CHAPTER 1.11 - THE WOMAN OF THE WOODS: I
Anuk wakens slowly, grudgingly. Even through her closed eyes, she can detect that it’s too bright. Noon, or past. As she swims to the surface from unsettling dreams, she can’t help but run over the night.
The woman, the ‘dryad’ according to Hugo, was giving birth. She and the halfling had dug out a shallow pit, gathered fallen branches for a fire, and set a small cauldron of water to heat. The pair had marvelled at how comprehensively the big man, Rian, had packed. It was a heavy backpack, sure, but contained a small shovel, cauldron, dried meat and seemingly everything he would need to live in the forest indefinitely.
Hugo’s friend, the cultist of Athena, had announced that the baby was in breach. Thae’s voice was even but that belied a face full of concern. The pair at the fire knew that either the baby, the mother, or both were in grave danger. Hugo and Anuk had shared a tense look. She knew she had no skill in healer’s arts, and the small man classed himself as a “gifted amateur, sadly lacking any relevant experience”. Cocky little shit. The wild man seemed capable enough and lacked their discomfort at witnessing or fumbling around a woman in such intimate distress.
Their shared embarrassment did not, of course, prevent Hugo from trying to strike up conversation. The woman’s a dryad. They’re supposed – Anuk is certain he used the term ‘fabled’ once – to change their colouring with the seasons. Looking towards the edge of their firelight in which Thae and Rian were working feverishly to turn the baby inside the ailing creature, she couldn’t help but think the grey-tinged skin and leaves on the woman’s body weren’t an intended palette. NOT a good sign.
Despite having obviously cobbled his information together from myths, Hugo warmed to the telling of them. That the huge oak is obviously the forest spirit’s home tree. That the forest around this would be affected, nurtured, possibly even guarded by the dryad. That the animals he had feared were stalking the heavily pregnant woman were probably serving as her protectors. Or at very least were living peacefully alongside her.
After a couple of hours of this, Anuk’s discomfort was finally defeated by irritation. Hugo wasn’t poor company, however…wordlessly, she had stood, marched over to the cluster of figures and left the little man and their-captive, Wiln, to their fire. Thae hadn’t reacted, immersed in projecting a dim golden light into the dryad’s nethers. Rian, however, looked up in question. With a murmur and gesture, Anuk had vanished some of the gore from the woman, the bedding on which they had laid her. She had done the same for the hands of the pair working on her. As the wild man nodded approvingly, shuffled on his knees to provide her space, Thae had looked up. The cleric beamed at her and thanked her in a voice tinged with tiredness but bursting with admiration and gratitude. Such civility in the heat of a crisis.
And there they had stayed, Thae doing most of the ‘dirty work’, Rian and Anuk following the half-elf’s gentle, grateful directions. For HOURS. Already exhausted, worn thin by the day’s events, she and the forest man fell into the pattern of compensating for each other’s fatigue, briefly allowing one another to rest, to regain at least some resources. Thae, in contrast, seemed tireless. Or rather to have endless resources on which to draw even in the depths of exhaustion. Anuk naturally mistrusts religious people, sees the stain of fanaticism on them. Thae certainly seems fervent, however the fact that this seems focused on healing, nurturing, protecting even strangers seems to Anuk to be…maybe the least worst type of fanatic?
And then, then when everything had been going wrong, crisis and panic (at least in Rian and herself) for a seeming age, she had heard a sharp intake of breath from Thae as the wooden woman stilled. SHIT. Mechanically, Anuk – eyes averted – began the gestures to clean the corpse when Thae’s voice, soft, reverential, directed her with the words “the baby.” Dragging her gaze as directed – she REALLY didn’t need to see a dead child – she saw movement from its limbs, tiny fingers grasping despite its eerie silence. Saw its mother’s hands tremble, rub against her thigh as Anuk detected gentle breathing from the dryad.
-x-
Having magically cleaned the strange, viny placenta from the child, Anuk slumped back onto the ground. Already, the dryad’s colour was returning, the woman’s skin becoming a rich brown as the tiny leaf-hairs became tinged with autumnal reds and oranges. The child, however, could have passed as a corpse, albeit a bizarre one. Its skin was even paler than Anuk’s own, the scattering of tiny leaf buds across its scalp jet black. The child, even had she not witnessed its delivery, gave Anuk the creeps. It was silent, even when Thae had held it up by the feet, slapped its arse to help clear its airway while Rian worked to sever the creeper of its umbilical cord, tying it off professionally.
She observed Hugo leading the bandit towards them as the dryad raised hands to receive her child, immediately offering it her breast. The group formed in a loose circle around the nursing spirit as Thae clapped Rian on his shoulder, the huge man still slumped on his knees.
Then the woman of the woods looked up, spoke an alien-sounding word, obviously a question. As her sinister child suckled, her eyes seemed to glow. Numbed by deep exhaustion, Anuk was slow to react as she saw Rian, Hugo and Wiln slacken, their faces becoming dull. Until Thae – voice not precisely angry but definite, authoritative – spoke in Elvish: “We are friends – friends do not do that to friends.” The woman had given her head a subtle, surprised shake and Anuk saw the others’ expressions return to cogency.
