The Land of Broken Roads

Dirt had two dreams that night. In the first, he and Socks played in the den, dreaming of home and simple things. Wolves of all ages came and went and greeted them with curious sniffs. When the dream suddenly cut off for no reason and Dirt woke with a start, he wondered if Socks had really been in that one, or if Dirt had just dreamed it.

In the second dream, he was in a place of men. That realization almost shook him awake, but he managed to calm down and stay asleep. He stood on a handsome tiled floor with a pattern of concentric squares enclosing a potted plant in the middle. The walls were painted red, with faux pillars in the corners painted green and yellow.

A cool breeze shook the curtains behind him, but he heard a rustling of something else moving and turned to greet her. She was beautiful, curved and graceful and feminine. Her shining brown hair was done up in curls with gold needles holding it in place and her dress of green and yellow danced like autumn leaves when she walked.

She placed her arms around his neck and spoke, but he couldn’t hear any words. No sound came out of her mouth at all, although her lips were moving. He tilted his head to listen and only a moment later the whole thing fell apart and cast him back into wakefulness. He lay stunned, heart beating mightily against his chest.

It wasn’t fear that kept him awake for half the night after that, though. It was pure shock. His mind spun with questions and there was no one to ask. Had he known her? Where was that, anyway? He kept picturing her, over and over, how she walked, how she looked at him and smiled.

He pictured her in his mind as strongly as he could, but the longer he held the image the fuzzier it got. His memory kept trying to fill in missing details and after a while she started looking more and more like Home’s dryad.

“No, no, no, no,” he whimpered frantically. “Please, no, no, don’t forget.”

Dirt did his best to cement the real memory in his mind and then rolled over and fell asleep before he could ruin it any more than he already had.

He met the morning with wistful melancholy. He’d forgotten more of her during the night and now he couldn’t even put a good picture together. He ate his sap huddled up in a corner, knees folded against his chest like he was hiding from something.

He stayed that way for too long, head tilted to rest against the wall. He wanted to feel nostalgia, to remember warmly things that no longer were, but instead he just felt regret. He’d forgotten anything he could be nostalgic about and the fading memory of a dream wasn’t enough to sustain him.

Home peeked her head in a window and asked, “Dear Dirt, are you unwell?”

“I’m fine,” he said, sighing to himself. Well, if he stayed like this any longer he’d have to explain why he felt that way, and then they’d try to help, and the Gods only knew what they might try. He rose to his feet and made himself smile.

“Open,” he told the doorway. He really had waited too long—the fog was already fading. No wonder they were concerned.

Home and Dawn both hugged him at once, one on each side. Callius stepped up and kissed him on the cheek, which surprised Dirt since he’d forgotten kisses existed until now. But then Callius licked him across his whole face and barked like a wolf and ran away laughing. The dryad’s tongue was wet and soft and felt almost—almost—like flesh.

Shrieking with indignation, Dirt pulled away from the girls and rushed after him, determined to grab him and give him the same treatment.

The chase was on. Callius didn’t simply run, either—he leaped over roots or ran all the way up them and jumped off. Sometimes he turned sharply and tried to hide. It wasn’t exactly a fair chase, since Callius could probably run plenty faster than he had so far. And probably faster than Socks, too, since the trees had ridiculous amounts of mana inside them. But Dirt wasn’t about to give up.

Callius ran straight for a tree and turned at the last moment to go around it, and Dirt went the other direction. They both hid from each other, but Dirt hid better, even keeping the ferns from noticing him by applying gentle pressure to their thoughts. Callius came looking for him, trying to sneak, but Dirt spotted him first.

Dirt jumped out of the ferns, caught the dryad around the shoulders, and pulled him down for a tackle. Then Dirt licked his face and barked like a wolf and jumped away. He shouted “Now get somebody else!” as he ran, halfway between a laugh and a scream, but in vain. Callius had only one target and he hit Dirt from behind before he even made it to the next tree.

The dryad licked Dirt’s face, despite his squirming to get away, and then went bark bark bark HOOOOOWL. He got up and ran again.

Dirt rolled and stood, brushed off the clumps of black earth he’d collected, and gave chase. But before he made it five steps someone hit him from the side, knocking him clear off his feet.

Dawn. Dawn had come out of nowhere and absolutely crushed him. For a brief moment, Dirt’s heart filled with terror that she’d broken all his bones again, but he was fine. She held him down, trying to figure out what to do with him. “I’m not a wolf,” she said. “I’m a bird!”

