It took Barkle and Reg a long while to start moving again. They just stared at the huge gap formed by the falling primary branch. On its path down, the falling branch had crashed into other smaller branches and broke many of them off. The result was more snapped branches and a clear view all the way to the mist below. The mist was a calm darkness that hid the branch’s final resting place. From their vantage point, they couldn’t see the point where East Starswallow had broken off, but they could tell it was close to the trunk.
Sitting there, staring at the gap, Reg kept thinking about the last day that he’d seen the crew. They’d headed out a few days before Reg, Barkle, and Martha had left with their flock of goats. The phase spiders were rambunctious: several were aggressively wrestling. Reg was helping his brother Jeb separate two young females whose hisses made it sound like they were no longer playing well together. Once they had the two females separated, Jeb slung his arm around Reg, “Excited for your first herding?”
Reg did his best to wrestle out of Jeb’s tight embrace while responding, but Jeb had a good grip around Reg’s neck, so he didn’t make much progress. “Yeah. Getting to spend a season out on the wild branches is going to be so overstory! Wish I got to go with you and herd phase spiders, though. Sounds way more exciting than beetles and goats.”
Jeb laughed and let Reg go. “Goats wander. They’ll be plenty of excitement. Beetles though, you’re not wrong.” His voice turned a bit more serious, “Reg, I’ve got something important to tell you. It’s the same thing that Nadia told me on my first season out.” He paused, then continued “You’re going to be awful at herding. Just abominably bad. Nobody is a natural at this. If things start going to rot out there, it’s OK. You’re a ton better with the critters and Ankie than I was when I first started, and you’ll figure it out. I lost two beetles my first day. Do you have any clue how hard it is to lose a beetle? We found ‘em, but it was miserable. I thought I just didn’t have the spark for it, but there’s no such thing. It took me a few seasons to be even halfway competent. So, you’re going to be awful, and that’s normal.”
Reg felt a bit stunned. Jeb was one of the best shepherds on the ranch -- there was a reason he was chosen for the crew that was taking the phase spiders out on their season-long hunt. If he had lost two beetles during his first season, how bad was Reg going to be?
Jeb looked at him, “Don’t look so glum. You’ll pick it up right quick. The older hands have a betting pool for how many goats new herders lose, and I bet the under on you. I just don’t want you feeling like things going wrong isn’t normal.”
Reg mustered a smile, “Any chance I can get in on this betting pool? I’m sure it’ll take me a while to pick things up, but I bet folks are underestimating Ankie.”
Jeb laughed, “That’s the spirit! You’ll do well. Just know that everyone goes through a rough first season or two and that it doesn’t mean that you’re not cut out for this.”
Later, when the phase spiders had been gathered together, Reg’s mum Jemma took turns hugging all of the family and friends who had come to see them off. When she got to Reg, she gave him a huge hug and said “love you, kiddo. I’m looking forward to hearing all the stories about your first season. So proud of you.”
Reg hugged her back strongly. “Take care, mum. Don’t get eaten by one of your spiders. Love you too.”
Auntie Bel’s goodbye was a firm handshake, a gift of a beautiful hand-woven phase-spider-silk sling, and the admonition to practice with it or she’d use him for target practice when she got back. “Best to have a moving target and you’re scrawny enough that you’re hard to hit.”
It was hard knowing that they’d never be coming back. He’d never hug his mom again. Never wrestle with Jeb again. Never spend hours playing with a sling with Auntie Bel again. They were gone.
After some time sitting and staring at the gap, Reg wiped the tears and snot off of his face. He felt wrung out. He turned towards Barkle who was still staring at the place that the branch should be. “Barkle, you ever heard of a branchfall like this? Of a primary branch?”
Barkle shook his head, “No, I ain’t never heard of nothing like this. Minor branchfalls, sure, those happen every season, but nothing like this. A whole mist-touched primary? Bramble and bark, that’s not right.”
Reg shooed Ankie off of his lap, where she’d curled up after she’d seen his crying, and stood up, “reckon we should take a look nearer to the trunk?”
Barkle nodded, “yup, much as I want to head back and tell folks at the ranch, we gotta report this to the Thornbound and they’ll want more detail.”