The woman, beautiful face full of gratitude, gestured at herself with her free hand, intoned “Thaesurala” in a pretty voice. The cleric immediately responded in kind, intoning “Thae”, the dryad beaming at the serendipitous similarity. Anuk, Rian then Hugo followed suit, each receiving a wide smile from the proud mother. She looked to Wiln, confusion written all over her face, asking in something vaguely resembling Elvish: “This man? Why is he tied? Is he evil?” Anuk could see Thae’s honest face struggling with the question. The woman – Thaesurala – nodded sagely as her eyes flashed purest green and Wiln’s whole pose slackened. Thae seemed about to object, when the bandit reanimated. He appeared fully conscious, but his expression was suffused with adoration for the dryad. “Unntie, he will be no threat to uss.”
Thae uncertainly translated for them, but the group was too tired to debate or disagree. The dryad looked pleased, accepting some assistance from Wiln to get to her feet. The party fell to unrolling bedrolls, conscious that dawn was quickly approaching. Hugo looked abashed at his lack of equipment, and Anuk was certain Thae would offer to bunk up with the halfling, when the dryad walked up, bandit lackey in tow. She momentarily assessed the situation before handing Wiln her baby. Thae and Rian, she could see, were preparing to protect the child, but the bandit took the pale, scowling thing like a doting father.
Unperturbed by their suspicion, Thaesurala made a simple gesture with her hands. Immediately, green shoots began to grow and swarm out of the soil in front of her, weaving together as they emerged. Within a minute, a halfling-sized patch of soil had gained a groundsheet of soft, woven grass, a denser patch for a pillow. A beautiful, impossible “blanket” of interwoven wildflowers, delicate and fragrant, lay on top.
The tall dryad bent at the waist, leaning down to plant a soft kiss on the top of Hugo’s head. The small man appeared shocked, dumbstruck for once, and Anuk almost laughed when the dryad withdrew, leaving a tiny fascinator of pretty flowers where her lips had pressed onto Hugo’s hair. Thaesurala smiled with satisfaction, retrieved her son from Wiln, and walked off as though everything that had just happened was absolutely normal.
-x-
Anuk groans, shifts her back and rolls onto her side. The floor of the clearing’s comfortable enough, but she hates sleeping rough. Even the worst inn – she catches herself – most inns, she corrects, promise a softer bed than this.
Her mind flicks back to the dissonant moment, the dryad and the tree.
As they were getting ready to settle, having performed whatever ablutions they required courtesy of the nearby brook, Anuk had become aware of Hugo’s gaze upon Thaesurala. The halfling seemed to have been monitoring the dryad’s movements and actions since she provided him with bedding. Despite Anuk’s certainty he could hide a lie, or his true intentions, his expression was complex. Certainly not the dumb adulation of Wiln, still traipsing around at her beck and call. Nor even the guarded, guarding, attention of the giant black mastiff. It had, she noted, remained at the base of the tree throughout its master’s difficult delivery. The nightmare creature had watched every movement of theirs without hostility, but with a very clear air that they were currently in no danger. For that precise span and no others.
Even when a clearly exhausted Thae insisted on checking over their injuries, Hugo’s attention had been diverted towards the wild woman. Thankfully, they had all gotten away with nothing worse than cuts and bruises. Even Hugo’s arm, raked by the boar, had avoided being gashed. That said, the length of it was blooming with painful-looking black bruises. That was when it hit Anuk; it was active attention, some form of investigation. The halfling looked for all the world like he was doing complex mathematics in his head as he watched the dryad. The realisation didn’t make Anuk any more comfortable about his intentions.
Then the moment. Thaesurala, babe in arm, approached the base of the giant oak. From Hugo’s earlier fireside babble, it seemed dryads were always ‘attached’ to oaks, although Anuk could easily have made the association between such an obviously magical creature and the incidence of such a huge tree by herself. The dryad’s free hand pressed to the bark on the giant trunk, and the woman seemed to jerk as if in surprise. Anuk pictured the shock of stepping ‘down’ on the floor at the foot of a set of stairs, when you’re certain there’s another step.
The dryad stood uncertainly, looking at the palm of her open hand. Anuk’s and Hugo’s attention to the dryad seemed to have alerted their other comrades, and the four were watching the strange scene. Thaesurala put out her hand to the tree twice more, seeming surprised or frustrated to feel the rough bark under her hand. The woman looked distressed for a few seconds, then appeared to reach a decision.
Similarly to creating Hugo’s bed, the dryad flexed her hands. The ground produced thicker plants this time, but still slim, green, flexible new wood. As the four watched, these snaked and bound and twisted themselves into a large nest close to the huge tree’s trunk. Thaesurala stood in contemplation for another moment, then twisted her hands again. The round nest gained a canopy of new wood, snaking from a point along the circumference of the nest and knitting above like a clamshell of green branches. Apparently satisfied, the forest spirit waited another dozen seconds as the inner surfaces of the nest sprouted with soft grasses and flowers similar to Hugo’s bedding. Then, for all the world as though this were completely routine, she placed the silent newborn in the centre of the nest. As the new mother turned back towards the tree, the inky hound stalked over, sniffed twice at the child, then plonked itself down in preparation for sleep.
They all watched intently as Thaesurala took a deep, nervous breath, then extended her hand to the tree. Instead of stopping, this time the woman’s hand, wrist, forearm slipped into the wood. With a sigh of comfort, they watched the dryad step forward into the solid trunk, disappearing from view. Wiln, abandoned at the foot of the tree, stood looking at it owlishly for a few moments, before sitting himself cross-legged, back against the tree of his new master.
-x-
Anuk stifles a yawn, rolls her shoulders in preparation for a stretch, stops suddenly as she hears her name spoken from close by.
