The Land of Broken Roads

In the deepest black of night, something pressed against Dirt’s calf, low to the ground. He screamed and leaped to his feet before he was even fully awake, stumbling ten steps before falling down again and whimpering in terror.

He opened his eyes wide and wider against the darkness, but there was nothing to be seen. Scrambling to his feet again, he froze, realizing he didn’t know which direction to run to get away. He opened his mental sight to look for minds, even as he listened and smelled with every bit of focus he could muster.

Nothing. Nothing unusual. No animal minds, and certainly nothing ferocious and hungry. No sound, no scents but the fog.

Confusion replaced some of the terror. What was that? Had he imagined it? His heart pounded so loud in his chest he was sure he could hear it. The cool, damp air enveloped him, almost gripping him where he stood.

Dirt took a step back toward where he thought he must have been lying, then another. Nothing happened, and he started to feel foolish. He forced a grin onto his face to try and help calm down, and it helped. Slightly.

It took him a moment to find where he had been, which he only could because of the ferns he’d pulled up and a bit of luck. He got down on hands and knees and felt all over the area and jammed his pinky against something hard and immobile.

With trembling hands, he carefully reached out to see what it was. Wood. It felt like part of a root, about a foot wide and only a few inches high, that grew up from the ground right where he’d been sleeping.

“What are you doing here?” he said aloud. The fog muffled and swallowed his voice.

The tree minds around him were mostly calm. He thought they might be sleeping, but their minds were so deep and broad and alien that it was impossible to be certain. Parts of them were still active, still aware of things with their alien senses. And they were still talking, just not as much.

Strangely, he saw the pulse, the rhythm that he heard when he slept under Home. He couldn’t hear or feel it out here, but their thoughts shared in the rhythm and he recognized the tempo.

He sat more comfortably and rested his hand on the tree root, trying to determine which of the trees it belonged to. The ferns around him seemed more active than he remembered, and after watching them for a moment, he realized they were talking with the tree. The ideas they communicated were tiny and just as inscrutable as everything else, but it dawned on him that they’d told the tree where he was somehow.

That must be it. The tree had asked where he was, and they told him. Then it… grew a root up for some reason.

How odd. He saw nothing in any of their minds that looked like a picture of the world. He was sure they didn’t know anything about direction or distance, not as he understood them. To them, it was more about where you were in the web of connections, not where you were standing on the ground. Maybe the tree had just followed the connections to find him.

The tree knew he was touching its root now, and opened a place in its sleeping mind to form a wordless question around the image he’d been using to identify himself.

“Yes,” he told it, trying to say it like the trees had.

He saw its happiness, which helped alleviate most of the rest of his lingering fear. It had just been looking for him, that was all. It wanted to see if it could find him. Nothing more.

But then it placed two more thoughts in its mind—the name of Home in the language of trees, and… sleep. Dirt chewed on that for a minute, wondering what it meant. Home, and sleep. Home and sleep.

Well, it must want to sleep with him like Home. Maybe it wanted to see his dreams. Dirt lay back down, heart still pounding but much quieter now. He covered himself with the ferns again and crooked his knee around the little root poking out, so the skin would stay touching after he went back to sleep.

He woke the next morning without any recollection of what dreams he might have had, or anything else unusual. The root was gone, in fact. How odd.

But he didn’t think he’d dreamed all that. When he got up and stretched and looked around, he could sense that the trees were eager and ready for him.

“Give me a minute! I’ll be ready to go in a minute,” he said aloud to no one.

Dirt drank his fill of dew, which took longer than usual because he was still thirsty after yesterday. He ripped up several handfuls of baby ferns to munch on and made his way to the next tree.

Its roots were perfectly symmetrical, the first time he’d seen that, and when he touched the closest one it greeted him almost instantly. It had been waiting, and it was already telling the others he was here. How had it known he’d be back? Maybe it was just hoping. Dirt tried to share some of his happiness and growing affection, but it was hard to tell how it was received. He asked for the next tree on Father’s list and saw the connection, then went from root to root until he found it.

The morning passed quickly. The good mood of all the trees was infectious; he ran much more than he walked, watching them speak to each other in a way that felt rapid and excited.

And it really was fun, even if running made his face bones ache. He couldn’t stop. They were so excited! He already felt like he had a hundred new friends. Sometimes he got several greetings at once when he reached the next tree, as if they could package up thoughts and send them along where they needed to go.

