Woods. Now, what comes to your mind when you read that? Or "forest" for that matter. Well, that will depend on where you've encountered a collection of trees and other related plants. It matters.
If you are familiar with the Pacific Northwest, the "forest" is dense conifers, huge towering cedars and hemlocks and firs. And chances are, a whole lot of Himalayan blackberry. Making any headway through this is like trying to swim through a combine harvester.
If you grew up on the East Coast, say around Virginia area-- your woods are mostly hardwoods, tall columns that blot out the sun and leave leaf-dappled landscapes beneath. You can walk off-trail here, easily enough to get lost off the AT, for example. You wil wander among birdsong and wildflowers, and fireflies light the dusk.
In California, sequoias would tower over your head in the mountains, pines and others conifers blowing a soft moan in the wind. Dry manzanita wouldn't present much obstacle as you went over the landscape of decomposing granite in the high places-- but come down to the coast, and see Redwoods, full of mist and mystery, softly carpeted with ferns and the eternal russet needls of the giants. The Trees (yes they get a capital letter) are a presence here, and you walk among them humbled. Between them lie the golden hills and the liveoaks, now rare and scattered like unicorns, a woods no longer.
Perhaps you had the good fortune to walk in a native woods in northern Scotland, in which case you'd remember a mixed display of conifer and broadleaf, great clumps of rhododendron, stands of spindly birch and here and there a moss-covered giant that rises from a clump of old stones, clearly a magical king's burial mound. Or a planted monocrop, silent and dark as night between the narrow trunks, trickling with small streams over stones.
Maybe you've never walked in a woods at all; or the closest you've come is Central Park, or watching a bootleg copy of "Twilight" on your tribe's small solar-powered TV/VCR, in the sweltering heat of Guyana where you have jungle instead, and probably have never seen anyone's breath showing in the air before.
The Woodstrider grew up along the Fractal Coast, and thus was familiar with the California variations, but if you want to set this scene in your own backyard or other woods, please feel free.
But it will only be really accurate in this case if you've had the misfortune of walking in a sickened forest; downed branches and trees rotting in place faster than the fungi can reclaim them, yellowed leaves upon the trees and orange burnt needles on the conifers, vegetation soggy with slime from things that should not be, and the silence-- the cold and aching silence where there should be the chorus of life.
To Trashscarf, it looked uncomfortably familiar, reminding him of Fluffy's valley. The Woodstrider hadn't been there, but she'd noticed that this part of her World had always-- as long as she'd been alive-- seemed sick, somehow. Too wet, that's what it was; the plants that had adapted to warmth and sunshine could only struggle and suffer under the increasing clouds and rain. Pines drowned, oaks decayed, broadleaves writhed with strange pale grubs and dripped oozing sap like mucus.
The Woodstrider had unslung her axe, and as they proceeded into the decaying woodland, she cleared a path for them. The broad blade chopped soggily this way and that, dropping spongy chunks as she navigated in the rough direction the crows had taken.
Trashscarf's Waymaking magic was at a very low ebb due to his stunt across the desert earlier, but he could still mark a trail, even if he couldn't blaze one. Small scraps of color and sparkle trailed behind their slow progress, like garish breadcrumbs.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
That should about do it for our little travel montage; let's do a quick recap of best scenes from our heroes--
-Woodstrider was very skillful and fearsome, hacking her way through the wet wilderness-
-Offswitch trudged along in her wake, occasionally commenting "Nice one," or "Ooh, good," at one of her swings, until she finally turned and looked him full in the face, with an annoyed expression, and then he slunk sheepishly back to bring up the rear--
-Garbleday was utterly clumsy and useless and fell over things and off things and down things, and he ended up soaked in Murk as well, but Mrrp?, who seemed to be immune to the stuff--(Trashscarf pointed out that the bugs and frogs and other things that had very little brain also seemed immune, or at least resistant) -carried him by the scruff of his chainmail, like a kitten, through the worst of it until he'd dried off enough to cheer up.
-Trashscarf picked his way along in the rear, marking the trail in a temporary sort of Way, and therefore, he was already there when Offswitch came slinking back. Trashscarf gave him a sympathetic look. Although not a player in the games of love himself, he recognized the symptoms.
"I don't know how to talk to ladies," Offswitch grumbled, kicking what he thought was a rock, but it was actually a toad, and he had to run after it and make sure it was all right (it was, having landed on wet leaves).
When he got back, Trashscarf told him, "Don't fret about it, lad. The Woodstrider probably has even less experience being a lady than you have at conversing with one. Just be yourself."
"But what if she doesn't like me?" The mosquitoes were thick over Offswitch's bristly scalp, enough to make him look almost like he'd grown a toupee over his buzzcut. He ignored them, not daring to scratch, much less slap.
"Then she doesn't like you, and thank goodness you never pretended to be someone else, so that you'd have to keep pretending in order to keep up the lie," Trashscarf said kindly.
"Yeah, that's a good point," Offswitch sighed. "It's tougher out here in the sticks. Back in Bridgetower, I knew my way around better, I was a lot more useful-- plenty of constructs that needed shutdown-- I even had a Guild, for a little while." He smiled at the memory.
"An Assassin's Guild? They took you, even though--" Trashscarf found himself asking. Well, he -had- promised he'd listen to the fellow's tragic backstory, after all.
"No no, hells no, not those stuck up psychos. More of a gang, really. Bunch of us weirdos." He shook his head, not wanting to go into it further.
"Why'd you leave? Visiting your father?"
"Sort of, yeah, but also," Offswitch said ruefully, "I might have been getting a bit too good. Bridgetower, now, see, it's supposed to be run by the Mayor and the Doges, but one who's really in charge is a wizard lady. She's an arcanificer-- makes a lot of gizmos, including constructs. Sooo--"
"Ah, you pulled a few jobs too many?" Trashscarf said knowingly, and Offswitch nodded.
"They started hunting for me, yeah. In fact, I been thinking... I'm pretty sure that wardrobe that tried to eat you was one of hers."
"The wardrobe was a creation of the Arcanificer?" Trashscarf was surprised. "You mean there was actually a plot reason for it? I thought it was just another one of those random things that happens to me."
"It fought back like one of hers," Offswitch said, ignoring the parts of Trashscarf's statement that he didn't undersand, which was most of it. It seemed to be the best way of dealing with the eccentric Waywalker. "Some of them, it's like they know they aren't alive, so they don't fight back to survive. But Sohvail's -- that's her name-- they're bastards full of spite and malice down to the end."
"Weird," Trashscarf said, his voice light and dismissive, but over his eyes passed a brief shadow of worry.
Then a sodden fir cone smacked him upside the head. "Ow!"
Trashscarf and Offswitch looked around and saw the Woodstrider had come back and already halted Mrrp? and Garbleday, and she dropped the other pinecone she'd picked up, and touched her finger to her lips for silence. They both obeyed at once, shutting up and scuttling forward with as much stealth as they could manage.
The Woodstrider pulled them in to hunker behind the rotting root-ball of a fallen cypress, for concealment, and then pointed ahead, through a gap in the trees.
The sky ahead was full of crows and ravens, wheeling around an ancient, crumbling tower that jutted like a decaying fang from the gloomladen landscape.