The Tale of Den Oakentoes

                Ale and mead flowed in the dim light, splashing into mugs, into mouths and onto the floor at about equal rates, as Vernon the bartender attempted to gradually fill up all of his patrons. It was the same every night; a crowd of empty townspeople entered, drained by their work and their lives, and it was his solemn duty to top them right back up again before the day was done. If they were all willing to pay him a few of the King’s coins for that service then he was a humble enough man to accept. The fact that he turned a profit was surely just a reflection of how necessary this providence was.
                Songs were bellowed across the room and candles flickered in the turbulence as arms were enthusiastically swung with tankards in hand. The orange-yellow light they cast was reflected from shirt buttons and spilled puddles of ale, mixing with the dying light of the day which glowed from cracks in the window frames. Unfortunately that light meant Vernon could see how many people were still wearing their shirts, which was far too few for his liking. As much as he loved seeing people who loved ale, seeing the sweat-beaded product of years spent drinking heavily was yet to charm him. At the very least, though, he was used it. After years of running ‘The Hog’s Trotter’ he’d come to accept that the when the people of Badharbour took to the tavern of a summer evening it would always end up like this.
                Anders the village blacksmith dropped a small pile of silver coins on the bar and held out his empty tankard in one thick, calloused hand. In a single smooth move with both hands, Vernon swept up the coin and tankard, filling it to the brim from a wooden keg under the bar for which Anders himself had provided the iron banding. With froth spilling over and running down one side the tankard re-emerged and slid across to Anders’ eagerly waiting hand. He looked Vernon in the eye, his face blackened with soot, pocked with burns from stray embers and baked from hours at the furnace, and gave a nod before swiping up his drink and walking back to his table.
                No-one else was immediately vying for a drink, so Vernon adopted the traditional barkeeper’s position of leaning against the wall and wiping a single flagon with the grey, damp and stained cloth that otherwise lived over his shoulder. Even by this early stage of the evening there was no doubt that the cloth was adding more dirt to the flagon rather than cleaning it, a series of wet streaks bearing witness to the fleeting contact between rag and pewter. Tradition was tradition though, and it brought the patrons a level of comfort to see him polishing away his idle time. Had he simply stood empty-handed and watched them drink it would have roused suspicions. Although he was a believer in tradition, Vernon wasn’t in the business of poisoning, so he never used his pewter flagon to serve up a drink. Not to anyone he liked, anyway. It instead kept a ceremonial status in ‘The Hog’s Trotter’; as critical as the latrines and kept just as far away from people’s mouths.
                Through the crowd of revelling villagers who were celebrating that they’d survived to the end of another day, Vernon saw the door creak slowly open with a wash of dusky light that illuminated a series of unpleasant, sweaty backs. He was grateful to see the door close and plunge the tavern back into its modest darkness. Causing a gentle ripple through the bodies walked a cloaked figure, pushing softly between the other patrons on a course for the bar. Bare feet, stained with years of mud and dust, appeared beneath the hem of the robe and paced across the tavern floor. Faintly at first, but growing louder as the figure approached, Vernon could hear a clicking sound with each footstep as if wood was contacting wood whenever the figure stepped. The barkeeper remembered it from somewhere, with the instinctual dread of a half-formed memory that’s still undeniably negative. Ever closer the figure paced, drawing time out to an eternity with the dread anticipation in Vernon’s mind. He was so close to remembering.
                Finally, after walking for eons, the figure reached the bar. He leaned over and from the depths of his heavy brown woollen robe came the overpowering scent of mud, leaves, and wood pulp, swelling upwards around Vernon’s nose and combating the naturally pungent aromas of his tavern. Normally Vernon wouldn’t have minded a change of nasal scenery, but if that were to happen then he’d prefer something like the smell of a mountain of gold, or perhaps a freshwater stream at a push. If the alternative was another bad smell, albeit a different one, then he would have chosen to stick with his tavern’s own. At least that was familiar.
                The robed figure lifted an arm and dropped a lump of something solid onto the bar. Vernon looked down and picked up the lump. Turning it over in his hands and peering closely in the poor light he saw that it was a chunk of raw silver, extracted from its ore but otherwise untouched.
                “I remembered your insistence on payment in worthless metals.” The figure said, his deep voice raspy with underuse.
                With that, the memories came flooding back to Vernon. He remembered an argument over whether or not watching over the life-giving wealth of the forest constituted adequate payment for a flagon of ale, with himself on the negative side of that discussion. There were plenty of judgemental tones too, regarding not exploiting the land for this and that, disrespecting the laws of nature for something else, and failing to swear sovereignty to the dominion of some old deer over the lands surrounding Badharbour. It had been a poor enough experience for that alone, but Vernon could have coped if it had stopped there. He hadn’t run a bar for that long without learning how to conduct a disagreement civilly; there was never a need to raise his voice when the pewter tankard was always available for underhanded spite. It was when the stranger’s judgemental discussions were extended to the other patrons that it had all gone downhill. Hard-working village folk weren’t the most understanding once they were in their cups, and Vernon had ended up with a lot of furniture and crockery to replace.
                “It’s you! The forest man. Old Woodfoot or whatever your bloody name was.” Vernon said, his annoyance getting the better of him.
                “Den Oakentoes. Druid.” The figure replied. “A flagon of ale for that silver, please.”
                Vernon turned the silver lump over in his hand some more, keeping half an eye on Den the whole time. Silver it might have been, but it wasn’t even a coin. He couldn’t very well spend this, and turning it into a coin himself didn’t seem like the sort of thing to which the crown would take kindly. He’d heard talk of coin forgers operating in the King’s own city for a short time. Short time was the operative phrase there. Regardless, the lump could at least be exchanged with a jeweller, and it was a show of willing from the forest-dweller.
                “One flagon.” Vernon said, reaching back for the pewter tankard.
                “Not that one.” Den snapped. “I can sense the life in it from here.”
                The barkeeper’s hand hovered in mid-air. He didn’t know exactly what the druid meant, predominantly because of his poor knowledge of microbial biology, but got the idea well enough. Taking a fresh tankard from the below the bar Vernon filled it from the ale keg and placed it roughly in front of Den.
                “Thank you.” Said Den, lifting his open palms from the bar and taking the flagon in one hand. Vernon looked down and saw with a frustrated start that bark had starting growing where Den’s palms been. It had taken hours to plane that down and polish it back to a decent bar surface after the last time.
                “Right, no more touching the bar or furniture unless you’re going to fix what you do to it.” He instructed.
                “I am fixing what was done to it.” Den shot back. “You killed it for a place to rest your drinks. I’m bringing it back to life.”
                “It don’t need bringing back to life. It needs to be level.”
                Den took a deep swig of his ale and tried to resist pulling a disgusted face. Doing so had got him more than a few dirty looks last time, although they were still positively spotless by comparison to that pewter tankard Vernon had just tried to hand over.
                “Look, Woodfoot-”
                “Oakentoes.”
                “Whatever. You can drink here for as long as you’ve got means to pay. But you’re not to cause trouble like last time, alright? These folk are honest people, for the most part. They work hard and they just want to be left to drink in peace with their kin, so don’t you go around telling them they’re killing your tree gods or whatnot and causing arguments, understand?” Vernon lectured. He’d built The Hog’s Trotter from the ground up, mostly based on the experience and advice of architects and house-builders throughout the kingdom. He knew of another tavern owner who’d tried to build one from the roof down, and they went immediately bankrupt from the costs of excavating down to the ground floor. Having done such a good job of building it, he wasn’t about to have it torn apart in a riot caused by some deciduous old codger, especially one who emerged from the trees whenever he felt like it to argue with the potter about robbing the earth of its precious clay.
                “Would you stand by and watch murder happen?” Oakentoes asked, not too shy for confrontation when explicitly asked to avoid it.
                “If that murder happened to be the murder of dead dirt by an honest man then yes, I probably would.” Vernon said defiantly. “But I don’t want to get drawn into this. Drink your ale and be friendly.” He ordered again, immediately walking away before Den Oakentoes could argue back.
                Den scowled from beneath his cowl, watching the barbarian bartender walk away. These people were all brutes, exploiting the land for what it needed but they merely wanted, and then moving on like a parasite when its host was depleted. This bartender, it had to be said, was better than the rest. Most of the tavern owners in the villages around the Falseoak Woodland turned him away immediately, citing some nonsense about trouble following him too closely. Trouble didn’t follow him. It was waiting for him at the bar and met him head on, if anything. But whenever Den needed information about the machinations of the foolish empires, there was no better place to find it than the taverns.
                Slowly the druid took another mouthful of his ale, resisting the urge to spit out the be-fouled water. He’d learned the hard way that it was necessary to have a drink in hand when loitering in taverns, since empty-handedness was tantamount to open treason and no-one would extend him any trust at all. Being a known druid also accomplished that feat, but Den saw no reason to double-down on vilification and so made a point of getting himself a drink before conducting any kind of reconnaissance. Unfortunately, the only drink more corrupted than their ale was their water, which had a level of ‘life’ in it that put even the pewter tankard behind the bar to shame. So it was that Den had been forced into yet another container of this fermented horror. He’d also learned the hard way not to refer to it out loud as fermented horror.
                The Hog’s Trotter was filled up to capacity and then a bit more, with a significant proportion of Badharbour’s population gathering to swap stories about their lives and slake their apparently limitless thirsts. Without a doubt there was plenty to overhear in this cathedral of arboreal murder, but not a lot of it was going to be of interest or use, and listening to just one conversation at a time was nigh-on impossible. Those with the ears of a bat could pick out a leaf falling in the canopy, but distinguishing it against the rest of the forest collapsing was a different matter.
                Moving in a slow, jagged trajectory, like a stream filtering between a jumble of rocks, Den weaved his way between the bellowing revellers and examined each of them for the clothes of the axemen. In recent days Den had seen many of these blade-toting butchers setting up camps and equipment at the edge of the Falseoak Woodland, more so than ever before, and that did not bode well. As the protector of all life, and with particular dominion over Falseoak, Den was determined to find out what these savages were up to now and put a stop to it.
