The Land of Broken Roads

Socks joined him in the dream that night and together they chased and danced in a twilight field of tiny swirling lights that turned out to be bugs. But the pup seemed distracted, leaving and returning several times until he finally left Dirt to wander alone until dawn.

Dirt woke feeling uneasy and crawled out of bed without even waiting to stretch and get his sparks back. He drank from his little water basin, but not enough to make his stomach slosh because he could get more any time he wanted. The luxury of getting water anytime he wanted still made him smile, which helped him feel a little better. He grabbed the big glop of sap, big as his two fists together, and got to work. It always tasted better when he was hungry, he noticed. Sweeter.

“Open,” he told the doorway. He stepped out into the thick fog, carrying the sap to munch on. It was still too early in the morning to see very far, but after about five steps he could see Callius and Home and Dawn waiting for him, inert. They were a little slower waking this morning, he supposed, although some of the others were coming alive, blinking and acting like they were breathing.

“Hello,” said Dirt to a dryad he hadn’t talked to before while he munched on his sap.

She smiled, but didn’t speak. He noticed more of her was covered by the tiny little leaves than most of the others; indeed, all of her from neck to toes. She must be less involved than the rest.

“Good morning,” said some of the other girls nearby, and one that he thought might be a boy, with long hair. They stretched convincingly and gave him tired morning smiles. “Are you ready for the day?” asked one.

“I hope so. I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “Say, you all know the same things, right? More or less?”

One of the girls laughed, and several others chuckled and covered their mouths with one hand. “No, little friend. Do you and your friend Socks know all the same things?”

Dirt thought about that for a moment and said, “No, but that’s only because he’s been alive for longer. And he had different people to teach him. Mother and Father and his siblings.”

“Just so with us.”

“Oh.” He tried not to look as silly as he felt. “No, I mean, you share basically everything, right? If I have a question, I may as well just ask anybody?”

“What would you like to know?”

More of them were waking up now and starting to crowd in, watching curiously, although they no longer stared at him. Now they looked away from time to time. It made them much less creepy, he realized. They yawned and stretched, which made him have to yawn again. Three different times. Was that a tree thing, or a human thing, he wondered?

Dirt asked, “Is Socks okay? He’s not in danger, is he? I think someone hinted he might be and I feel uneasy about him.”

The one with long hair sounded even more like a boy when he talked. He said, “He is in danger, but as the strongest of the litter, the great wolves are taking care to keep him from being lost.”

Dirt’s unease turned to dread. He almost didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “What’s he in danger from?”

The boy shrugged and said, “We will not tell you. The Mother of Wolves will kill you if we explain too much.”

“Well, can you give me a hint? Is he going to die?” Dirt begged.

Callius came up from behind and put his arm over Dirt’s shoulders, squeezing him in a half hug. “Did you miss that he’s the strongest now? Take heart, little Dirt.”

Dirt stood up straighter in surprise and looked at him. “I did miss that. He is?”

“Yes. Your bond with him made him stronger than any wolf has been at that age since his sire. The wolves all know it. So do many other creatures.”

Dirt wasn’t sure what emotion was going to take over, but when it did, it was resolve. He had to keep up. He had to. He ate the rest of his sap with a serious sort of enthusiasm, wolfing it down as fast as he could swallow.

By the time he was done, Home and Dawn had joined them, one walking serenely and the other bouncing like a girl on her way to play. They were becoming more different by the day. The dryads were probably all awake now, but he could only see a few paces into the fog so he wasn’t sure. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s get started.”

Callius gave an excited grin and said, “Good! The first thing to learn will be the easiest. You’re going to synchronize your mana vessel and physical body. Take in mana. Fill right up. Go ahead.”

Dirt nodded resolutely and breathed in the mana, since it felt like breathing to him. He’d learned it in the middle of suffocating to death and now the ideas were linked. Just, not inhaling with his mouth. With another part he could only barely sense.

The mana filled him, sparks and motion and limitless potential. He sighed contentedly, enjoying the feeling.

“Good. Now release it all.”

Dirt tried to will it out of himself, to exhale it. The mana didn’t want to go and it took significant mental force to push it out. It would eventually seep away on its own, but that’s not what Callius wanted.

“Okay, listen well, little Dirt,” said Dawn. “Magic will rush in anywhere it can find an opening because that is its nature. You need the strength to balance it perfectly or greater works will always be beyond you.”

“Yep! So you’re just going to do that until we’re satisfied. Do it again,” said Callius.

Dirt did it two, three, four more times. Each time he inhaled mana, it rushed in with impact, filling him immediately; each time he exhaled it, it was like trying to breath sap instead of air, all sticky and viscous.

