Sprig's Diary
Tripwire
Today I visited the thick trees of the Dark Wood to hunt perberries for the rich, sweet wine they make. The bushes ring many trees there, but the floor of deadly tripwire denied me access. Instead I studied the tripwire, which be yet a mystery.
Tripwire’s near black vines bear dull, heart-shaped leaves and large tendrils, far different from the delicate coils of most vines. If ye be still and silent as stone, ye can see it breathe. It crouches with an unnerving sentience impossible for plants.
I sat in the border between sunlight and shadow, hearing too much rustle for the light breeze. Sometimes I held my breath, inexplicably wanting to escape detection.
Heavy pods, previously unobserved, hung near hidden below the leaves. Unthinking, I reached for the utility knife on my belt to collect one.
With a sigh like a snarl, the nearest vine rose up and reached, wrapping wrist and knife.
My hair stood on end. Fear soaked through me. I had seen the prehensile vines kill a deer, and I be much smaller. I froze, holding my breath. The tripwire waited, quiescent, until I moved, then stretched more vines towards me.
What a predicament! How could I free myself without triggering further attack? Hoping my heart’s hammer be inaudible, I forced a foreign calmness. At last I reached oh, so slowly with my other hand, perhaps an inch at a time or less, testing to discover what movement would trigger the vines. It took long to touch the knife, longer to free it from the tendrils.
Cutting the tough vine from my wrist proved more difficult. When at last it parted, I waited for my heart to slow and my palms to dry. I shifted closer, as slowly as possible, to locate a pod near the edge.
I strained for slow, imperceptible movement. At last the pod fell free. I felt its shriek in my bones, of pain and fury and fear. Imagination? Perhaps ...
The vines rose up with a whispered roar, throwing themselves in my direction. "Infant" or "offspring" or some such concept poured through my brain. No true word be shaped, but I could not ignore the feel of outrage and anger.
I closed my fist about the pod and flung myself away from the tripwire, scrambling on all fours. Twice I must stop to cut free an ankle or a thigh, as fear thundered through my blood. I won free–barely–with the pod still safe in my fist. The tripwire extended its reach, its roots digging closer to the village, but it stopped before exposing itself to the sunlight.
And I? I opened the pod to reveal a nest of silky fibers, holding tiny seeds–the next generation of tripwire.
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Footnote:
Years after I wrote this, the silky fibers became known as the rare and beautiful silversilk.Wolf Winter
The Edge of the Dark Wood suffers a horrendous winter this year. Many of the little people have run short of food, and the snow be too deep to forage more. As midwinter nears, the cold bites ever deeper.
Predators find poor hunting, while prey takes refuge in hollows warmed by their body heat. Wolves sometimes lurk outside the visk oaks, trying to catch someone outside–but without success, thank the Mother.
Today, as I prepared a hot, savory dinner, a wolf pack snuffled at the cracks of my door, snarling. I had left thick walls when hollowing out my home. Nevertheless, I feared the wolves’ strength of desperation.
Their clamorous ferocity shrank my vitals, and a rotten-meat smell clogged my nostrils. When they flung themselves against the door, I bundled up as warm as I could, picked up my walking stick, and trudged upstairs. The big door juddered behind me, and I quickened my pace. Near the third floor, I heard a loud crack, and then another. The door splintered as I climbed out the trapdoor. I latched it securely behind me, panting with exertion and fear.
The wolves ascended stairs, their hunting howls and hungry growls accompanied by thudding feet on the stairs. I climbed again, racing for the final escape hatch. The hatches be less thick than the front door and I feared their being breached, though above the wolves’ heads and harder to assail. The final hatch be almost a hundred spiraling steps more, so that perspiration drenched me and my legs trembled.
When I could climb no more, I sat on the step, waiting, sucking in frigid air that burned my lungs. Far below, more wood cracked. This wood be not dead and dry but part of the living tree. I felt the tree’s pain, heard its silent cry in my bones.
The howling and snarls subsided. The tree became still, no vibration of the pack’s climb. The silence be absolute as the world held its breath.
I shivered, sweat-chilled. Nought above the third floor be heated, though still within the tree. Legs trembling, I continued up and through the final trapdoor, set in the first branchings. I clutched the railing, a hundred forty feet high, and stared through the branches below me. Even bare, they provided some concealment for the platform.
Far below, the wolves emerged from my home. They drifted away, tails between their legs and heads down against the bitter wind. For safety, I waited before returning to the first floor.
Much be destroyed–my dinner and all food within reach. Clay pots, bottles, drying herbs lay shattered, the kitchen near destroyed. Paws printed the flour on the floor, marked by tongues and noses where they had eaten it. Two lamps in the great room had fallen with no harm, being unlit. The cracked door hung from one hinge.
All could be repaired or replaced. I could set barricades until then. Life would go on as before, with little impact from the raid.
I wondered if that be true for the wolves who visited.
The Black Caverns
Today I found a rare glow worm, three inches long and softly fuzzed with pale yellow hairs. A tiny glow sac bulges near the end of each fine hair. I took care that no action of mine should harm the fragile creature. With it in my pocket, I traveled the Slipaway Trail to the Black Caverns.
Drawn by hollow silence and pregnant air, I feared to travel into the darkness. Lured by the possibility of the never-seen, I could not resist. The living caverns waited with bated breath.
For hours I wandered blind, led by the kiss of a breath on my cheek, or by a contented sigh just beyond my hearing. I would not use the glow worm, for its light be brief. Instead, I felt my way along treacherous paths through jumbled rocks and pot-size holes. A low groan prickled my hair, but hearing it only once, I judged it no more than wind having its way with the rocks.
