The Land of Broken Roads

They were not far from Home’s roots, which he recognized now that he got a chance to look around. Home’s dryad held one of his hands and someone else held the other as they walked. Both dryads held their fingers perfectly steady in just the right shape, but unmoving in a way that felt unnatural. Dirt didn’t say anything, though, because it was nice they were trying, and besides, the pale gray bark of their skin was convincingly supple.

A whole crowd of dryads had gathered to see him, it seemed, and more were coming. They walked in through the ferns at the same steady, measured pace. There were already as many dryads as there were wolf pups in the den at night and Dirt was sure there’d be ten times as many before long. All children his size, all girls. At least the ones he could tell, which was most of them. The tiny green leaves concealed too much of their bodies and hid the first place he’d look to tell the difference.

“I wasn’t expecting there to be so many of you, but I’m not surprised. How did you all know to look different? Was that so I could tell you apart?”

Home said, “The Mother of Wolves showed us many humans. We are pleased with our imitations. Do you approve?”

Dirt looked at Home, then several of the others. The faces really were quite good, and the variety he saw told him they understood what they were doing. Home’s face was a little narrower, her jaw a bit more pointed, whereas the dryad holding his other hand had round, full cheeks and a flatter nose.

“You all look very human to me. I think if you told me you were human and I didn’t know any better, I’d believe it. Except the gray skin, but maybe some humans are that color. I don’t know. So I’d probably believe it. Actually, do you mind if I ask you something? Are you supposed to be wearing clothes? Is that what this is?”

“Rather than imitating clothing, partial body coverings allow us a convenient excuse to reduce our expenditure of focus. This appearance requires less effort on our parts and we wish to reserve as much as possible for the purpose of learning. Would you prefer my form to be uninterrupted, as yours?”

“Oh, well, no, I don’t really care. I was just wondering. I thought maybe if you all had clothes, I needed some too, but I don’t know where I’d get any.”

“I wish for you to do as you prefer to give us opportunity to learn your preferences. Do not concern yourself with ours. If they become important, we will speak them,” said Home, still smiling. Her voice rose and fell as she talked, in a way that was more repetitive than expressive.

Everything they did was so close to human that the things they got wrong were strangely discomfiting and Dirt had to school himself to push down the growing unease. Facial expressions and body language that were close but not quite right. A hundred little things.

Instead, he decided it was endearing how hard they were trying. The trees were bigger than he could measure and older than he could guess, but here they were seeing and living in the world as if for the first time. They were even younger than he was, in a way.

“Why did you choose to imitate humans instead of something else, like wolves?” he asked.

“It was your dreams that first made us aware of this way of perceiving, and it is you with whom we wish to interact,” said Home.

“Also, the Mother of Wolves would not send us one of her own to examine more closely because we are too dangerous. We understand your anatomy better,” added the other dryad.

Dirt glanced at her, now nervous.

That one said, “I apologize. The Mother of Wolves said we should not all speak or it would disorient you. Have I disoriented you?”

He swallowed and said, “No, that’s fine.”

The forest was just as he remembered it, at least above. The trees were still impossibly tall and left no sky visible anywhere, covering it all with their canopy. The comforting ceiling of leaves still relaxed him. The open sky outside wasn’t as intimidating as it used to be, but this was better. Quiet. Eternal. The sky changed so much day by day, even hour by hour, that it felt less reliable.

It was also nice to feel the ferns brush against him as he walked, and his toes digging into the rich black soil. He was happy to be getting covered in the right color dirt again. The ground in the den was a paler brown, rougher and harder, and he didn’t like it as much.

“Are you hungry?” asked Home, with a pleasant smile. Which every other dryad mirrored, exactly the same. Every single face.

Dirt laughed before he could start getting scared. It really was funny. They were trying so hard! “Oh, I’m only a little hungry. I ate a lot of deer earlier with Socks. Mostly I’m just tired. I’ve had a really long day.”

“We will more deeply analyze your composition and prepare a sap that contains the appropriate nutrients,” said Home, her pleasant smile never breaking.

He wasn’t sure what she meant and he’d rather not find out as the last thing he did today, so he said, “Thanks, but tomorrow is fine.”

Dirt spared a glance at her mind, which felt a bit intrusive now that the tree could talk. The majority of her thoughts were as inscrutable as ever, except the portion that was processing speech and orienting in the physical world. From the sheer excitement he saw there, she was beyond eager to try and make that sap, whatever that was. Home was as happy as he’d ever seen anyone being. That smile wasn’t an affectation after all.

“We eat always, but you eat only sometimes, in larger amounts. Is that correct?” asked a dryad walking just in front of them. This one’s green hair reached almost to her waist.

“Yep, every single day. And drink water, too. Wait, wow, what is that?!” he exclaimed, spotting a little house of gray and green built against Home’s roots, right above where his nest was. With night so close, he hadn’t noticed it tucked there in the shadows.