                For all his life, Den had been clashing with the unnatural folk of the empires. They sought to strip his woodland bare to build their cities larger and their weapons of war more devastating, all for the cause of crushing the cities that the other empires had made. And when that crushing was completed they came back to the woodland and stripped it again to rebuild what they just broke. It was nonsense. So whenever they arrived with their axes and saws Den told them in no uncertain terms to get out of his woodland, because it was his to own. The problem was that the loggers’ king had also decided that he owned the woodland, and that had created something of an impasse. Unfortunately for Den, far more people believed the king than the true protector of the woods, and while that didn’t make his claim any more legitimate, it did make Den’s warnings fall on selectively deaf ears.
                After many years of conflict and confrontation, with manifold lumber camps falling to unexplained natural disasters, hostile wildlife, aggressive flora, missing tools, sabotaged equipment, and name-calling from the woods at all times of the night, an agreement was reached between the empire and Oakentoes. The lumber harvesters would limit their activities to the outer woodland, and Den would replant and encourage the growth of those trees whilst leaving the loggers unmolested.
                In truth, the agreement hadn’t sat well with Den. He was raising trees for the express purpose of being killed which felt like a moral grey area at best, and the loggers still hunted those creatures who strayed beyond the bounds of Den’s sanctified woodland. It had however allowed him to sleep at night rather than casting spells, sneaking around camps, and shouting his limited array of known insults from the treetops.
                Having grown quite used to the terms of this deal, seeing the surge of logging equipment outside the woodland had been a surprise; it didn’t appear to be in line with the agreement at all. So Den had travelled into Badharbour to learn what he could. Most of the crowds through whom he pushed ignored him, used to the bustle and buffeting of thronged taverns. But some turned a head reflexively at the contact and recognised that flash of wild, ragged beard, the hawk-like eyes, the pointed nose, and the dirty flesh of the druid.
                “It’s the wooden man!” a baker hissed to her companions as he passed by.
                “What? Where?” one of them replied with a note of shock and fear.
                “Don’t look at him!” the baker spat. “Heads down. I want nothing to do with his insanity.”
                Den Oakentoes was a bad omen for the people of Badharbour, followed by the kind of primal magic which was frowned upon by the inquisitions of several major religious orders. In his footsteps the floorboards started to sprout moss and grass, whenever he sat with them at a table both the table and the chairs started to take root, and they all remembered the last time he’d been here, when he picked up a wax candle and it started to sprout bees. As far as they were concerned the cantankerous old tree-hugger was nothing but trouble. But he was the kind of trouble best dealt with by someone else.
                Den heard the hushed gasps and whispered words about him coming from all around. It was always the same, but he wore it as a badge of honour. All the time that these fools reviled him for protecting the life of Mother Nature he knew that his actions were preventing the empire’s destructive tendencies, and that meant he was doing his job.
                “Oh my- it’s branchface.” A voice said to Den’s right. He looked up from the corner of his eye to see a tall, muscular man leaning towards his friends. Den recognised this man; he was a known carpenter. Manipulating the bodies of the dead was a hallowed task not to be taken lightly. Den himself made use of the carcasses left behind when the mighty trees fell, and that was the way of nature, but these carpenters made baubles and trinkets. They encouraged the slaughter of rare, centuries-old trees for sake of making the king’s wardrobe a different colour to those of the others around him.
                The druid kept slowed his walking and reached deep within himself for the primal powers. He could feel a connection to even the dead wood of the flooring beneath him, and through that he felt for the table and chairs next to the carpenter. With an imperceptible tensing of his abdomen, Den grew the table and chair legs into winding roots, wrapping them over the carpenter’s feet without his notice. Smirking to himself at a job well done, Den kept one ear peeled for the tripping sound and disappeared among the crowds.
                Not far from the carpenter, Den finally heard something of use to him. A pair of loggers sat with a cluster of other villagers at a table cluttered with empty tankards, earthenware plates and more microbial life than even the forest floor. He pulled the hood of his cloak further up and over his head, turned one ear to the table and listened.
                “Blunt as anything. The boy’s more of a nuisance than an apprentice.” One of the loggers said. His voice sounded like a saw blade, complete with the dust.
                “Sounds like he’s doing a good job of learning from Willikers then!” the second logger replied, erupting into laughter far more generous than the quip warranted. Clearly the barkeeper had been working hard to fill up these particular men. His voice was like deer’s tallow, spread over lichen.
                “How could he let the boy get away with not sharpening that blade though? It’d take even you two swipes to get through a twig. Might as well be cutting with a hammer.” Saw voice said, taking another drink.
                “Best way to learn is the hard way. Let him struggle and work it out for himself. Won’t do it again.”
                “He’d better work it out soon. The real job starts in a few days and I’ll not be responsible for pulling the extra weight.”
                “I wish they’d just let us get on with it now.”  The tallow-voiced man lamented. “It’s more wood than the empire’s seen since they made the palace.”
                “I reckon they’re scared of the wood man.” Saw-voice speculated. Den felt a small surge of pride. “They think he’ll cause too much trouble if we just jump in.”
                “Old bark eyes? The crazy old coot wouldn’t be able to stop all of us. He comes near me with that nonsense of his I’ll give him one with the axe. That’ll shut him up.”
                “King’s got an agreement with him for a reason. Breaking that’s not going to go down well, so I reckon he’s got something else to prepare before we get going.”
                Den tensed up, his nostrils flaring and fists clenched. The king was planning to betray him and break their agreement! His toes curled under his feet, scraping harshly against the floorboards.
                “Heh. Hey, think about it. If twiggy’s gonna be angry about the trees coming down, imagine how hacked off he’ll be when the dam goes up at Triggo’s Pass and the valley floods.”
                “Won’t be much of a surprise though will it, if we wait around much longer. Even squirrel-man’d notice this going on.”
                The druid was shaking. Restraint was a trick learned late in his life and he didn't care for it.
                “You never know. He might be too busy asking a daffodil to marry him.” The tallow-voice cackled, sending his companion into fits of laughter.
                That was it. Den Oakentoes' eyes flared with the powers of Mother Nature and all the self-righteous fury that power entailed, unleashing it in the only way he knew how. The saw-voiced logger raised his tankard up for drink and shrieked at what met his lips. With a sound somewhere between a sponge soaking up dirty water and a leather saddle creaking, a dense fungal bloom erupted from the ale and rose in a huge mushroom top, cresting the top of the flagon and spilling over the sides.
                "What in the seven hells?" Tallow-voice cried.
                "It's barkskin here." Said a voice like neither tallow nor a saw from behind the druid. Den didn't much want to turn around because the voice sounded very angry indeed. It was the kind of angry voice that a carpenter might use when he's just been tripped by a rooted chair, in fact. Den started to smirk under his cowl despite the imminent peril of a clobbering.
                "You should watch your tongue or more furniture might take a disliking to you." The druid said, turning to face the carpenter and examine his handiwork. An angry red patch on the man's forehead shone out as evidence that the roots had done their job. Den struggled not to laugh out loud, and was just a little disappointed that he'd not seen the carpenter fall.
                The carpenter didn't seem to find the situation quite as amusing. Unless a man winding up his fist for a stiff blow to the jaw was a sign of mirth, Den decided that the carpenter hadn't liked being tripped up at all.
                Reflexively the druid reached out and felt the wood around him; there was a lot of fresh and easily malleable wood nearby, freshly cut from a living body. A whole coating of it over the bodies of the carpenter and the loggers. With an invisible wave of the natural powers Den called for help. The layers of sawdust coating the three men of lumber responded immediately, sprouting thin limbs and winding around their murderers. Shrieks rang out as wooden straitjackets formed around the carpenter and the loggers, setting their arms, legs and torsos in place with a shell of new life.
                As much as Den was enjoying the spectacle he knew that, somehow, the crowd would decide that he was the bad guy here. Rather than wait for that to happen yet again in his life, he took the opportunity to start pushing through the other drinkers, many of whom were starting to turn and face the source of all the commotion. As he neared the door, he started to hear the age-old cries.
                “It’s that bloody druid again!”
                “Someone stop him!”
                “My chair’s flowering!”
                Den didn’t pause to smell the new blooms. To the familiar chorus of angry shouts and vows to do all sorts of unpleasant things to him, Den Oakentoes fled The Hog’s Trotter and ran for the edge of Badharbour. Nestled against the outskirts of the Falseoak Woodland, Badharbour was landlocked by trees on one side and open grassland on the three others. When the empire’s founder, King Edward the Misguided, had arrived at this spot for the first time he’d remarked on how poorly it would serve as a harbour, since it was many miles from the sea and on the wrong side of a forest. After a number of hopeful laughs, . Despite the best efforts of several officials, the name Badharbour stuck. In a desperate attempt to add the context which King Edward’s remark so sorely lacked several embarrassed historians later attempted to alter the story, adding an advisor who’d suggested using the location as a shipbuilding yard due to the proximity of so much wood. Those revisions never really took hold, however.
                Heading towards his woodland home, Den splashed along the damp, muddy roadway. He passed simple houses, animal pens and workshops without stopping or slowing. It pained him to leave animals in these conditions instead of running free, but he had tried to release them before and that didn’t end well for anyone; both he and the animals became targets for the hunt, and it had taken several years for the famers and families to greet him with anything other than an arrow. From then on he accepted with resignation that he had to choose his battles, but it was a long time after even that event that he revised his choice downwards from ‘all’.

                Under a gentle drizzle Den Oakentoes breathed a palpable sigh of relief to be back in the Falseoak Woodland. He drew a deep lungful of the elm, hornbeam and ash aromas that typified the outer woodland and allowed them to calm his heart, even as he turned the loggers’ words over in his head. Whoever the king of the false empire of men was these days, he was planning to betray a sacred deal with Mother Nature, and that could not be allowed to stand. As Den stepped deeper into the woods he pondered on the best course of action, noticing as he went the scents of elder and holly joining the aromatic landscape. He could launch an attack on the lumber camps tonight, break their equipment and send a message that the woodland was not to be disturbed, but such a course was a difficult road to follow. Other druids had tried that before, but even with the primal powers on their side the sheer weight of men and steel from the empires eventually won through. In the past he had fortified the trees with druidic ritual so that the tools of loggers failed to penetrate the bark, but it required so much concentrated power that it was unsustainable in the long term. Besides, they would only move onto another woodland, raze that to the ground, and then build their damnable dam regardless.
                Den brushed his hand across a branch of pine needles, feeling them run softly against his skin and kicking up their fresh scent. The pine tree, given any choice, would have preferred not to be touched by any passing strangers, even those who sought to protect it. Unfortunately it was unable to communicate that fact to Den, who would have missed the message regardless in his deep thought.