Then she pinched him a bunch of times and leaped into the air, flapping her arms like wings.

“How do you know about birds?” he shouted, but she just laughed and ran as soon as she landed. Of course she knew about birds, though. She was a tree. There were probably some birds nearby right now, if he looked carefully.

Dirt gave up on Callius and chased her instead, but he had to run while trying to watch for more incoming dryads. He was certain others were on their way. Home, possibly, and that girl with the round face, or the curly-haired one. They seemed the type. Most likely there were dozens out there, waiting for their chance.

Dawn was distracted by someone else running toward her and a short moment of indecision was all Dirt needed. He caught her from behind, but she almost slipped away until he got a hand around her collarbone that spun her back around.

He jumped on her and said, “I’m still a wolf!” Then he howled, licked her face, and ran away as fast as he could.

The rest of the morning, Dirt got the worst of it, but he still managed to catch a bunch of them. Dawn was the only bird—the rest wanted to be wolves, and some even ran on all fours in a way he couldn’t imitate. He suspected they were shortening their legs to make it easier.

Dirt ate his lunchtime sap slowly, enjoying getting a chance to rest. It was fun chasing dryads all over, but it turned out getting knocked over a hundred times was tiring. He wished he’d taken some toys from the dead bodies in that city to play with, since he didn’t think he needed to get worn out every single minute of the day. But he needed the right kind—dolls of wolves and boys and other fun things. The city was too far from here and he didn’t know where to find it anyway, so he couldn’t just go look. How else was he supposed to get any?

After making sure Dirt ate slightly more sap than he wanted, Callius said, “Okay, Dirt, we’re going to start hitting you a little harder so you can practice protecting yourself with mana. Do you think you can figure it out?”

Dirt realized he did have one way to get the toys he wanted—make them. He jumped to his feet in excitement and said, “I probably can, but do you know what? I want to shape wood instead. Can I learn that today? Home said I’d learn someday. I promise not to use my knife on you.”

The dryads all paused, but they weren’t frozen. They weren’t thinking. They looked nervous.

“Come on, please?”

Callius dug in the dirt with his toe. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“I just want to shape little things, like maybe this big,” said Dirt, holding his hands about eight inches apart. “Please?”

The boy sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s only fair. Come on.” He held out his hand. Dirt took it and the instant their fingers touched, Dirt was yanked through the roots and tossed into the ground under a tree he wasn’t sure he’d seen before.

He picked himself up and put his hands on his knees until he was sure he wasn’t going to get sick or dizzy again. After a moment, he decided he was fine and stood up the rest of the way.

No other dryads had come—it was just him and Callius.

Callius pointed at the tree and said, “This is me. If you’re wondering where all the others are, everyone wanted to watch in the normal way so they aren’t coming. So here we are. Don’t mess me up too much.”

“Oh, I’m going to learn on you?”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t really know. But why you and not Home where my house is?”

“Because I’m better at it than anyone else,” said Callius. He did a graceful backwards cartwheel and when he landed, he wasn’t a boy anymore—he was a wolf, with long gangly legs and tiny green leaves instead of fur. Then he stood on his hind legs and was a boy again, with green leaves from waist to knees like he’d had before.

“Wow,” said Dirt, unsure what else to say. The whole thing had been one seamless motion, perfectly balanced. An exquisite display of grace and control. Truthfully, he wanted to see it again but felt foolish asking. So instead he asked, “So if you’re that good, how come you still cover a third of yourself with the little leaves?”

The dryad said, “Oh, I thought we told you once already. Watch my mind and you’ll see.”

Dirt looked at Callius’ mind and was reminded that the boy in front of him was merely a doll used by an ancient, mighty being to run around in, and not the being himself. The tree’s mind was immense and too complicated to comprehend. Except the portion that controlled the dryad—that was familiar. Normal sights and sounds and even thoughts with words, sometimes.

That portion grew as Callius withdrew the little green leaves that covered him from waist to knees and replaced them with supple gray bark-flesh, making him fully human from head to toes. Dirt noticed peach fuzz on the dryad’s arms and cheeks and ears. Even the eyes grew moist and lost that glassy character they had.

The effect was unexpected. Callius was so perfectly human now that Dirt wasn’t even sure he was still looking at a dryad and not a gray-skinned boy his own age.

