It is a little-known fact – mainly because everyone who tried to document it was eaten by metaphor – that all forests have opinions.
Most of them are quite vague opinions, admittedly, along the lines of “Sun good, fire bad” or “This squirrel is mine.” But there are some woods that are old enough, twisted enough, and magically questionable enough to have very firm opinions indeed. Chief among these: that trespassers make excellent compost.
The Binding Woods, for example, did not simply dislike visitors. It actively rescheduled them.
This was unfortunate for Olivir, who wasn’t even there to trespass. He was there on a kind of academic field trip, if academic field trips also came with cloaks that itched in all the wrong places, a talking wolf (possibly hallucinated), and instructions from the Wardens so vague they may as well have been poetry.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” they’d said.
Olivir had seen it. It looked like a tree that had grown backwards through time, or perhaps like several trees that had become too entangled to sort out, rather like the time the Academy’s divination tutor had tried to separate his robes from the tapestry of Fate. Either way, it definitely wasn’t on the map.
But then, maps were for places that wanted to be found.
He peered through the branches. The air shimmered the way heat does off a road – or like reality had been ironed too vigorously and left a crease. The wolf, who had been following him for reasons unknown (and possibly unknowable), gave a noise halfway between a yawn and a dire warning.
“That’s the place,” it said, in a voice like gravel in a sock drawer.
“You’re talking now?” Olivir blinked.
“I’ve always been talking. You’re just finally listening. Typical human – hear one bone riddle and suddenly you’re attuned to the spirit realms.”
Olivir rubbed his temples. “Right. Good. Excellent. Just what I needed. A sarcastic cryptid as a spiritual guide.”
He looked again at the shimmering forest edge.
“You’re sure I need to go in there?”
The wolf sat back on its haunches. “Look, if this were a safe story, there’d be a gate and a friendly sign. Something tasteful, with maybe a helpful gnome. As it stands, there’s this…” It waved a paw vaguely toward the swirling magical nonsense. “…and the distinct possibility of transformative trauma. So yes, go in.”
Olivir sighed. Somewhere behind him, a branch creaked ominously, as if the forest were checking its cutlery.
“Well,” he muttered, “if I die, I hope I at least get an ironic footnote.”
And with that, he stepped through the crease in the world, cloak snagging on a twig that definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago and absolutely had opinions about his fashion choices.