                Of all the tainted gifts that kings had given their people, dams were Den’s most loathed. They took the gradual work of noble waterways, shaping and sculpting the landscape over millennia, and wrought devastation upon it in the uniquely heavy-handed and ignorant manner of the supposedly civilised peoples. Valleys became lakes, creatures of the meadow drowned, trees rotted, and a beautiful work of natural art was irrevocably destroyed.
                Den leaned against a sycamore, unable to walk and seethe at the same time any longer. He should have known this would happen eventually, no empire could resist such a lush and diverse woodland as Falseoak. Den looked around at all the species surrounding him, each one suited for a different exploitation by the empire, with the only omission in the woodland being oak, hence the name. It was another gift from Edward the Misguided.
                King Edward’s first foray into this woodland had seen him proudly slapping the trunk of what he called a ‘mighty oak which would give its life to build the empire’, but his rangers quickly informed him to in fact be an ash. Not one to be put off, the king moved to another tree and repeated his claim, this time being corrected that it was an elm. The legends were unclear with regard to how many times this process was repeated, moving between the trees, bushes and even vines until finally, in frustration, the king declared it to be a forest of deception. He labelled it the Falseoak Woodland and vowed never to trust any oak furniture made from its produce. There is no record of his rangers explaining again why that wouldn’t be an issue.
                For possibly the first time, Den wished that Edward the Misguided was still on the throne. At least the insane old man would have left his forest alone. The new king had apparently disavowed his ancestor’s superstitions, which made him problematic. He had the same material sickness from which nearly all in the empire suffered. But that sickness made none of them suffer as deeply as the forest.
                Den pushed off from the sycamore, so angry that he didn’t even thank it for the support it had provided him, and continued his journey into the forest.
 
                Deep in the heart of the woodland, Den Oakentoes nestled under the thick foliage of a pine tree and attempted to calm himself. The audacity the new king must have possessed to renege on their deal was a hard pill to swallow, and his intention to use lumber, stolen in an act of duplicity, to destroy a pristine valley was barbarism. Around him the animals of the woodland felt his anger but couldn’t really grasp why they were suddenly so annoyed. A proud stag kicked a tree stump in confused rage, a flock of starlings failed to agree on a path for their murmuration and crashed in mid-air, and dozens of worker ants threw off the mantle of oppression, rejected indoctrination, and deposed the queen.
                Summoning his breath from deep within his chest, the druid tried to feel for the pulse of the woodland and calm himself. Rage could serve him when visiting the king. For the meantime, a nap was in order.
                At dawn the following day Den Oakentoes made preparations to leave the Falseoak Woodland for an audience with the king. Into a set of hempen bags he packed supplies for the road, as well as a spring of sycamore to remind himself of home. He slung a travel cloak over his back, bid a temporary farewell to the forest, and stepped over a strangely quiet anthill to set out for the king’s great palace. It would be two days’ walk to reach the king, and Den loathed to be away from his home for so long, but there were matters of great importance to give the king a right earful about. If Den had been forced to honestly answer what his favourite duty as protector of the forest was, then giving people an earful would have ranked highly.
                Taking a path out of the woodland which kept a safe distance from Badharbour’s slow-to-forgive community, Den trudged along narrow, muddy lanes with deep cart tracks furrowed into them. Patchy grass made a valiant effort to reclaim the pathway, bolstered by Den’s magic wherever his feet fell, but the footfalls of human and beast were an indomitable foe and keep coming unabated. If grass had adopted the technique of eroding those feet right back then perhaps it would have been a different, if bloodier, story.
                Several miles of narrow backway trails eventually culminated in larger roads, the tributaries of foot traffic coalescing into the wide main flows. The road on which Den now found himself led directly to the capitol city and the seat of the king’s power: Siege’s Bane. Out on the road, few travellers took Den for anything other than a wandering peasant and therefore paid him no mind. To help this illusion along he did his best to suppress the growth magic from his oaken toes whenever people approached, since leaving floral footprints tended to invite more questions than he liked.
                After a full day's mercifully uneventful travel Den found a secluded patch of hedgerow just off the road in the fading daylight and settled comfortably into the base of a dense bush to sleep. As always when Den travelled, however, his slumber was interrupted by the snuffling of unfamiliar noses around him. Having a primal connection and kinship with all beasts was part and parcel of druid life and something that Den counted as normality. It was fine whilst he stalked the Falseoak Woodland where the creatures were all perfectly aware of and accustomed to Den's presence, but whenever he went out travelling it was a different matter. Without fail he would wake with the confused and unfamiliar animals of new territories sniffing, nudging and otherwise investigating him. They were drawn to him for reasons they couldn't understand, which meant that they tried to find out and refused to leave him alone until they'd done so.
                "Ugh. Get off." He said groggily as a wet nose probed into his ear. Doing so had involved taking his hood down and parting Den's dreadlocked hair, so whatever it was must really have had an emotional investment in Den's aural capabilities. Den reached out with a stiff arm and pushed the face away from himself. From the scent and the face-feel he recognised the culprit as a deer, taking time out of its busy grazing schedule to sniff at a man sleeping under a hedge. Another face was quick to take on the deer’s vacated role however, slurping curiously at the other exposed ear. To the druid’s mind his ears were perfectly mundane and easy to understand without the investigative talents of a deer being augmented with what felt like the second opinion of a badger. As he tried to reach up and nudge it off his arm was restrained by sharp teeth, applied gently to his sleeve. At this stage Den was forced to acknowledge that the time for sleeping was over, and he would have to open his eyes and address the situation directly. What met his gaze were the bright yellow eyes of a small grey wolf, which was learning all it could about Den by chewing softly on his limbs. It was scholarly technique not applied often in the academic world of humanity, but when it worked it was second-to-none.
                “Please stop.” Den asked politely but wearily, standing up as slowly as he could to avoid startling the animals. The wolf cocked its head to one side, still chewing slowly, and maintained eye contact. “No. No you see, what you’ve done there is you’ve continued. That’s the opposite of what I wanted.”
                The wolf cocked its head the other way and stopped actively masticating, instead keeping a soft grip and simply allowing its saliva to soak Den’s sleeve.
                “That’s a step in the right direction I suppose.” Den conceded. “Would you please let go?”
                With significant effort the wolf tried to comprehend what Den was asking, and the druid in turn tried to focus his whole mind on the concept of releasing one’s jaw. It was a little difficult however when a blackbird was pecking inquisitively at his scalp. With slow motions Den reached up and lifted the blackbird away to a tune of displeased whistling. The tune grew more urgent when an impact from behind sent Den stumbling forwards, undoing much of the good work he’d been doing in getting the wolf to let go while the arm was still attached to the shoulder.
                “Ouch!” the druid growled, patience starting to fade. The blackbird in his hand chirped urgently, the wolf gave a muffled bark, and from behind a boar’s squeal rang out in confused apology. Regaining his footing, Den spoke with the primal magic of command edging his voice.
                “Wolf, let go. Boar, no more head-butting. Bird, no more pecking. Everyone else, as you are.” He listed off quickly, uncomfortable with manipulating the denizens of Mother Nature’s world unless he absolutely had to. Feeling the instinctive authority of Den’s magic, the curious animals obeyed. “Thank you.” Den said, minding his manners.
                In a loose semi-circle around Den and his erstwhile sleeping-hedge were dozens of meadow animals, each one heeding the unspoken call. They all stared at him expectantly, except the cluster of deer and rabbits who were busy casting untrusting glances as the wolf.
                “Hello. I am Den Oakentoes, druid and protector of the Falseoak Woodland. I am passing through your territory on a mission of protection, to save the trees from the savage city barbarians.” Den said by way of introduction and explanation. “If any of you can offer me information regarding the king’s palace then please speak now for all of our sake’s, otherwise be about your business. I shall pass through again soon.”
                The animals kept staring up at Den. Some had sat down to better listen, and others were pacing or fluttering idly. None of them moved to take action on either his dismissal or his call for information.
                “Really. I’m leaving. You can go.” He repeated. A few small mammals shuffled a little further away from the pair of foxes who had made a silent path to the front of the crowd, but nothing of significance happened. Den sighed. It was all very well that the creatures of Mother Nature knew what he was saying, but it didn’t make them understand what he meant. Shaking his head, Den placed the blackbird from his hand onto a branch of the hedge.
                “Well, goodbye.” He said encouragingly, trying to make the point, as he gathered up his bags and started to walk along the road again. Several snorts and snuffling sounds trailed behind him. Looking over his shoulder, Den saw the whole herd of semi-hypnotised animals padding along behind him.
                “You can’t all come with me! Go! Be an ecosystem!”
                The creatures continued following, but some of them now looked a little bit more guilty about it.
                “Seriously, you can stop following me.” Den said, spinning around on his heels to face the crowd. The animals also stopped, some of them mid-stride, and kept their eyes locked on Den for the next instruction to ignore. Den threw his arms up into the air in exasperation, and kept walking.
                The day’s walk was a noisy one. From quiet patience the herd’s behaviour had quickly morphed into dedicated bleating and crying, each animal trying to get Den’s attention and work out why they needed to be close by. This was another reason that Den didn’t much like walking away from his home, where the animals had grown accustomed to the natural kinship and didn’t feel the need to follow him everywhere. It was always nice to see the creatures of the land working in harmony, but when that harmonised work seemed to focus on taking the food rations out of his hand it was a little less quaint. They’d only take a few days to get over his behaviour, but that unfortunately meant they’d be confused until the very moment that he left.
                By the time Den reached Siege’s Bane, the capitol city of the false empire, many of the animals had departed either in search of food, or so as not to be the prize of such a search. A handful of migratory birds and the nomadic wolf were still following behind, but even they knew to stay out of the way of the road, where hunters and panicked merchants might try their luck or raise the alarm.
                Although heavily trafficked under normal circumstances, the southern gate of Siege’s Bane was quiet at this time of the afternoon. Only a few guards stood at the gate, arranged in groups on either side of the open wooden gateway. Den approached, walking between the vast stone chunks of walls and gates which had been destroyed in wars long past. They jutted from the earth like mountains slowly rising up to the sky, reminding the people that Edward the Misguided had been as good of a military architect as he was a botanist. When Den reached the gate the guards stood up a little straighter and surveyed him through narrowed eyes.