“Good enough!” said Callius.

“Well, come on, I’ve never even tried—“

“Good enough is not bad, friend Dirt. It’s good. Now come with me. Let us walk, and you can keep practicing,” said Callius, dancing away. He beckoned Dirt forward and began walking.

Dawn gave him a pretty smile and turned with just as much energy as Callius, starting to walk with an eager little jump first. Home gently patted him on the back, then harder when he didn’t start walking. Dirt laughed, wondering if they ever disagreed about anything. “All right, I’m coming!”

They walked through the slowly dissipating fog as Dirt practiced breathing mana in and out. At first it was harder, since he had to watch where he was going. He couldn’t help but think about breaking ferns every time he took a step now, even though that was silly. There were plenty more and the trees didn’t care.

But cycling mana got easier, slowly. He found that the natural motion of walking helped him drive it out, even though it wasn’t really his muscles doing the driving.

All of a sudden, the entire crowd of dryads, hundreds, stopped cold. Callius turned and said, “Good. Now try and take mana in slowly as well. Are you ready?”

“Wait, how did you know? How can you tell what I’m doing?”

“We can see the world of magic, dear Dirt,” said Home, serenely. “How else?”

“We are going to run now. Moderate your intake of mana and do not explode,” said Callius with another mischievous grin. With that, he turned and left at a quick jog.

Dirt chased after them, doing his best to keep up. They kept picking up the speed any time he felt himself settling into a rhythm, though, and before long he was sprinting. He tried to slow the intake of mana like they said, but he was having so much trouble keeping up that it was hard to focus.

He stopped, and they all kept running without even looking back. He made his face calm down, which helped him focus his mind. Dirt inhaled mana, as much as wanted to come in. Socks could run with it. They’d even shared minds and Dirt had done it himself. There was a reason the dryads were running. This was the first time he’d even seen them try.

Socks had two runs—the playful, fun one, which was bouncy and joyous and exciting, and the long-distance run, which was sleek and powerful and handsome. The dryads had much more variety, save that they all ran with easy, graceful effortlessness. Some, like Home, ran smoothly like birds floating on the wind and others like Callius and Dawn ran like puppies, exuberant and wild, turning in the air or flinging out their arms and legs from time to time in a dance.

Dirt focused his will and pushed the mana all throughout his body, just like Socks did. Not just his legs like when he’d jumped a couple times, but all throughout, into every part of him.

He sprinted forward, riding a burst of power so easily it was like being carried. The dull, heavy air of the forest picked up into a gentle wind in his face, then a stronger one. He had to lengthen his strides or risk falling over, and soon he was practically leaping with each step.

The distance vanished beneath him and he darted between the running dryads until he burst out ahead of them, laughing and picking up the pace. The mana was burning away inside him, getting all used up. He breathed in through his nose and let more in, trying to slow it down to match the pace at which he was using it. The mana inside him acted as a buffer preventing more from coming in, and that helped him learn the trick.

The dryads caught up and surrounded him, running fast as wolves, still running in whatever way expressed their personality.

Dirt settled into a rhythm that quickly became natural. His body breathed and ran, his mana vessel inhaled and exhaled, keeping his body energized. He laughed aloud for pure joy and the wind tried to push its way down his throat, which just made him laugh harder. It was blowing so hard on his face that it was hard to see, but what could he do other than try and squint and keep going? How did Socks do it? He’d have to ask.

Faster and faster they went, so fast the ferns whipping against his lower half just turned into one broad sensation of pressure, so fast he had to turn his head and peek sideways to see at all.

Dirt risked a jump high into the air, screaming all the way up, inhaling, and screaming all the way down. He hit the ground hard and tumbled like a bucket full of garbage, rolling and coming to a stop bent every which way.

He rolled out of being all tangled up and laughed. What had he been thinking? But nothing hurt. The mana had protected him this time. No broken bones at all!

Dirt shot to his feet, raised both arms, and gave a wolf’s howl for a cheer. The whole crowd of dryads did the same and the impact of their voices was almost deafening. Their cry climbed all the way up to the sky and shook the leaves, it seemed. Probably not really, but it felt that way.

“Okay, hold on!” he said. He stood still and pushed all the mana out, then used the feeling of cycling it while he’d run. It worked. Only a trickle came in, like fiery drips of pure electricity. He didn’t know what that even meant. What is electricity? And besides that, who cared?

“I did it! Look, Callius, Dawn, Home. Everyone. Look! Watch.” Dirt cycled it, just a trickle, in and out, slow as deep breathing. “I can run like a wolf! I can keep up with Socks now! I can really keep up! I… Uh oh, I’m getting too happy, I’m—“

Dirt’s throat got a burning lump in it and his eyes filled with water that had nothing to do with wind. He was so happy he couldn’t contain it, so happy it felt like pain and was making him cry. Magic was his again. It had been so long. And he wasn’t going to lose Socks. It was all too much.