The rest of the day was spent at a quick hike. The primary they were on was close to East Starswallow, so they didn’t need to do any crossing or backtracking. They just headed inward. Neither Reg nor Barkle felt like talking, so it was a silent hike. They stopped in the evening at a burl close to the trunk. This close, it was quite dark. The evening sun was fully occluded by the flat mass of the trunk. It made up a wall that covered half of the sky.
Reg and Barkle made it to the stub in the bright light of the next morning. The break point was jagged and rough. The bark on the stub was twisted and large patches were missing. Reg and Barkle had to move carefully as they got close to the edge to avoid tripping on the uneven terrain. When they got to the edge, they could look down and down and see the path that the primary branch had taken on its fall. It had hit other, smaller, branches on its way down and several of those smaller branches had snapped. Many of them were still attached to the tree, but any creatures that had been living on those branches would have been tossed into the dark mist, far below.
Reg had Ankie set up a line, and carefully climbed down to see if there were any other signs from the stub as to what happened here. Ten meters down and it was obvious, “rot and canker!”
Barkle responded quickly, “What is it? Do you see what happened?”
Reg answered, “Barkle, I wasn’t cussing. It’s rot and canker almost all the way through. By the Heart, I don’t know how this branch stayed up as long as it did. It’s riddled with rot.”
Barkle paused for a few seconds. “I’m coming down. You’re wrong. There’s no mist-touched way a primary has the rot. That ain’t never happened. It must be something else. It must be.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Barkle climbed down on another line and the two of them spent time inspecting the black, tar-like remnants that the rot had left behind. This close, it smelled like the ranch’s small abattoir after a day of slaughtering goats and beetles.
Clambering around on the weakened wood was unsteady. If they hadn’t tied themselves to spider lines that Ankie had set up, Barkle would have fallen to his death when a handhold fell away under his foot.
After looking at the rotten branch stump for thirty minutes, they both clambered back up to the top. There was no way to deny it: the East Starswallow Primary Branch had had the rot and it had fallen. Barkle turned to Reg, “I know you want to get back to the ranch and tell folks what happened here, but we gotta tell the Thornbound immediately. They’ll know what to do. Heart’s Sap, I hope they know what to do.”
Reg nodded. There was no arguing with that. He wanted to head home and mourn, but seeing a primary branch rot away was insane. He’d never heard of anything like that happening in the two millennia that people had been living on the Tree. It felt almost blasphemous to think, but maybe there was even rot in the trunk? What if the Tree fell? In the Mist, they’d all go mad. There was no way to survive down there.
Reg had thought that Barkle had set a hard pace on their way out, but the pace that he set on the way to the Thornbound offices in Ithilia was even faster. Reg kept pace in grim silence. After the first few hours, he had to carry Ankie in a sling on his back to give her quick breaks. She did her best, but she didn’t have the endurance to keep up a pace like this hour after hour. Even Barkle’s breath was labored.
They reached Ithilia at dusk on the third day after they saw the rot.
Despite the reason for their visit, Reg still found himself staring at everything. Ithilia was built into the Trunk at the junction of two primary branches. Up along the trunk, druidic craft-folk had sculpted soaring towers with arching bridge paths between them. Along the two primary branches, the buildings were squatter, but most still bore the curving lines that indicated a druid carpenter’s work. The scale of it was breathtaking.
Despite entering the city at dusk, there were still people hurrying everywhere. In his first few steps into the city, Reg saw more elves and gnomes than he’d ever seen in his entire life. Some were dressed in simple leathers like him and Barkle, but most wore fancier clothing. Humans and gnomes hurried by in their spider-silk doublets and robes, dodging around porters hauling heavy loads, sometimes with goat trains in tow. Elves wore fancier clothes still: phase silk jackets and dresses that shimmered with fey colors or fine spider-silk doublets embroidered with fanciful designs.
Reg had a hard time not just stopping and staring at people. An Achivian Guard stalked by, wearing the traditional sigil-engraved mask and wearing lacquered armor. A gnome walked by on short stilts that seemed designed to help him move faster than his stubby legs would normally allow. A wizard in robes covered with protective sigils staggered in the opposite direction, and muttered something about “sulfur” and “salamander feed.” A lute-carrying elf stood near a cross-roads and sang a beautiful advertisement for a play that her troupe was putting on that evening.
