Whether it hatched one vernal morning from a silver-dusted oak apple—
or oozed sap-borne like a kid from the seeping cleft of the tree—
or fell fully formed as the dew out of the darkling airs at night—
it was certain that the good people of Rillsdrop had let the town green be overgrown for too long, and in consequence, had got a Woodshirk living in the heart of their village. All the tongue-wagging and disputation they could muster concerning how it had come was to no purpose, for come it had. All sensible Plainsfolk knew not to let one tree grow beside another, and to keep that one clear of vine and hedge. Yet they’d let the venerable oak in the center square, past which half the townsfolk walked any given day of the week, get so wracked and choked with saplings and briar that a Woodshirk had appeared in it.
This was a disaster.
If the news got abroad, the folk of Rillsdrop would be scorned for fools up and down the Bickering. Their grain and goods would be regarded with suspicion, bought reluctantly, sold below market value, or spurned altogether. Suitable matches would be refused their sons and daughters when it came time to marry. Rillsdrop itself, always passably prosperous but neither large nor important, would be shunned, dwindle, and die away. Such had happened before. Plainsfolk could brook no dealings with Woodshirks.
Fortunately, the creature had not yet been seen—not in daylight, at least. Reports from two who’d witnessed its large, catlike eyes gleaming out of the thicket, and one who’d seen its lithe shadow trip quavering past her eaves at an hour when all decent Folk were indoors (honorable lamptenders and night guard excepted), were a matter of considerable dispute. Several argued that these incidents alone could not be taken as positive proof; so, before they’d quite realized the Woodshirk was amidst them, it had driven the town almscrier mad with moon-frenzy and gotten the cobbler’s daughter, Nyn, with child.
If no Woodshirk dwelt among them—as some citizens of Rillsdrop continued to stalwartly maintain—then no Woodshirk could have done these things; but as they had been done, it stood to rights that a Woodshirk must be there to do ‘em. Such, at least, was the opinion of the greater part of the town. The question that occupied them—as they worked each day’s trades and drank shares of each day’s wages—was what were they to do about it?
The herbseller was called to remedy the wood-touched pair, though little there was to be done for the almscrier. The cobbler packed Nyn his daughter off quietly to stay a season and more with a farm cousin who dwelt a fortnight’s wagon journey south; many a likely lad spent the summer pining over her absence, not perhaps knowing what had transpired (for the cobbler and his wife put it out that the farming cousin needed extra hands, nothing more), and the mothers of Rillsdrop’s other eligible daughters thought secretly that some good might come of these happenings after all.
As for the Woodshirk itself, clearing the thicket was out of the question. For one, nobody wanted to venture as close to the Woodshirk’s abode as needed for such work. For another, though all authorities agreed that letting any patch of ground go to thicket could attract a Woodshirk, not even the oldest and sagest among them had ever heard whether clearing the thicket aftertimes would make one go away once it had taken up residence. They were like as not, the majority argued, to accomplish no more than drawing its ire and its curse.
“It’d sing us to sleep for a day and a year,” Maimsy the herbseller warned, shaking her bony finger all round, “and when we woke, the whole village’d be overrun by forest, mark my words!”
Fire was proposed and hotly debated. After much discussion, it was generally acknowledged that this invited the same great risk as clearing by saw and axe. True, fire could be set from a distance using arrows, and everyone knew Woodshirks feared and hated fire. Yet to offer it fire would surely be seen as an act of war, and invite violent retribution.
“They aren’t like us,” the innkeep reminded his common room at large. “It doesn’t understand what it’s done. It doesn’t know that it bein’ here’ll cause harm and sow madness.”
A few heads nodded.
“That’s right,” one lone voice agreed. “It don’t want to be out here on the Plains, hundreds of leagues from the Deep Woods and its own kind.”
“All the same, it can’t be allowed to stay and roam about freely. And we can’t make it go.”
The dilemma was sobering: the common room fell silent.
“We need a Murmur,” someone said at last.
This suggestion was received with considerable aversion.
“Where’d we find one?”
“We ain’t had one o’ them through for nigh two years!”
“They’re half Woodshirk themselves, they is, and near as bad.”
“Not even they deal with Woodshirks direct,” objected Finn the furrier, Rillsdrop’s most well-traveled and worldly-wise resident. “Murmurs just unsay Woodshirk magic. For Woodshirks theyselves, what’s wanted is proper soldiers or Shirkstalkers.”