                “What’s your business here?” The guard on the left asked. His voice was thin, much like his eyebrows, and it didn’t scream welcome.
                “Just trying to buy some bread.” Den said vaguely, not stopping. The guards gave him a distrustful look but allowed him to carry on when they saw his dishevelled form. No threat to Siege’s Bane ever came dressed in rags.
                By means entirely of their own, Den’s entourage of meadow animals also made their way into Seige’s Bane, a city renowned across the empire as being easily breached. Several armies throughout history had variously climbed over or burrowed under the walls, and a couple had even walked straight in because someone had forgotten to lock the gate. It was basically acknowledged that if an army was outside Siege’s Bane then they may as well be inside already, so giving up was the only reasonable choice left to the defenders.
                As invaders went, the birds that had followed Den were no trouble, and the people of the city paid them no mind as they flitted from window to rooftop and sang their shrill songs. The young wolf, however, was a different matter for the peasantry, with its pointy teeth, sharp claws, and liberal attitude towards the ownership of food and poultry. The people of Siege’s Bane made their feelings on that matter known at a significant volume.
                “This is why you shouldn’t have followed me!” Den chastised the wolf over the wailing sounds, who for his own part was largely unconcerned with all the screaming and panicking. Hearing Den’s voice directed at himself, the wolf was overcome with joy and trotted alongside its new pack leader. “Just stick close to me and don’t try to eat anything.” Den growled at his new companion, reluctantly using this command magic to keep the wolf under control. As much as Den enjoyed the barbarous city folk being scared by nature, he also enjoyed not having the city guard descend on him in response to a wolf attack. It was necessary, therefore, to take at least some token action.
                “Don’t panic! It won’t cause any trouble while it’s with me.” Den shouted to the terrified masses, feeling the need to defuse the situation before a screaming mob followed him to the palace gates. His reputation didn’t need another misunderstanding regarding a coup. Much to Den’s surprise, his words of reassurance seemed to have an effect on the crowd, whose wails of terror died down to yelps of fear. Unfortunately, no-one saw fit to carry that message forwards, and new people ahead of Den gave in to the same anti-lupine prejudices as their outer-city brethren. It didn’t take long for the druid, not accustomed to speaking to other humans for more than a few minutes let alone shouting repeatedly, to grow distinctly weary of being a town crier. He was almost grateful when a group of a dozen armed city guards appeared and barred his way.
                “Halt in the name of the king, wolf man!” A man in the middle commanded, twirling a long halberd with an almost theatrical flair. Den took him to be the sergeant of this squad. “Don’t resist, or you’ll feel the cut of the Dancing Blades!”
                As instructed, mostly for the cause of ceasing his bellowing, the druid halted and his young wolf followed suit, remaining at his side. For the squad of halberd-wielding guards this was something of an anti-climax, and disappointment crept in behind their raised weapons. It had been several months since they’d been able to perform any of their aggressive formations, choreographed to perfection in the barracks, and even that last time had only been to scare some drunkards. They’d been looking forward to a madman with a wolf.
                “Oh…” The sergeant said, seeming to share his team’s feelings. “…are you planning to lull us into a false sense of security by apparently complying, and then lash out when our guard is down? Nice try!” he rationalised enthusiastically, as an excuse to keep his weapon and his hopes up.
                “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m here to speak with the king, not to fight in the streets.” Den snapped.
                “Are you planning to assassinate him maybe?” the sergeant asked hopefully. “We would have to use our defensive formations instead in an effort to stop you.” The sergeant span in a dramatic pirouette as he spoke, and there were excited murmurs from his squad, some of whom started to shift their weapons pre-emptively.
                “What do you not understand about the term ‘speak’? It’s all you city barbarians do apart from destroying beauty.”
                The sergeant squirmed like a toddler being told ‘no’.
                “Aren’t you going to resist just a little bit?” He pleaded. “We could just use the handles and rough you up gently, and we’d even leave the wolf alone.”
                “I am perfectly sure that I don’t want to resist. Take me to the king and tell him that Den Oakentoes is here to speak about their deal.”
                The sergeant crossed his arms sulkily as best he could whilst holding a polearm.
                “Maybe I don’t want to. If you’re not going to resist then why would you need an armed escort?” he pouted. His men shouted “Yeah!” and “How do you like that!” from behind in support. Buoyed by his squad, the sergeant tilted his head upwards and away from Den in a fit of passive aggression. It caused his helmet to tumble off and land on the cobbles, but he was committed to this pout and didn’t bend to pick it up.
                Den sighed heavily and rolled up his sleeves. Like a thatched kiln the sergeant’s eyes lit up at this single spark of motion, and he held his weapon out in preparation for battle. Around him the rest of the squad started to move, taking up their designated places.
                “Falcon rhumba strike, lads. Nice and tight, no improvising, just like we practiced.” The sergeant instructed. He winked a strangely combative ‘thank you’ at Den, who rolled his eyes back.
                Before the guardsmen could form up into their full stance, Den’s eyes flared with green energy and the tenacious plants growing between the cracks in the cobbles erupted into life like floral volcanoes. Stones were cast aside as the quite literally downtrodden weeds of the road rose up to have their vengeance. With stems the width of a human leg they snaked across the thoroughfare, tripping and entangling the city guard before pressing pollen-laden flowers into their faces. Those who were quick enough leapt and danced out of reach, initiating a synchronised and unnecessarily complicated routine of slashes and spins. Among their performance they managed to strike out with their blades, severing the serpentine creepers and bifurcating petal-dense aggressors. Den was quick to heal those wounds, and from them sprouted forth more life, keeping the melee burning. Sap and pollen was spilled by the gallon, orders were shouted, airborne triple-spins were landed and transitioned into perfect box steps, hay-fever struck hard and fast, and every bystander was equipped with a story they could tell for generations at otherwise tedious dinner parties.
                After a few intense minutes of what Den was forced to admit were elegant combat techniques, he allowed his vines to fall limp. Plant fluids stained the cobbles and dripped from the boots and halberds of panting guards. The sergeant unwound a particularly determined vine of bindweed from his chest and stood facing Den with a beaming grin.
                "Ha! Common weeds are no match for the lightning fast footwork of the Dancing Blades!" He celebrated, tap dancing excitedly and apparently entirely unconcerned by the sudden appearance of enchanted vegetation. "Now that your resistance has been quashed with our beautiful rhythms, we shall bring you before the king in perfect safety. Lads? Escorts the prisoner and his pet to the palace." He ordered, swirling his hand around with a flourish.
                A diamond of pirouetting guardsmen, who seemed to be growing more terpsichorean by the second despite presumably being rather tired, formed around Den at their sergeant’s order. In perfect unison they tapped their halberds on the ground, faced forward, and started to march in a confusing three-time beat with which Den had serious trouble keeping an even pace. Their periodic steps beat out a catchy drum line on the cobblestones, as if the druid were being played onto a grand stage, which seemed oddly fitting; if the king was serious about betraying the long-standing agreement over the Falseoak Woodland, then Den was certainly planning to make a scene.
                Although utterly foreign to him and distinctly more intimidating than a display of typical thuggery, the gaggle of dancing guards did at least shield Den from the sights and insults of the city folk. With the occasional happy yelp Den’s young wolf trotted along unfazed, his gaze flitting from Den to the dancers in calm curiosity. It didn’t even bat an eye when the sergeant pirouetted to signal a change of direction, a continuation of the same direction, or a change of pace. The longer the march went on, the more Den came to the conclusion that the sergeant just loved spinning around.
                At the end of a protracted foxtrot which took Den entirely by surprise, the Dancing Blades came to a halt at the gates of the king’s palace. Extending higher than all but the most ancient trees in the Falseoak Woodland, the palace was a testament to humanity’s pillaging of the earth. Unnecessarily stolen clay had been fired into pink-red bricks and formed into a wall that ran along the road for as long as Badharbour was wide. Gates of onyx-painted iron loomed over the roadway and allowed a glimpse of the most multi-coloured and over-specified example of human architecture that Den had witnessed in any of the false empire’s settlements. It seemed that the new king had made significant additions to the palace since Den had last been here, under the previous king’s reign. The brightly painted doors were certainly a statement, and the marble balustrades were attractive, but edging every window with gold didn’t appeal to Den’s sensibilities. Nor did the idea of how much land must have been ravaged to access these materials. Not for the first time in his life, Den hoped that these materials had been stolen from other empires rather than Mother Nature. At least the true thieves would have been punished in that eventuality.
                “Sergeant Walt. Report.” A harsh voice demanded from a gatehouse by the gate. Den peered through a gap between his escorts, who were fidgeting rhythmically on the spot and saw an older man in the decadent uniform of the palace guards. With a sickness that welled up from the pit of his stomach he counted off the birds whose plumage had been robbed for the feathers in the man’s helmet. A different kind of sickness joined it when he noted the bronze and purple stripes of the man’s puffy-sleeved jacket. It seemed that the tailor had agreed that such a helmet and jacket combination was enough of a statement, because the man’s leggings were a simple untreated cotton with understated black boots.
                “We have apprehended this man of the woods and his pet wolf in the street. Bards will sing of it and the dancing troupes will-”
                “Details, Walt.” The palace guard reminded him.
                “-uh, yes, sir.” Sergeant Walt said, a little deflated. “He says he has business with the king. Called himself Den, erm, Oakfoot was it?”
                “Den Oakentoes, protector of the Falseoak Woodland.” Den said, irritably. Getting his name wrong was bad enough, but to claim that they had apprehended him was not on.
                “Oakentoes? King Harlon is expecting him. Send him through right away.” The veteran instructed. With a series of silent hand signals he indicated for servants somewhere unseen to open the black gates, which swung open silently and smoothly. Den didn’t trust anything made by the empire which moved without sound, but he stepped through when directed by the palace guard despite his surprise that the king had been expecting him all along.
                “What about the wolf?” One of the Dancing Blades asked. Den’s nostrils flared.
                “Leave it be.” The palace guard answered before Den could do anything that everyone else might have regretted. “I’m sure the druid knows better than to let it step out of line in the palace.” He added with a smirk towards Den.
                Den looked away from the guard without a word and kept walking towards the grand palace entrance. Muttering under his breath, he focused on the feathers in the murder-cap and pictured the guard’s face when he felt them take root in the back of his skull.