And just as surprising was how much extra effort it took to finish the body. It took up a third again as much space in Callius’ mind, if not more.

“See? It’s a lot more work. And besides that, watch closely,” said Callius. He reverted back to how he was before, the fur of tiny green leaves returning. This time, Dirt noticed a bundle of new sensory information in the tree-based part of the mind.

“Oh! You’re using the leaves to sense the air, aren’t you? Like with your real leaves?”

“Yep!”

“I never noticed that before.”

“Nope!”

“How come you do that?”

“Because it’s too weird not to. How can you even tell what anything is?”

Dirt thought about that for a moment, remembering bits and pieces of the tree-dream.

“Look at my mind, friend Dirt. Remember this word. It’s a word that means ‘grow and change’, except that a tree will understand it. Are you looking?” said Callius.

Dirt peered at the tree’s mind and found the thought, which was held isolated from the rest to make it easy to find. Like their real names or the words he used to make the ferns bend out of the way, the ‘word’ was a complex structure that almost seemed more like a set of patterns than the thoughts Dirt was used to.

Once he was fairly certain he had it down, he asked, “What do I do with it?”

Callius grit his teeth and looked as nervous as possible. “Put your hand on my root. There’s fine. Now what you’re going to do, is… talk to the wood there, with your mana body, using that word. Not with your mind. Let your mana vessel take the shape of the change you want to cause, and then let it interact with some of my wood. Beyond that, I’m not sure I can explain, so you’ll have to figure it out.”

Dirt asked, “Is this going to hurt?”

“I can’t feel pain.”

“Then why are you acting so nervous?”

“I’d answer but I don’t want to give you any ideas. And try not to be nervous yourself, or the result might not be what you wanted.”

The forest was silent before this moment, just as pleasantly dim with shadow, just as empty and peaceful and eternal as always, but to Dirt’s mind, it suddenly got a lot quieter. The forest held its breath, as if everything in here was waiting for him. And it probably was, maybe even the ferns.

Dirt willed his mind to quiet down. He placed his hand on the smooth gray root and pictured the word ‘grow’, but not in his mind, or in the dream, but rather, with that part of him that was deeper than emotion.

It worked on the very first try. A lump formed under his hand and lifted it away, first one inch thick, then two. Dirt forced any thought of triumph or rejoicing from his mind and steeled himself even further. Every thought was quieted and schooled into submission, stepping aside to let his pure will manifest. The wood responded eagerly to his command; not Callius, not even any significant part of him. Just this wood right here, this small hand-shaped amount on the outside.

Dirt made it grow beneath his hand, and he brought his other hand to reshape the cylinder and give it a head, then arms, then split it to make legs. Finally, under his fingertips, feet emerged, and beneath those the wood narrowed sharply until it simply split off and came away in his hands.

The task complete, his state of focus faded in a way that felt like waking up, much more notable than making magical wind yesterday, and he looked at what he held.

It was exactly what he wanted—a little wooden replica of a human, no bigger than his forearm. It was even rougher than Home’s first dryad, without any joints, but it was perfect anyway. It almost came alive in his hands as he started thinking of the things he could do with it, of the adventures he could imagine.

“No one expected that to work, friend Dirt,” said Callius, coolly impressed. He rubbed the spot where Dirt had been working and smoothed it out.

“Well, I’m glad it did. Look, Callius. It’s a toy person. I’ll make some more, and then I’ll be this and we can play with them,” said Dirt. He was so excited it was almost like dreaming. Infinite worlds of possibility swirled around him.

“Go ahead. Make as many as you want.”

Dirt made a wolf and it was even easier than the human. Then he made some goblins, and even a dryad or two, which were only different by being skinnier than the human, since he had to tell them apart somehow. Slipping into that state of focus, of will without thought, got easier and easier each time. By the time he made the fifth goblin, he could think normal thoughts while doing it.

Callius said, “That was supposed to be much harder than you’re making it look.”

“I had a good teacher.”

“No, I didn’t teach you this.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dirt, but he was barely listening. He was too busy arranging his ten dolls, preparing them to be properly played with.

“This is wisdom, friend Dirt, and it is hard won, even for us whose nature is stronger in the world of magic than yours.”

“Callius, I love you and I’m interested in hearing that sometime but right now, I have to play with these. I’ll be the human. Here, you can be the wolf, and we’ll go fight these goblins!”