As they walked through the crowd, a young elf toddler who was holding his mother’s hand, pointed at them. “Look ma! Spida ranchas!! Look at their spidas!” He couldn’t quite hear the mother’s response, but her voice was musical and amused.
As Reg and Barkle headed towards the central market-circle, the buildings became more elaborate and they started seeing shops. On the left, “Magical Mandy’s Ministrations” advertised “tonics that will make you feel a century younger”. On the right, a woodsmith was lacquering a breastplate in front of a shop full of armor and weapons and advertised a “limited supply of metal weaponry. Inquire within”. Up ahead a bit, “Moonheart’s Cooking Supplies” was three times the size of the general store in Willowbend and only sold cookware. Reg had thought that the weekly market days in Willowbend were large, as folks from nearby smaller villages came in to sell things, but it wasn’t even a comparison. There were shops for cheese, for silk, for clothes, for food, for spider husbandry, and for everything else under the moon.
Despite the urge to stop and stare, Reg followed Barkle to the office of the Thornbound Order. It was a short building with vines and flowers growing out of nooks shaped into the outer walls on the Trunk-side of the central market-circle. Despite the late hour, the building was still open, and the receptionist told them it’d be a three hour wait to see an officer. She ignored Barkle and Reg’s attempts to tell her that it was urgent, “I’m sure it’s urgent. Everyone who comes here has urgent business, but it’s going to take the time it takes. Please sit down in the lobby to wait.”
Barkle glanced over at Reg. “Mist-touched bureaucrat. Reg, no need to have both of us suffer. Go lose some money on a throwball game or something and meet me back here in three hours.”
Reg didn’t need much convincing to head back out into the city to explore. Waiting for hours when he could be exploring instead? He spent three happy hours walking around. He checked out two spider husbandry shops and bought a slurry treat and a bristle brush for Ankie. He watched two schools’ circle duel competition. Some of the older students were impressive: moving their spears and bucklers in patterns that Reg hadn’t seen before. He grabbed a quick snack from a small cart. The gnome manning the cart had a thick accent that was hard to understand, and told him that it was “egg irrigated vine-bread.” Whatever it was, it was oily and delicious, and was a welcome change of pace from the trail food that they’d been eating for the past several days.
The three hours went quickly. As night came on, crystal lights illuminated the streets in a cheery blue glow and most shops stayed open late. Happy music and laughter came pouring out of bars and restaurants. Reg and Ankie headed back to the central market-circle, which was quieter now that most small vendors had packed up their tables. Barkle was sitting down on a bench outside the Thornbound Offices and stood up when Reg came close, grabbed him by the arm, and started hurrying him away.
Reg asked, “So, how did it go? What did they say?”
Barkle answered in a monotone, “The Thornbound have everything under control.”
“Well, what’d they say? What’s going on?” Reg asked immediately.
Barkle just responded, “The Thornbound have everything under control.” His face looked a little pained.
Reg kept prodding, “But what are they going to do about the fallen primary? There might be rot in the Trunk! What do you mean it’s under control?”
Barkle paused. He seemed to be mustering his willpower to speak, “the Thornbound have everything under control. There was no fallen primary. Rumors about a fallen primary will be punished.” His voice sounded pained and his eyes were looking around all over. “It’s under control. It’s under control.” He paused for a few more moments before adding in a slow monotone, “Don’t tell people everything is under control or the Thornbound will ensure everything is under control.”
Reg felt sick. They’d done something to Barkle in there. His pained non-answers didn’t sound like the things he’d normally say. Even his words were wrong -- clear and precise and without the curse-words that Barkle normally littered his speech with. Reg didn’t know what to do. When Barkle changed the topic, and asked whether he’d seen “any half-decent throwball” in his wanders, Reg went along with it. Barkle sounded like himself when talking about anything other than the fallen primary, grumpily telling him he was a “ground-dwelling mud-brained idiot” for not trying to catch a throwball game while he was wandering around the city.
Over the next five days, as Reg and Barkle hiked back to the ranch, Reg kept wondering: what had happened to Barkle in that office? Was the Tree actually rotting? Could he fix Barkle? And, pressing more and more on him than the day, how was he going to tell everyone that the phase spider crew was all dead?