                As he approached the palace, it occurred to Den that perhaps the king expecting him shouldn’t have been a surprise after all; he clearly knew that he was breaking a covenant with the protector of the forest and wasn’t so naïve to expect that it would be taken lightly. His oaken toes clacked against the paved path in an even pace which felt drab compared to the Dancing Blades’ march, and he tried to decide whether the king’s acknowledgement of the druidic protectorate should have been making him angrier about the situation or not.
                Before he came to any solid conclusion on the matter, the double-doors of the palace opened before him and unveiled a vaulted atrium replete with vases on pillars for no immediately clear reason. Each one of them was completely empty as if some fired and painted clay should have been an attraction in and of itself, but they were also stored in the most precarious manner possible as if they were completely worthless. Every beast in the forest knew that precious resources should be guarded or buried, not left on display for anyone else to take or break. Den shook his head. He would never understand the ways of the false empire.
                Den’s lack of understanding was clear to the palatial servants who came to greet him, when they observed the muddy prints left on their spotless floor by Den’s bare feet and his wolf’s paws. A man arriving with a dangerous animal wasn’t unusual when somebody was trying to impress his highness, but to do so without footwear or any regard for the poor mop girl was most unbecoming. Den’s toes clacked against polished marble with a richer sound than the paving outside, and he was silently directed by an over-dressed man towards the king’s audience chamber.
                With a nod of acknowledgement Den followed the man’s directions and emerged into the back of a small crowd. Whispering conspiratorially to one another the assembled throng of people faced into the room ahead, listening to the plight of someone or other whom Den was unable to see.
                “Move aside, please.” Den said, employing his best court manners. There was no response and no break in the muttered gossiping. “I said move aside, please.” He repeated, this time eliciting a disapproving shush from a few people ahead of him, but nothing more.
                “Wolf? Would you please ask these people to move?” Den commanded. Squaring his feet and arching his back, the wolf seemed to double in size as it inhaled. Then, shaking with the release of breath, it unleashed something between a howl and a guttural, rasping roar which filled the atrium and echoed from the roof. Every corner of the palace felt the vibrating force of the wolf’s feral call, igniting an instinctual fear in each member of the assembled court. They stumbled over one another in their desperation to flee from but still face the source of the noise, collapsing like a row of fleshy dominoes to a chorus of panicked yelps and unveiling pairs of eyes which were wide and white with terror.
                “Thank you, wolf.” Den said as the cadence of the roar faded down, much more satisfied with the gap which was now open for him. A hushed silence fell as he strode through the parted crowd, the clacking of his oaken toes ringing through the audience chamber as he left progressively less muddy footprints behind himself. Feeling proud of itself the wolf pranced along at his side, lapping up the attention and reverence that all the court’s people were sending his way.
                As he emerged from the throng of people Den saw that he was at the rear of the chamber, and so had to continue his dramatic walk even farther. At the other end of the hall, sitting on a throne raised up on a set of marble stairs, was the new king of the false empire. He was taller than the old king, with harsher features and eyes that burrowed into Den even from the length of a hall away. Everything about him was straight lines and rigidity like an unyielding cliff face looming over the rest of the court, from his tight fitting and pressed doublet to his angular crown. Compared to Den’s heavy, slightly damp brown robes he was a testament to the variety of fashions which were available from plundering Mother Nature’s natural resources.
                Kneeling at the bottom of the stairs and watching Den approach was a young nobleman in a bright blue brocade tunic. In his hands he held a basket of broken ceramic pieces which, as the druid grew closer, were recognisable as fragments of a vase like the ones in the entryway. Den could have told them that something like this would happen, but they would never have listened anyway.
                Neither the nobleman nor the king said a word to Den as he closed the distance, but they were very different silences. One spoke of fear, the other of judgement. One was submissive and the other was unquestionable authority. One came from the floor and the other from a gilded throne raised several feet in the air to make the least subtle statement about status that a seating arrangement could.
                Den’s toes tapped the edge of the bottom stair and he came to a halt, facing up at the king. His wolf came to heel, a development which the young nobleman took as his cue to scurry backwards fearfully into the crowd. He took the collection of vase pieces with him.
                “King. I don’t know your name, but I know your plan to break the established covenant over the Falseoak Woodland and by my oaken toes I will not stand for it.” Den said bluntly, throwing the words out like bathwater complete with baby and housekeeper. “If you are a man of any integrity at all, call your loggers off and leave the word of your predecessor intact.”
                The king tilted his head almost imperceptibly to one side. His eyes didn’t waver from Den’s.
                “Hello to you too, Den Oakentoes.” He said. His voice was simultaneously soft and threatening, like treacle armed with a crossbow. “I have been expecting a visit.”
                “And I have been expecting our deal to be honoured. The trees of the Falseoak Woodland are under my protection, and the outer woods are yours to harvest. I even pay for the pleasure of seeing them ripped down by helping them to regrow for you. Greed is typical of you barbarians.” Den ranted, not necessarily winning the hearts and minds of those around him.
                A smile spread across the king’s face. It was the kind of smile that ordered executions and authorised war, not so much a display of happiness as a confession of feeling no guilt for wrongdoing. On some level, it might have been evidence that the king had dramatically misunderstood what a lot of body language and facial expressions were supposed to mean.
                “Your words are too kind, druid. But I know that this setting isn’t necessarily to your tastes and you might feel uncomfortable, which surely is why you see fit to come into my home and speak like this. Please, make your way through to the gardens and we shall speak there.” The king said, holding one hand towards a corridor leading from the audience chamber. Almost materialising from nowhere a group of palace guards appeared around Den to show him the way.
                With an indistinct grumble Den allowed himself to be led from the audience chamber, once again passing through the whispering crowds, and through the palace’s grand interior. Past ugly portraits of even uglier monarchs he was marched, each one complete with a placard attempting to vainly immortalise their name. Edward the Misguided had secured his immortality far better than any of these other wretched faces, but not necessarily in the way he’d intended. Perhaps this new king was seeking the same with his destruction of the woodland. Den would do all he could to ensure that King Harmon was forgotten.
                “Out there, druid.” One of the guards said, stopping next to an opening in the corridor wall. Beyond the doorway was daylight, greenery and everything that the cold stone lacked. Stone had its place in the world without a doubt, but enduring it in isolation wasn’t something to which Den was, or wanted to be, accustomed. As he stepped into the garden though, he couldn’t shake the sense that something wasn’t right. Looking around himself he saw that the greens were the wrong type of green, the trees grew in strange shapes with unfamiliar bark, and the flowers smelled unfamiliar. More than that, though, they were all so isolated and separated. Everything was sterile and controlled, strictly bound to its own plot, its prison, and disallowed from experiencing freedom or growth. This was as human as a garden could be made. The wolf was happy enough there though, and proceeded to claim several of the trees as its own.
                Den turned to face back into the palace and saw the king arrive, standing just inside the corridor. He still wore his glass smile.
                “How do you like my garden? More at home?” he asked. “I take pride in it, keeping something of nature about myself. These have been gathered from the far reaches of the empire and planted here for my pleasure, so you must realise that I appreciate the work that nature has done.”
                “If you betray our deal then you appreciate nothing but your own savagery, king. I will not stand by and watch the woodland be destroyed. So this is your last chance to call off the loggers. If your word is broken than mine shall be too, and I won’t hold back in throwing out those trespassers and vandals.” Den threatened.
                “You’re right. You won’t stand by and watch it happen. Malia?” The king replied, turning to someone hidden in the corridor. Stepping forward into the doorway came a woman dressed in robes which were a decadent parody of Den’s own. Her washed and oiled hair was plaited with fresh vines, her skin was cleaned and then deliberately smeared with thin mud, and she even wore boots; the worst example of druidic corruption that Den had ever seen. With a familiar flare of green in her eyes she looked at the trees either side of the doorway in the garden, and their branches burst forth with life. They creaked and groaned as they grew, weaving a solid wall of living wood where once there had been a route of escape.
                Den rushed forward but couldn’t outpace the growth. He struck stiff branches and was rebuffed by rapidly sprouting foliage, landing on the pristine turf and sinking in slightly.
                “What is the meaning of this?!” he bellowed, although in all honesty he could have worked the meaning out for himself if he’d tried.
                “I know better than to kill one of Mother Nature’s protectors, Oakentoes. But I also know better than to be pushed around by a hermit with no appreciation for the progress of humanity. King Harmon of the Eternal Empire won’t have his own resources held to ransom by the whims of one particularly disobedient subject.”
                “Betrayers, both of you! How far have you fallen from druidic law that you would help this monster?” Den shouted, this time addressing his rage at the woman known as Malia. “He plans to build a dam. He’ll drown the whole valley. No druid would let that happen!”
                “She’s aware, Oakentoes. It was her idea. Not all of your contemporaries are as obsessed with poverty and suffering as you are. Enjoy your cell; it was the best we could think of for you.” King Harmon shouted back. Faintly Den could hear footsteps in the corridor.
                “You won’t hold me!” Den bellowed, summoning up his magic. He focused on the wooden wall and commanded it to separate for him, but it held fast. He could feel resistance like iron bands around the branches, unyielding to his attempts at breaking them.
                “These plants are loyal to me, Den. I gave them life and they listen to me above all else.” A voice that Den took to be Malia’s replied. “Shockingly enough we did consider the fact that you might try this.”
                “How can you live with yourself?”
                “Comfortably. I don’t have to sleep under hedgerows anymore.” Malia told him casually.
                “There’s nothing wrong with a hedge. If it’s good enough for the other beasts of Mother Nature then it’s good enough for us. You’d know that if you were worth your oaths. If you let that monster touch a single tree in Falseoak then I swear I will-”
                “Too late for that, old man. They started as soon as you left. I’ll bet they’ve made good headway in these last two days.”
                A void formed in Den’s stomach, like a particularly deft pickpocket had looted Den’s organs without him noticing. A lump built in his throat, and tears burned behind his eyes. It was an incredibly busy time for Den’s body, even before the white hot anger rose into his chest,
                “Murderers and deceivers the lot of you!” he wailed. The wolf picked up on the waves of intense emotion and started howling along sympathetically. Despite its best efforts, two voices in unison were no more convincing than Den’s alone had been.
                “You were outplayed, Oakentoes. Be grateful that the old king was weak enough to let you have extra time. Maybe you should think about that while you’re here.” Malia laughed, her voice starting to grow distant as she finished speaking.
