ran behind him with a leather stool. The chieftain, Yuliko assumed, flipped his cape so it draped behind the stool, then he sat and stared at the prisoners. “Pokum,” he said with a wave of his wrist.

Faydayo took that to mean he wanted to hear from them. He crawled forward on his knees and bowed, “Chief of the sunflower people, we come as travelers on our Great Journey. We mean no harm to you or your clan. We only ask for permission to cross your land to the mountain pass.”

The crowned man frowned. He pointed to Faydayo and said, “Acki okimon ton glass chal.”

Faydayo perked up at hearing glass. “Yes, we are Glass People. Glass chal.”

The chieftain ordered something else in his foreign tongue. He gestured to huts farther down as he spoke. One of his subjects bowed and ran towards those huts. As they waited for whatever the chieftain wanted, Yuliko thought she heard the sounds of a woman crying out in pain. But it was brief and hard to discern if that’s what she really heard over the murmur of the flower people watching the strangers.

In short time, the runner came back with a stocky man walking with a limp and missing an arm. The man was sweaty and had a worried expression. The chieftain spoke with the one-armed man briefly in their own language, before the newcomer limped a few steps forward to face Faydayo.

“King Leandrus say why Glass People come here?” The one-armed man said.

That shocked and relieved Yuliko that this man somehow knew the tongue of the Black Glass People. There was a chance of talking their way out of this.

“We are passing through on our Great Journey,” Faydayo said.

The one-armed man thought for a second, then translated the best he could. King Leandrus leaned forward and repeated a phrase the translator had said.

“You say Great Journey brought you here?” the translator asked.

“Not here exactly,” Faydayo said. “Just this way.”

But King Leandrus spoke again before the translator had time to interpret. He spoke with grit in his words.

“The king say you here to steal tribute. He say Glass People no steal tribute from Meadow Dwellers,” the one-armed man said.

“No, we have no intention of—” Faydayo started, but was cut off by the sunflower king who rambled off a string of foreign words, then he pointed to their mighty wicker man.

“King Leandrus say you here to steal pyre totem,” the interpreter told them.

Faydayo shook his head. “No. No stealing.”

“Foopolo,” the king said.

“He say you lying,” the interpreter said.

“We didn’t even know you were here!” Faydayo said, growing angry.

The one-armed man conveyed that to Leandrus. The king yawned and gave a reply, then flicked his wrists at the prisoners.

“King Leandrus say you be offer to Wild Watcher,” the interpreter told them.

The sunflower king clapped his hands together again and a Meadow Dweller brought him a long stone blade. The longest stone knife Yuliko had ever seen. It was made of a peppery looking rock, and only sharpened on one side by grinding instead of knapping. The blunt end was thick, polished, but not grinded down in order to reinforce the weapon. Yuliko imagined the blade must be quite heavy. A strong blow could maybe even cut through bone.

The king stood up from his seat and stepped forward, careful not to catch his cape on the stool. He raised the stone blade and waved its point across the line up of journeyers. The knife point threatened each of them in turn with a bloody demise. Minty let out a cry when the knife faced her. Faydayo snarled when the blade came to him. Yuliko felt her heart pound at her chest when the king pointed at her.

But finally, King Leandrus came to a stop on Krissa, who was blanked-faced. He used the tip of the blade to brush her beaded braids away from her face.

The king said something else and two masked sunflower warriors picked her up and started dragging her towards the wicker man. King Leandrus followed after them. The Ibexes shouted helplessly, begging for them to stop.