The dryads crowded in and squeezed him in a giant hug from everyone at once and that just made it worse. His tears vanished into Home’s hair, which he couldn’t smell because now his nose was running. “I’m sorry, I’m just really happy, I’m—“ but he couldn’t say more.

They nuzzled him and patted his head and back, hugged and squeezed and consoled him. But he wasn’t even sad, he was just too happy and he felt foolish. It didn’t take him too long to calm down, though, thank Grace.

“Who is this?” asked Home, pointing at the nearest tree, only a hundred paces away.

A girl raised her hand, hair all curly with a round face.

“Will you make him some sap, please?”

The dryad nodded and gestured toward her tree. The crowd of dryads gently nudged Dirt in her direction and he smiled, still wiping tears from his eyes.

He didn’t cycle any mana as they walked, which turned out to be a good idea. He felt sore from hair to toes, but only faintly and hard to pinpoint. It wasn’t bruising from the tumble. He pulled the lump of sap off the bark of her root and sat down to eat and catch his breath, even though he wasn’t really tired.

The dryad whose tree this was sat next to him, close enough for their arms to touch. She tilted her head back and stared upward, along that eternal length of pale gray bark to the branches so far above. “It is odd to see myself like this,” she said.

Dirt smiled as he swallowed another bite, mostly just glad he wasn’t crying anymore. “I bet it is,” he said. “What does it feel like controlling your dryad? Does it feel like you’re in the dryad, or in the tree?”

She tilted her head to the side, thinking. “I suppose it feels like…” She held out her hand, palm up, and waved it slowly in the air. “It feels like I am holding an eyeball in my hand and looking by moving it around, and without it I cannot see. It also feels like I had eyes during all four thousand years of my life, and never learned to open them until now.”

“You’re four thousand years old? Were there ever humans in the forest, do you know?”

She gazed back upward, as if her mind was elsewhere. “I do not know. You are the first human any of us have become aware of. And I have not always been capable, either; in my early years, I was not allowed to grow to my full potential. There was a being here who prevented it.”

Dirt felt the lump of sap stick halfway down his throat and he had to swallow harder. “There was? What was it?”

“If I were to give her a name in words, I might call her The Gardener. She was a mystery, but always kind. She loved us, I believe, but we were not her primary care and were not capable of becoming as we are now until she vanished.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know if I can explain.”

“Well, you’re smart, so try,” he said with a smile he hoped conveyed his good humor.

“I do not know exactly what happened to her, that is why. There is a… skin… around the world. Around reality. Around the many perceivings. It exists in the world of Law. Something damaged it two thousand nine hundred and sixty-two years, two hundred twenty-one days ago. That was the last time we felt her hands upon the Many Connections. Upon us, in our way of knowing the world.”

“I came into being long after she disappeared,” said Dawn, plopping down to sit nearby, her eyes bright, “as did most of us. This forest was not quite so large during those days.”

“Yeah, I bet. I bet there were humans here once, maybe before the forest grew, because there are some ruins that Socks took me to once,” said Dirt.

“That sounds interesting. Perhaps we will see them someday.”

“You don’t know where they are?”

“Position in this world is still difficult for us. To us, direction doesn’t mean this way or that way, it means this connection or that connection. We are still learning,” said the girl sitting next to him. “And besides, any of us who wished to make a dryad are here, watching you, not wandering around.”

Callius came up and gently kicked his toes. “We’d learn faster if you hurried up and ate so we could run again.”

Dirt grinned, licking some of the sap off his teeth. “You can’t learn if you can’t keep up, Callius.”

“Keep eating,” said the curly-haired girl. “And you can wait, old man. I will do it, since I’m right here.”

“Do what?” asked Dirt.

In answer, he felt the forest hum, that familiar night-pulse, rise from the dirt again and fill the air. This time, each gentle wave sang in his mana body, making the whole thing relax. He felt pressure moving around it, perhaps massaging it; he wasn’t sure, and he wondered if he’d ever have fine enough senses in his mana body to understand what was going on. But bit by bit, the vague soreness disappeared.

Dirt finished his sap while the dryad did whatever she was doing to his mana vessel. Something that helped, it seemed. It was a pleasant sensation, certainly. After it was all gone, Callius eagerly pulled him to his feet and said, “Come on, let’s go!”

“Wait, do you know where we’re going?”

“No idea! But fortunately, it doesn’t matter. Come!”