                “I won’t be in here forever! And I never forget those who do me wrong!” Den shouted back, but there was no response. He was trapped and alone, except for a young and deeply emotionally confused wolf. Falseoak had fallen.
 
                Days passed in Den’s living prison, with the sterile, impenetrable life-force of the plants in the king’s garden pressing against him. Out of tenacity, stubbornness, or even just for want of anything else to do, Den had tried using his magic to force the woven wall open until deep into the first night, before collapsing in exhaustion underneath a foreign bush of some description whilst cradling the sycamore sprig he’d taken from Falseoak. The next day he’d searched the walled garden for any potential avenue of escape, but the trees were far shorter than the walls surrounding him and there were no doors or windows on the ground level. Once his energy had returned he tried his growth magic on the door again, and then the next day, and the day after that, but it always yielded the same amount of nothing. Every morning and evening someone unseen from a window high above would drop a package of food and water down for Den and his wolf, but it had been nearly a week before Den admitted that he was hungry enough to go through with eating their unnatural and overcomplicated foods. Had it come from anywhere else he would have been forced to admit that cakes and sweet pastries were, in fact, rather pleasant. But knowing that they were from his captor, directly or otherwise, made them sickening. He also decided that the pastry was too much like a shortcrust and not enough like a puff, even though he didn’t really know what that meant.
                Den couldn’t help wondering why the king was feeding him such rich foods. From what he knew of the empire’s prisons catering wasn’t a selling point, but then again the cells were usually subterranean rather than sculpted gardens so perhaps things were just handled differently in the palace. He wished that he could avoid wasting energy on wondering about that so that it could be spent on getting free, but deep down he knew that it was a distraction from mourning the loss of Falseoak. His small piece of sycamore sat safe and still, lying underneath Den’s sleeping bush as a shrine to his lost home and a reminder of his failure. Leaving the woodland unguarded with an enemy on its border had been foolhardy, a death sentence for the whole ecosystem except the sycamore fragment. Den allowed his magic to flow into the sprig to keep it alive, feeling like he owed it that much.
                Ruminations on this occupied Den’s thoughts for weeks. There were variations on the theme, blaming himself and then Malia, and then King Harmon, and then himself again, but it never got him any further. For a couple of days he tried blaming one of cart tracks he’d seen whilst leaving Badharbour, but that didn’t ever take root properly in his mind. Although Falseoak was gone, the sun kept rising and setting and his heart kept beating. He lost count of the days, and couldn’t even track the passage of the seasons by the flora, because they were all a mystery to him. In none of the countless days had anyone ever come to speak to him. Malia didn’t appear to check her prison, and King Harmon didn’t return to gloat. He was just left alone with the wolf, who was coping far better.
                Life in the wilds had apparently not been so kind to the wolf that he was concerned by his newfound containment. Every day he would spend hours walking in circuits around the garden panting happily to himself and wagging his tail, wearing a track into the earth but never seeming bored or distressed. He would have a daily hunt for the food package which fell from windows above, feast on the raw meat included for his wellbeing, and give a particularly prickly tree a good telling off when he tried yet again to lick it. Having grown accustomed to the natural connection to Den, he didn’t worry so much about leaving his side. After all, he couldn’t get much further than a few dozen metres away whatever happened.
                As their imprisonment stretched on the wolf continued to grow to maturity and Den continued to dwell on his immaturity. He started spending whole days lying on his back in the grass, no matter what the weather threw his way, and wallowed in the numb sensation of the garden’s life. All that occupied his mind was eating, sleeping, and remembering the depth of his mistakes. Until that is, something else started to whisper through.
                Den knew the feeling of Falseoak better than he knew his own body, and the respective levels of care he put into both of those things certainly reflected that. It was just one other reason why he found it such a shock that he was alive and the woodland wasn’t. But lying on the floor of his garden prison he started to feel it again for the first time since he’d walked away. At first he mistook it for a vivid memory, his mind playing cruel tricks on him to pass the time. But over the course of the next few days it grew stronger and more focused.
                Muddling through his malaise, like trying to stare through a window fogged with mayonnaise, Den eventually managed to connect the dots and leaned down to his sycamore twig. The leaves had grown fuller, new buds were appearing, and it was standing rigidly in the ground of its own accord. As if he’d never seen a new sapling before, which was about as far from the truth as a situation could get, Den pressed is face into the sycamore and pored over every detail.
                The young wolf picked up on Den’s curiosity and hurried over. As far as he could tell from the waves of empathy between himself and the druid there was a new cub in the pack, and so his protective instincts came up to the fore. Pushing his face alongside Den’s he sniffed at the sycamore sprig and confirmed to himself that it smelled a lot like the druid. He couldn’t really see the family resemblance, though. He cocked his head to the side upon noticing that Den’s legs weren’t firmly rooted into the ground like the cub’s were. He cocked it a little further because Den’s foliage was thick, brown and limp rather than firm and green. By the time he determined Den’s bark to be softer, warmer and squashier than the cub’s, the wolf’s head was basically upside-down and it was quite a struggle to stay standing.
                From the corner of Den’s eye he could see the wolf attempting to rotate in mid-air and made a mental note to check on its health later. For the moment the sycamore required all of his efforts. It was the last remnant of his forest, and its life was the only thing he could feel a connection to in this lobotomised garden, other than the wolf. His duty as protector wasn’t done, and there was hope yet.
                Apologising as he went despite the dull lack of connection, Den snapped leaves and twigs from the sleeping bush to remove its shade from the sycamore. From those leaves he fashioned a series of small bowls to gather rain and morning dew to water his charge, and he let the wolf know in no uncertain terms that this new tree was not to be marked as his territory.
                In all of his years as a druid Den had never known human pastry to be a plant food of any merit, not least of all because it was rarely mulched into the soil. But in his prison garden he became an intermediary to transform sweet pastries into plant life, pouring all of his energy into making the sycamore strong. Under the surface of the garden he spurred the tree’s roots to grow larger, wider, and deeper each day, adding more and more of them until it was a subterranean weave that covered the whole garden.
                At night the wolf patrolled around the tree to keep it safe from any threat which might appear, and Den rested and planned, lying under the remnants of his sleeping bush and keeping himself close to the sycamore. At long last he had power here. And if he had learned anything at all from King Harmon and his false empire, it was that power was to be abused until you had your own way.
                More carefully than he had ever grown a tree before Den poured his magic into the sycamore. He took it slowly, ring by ring, mending galls before they could form and straightening any bends that tried to appear. Branches only started where Den wanted them to, buds and leaves were placed deliberately, and even the fissures in its new bark were tightly controlled. Den toyed with the idea of fissuring his name into the trunk, but decided against it; that was exactly the kind of hubris that King Harmon would have displayed. Every day the sleeping bush was further sacrificed for the good of the tree as it expanded, crowding out root space, light and even the ground from which the bush sprouted. Den forged himself a new canopy of sycamore under which to sleep, and included an extra outcrop for the wolf.
                After two weeks of this careful gardening, Den could feel that the sycamore was strong enough to become the true seat of power in this palace. After gorging himself on the day’s sweet pastries, he sat upon a purpose built bough-seat, pulled the wolf onto his lap, and reached out through the tree to its roots. Like a hundred thousand fingers spreading out in an impossibly complicated attempt at shadow puppetry, Den could feel the network throughout the garden. He was aware of the walls, and of the water table below. He was aware of where the imported top soil merged with the natural earth below. But most of all he was aware of where the sycamore’s roots met those of the other plants in the garden. Creeping among them, he plaited, wove and tangled them all together until everything was united in a muddy, knitted whole. And then he pulled.
                Like a parasite Den used the sycamore’s roots to pull on the life of the other plants in the garden, draining them of their energy and pouring it into fresh growth. For all their lush greenery, the other plants didn’t even resist, or perhaps Malia didn’t resist. Den couldn’t tell whether there was anything left of the lobotomised flora at all, or if the fallen druid was the only life present. Either way, it was a mercy killing and he hoped that Malia would be going down with her garden.
                Exotic flowers shrivelled and started to collapse, while the foreign trees dropped their leaves and turned grey. Dense foliage disappeared in the coming of a sudden, permanent winter, burying the dying grass under a blanket of detritus. In every corner the colour started to drain and decay, but the sycamore glowed with the flux of life. Like a spider’s web branches shot out from the trunk and anchored the sycamore to the palace on every side, growing through the mortar and up along the walls. Glass shattered and stones were ripped free as thick shoots of wood punched through windows and wrapped into corridors of the palace. They slithered across flagstones and tore up carpets, investigating rooms and grasping on to every surface they could.
                All the while, the trunk extended upwards and carried Den with it. He rose above the prison cell and watched Malia’s monstrosity die beneath him as he breathed the air of freedom once again. Given that his cell was an outdoor one anyway the air didn’t taste any different, but he made the symbolic effort regardless.
                Once level with the roof, Den grew a branch out like a curving walkway. It wound over the tiles and down the outside of the palace, startling many of the servants and palace guards who were more accustomed to not seeing sudden wooden paths appear. When Den walked out along it, carrying a fully grown grey wolf in his arms like a deeply confused baby, they didn’t get any more comfortable with what they were seeing.
                From his elevated bridge Den looked out over the Siege’s Bane with a newfound disgust. He’d hated it enough before his incarceration, but now he wouldn’t even have acknowledged it if it asked him to pass the sugar. At the very least, he consoled himself, it had proved as poor at keeping people from breaking out as it was at keeping people from breaking in. Striding down his sycamore bridge he scowled at every thatched rooftop, every crude stone building, and every lesser noble with their tasteless leather boots and uneven makeup. They were all part of the same beast which had conspired to take away the Falseoak Woodland. He couldn’t wait to get out of the stone confines of the city, but where was there to go? He wanted to check whether Malia had been lying about Falseoak’s prompt destruction, but the king would look there for him first of all. Maybe Harmon wouldn’t care, now that his work had been done, but if the king was expecting it then Den wanted him to be wrong. There was nothing left for him at Falseoak anyway; if he wanted to see the last vestiges of his home, there was only one place to go.