Finn’s pronouncement was greeted with general displeasure. Most of Rillsdrop did not believe that any Plainsfolk would survive long hunting Woodshirks, let alone make a profession out of earning the standing bounty posted by the lords. They’d never credited Finn’s claim to have met Shirkstalkers during his tradegoings.
The debate went on for a week, and meanwhile the thicket on the town green steadily grew. Every morning they woke to find it broader and deeper. Sapling trunks thickened. Lower branches began interweaving an intricate latticework, around which flowering ivys twined and knotted themselves. Higher up, long, slender branches arched like elegant rafters holding aloft a pavilion of gilded green. In the center of all, the great mascot oak towered higher than ever. As each day wore on, the shadow of the thicket spread further and farther across the green and across the cobbled road surrounding it as the sun made its circuit. In its shade, rare and fantastic wildflowers sprang up from the sward and nodded at passersby from tall stalks.
Maimsy began to be often noticed eyeing these ruefully. They were Shirk-craft, she said, like to wither if plucked and carried through direct sunlight, but there were types growing there as would stock her store of remedies for a year and more, if only they’d keep.
As she spoke, several glistering clusters of crimson grapes began to ripen on the branches overhead. They hung like the fabled pewter chandeliers of Lord Vyrgan’s Great Hall, which in the well-traveled Finn’s retellings dripped with dark garnets big as quails’ eggs. The ripening grapes earned as lusty a gaze from Pice the vintner as from the village children, of whom some were thought bold and fool enough to tempt the Woodshirk’s attentions to gain such a sweet prize despite the unknown consequences. Volunteers were organized to patrol the outer edge of the green day and night, as much to keep the more daring youths away as to raise alarm if the Woodshirk revealed itself.
Flickers of movement began to be seen in the depths of the little thicket. Most times these turned out to be songbirds or rodents, small and ordinary beasts, but twice the patrolling watch swore they’d seen the flank, hoof, or horn of some great wild creature. And sometimes a wind seemed to sigh out of the thicket that had no origin in the still air on the far side of the village square, a wind that wafted exotic scents of flowers, fruit, or deep earthy musks that no-one could name, but that seemed charged with familiar longings as of half-remembered childhood days, first loves, early summers.
“This will drive all of us mad,” the innkeep said solemnly. “All at once, if not checked. Rillsdrop’ll go to the wilds, and the pups of dogs we fed a-table shall gnaw upon our bones.”
Nowhere that evening was the common room’s customary air of rowdy disagreement, for deep in those selfsame bones he’d invoked, the townsfolk knew he’d spoken the right of it. Silently they sat, and nursed their drinks.
Next day, from opposite outskirts of town, the woodcutter’s household and the blacksmith’s household drove laden carts to the center of Rillsdrop, each blanketed by a pall of heavy canvas.
“Here, people of Rillsdrop, is our salvation!” the woodcutter and the blacksmith said, together throwing back the edges of the palls; and behold! The woodcutter’s cart was laden with blackened rowan staves, every one pointed like a stake yet thick as a man’s thigh. And on the blacksmith’s cart was coiled a great length of iron chain, forged of links stout as sausages.
“It is well known that salt, forged iron, and rowan-wood are proof against Woodshirk magic,” Resden the woodcutter explained. “Therefore long have we labored, Blen at his anvil and I far afield, to prepare these materials.”
“It is agreed that we cannot drive the Woodshirk out,” Blen said. “Therefore let us fence him in.”
Their plan seemed good to all the gathered people, and so right willingly did they fall to unloading Resden’s cart and driving the rowan staves at four paces’ separation around the edge of the green with great wooden mallets. The householders brought out their salt-bowls, all that they had; and the tip of each stave was turned in a little salt before setting it to be pounded into the wetted ground, and the men scoured their hands and mallets with salt lest the uncanny enchantment around the great oak turn the tools in their hands as they worked.
Before the circle of standing staves was quite complete, a cry went up from the lookers-on, with much gasping and pointing. No one knew just when, or for how long, or who became aware of his presence first: but the Woodshirk had shown himself openly at last. He stood amidst the living lacework of woven ivys and branches, between two blithe saplings and deep in the dappled shade, as a man might in the shadow of the doorway of his house. Leaves hid his figure for the main, so that all that could be seen clearly of him were his shimmering cats’-eyes that gleamed as with lantern-light behind panes of mossy crystal, a sharp angular nose like a falcon’s, and the curve of cheekbone and jaw on the left side that seemed carven of silvering wood. The hair on him was tangled like a mouse’s nest and nut-brown, both scalp and chin. He watched them silently, and his face bore an expression that some later called a smile as if he were amused, and some a snarl for it bared a single stone-gray fang. Those that swore he smiled called the smile slight, but those who said he snarled named the snarl gentle. He moved not, but held himself perfectly still; Cansen the woodcutter’s son observed both redpoll and gossip finch flitting heedless through the branches beside him.