Each time, he replied with a greeting and their name, or his best guess at what the name was, and the tree would send the message onward. That was his best guess at what was going on, anyway. At least he could recognize their feelings now. Somewhat.

After a while, he stopped to dig up some grubs, resting in the ferns to let the trees talk amongst themselves for a bit. He ate them slowly, looking up at the forest with new appreciation. It was truly beautiful. The tremendous, dizzying emptiness between the ground and the canopy, an unimaginable space where nothing was. The open sky seemed closer than the canopy did, because outside the forest there was nothing up there but blue. The pleasant, dappled green shimmering above him in gentle breezes that never made it down this far, the shadowy ferns stretching beyond sight in every direction, peaceful, silent, calm.

And now that he was getting more familiar with the trees, he had an easier time spotting their differences, and they were all different. Not in size, but some had more roots, or bigger ones; some had scars partway up, and others had big discolored patches of darker gray. All different, all alive and aware.

This might not be a place for humans or beasts or anything but ferns and trees, but it was a good place. And now it no longer felt so empty. He could be friends with the trees. He would learn how to talk to them for real, over time, and they would be happy to greet him anywhere he went.

Although, trees and wolves were one thing, but were there any humans left? Who would he even ask? Socks wouldn’t know where to find them and he dare not address Mother and Father directly. Not ever.

Still, it would be nice to have someone his size around, instead of giant like Socks or the trees. And that didn’t mean a goblin. Just…

Dirt hugged his knees to his chest, suddenly growing more somber. There was no one around here to touch, no one made out of flesh. He was starting to feel like an uprooted fern. Maybe the wolves would let him come sleep in their den once in a while? No, he didn’t dare. Mother would eat him before any of her pups. He wouldn’t last the first night.

He shook his head and stood, stretching his arms and legs to get a little life back into them after resting. He was being silly, he knew. This was an exciting, memorable day, and there was no use wasting it on unhappy thoughts.

Tree after tree after tree, Dirt made his way through the sea of ferns to greet them all, following Father’s map. Their joy kept him going, long after he got so worn out from all the running he wasn’t sure he could keep going. He was only walking by the end but the trees were so excited waiting for him that he had to push forward.

What would happen if they got mad at him, somehow? Could that even happen? That’s not why he was hurrying, but still, he wondered.

By the time night fell, he was still a dozen trees or more away, according to the map, but he would make it tomorrow. Every inch of him was weary and sore, and when he finally curled up under the crook of a root to sleep the night, all the pain he’d ignored in his injured face hit him at once, bringing tears to his eyes and making him whimper in pain. How much longer would it take for that to stop?

He slept touching the root so he wouldn’t get any surprises, and when he woke in the dim early morning, the snippets of dreams he could remember were so confusing he couldn’t hold on to them. He was probably too tired to dream much. Was that how it worked? It seemed like it.

The next morning, Dirt pressed on and it got harder with each tree he passed. His body simply wasn’t used to that much running and walking, even after a good night’s sleep. It had been too many days of hard work and it’d caught up to him.

The last three trees knew he was tired somehow, but everything they told him to do about it made absolutely no sense. And they were indeed trying—they showed him much more complicated ideas than simply hello and their names, and it did no good at all.

Finally, finally, he made it. And after how he hurried, he was sure he made it in time to meet Father’s unknown deadline. He was so tired there was nothing left in him, which might be what Father wanted in the first place, but he made it.

He didn’t touch Home’s roots out at the edges, but waited until he was outside the hole Socks had dug for him. Only standing in front of the black opening in the black dirt, right as he was about to crawl in and get a good rest and wait for night to fall, did he stretch out his arms and press himself against the enormous root.

The bark was as cool and hard and smooth as ever, and he greeted Home with all the warmth and happiness he could muster. To his surprise, Home returned it just as strongly. The tree was overjoyed to have him back. It must have been waiting this whole time. Maybe it knew him, really knew him from the dreams they’d shared. Maybe they were already friends and he didn’t know it.

Home seemed to be urging him on, now. Trying to get him to move, to go a bit farther along the root. There was something it wanted to show him. That was unusual enough to get him moving. So far, it was more than any other tree had been able to communicate.

Dirt traced his fingers on the bark as he crawled into the darkness of his nest and found it inhabited with a shape of wood, a continuation of the bark growing into something new.

With curiosity, he ran his hands all over it until he realized what it was.

Home had made a wooden person.