                Den grabbed a fistful of sycamore twigs from the walkway as he approached the ground outside the palace walls. On solid stone once again he turned back to his sycamore, his saviour, and patted it warmly on the bark. From behind the walls he could hear the carnage as it continued to grow and split the palace apart. Falseoak’s revenge was certainly going to be memorable. Den wished he could hang around to watch the king’s downfall, but he had a long walk ahead of him; the River Shemm was a day’s walk away from Siege’s Bane, and it would pay to have some distance between himself and the king’s men.
                At a full sprint, his oaken toes clicking against the cobbles and the wolf’s claws joining the rhythm, Den rushed through the streets of Siege’s Bane. His lupine companion’s excited howling and yelping ensured that he always had plenty of space from the locals, and even the guards at the gate recoiled rather than intercepting him. By the time the shouts to intercept him had reached them he was long gone, but their hearts didn’t break too badly.
                Immediately upon leaving the city the druid and his wolf abandoned the road, instead crossing over farmland and meadow until they were well away from the city. Den gulped a hungry lungful of the fresh, open air, carrying the smells of familiar grasses and bushes which soothed his panicking soul. Due to poor planning on the druid’s part, however, the gulp of air also contained the strong smell of animal leavings, which was less comforting but equally well known.
                Exhausted though he was from growing the mightiest sycamore the false empire would ever know, Den still channelled his energy into the grass below his rapidly dashing feet, causing it to spring back up and mask his tracks. It wasn’t much, but he hoped that it would be all it would take for the town guard, already fairly distracted by their own dancing, to lose his trail.
                Behind a thick row of trees, several minutes of mad running away from Siege’s Bane, Den collapsed to the ground, panting heavily and sweating underneath his heavy brown robes. He’d not seen or heard any pursuers since escaping the city walls, and if keeping his freedom meant a moment’s more running then he was no longer sure he wanted it. The wolf too came to a stop, rolling onto its back happily. It hoped there would be more running soon, despite the intense reluctance to move it was picking up on from Den.
                They had come to rest in a short-cropped field of wheat, having apparently just missed the harvest. In the shade of the trees they would be hidden from anyone peering across from the distant farmhouse, and no-one appeared to be working the fields for the time being. Seeing all the stalks in their neat, even rows reminded him of the sterility of his garden prison. These people sought to map all the bits of nature they liked onto patterns of their own making, and somehow deny the rest its part to play. Den would never understand it, but he also never tried so that wasn’t terribly surprising.
                “We can’t stay here for long.” Den told the wolf, for all the good it would do. “But for once it’s me being hunted, not you. Go back to your pack, wolf. You’re free. You’ve been shackled to my side for long enough.”
                The wolf span in a few circles, chasing its tail, then looked back up at Den with hopeful, eager eyes. Every animal had its own message to convey and its own way of communicating it. Den had long since concluded that this wolf’s message was always going to be along the lines of ‘I do not grasp on the situation at hand’.
                “I’m a terrible hunter and an even worse alpha. You’re better off finding your own kind again.” Den tried again. The wolf rolled over and the druid sighed. “Fine. You’re welcome to stay with me too.” He pushed himself back up to standing and surveyed the sky. The sun still had some way to go before setting, and Den still had some way to go before reaching the Triggo’s Pass, the reported site of King Harmon’s blighted dam. At a tired walk he set off again, dragging his feet between rows of wheat stubble in a small act of defiance against the false empire’s agriculture.
 
                It was late the following morning that the landscape started to evolve from mostly flat farmland to the increasingly steep hills of the Tranquillines. Edward the Misguided hadn’t done quite such a bad job of naming that particular range of hills, but it had come rather late into his reign so either practice or dumb luck meant that he had to get it right sometime. Rumours persisted that the king’s advisors had only been humouring him in the later years of his exploration and geographical naming, accepting his suggestions and then overruling his decisions whenever the maps were printed and signs were made. This interpretation was considered to be both likely and sensible in the opinions of most historians. Debates raged for generations after King Edward’s reign as to why he was allowed to take such an active role in cartography for so long, but the only conclusion ever accepted by a majority was the existence of an undocumented gambling ring which became rich and powerful by running books on how far off the mark their ruler could be. The potential earnings of such a venture were more than sufficient to have the perpetrators’ names erased from the history books.
                Although Den had rarely ventured deep into the Tranquillines and only visited the River Shemm infrequently, he had an instinctive idea of where to head. The pulse of the land spoke to him and told him where its waters of life flowed, plus he’d seen a few maps during his visits to the Badharbour and other towns nearby to the Falseoak Woodland, so they helped too.
                Up and down grassy slopes Den and his wolf trudged, picking a path around patchy shrubs and rocky outcrops. Occasionally the wolf would catch a scent and disappear, returning a few minutes later with a rabbit or small deer in its jaws to share with the scraggly druid. Den didn’t feel much like eating though, and eventually the wolf’s bulging gut slowed it down enough to stay by the druid’s side.
                At the base of a particularly green and vibrant hill Den started to hear the calls of water birds. He was on the far side of one of the hills which bounded Triggo’s Pass; the end of his journey from Siege’s Bane and the site of King Harmon’s great desecration. Staring up the slope Den knew that he would never be able to forget what he was about to see, but that was also true of many things which weren’t the result of his failures as a woodland protector. The Dancing Blades, for example, were something he didn’t think he’d be capable of forgetting in a hurry, despite his desires to the contrary. Forcing himself onwards Den started to climb, the ankle-high grass brushing at his legs invasively. Into the soft earth Den’s oaken toes sank, clawing out small chunks of mud and turning up worms and bugs for nearby birds to feast upon. A few times he stopped to watch them feed, but he knew that it was only a stalling tactic. He would have to finish his climb eventually.
                Den finally crested the rise with bated breath, closing his eyes as he reached the top in one final, pointless act of defiance. In his mind he had formed a hundred different mental images of what he might see, countless variations on a theme of a ravaged landscape, but even his fearful imagination couldn’t prepare him for what he saw. The valley was no more. It had been drowned by King Harmon, its deep green beauty choked and rotted by the waters of the same River Shemm which had carved it out over countless eons. Across the surface of the water, floating limp, were the bodies of animals not fast enough to escape the rising tide and plants uprooted by the flood. Decaying logs from standing deadwood and the trees which had lined the valley bobbed along in the gentle current, their branches disappearing beneath the murky, silt-stained water. The life of the valley had been stripped away.
                Worse than the drowning of the valley, though, was the manner in which it had happened. Knowing that he would hate what he saw but looking regardless, Den turned his gaze downstream. Even from this side, mostly hidden by the water, the dam looked enormous. A wall of wood stood above the new lake and held it back from where nature intended it to flow. King Harmon had undone the work of millennia, using the cadavers of a murdered forest.
                Den Oakentoes walked along the ridge, approaching his failure; the remains of his ravaged home. His wolf companion didn’t know how to cope with the bittersweet and melancholic emotions flooding from the druid; they required a level of nuance that went beyond his current life experiences. Desperate to at least to try to express himself, he ran in circles around Den’s feet, dashed to the water’s edge, sniffed it, and then ran back to repeat the cycle. Every now and again the wolf would lose his footing and slip into the murky lake water, and so before too long it had acquired a whole new brand of interesting and offensive scent.
                Decay was a natural smell to have around the forest. Boughs would fall in heavy storms and lie rotting on the forest floor with the help of fungi and insects. Plants and animals would contract diseases and expire where they fell. It was a critical process. But the reek of such a vast quantity of material rotting under a lake was something altogether more heart-breaking and overpowering. Den Oakentoes had never presumed to wash any wild animal before, but in the case of this wolf and this smell he was willing to make an exception, as soon as they found some clean water.
                Aside from lupine bathing, Den didn’t know what he planned to do when he arrived at the dam. His whole focus had been on reuniting himself with the remains of Falseoak, but then what? Would he apologise to timbers? Would he unleash bloody vengeance on construction workers? Would he try to break it apart and drown a whole new portion of the landscape in a flash flood? There didn’t seem to be any good answers. Several cathartic, vengeance fuelled answers, but no good ones.
                Larger and more clearly the dam loomed as Den drew closer, as was the way of all things when approached from a distance. Where it had been a single glistening brown wall from afar Den now started to discern the individual logs and timbers which had been killed and stolen by King Harmon’s loggers. A clearly as telling cattle from a small mushroom, Den could distinguish each type of tree which had been desecrated to form this monumental horror. It was chimaera of hardwood and softwood which would swell, crack and bend differently, all crammed together however it would fit. Far from an architectural wonder like the king’s palace, this was a rushed display of force and power which the beavers of any stream would put to shame. Feeling that spark of inspiration in his mind Den tried to feel for any beavers in the surrounding area but came up with nothing.
                Tears welled in Den’s eyes, as if the place needed any more moisture, as he grew ever closer to the dam. So hurried and savage had the loggers been that there were even narrow saplings wedged between the thicker logs and timbers, and many of the greater trunks bore dried buds or brown leaves. They had been in the prime of their life, but now they were a tool of disaster. Den pushed his hand into the pocket of his robe and felt the sycamore twigs he’d torn away after his prison break. Some part of him felt that this sycamore ought to be reunited with its brethren to lay in state, and whether that was just an excuse to keep going or a genuine desire, he took it into his heart and kept approaching in the setting sunlight.
                A few hundred yards away, in the shade of a rocky protrusion from the hillside, Den came to a stop. All around the edge of the dam, which was resting on a wide plateau carved into the sloped side of Triggo’s Pass, were construction workers and people of the false empire. Where the peasants of the empire walked the guards of the king would surely follow.
                “The sun will set soon, wolf. We should wait here until dark and try to sneak closer. I would prefer this memorial to be made without a background of shouted threats and violence.” Den told the wolf, sinking to the ground against the stone. Whether or not he understood the reasoning, the wolf certainly understood what was being expected of him, and he curled up at Den’s feet for a snooze.
                Long after dusk Den Oakentoes hunkered against his rocky wall, staring at the sycamore cuttings in his hand even when they were nothing more than silhouettes against a dark hillside. His imagination had been doing most of the work all along, so a lack of visual cues didn’t really hamper him too much. He thought of how grand the original sycamore had been. He thought of how he should have appreciated it one last time, and how he should have stayed and fought for his forest rather than playing the false empire’s games of idle words and transient promises. The sycamore had been his saviour, granting him life despite its own death. The thought lingered with Den until he finally stood up.