Now the Plainsfolk redoubled their vigilance, keeping sweat-soaked grip of makeshift weapons and standing ready beside the mallet-wielders as they drove the last few rowan staves to earth. The blacksmith’s family looped the great heavy chain a single turn about each stave and fastened each turn in place with rough-hammered iron nails. And the Woodshirk watched all, but made neither motion, nor sound. Three hunters watched him in turn, with arrows nocked and ready to loose if the Woodshirk so much as opened his mouth. Finn muttered that the Woodshirk’s craft would turn their shafts aside ere they found their mark, though the distance was scarce twenty paces, but he stood fast.
As they reached the last stave, Bren the blacksmith realized—as he readied his hammer for the final nail—that Cansen Resden’s son, who held the chain steady for him, was standing on the inside of the rowan circle. How long he had been standing on the sward of the town green as they worked, none could later recall; but now was the chain about to close and be linked together in one unbroken circle that the Woodshirk’s power could not cross.
Bren ceased to hammer the nail, and beckoned. “Come, lad, before I twist the links together at last.”
Cansen looked up from the chain, then down at his own feet. Slowly he stood.
His father Resden sprang forward to clasp his arm or his coat, but hastily Cansen dodged out of reach, stepping back with a light foot already famed throughout Near Bickering for its prowess at the festal dances. He said not a word, and the two regarded one another from either side of the iron chain. Then in silence Cansen turned and strode toward the thicket.
A noise like a half-shout went up from all the village, warning him back. Some made as if to follow and lay hands on him, but hesitated at the edge of the green and the iron chain. The hunters drew bow, but Resden stood bodily before them and bade them stand down. Then as Cansen paused at the edge of the thicket, the Woodshirk moved at last and the people of Rillsdrop stood still and wordless; for he took his hand, which had been resting all along in plain view on one of the saplings unmarked, so like the gnarled beechnut did his fingers appear, and held it out to the lad.
Cansen took the offered hand in his own, and the Woodshirk helped him step upward onto an unseen threshold amidst the dazzling foliage; and then both moved together into the deeps beneath the oak, and vanished from sight.
“No more,” Bren the blacksmith cried hoarsely, as with trembling hands he prised open the final link of the iron chain; yet with a cry of grief Resden flew at him and strove to stop him. As they wrestled on the cobbled street, Bren’s wife Lismond took up her husband’s discarded tools and drove home the last nail, and as she twisted closed the final link, the enchantment of the thicket reached Rillsdrop no more.
No more did the wind sigh with lost memories, nor sound the wild calls of creatures that dwelt only in legend or in the Deep Woods far leagues distant, which no Plainsfolk might see and live. No more did the blossoms in the sward appear rare and lustrous, nor the fruit of the vines above drip with fatal glamours. The oak was no larger now than ever it had been, somewhat in decline and half-rotted in one limb; and the thicket which had sprung up around its base, a mere patch of scrub-brush. The villagers breathed deeply the ordinary airs of Rillsdrop, and looked at one another with relief like people newly-woken from dreams whose clinging grip they had fought to shake.
To the ordinary busyness of life they returned, by day, and for many months rehearsed the telling of what had happened over ale by night; but never would they tell any stranger or traveler from out of town why the village green was fenced with iron-girded rowan staves. Gradually a strange reluctance to discuss the matter even with one another settled upon them all; so that by the time Nyn returned after the harvest, having been persuaded to leave her babe to be raised by the farming cousins and say no more about it, long days passed before she could learn what had transpired, and where Cansen Resden’s son had gone.
Once she had been told, Nyn shut herself in her room for three nights and two days, and would not heed her mother’s voice nor her father’s, nor even her dear sister’s; nor the wooings of her several would-be suitors. And in the deepest darkness of the third night, which was a new moon, Nyn the cobbler’s daughter took a coal from the hearth and put it in a shuttered lantern, wrapped her traveling cloak about her shoulders, and went to the village green.
There the night watchmen, drowsy and half-drunk from lingering too long at the common room, blinked his dim eyes at a distant and doubtful figure standing hesitantly in the cobbled street, seeming to contemplate the great oak. The watchman hailed the figure, who neither acknowledged his shout nor turned aside; but after a moment, before he could come near, stepped lightly over the chain and vanished into the shadowy thicket.