In his excitement, he let go of the dryads’ hands and ran forward to get a better look. The house was just his size—five or six paces wide, made of sturdy branches and twisting vines instead of stone.

With no cut edges, Dirt decided Home must have grown it in place. He rested his hand against the empty door frame, wondering if it was all part of her.

The doorway was just a bit higher than he was tall, not towering overhead like the ruined city. The windows on either side of the door were a bit lower, too, so he could see out better. The back wall was the root, and the roof was slanted instead of pitched. Inside, it was as dark as it could get.

He was sure wandering into a lot of dark places today, he thought with a forced grin. Before stepping over the threshold, however, he turned back to see the crowd of dryads walking calmly in his direction.

They probably didn’t know how to run. Well, that was fine, because he could teach them, and then they could play all sorts of games. He’d have to make them up, but preferably ones that didn’t result in his bones being shattered again. Maybe Socks would have some ideas next time he saw him.

The first dryad to reach him looked like it might be a male, since his frame looked a little more solid and masculine than the others. His scruffy green hair was much shorter and he grew leaves around his waist only, leaving his torso bare. He said nothing, stopping dead in his tracks a couple paces away.

Dirt wondered which tree he was, since only a handful of them were close enough for him to see their minds. He admitted it was a bit creepy how the dryads had no minds right there in them, since that made them feel like they might be corpses. But he’d get used to it. He still loved them, especially Home.

And soon enough she arrived. Home stepped to the front of the crowd and said, “Do you like it?”

“I do! I love it. How did you know? Not even I remembered what a house was until earlier today,” he said.

“The Mother of Wolves showed us many things that are to your benefit, at our request. Her guidance is that none enter without your permission, and none shall. Walk inside and speak the word ‘shut.’”

“Wait, Mother told you things to benefit me? Why?”

Still smiling, Home said, “We are too powerful to be denied carelessly. I will explain another time. Please, walk inside and speak the word ‘shut.’”

Dirt nodded slowly, trying not to look unsettled. The last thing he wanted was to get caught in the middle of an argument between Mother and the forest.

He turned and stepped through the doorway, holding his hand forward to keep from bumping into anything. Home wouldn’t put anything weird in here, would she? He’d never know, since it was too dark to see inside it right now.

Nothing reached out and grabbed him, at least. Just empty air so far. The floor of the house wasn’t earth—it was solid with a soft layer over it that he couldn’t immediately identify. The air inside was even heavier and quieter than the rest of the forest, which made it doubly different from the den where he’d been only moments before.

“Shut,” he said. Then he jumped as the entire house shuddered and groaned around him, creaking and popping. He felt the floor moving beneath him and just about ran outside before he noticed that the doorway was growing in, solid branches forming a hatch pattern with spaces just big enough to fit his hand through. The windows did the same, and all he could see anymore were little diamond shapes where the last remaining light got in.

“Open?” The house creaked and shook just as before, and this time the door and windows opened back up. The process wasn’t fast, but it was fast enough.

Home said, “Good night, Dirt.”

“Good night. Are you going to sleep with me, too? I don’t think all of you will fit in here, but Home made her dryad in my nest that first time, so is she coming in? Are you?”

There was no reply. No one so much as twitched.

“Home? Anyone?” he asked the silence. “Hello?”

Looking back to Home’s mind, he found her already mostly shut down, asleep.

The trees had fallen asleep just like that and they were all going to leave their dryads out there, standing there right outside this house, looking in. All night.

“Close,” he told the door, his voice wavering. It obeyed, but even with the door and windows latticed in, he still knew the dryads were there.

The idea of being watched like that, their faces unmoving in the perfect darkness, deeply unnerved him. The dread that had been building this whole time finally bubbled over and stole his breath. He could see their fading outlines, silent and empty. As soon as he turned his back, they’d start moving again and come grab him in the night, or scare him with sudden sounds, or something like that. They wouldn’t, but he couldn’t shake the dread despite knowing better.

But nothing inside moved or spoke. All was calm, the house empty except a shallow basin that grew right out of the root. Inside it his fingertips met liquid, which his nose told him was water. He had a sip and it tasted fine, but he didn’t dare drink more until he could see what it looked like.

At the back end of the house he found a narrow stairway and carefully made his way down. It was only four stairs, and at the bottom, a short tunnel led to a small room that he guessed used to be his nest.

He stubbed his toe on a wooden edge, then tripped and banged his shins against a short wooden platform, only knee height. He fell forward onto what he quickly realized was a bed, soft as a puppy and just as fuzzy, with some kind of thin fibrous material bunched up into clumps that molded to his form when he lay down.

Dirt settled in, trying not to cry from the sharp pain in his toe and shins, and from weariness, and from dread. He almost didn’t want to sleep, knowing it’d be Home waiting for him in the dream with all her unknowable thoughts and alien sensations, and not Socks.

He just hoped the dryads didn’t want to pull him apart to see what he was made of.