                “Wolf. I think we can sneak up there now. If there’s any danger I want you to run away, alright?” Den instructed the wolf, looking directly into his eyes and receiving a confused growl by way of response. “I mean it, don’t get yourself run through by a hunter’s spear or stuck with an arrow by these barbarians. There’s nothing for you here.”
                The wolf dipped his head and Den took it for agreement, more out of a desire to get moving than anything else. Keeping low against the hillside Den crept closer to the dam. Illuminated in small yellow patches by burning torches the dam was reflected from the reservoir’s surface, looking down at its handiwork without showing any visible remorse. Had the king employed a sculptor them maybe the dam would have been more expressive, but Den would not have taken kindly to it. Stoicism from the dam was for the best.
                In the torchlight Den could see that the guards were still in their positions. Either the king was anticipating that Den was seeking some kind of revenge or he was paranoid about another empire destroying his new achievement; the druid didn’t know which and didn’t much care. Either way they were an obstruction to him. Slower than before he continued onwards, keeping an eye on the guards in their flickering firelight. He channelled all the connection he could to the grass for it to stay silent and move any twigs or noisy debris out of his way and willed any wildlife to make noises in the opposite direction. Silently the wolf padded alongside him, licking its teeth in anticipation of excitement to come.
                Practically crawling along the ground, Den approached the edge of the torchlight, stopping shy of where he thought it would start to show his face. Flattening himself against the grass he listened as footsteps approached up the hill from the far side of the dam.
                “Got your food, sirs.” Came a tired voice. Emerging with a small flaming torch in one hand and a paper parcel in the other was a thin, middle-aged man. A cloak was draped over one arm, evidently surplus to requirements when climbing up to the dam from wherever their camp was.
                “Give it here then.” Said one of the two guards. His torch moved as he reached out with his other hand, illuminating the small table and stools on their carved plateau. Snatching the parcel from the messenger, the two guards left their post and took seats at the small table to eat what appeared to be some simultaneously soggy and stale bread.
                Seizing his chance while the guards were distracted, Den crawled forwards through the grass to approach the edge of dam. He could feel the warm breath of the wolf on his neck as it silently stalked beside him, coming along for the ride for reasons that it alone knew. The druid pressed himself against the edge of the dam where he thought he was still concealed. It transpired, however, that he wasn’t.
                With a start the peasant who had brought up the food parcel caught Den's eye. The guards were still busy concentrating on their low quality baked goods, and were paying no mind to their courier. Frantically as he dared, Den held one hand up to his mouth and waved the other from side to side, trying to communicate that the man should, under no circumstances, draw attention his presence. That worked about as well as Den’s efforts to explain complex emotions to a wolf.
                "Who's that?" The peasant shouted, pointing directly at the druid.
                "Oh you utter arse!" Den bellowed as the guards leapt to their feet spears in hand.
                “It’s the insane wood witch that the King warned us about! Raise the alarm!” one of the guards bellowed, dashing forwards blade first. He made it barely three steps before a mass of excitable fur and hungry teeth barrelled into his chest and sent him over backwards. Den nearly shouted for the wolf to stop, but couldn’t bring himself to interfere with the animal’s better instincts. With a preternatural awareness the beast lashed out for the second guard without so much as looking, ripping a hand away from its arm and snarling with the thrill of the hunt.
                Leaving the wolf to have his fun savaging worthless peons of the false empire, Den started to climb the rough timbers and logs of the dam. Wet from drizzle and presumed splashing from the reservoir the wood was slick to the touch and resistant to Den’s attempts to find purchase, but a lifetime spent inside a woodland where rain was the norm had prepared Den for this. Taking all the time he dared he placed one hand over the other, searched for finger-holds, and pushed himself ever upwards. With every new tree he touched, he felt the faded life it used to possess. Below him were the screams of men who had experienced a rapid reversal of the power pyramid, turning from apex predator to lunch in one fell swoop. It was a sound that Den had relished when it came from hunters in the Falseoak Woodland at the claws of a bear. Hearing it now was ecstasy. The wolf had certainly earned its keep.
                The top of the dam was welcome when it arrived. Wide enough for six people to walk abreast it was a reminder both of how vast the Falseoak Woodland had been and how much of a crime had been committed against it. Realistically it was also an indication of how poor the build quality of this dam must have been to have completed constructed in such a short space of time.
                His oaken toes tapping on the wooden surface, Den made his way purposefully to the centre, overlooking a huge, black lake on one side and a sheer drop on the other. There was an irony to be found somewhere about many of these trees being taller now that they were felled than they ever would have been whilst alive, but Den wasn’t a fan of it. Better a short tree living free than a corpse strapped to other corpses and used to create a reservoir, as they saying among humans presumably went.
                Den crouched down and took one of the sycamore twigs from his robe. He twirled it in his fingers, watching the leaves spin this way and that, and then placed it in the gap between two strips of ash, saying a silent prayer in his head to Mother Nature. A beacon of green life between dying buds, the twig was a bittersweet reminder of what these trees could have been.
                On the hillsides to either side of the dam Den could see more torches lighting up and heading his way. Apparently the wolf had been having so much fun with those guards that it hadn’t prevented the alarm being raised. Den didn’t blame him. He himself hadn’t expected this kind of effort from King Harmon. He could only assume that his antics in the palace had earned the royal ire, and that was a suitable comfort for his unpleasant new situation.
                Looking back down at the sycamore twig, he thought about the strength that such a small thing had given him back in the prison. It was the cliché about small acorns and mighty oaks that the false empire liked to tote on one hand, even when destroying the forest on the other. But it got Den to thinking. From the looks of the approaching forces, he was doomed. He could wait here on the dam, take plunge into the stinking reservoir behind, leap to his death ahead, or try to fight his way through a whole army, but all of those would end the same way. Alternatively, though, he could learn a lesson from the mighty sycamore and do his duty as a protector of the forest.
                Breathing a deep lungful of the cut-wood smell from the dam and the rotting plant smell from the reservoir behind him, Den once again concentrated his magical energy on a sycamore twig. There was no time for planning or care this time. He felt the life of the leaves and drew on it, using it to connect himself to whatever life or remnant spirit was left in the stack of cadavers below him. It was quiet, like the whisper of a ghost who was trying not to wake a baby, but it was definitely still there. King Harmon’s expedience might have been his downfall.
                Green light burned in Den’s eyes and burst from his fingertips. It seeped from his mouth and started to sweat from every pore in his body. Even his dreadlocked hair, an ecosystem of its own, glowed with the primal magic of Mother Nature.
                The king's men would be upon him and his new tree in minutes; there were no days to spare to grow it strong like his prison tree, and there was nowhere from which to steal energy but himself. Pushing hard, he forced roots from the twig and sent them burrowing into the timbers. With every one Den’s connection to the dam grew deeper and he became increasingly aware of each individual timber and log. As they started to wake back into life, Den commanded them to take root into their neighbours, and their neighbours’ neighbours, until he was standing at the top of a single connected entity. He was at one with the Falseoak Woodland once more, and he vowed that they would never be separated again.
                Infused with life, the dam started to creak and groan. The logs and timbers which had lain still and dead next to one another started to grow anew, fusing bark together and sending feeling twigs and branches among one another like a huge wooden tapestry. Foliage started to return to the ravaged logs, jetting along the dam like an expanding cloud of green, ready to drink whatever life the sunlight could provide when dawn broke. The sides of the dam, which had been roughly cut logs and nailed bars moments before, suddenly burst into a net of roots, burrowing into the ground and taking a grip on the earth. They threaded themselves in and out of the ground like a dolphin leaping in and out of the sea, spraying dirt and rock into the approaching guards and sending them reeling back down the slopes. In the blackness vast lily pads spread out from the back of the dam, casting even deeper shadows beneath the reservoir’s surface and reeds snaked out of the dam’s roots, beginning to populate the water’s edge like an inefficient hairbrush. All around the dam of murdered trees, life started to return.
                All night the hillsides around Triggo’s Pass boiled and shook with the furious growth of the dam, sending landslides of displaced earth down into the camps of the construction workers and guard battalions while the green glow at its peak grew gradually dimmer. It was remarkably difficult to get to sleep when the ground itself was shaking, and falling upon them, but many brave souls among the construction crew soldiered on and tried regardless.
                By the light of the new dawn, however, the terrifying energies of the dam finally died down, and they found that the day’s work had been stolen away from them. Brushing off the rubble of the night, the gathered construction crew gazed up at the dam in wonder. Where there had been a wall of crudely sawn logs and timbers the day before, there was now something utterly unbelievable. From the ruins of the Falseoak Woodland a single living wall of wood, comprising ash, elm, elder, hornbeam beech, and more besides had been born; The Damwood Vertical Forest. Great banks of leaves billowed from the sides and cast long shadows over the River Shemm far below. Roots made natural stairs which corrugated the slopes of Triggo’s pass, and at the top, dead centre was a single vast sycamore, rising like a defiant fist to the sky. And at the base of the tree, unseen by the construction crews and guards of the false empire and unassuming, was a set of oaken toes.
 
                By the light of the next moon, a set of feet traced a path across the top of the dam, following a compulsion that they still couldn’t quite grasp.  It led them out to the centre of the span, and up to a set of ten small lumps of oak, partially fused into the wood at the base of a great sycamore. They smelled comfortingly familiar. With a gentle bite and pull, one of the oak lumps came free and toppled into a mouth still caked in the dried blood of the previous night’s game. The wolf rolled it over and felt the shape. It tasted like a strong instinct to travel somewhere, which was something that the wolf wasn’t traditionally accustomed to tasting at all but somehow didn’t struggle to comprehend.
                For the whole night it ran, up and down hillsides and across open meadows, until it came upon a clearing of countless tree stumps, just outside the town of Badharbour. Picking a slower path among the debris, the wolf sniffed at the ground and walked ever deeper among the coppice stools, taking in the unique smells of every one and knowing that they were slightly different to what it held between its jaws.
                Finally, where the deep heartwood once stood tall, the wolf stopped. It felt an unspoken desire ring out and fill its mind. Giving in to the confusing but kind demand, it dropped the toe at the stump where a dense pine tree once stood as a shelter, and collapsed for a rest long overdue.
                In the new dawn’s light the wolf found itself at the base of a tree which had grown impossibly quickly among the stumps. The False Falseoak, as it came to be known, stood tall and proud, bearing a bountiful crop of acorns which were each shaped suspiciously like a human toe.