I entered an empty space where my feet echoed far and froze in terror. How close be my feet to an abyss? Sweat cooled my brow and soaked my beard. I could not force another step.
The glow worm in my pocket might help, but it be so small and the space so vast, I did not anticipate much aid. I forced a foot forward, managed two shuffles. Then my toe stubbed on some minor obtrusion. I fell.
I rolled down a jagged slope, bruised and sliced, knowing I would die. I stopped, tasted blood from my bitten tongue. My clothing gaped where rent. My chin bore a bald spot where I landed on my own beard and ripped some out.
Frantic, I eased the glow worm from my pocket by feel, fearing to have landed on it. At first I thought it dead, for I did not feel it move. I held my breath, fumbled to find its shape with shaky fingers, stroked its back lightly, head to tail. I think. It be difficult to tell, with a glow worm. The hairs be soft to the touch, if stroked with the growth, and the bulge near the ends tickled.
My finger woke the glow sacs. A soft light reached beyond what I expected.
A twinkle caught my eye. I looked up. My breath caught.
Around me, the large, shallow bowl sparkled and winked in the glow’s reflection. Light sparked from the gigantic shattered diamond in which I sat, and from smaller diamonds lying within. Rainbow prisms danced in the air. Awe overfilled me, the excess rolling down my cheeks as tears.
I sat until the worm’s glow waned, absorbing wonder and beauty. My rough voice echoed from the facets, sweet as windchimes. When I finally left, I carried away a small, perfect diamond, and a small, perfect glow worm, my new traveling companion.
Magic's Nature
Magic be amazing. In a few weeks, I will be 100 years old, and my understanding remains elementary.
Magic be the unexplained and the inexplicable, the most misunderstood, underestimated, overestimated, untrustworthy force of anything on this earth. It be contained in non-living things, although these things may once have lived. It may be the most powerful force in the world, and the most valuable. And most treacherous.
I suspect the trouble be with us, the humans who encounter it and try to use it. We make assumptions before we know enough. We try out the magic, test it, see what it will do–and stop, without seeking what else it may do. That can be a fatal error.
Let me tell ye about a man I met this morning. Ezeke looks older than I, though he be 40 years younger. He be one of the big people, of course, so he ages faster.
Ezeke told that he carried a bit of magic in his pocket, a small piece of iron that could be bent and shaped with the hands, before slowly resuming its former shape. Sometimes it reclaimed its shape faster than others, but he thought nothing of that. One day he gave it to his small grandson to play with. The child rebent and reformed the metal in myriad fantastical shapes and watched in fascination as it unwound and unbent back to its true self.
In the evening, the family conversed by the fire at home. The child sat by the hearth, playing with the iron. Ezeke enjoyed watching the boy work on a difficult shape, tongue sticking out between his lips. The child leaned toward the firelight and stroked the iron with his fingertips, until it evolved into a crude knife. In triumph, he laid it across his palm and held it high for all to see.
For some magic, heat or cold be a catalyst for change. This be one such. In the heat of the fire, the reversal happened in a blink. The energy so generated hurled the crude knife from the child’s palm and into his face, point first. Ezeke must watch in helpless horror as the child died of the wound. His own son cursed him.
Zeke has never returned to his son’s home. He cannot face his family, cannot bear even his own home. For twenty years, eaten by grief and guilt, he has wandered where the road takes him, telling his tale to all who will listen.
First
The first big person I met frightened me.
When I be about twenty, I accompanied my father to a small town called First, to buy halfponies. The story be that two big people argued over who found that site. One killed the other in a duel and claimed to be First, and so they named the town after him.
At the time, I thought myself quite tall at five feet. Only one man at home stood taller, by one inch. But at First, every man be at least eight inches taller.
People lived in stone "houses," which I had never seen before. They be square, with rounded corners and round-edged roofs slanting from front to back. Or from one side to the other. People worked in "shops," rather than in the open. I felt small, ignorant, and intimidated by strange domiciles and much openness. The great spaces be uncomfortable initially, but I soon became used to them.
My father paused by a pen to look over several halfponies. As we discussed their finer points, a man appeared suddenly beside me. I had neither seen nor heard him coming.
Energy burst into my fingers and toes, prickling my cheeks and scalp. My stomach bounced. He be huge! A man over six feet tall, built like a slab of granite, with glints of mica in gray eyes. Until he smiled at me, I did not realize I had backed away from him. I swallowed and stood still–and tentatively smiled back.
"Your first time in a town?" he asked, his tone friendly. "Arth, this must be the son you’ve spoken of for years. He has your eyes, bright and inquisitive."
"Aye," said my father, "this be Sprig. Son, this be Parnit, the wagoner."
Many big people bend over or even half-squat to address a little man, as if he be a child. Parnit did not. “Welcome to First,” he said, starting to stretch a hand toward me. He must have seen my confusion, for he smoothly moved it to my father, as if that be his original intent.
My father shook his hand gladly, demonstrating to me the customs of the big people, and then I shook, too. My hand disappeared entirely inside his.
"Come in from the sun," invited Parnit. "We can drink fresh-pressed cider while you rest your feet from the long walk. I enjoy visiting with little people, and there’s plenty of time for business after that."
My father and Parnit chatted amiably while I sipped sweet, refreshing cider and answered the questions that came my way.
Later, riding home astride our two halfponies, I recalled the day in wonder. So much be new to me–the wide space, the size of the people, their strange customs, the town of houses and shops–and apple cider. My heart filled with gladness, for all the newness, and for a big man who treated me as if the size difference held no meaning.
The small town belonged to the big people, but it be my First, too.
