Hours or months have passed since I’ve set out to venture into the thick stretch of  woods I have found beneath the earth’s surface, in a location I prefer not to share. The omnipresent syrupy smell of rotting soil was occasionally disturbed by the fragrance of a boundless army of odd-looking gray trees that appeared to be budding all over their coarse suits-of-armour. The longer I walked the more I was convinced this was a joke of some kind. Nothing around me seemed to be changing as I kept on. There was nothing distinguishable enough to memorize in order to draw a map in my mind for the purpose of a return trip. I felt like I was virtually fixed in one place. Walking aimlessly on a dark forestry conveyor belt of sorts.

When I noticed, in front of me, another clearing in the woods I decided to give it a brief examination. Expecting naught more than another thinning of the damp and dense forest and another rush of onsetting frenzy due to the lack of apparent progress in the journey, I walked in.

Right in front of my eyes, there laid a being. One that seemed to resemble a large man or other primate. It must’ve weighed at least 2 tonnes. Upon closer inspection, which required of me not a small amount of courage, I came to find it was entirely made of wood. The wood was of a bright and sturdy type, with small irregular patches of remaining bark, also bright, mostly in the areas where a human body wouldn’t fold or stretch much. It was impossible for me to tell which side was the front and which one was the back in order to determine if the creature was lying face down or up. That’s because the head was nothing more than a great uneven tumor-like burl. Aside from the sweet sappy smell I noticed the thing was breathing. Not something you could see but the slow, rhythmical creaks indicated nothing more but a respiratory system of sorts. It slept. On a stroll around it, I noticed that one of its legs was stuck in the ground. Like it fell into a traphole. Or, rather, like it struggled to come out of it but somehow couldn’t. 

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Crrrreeeak! I immediately turned around to inspect the area around me and discern the source of the sound. To my immense terror I realised there was nothing there but a wall of spear-like trees from which the sound must have bounced off back to my ears. This meant one thing and one thing only. The giant thing woke up. 

While gazing stupefied at the harrowing motions of the creature I very slowly and shakily began walking backwards as if an invisible leash of this horrible happening didn’t let me flee. The abominable being struggled to get its large body vertical. Helping itself up with the two arms and a misshapen leg to balance. Creak! The limbs ended with hundreds, if not thousands of tiny branches that acted as a chaotic system of fingers. I must have been about ten meters away from it by now and felt a small surge of relief, knowing the beast had been rooted and should not be able to reach me. This turned out to be completely untrue due to my exhausted brain’s miscalculations. There came a loud squeal while the body shook in spasms in order to correct its posture. Using the collective force of its limbs the thing turned what turned out to be its facade, towards me. The creaking. The unusually loud creaking, as if amplified by an apparatus for that purpose assembled. Like that of a choir of hundreds of ancient doors chanting a dreaded psalm about The Great Fire. Oh, the creaking. As if the wooden bones, joints and muscles of the creature were shrieking, begging out loud to perish into chips, splinters and dust with a singular crack and to return to the stillness so natural to all trees.

Stuck in awe and fear, I kept looking as the heavy and long-like-a-pine-tree arm crept toward me. Before I came to my senses, or, rather what was left of them the hand had already engulfed me, tangled my torso with its thin, branch-like fingers. To my astonishment, the trap I have found myself in did me no harm. I looked. That was all that I could do, to be honest, from this standpoint. The fingers were oddly dexterous, unceasingly weaving shapes unknown to me but possessing a pattern, an aura of mathematical logic.

Then, amongst all the creaks you would expect of a moving and sentient tree there rang a voice. A voice that, again, never came from its seeming source but rather from the trees that guarded the clearing.

“Free. Cut root.”