The Dryad's Folly

Tales from the Woldwood - Story 22

Consider an object of impeccable purpose. No malice in its grain. No hunger that can be seen. Only a talent for responding to need with speed and certainty, and a patience that allows it to wait until its bearer forgets the difference between use and enslavement.

My name is Wertilish, and I had lived in the Yewdeep long enough that both roots and residents knew me well. They knew my tread, my pause, my beauty and the way I listened. In the shallow hours when the sap-light ran dim, and the air grew a little colder, I walked the main ways first. Just because it was sensible, and because if something were going to give, it would do so when the Yewdeep was still settling back into itself.

I carried a staff in my right hand as I moved. It was not a banner or rod of ceremony. It was crafted from an aged dark wood and carried a headpiece carved into an eagle clutching a large amber gem in its talons. When I held it, I felt accompanied by a companion.

That morning, the corridor I chose ran above a chamber used for stores and gatherings. The ceiling above was thick with reinforcement, a load-bearing arch that had held through the flexing and slow pressures of the place. A young rootkin stood nearby, busying itself with a basket of dried moss. It had the pale wrists of new growth and the earnest eyes of one not yet used to the Yewdeep’s indifference.

“Wertilish. Early,” it said.

“No, no, little one, I am on time,” I replied.

It looked at the staff. “Root-wall. Sound,” it said.

“The deep groans,” I said, keeping my tone calm because I could sense its alarm. “Show me.”

It led me to a place where the sap-light ran in a thin line along the join. I crouched, pressed my palm against the root-floor, and let my own sense open first. The structure responded to me with the slow, wordless language of strain.

“Brace. Today,” the rootkin said quickly, eager to be useful.

“We will,” I said, and I meant it.

I could have gone to fetch resin strips and binding cord, or called the older hands or done it the slow way and trusted that it would hold until the work was finished. But the area flexed, and so slightly that mortals would have missed it. I always sensed the moment before collapse, when a structure chooses whether to keep faith with what it has been asked to bear.

The rootkin interrupted my pause. “Wertilish. Danger.”

My fingers gripped the staff, and it warmed in my palm with an intimate readiness, recognising my sudden fear. I rapped its butt to the floor, and the gem glowed. The passage responded. The weakness tightened in a firm correction, and the root-wall steadied. The sap-light’s fluttering ceased, and the rootkin cheered and hugged me with impressive strength.

“I still don’t think the rootkin should carry heavy loads beneath it until it has been braced properly,” she said and pressed her palm against it. “This is holding, but it’s not healed.” It nodded, happy to be given something practical to do.

We walked on a little further, and when we reached a place where frost had gathered in a shallow sheen along the wall, I caught my own reflection in it. The ice was not a mirror, not truly, but it held enough of my outline to show what my skin already knew. A pale hollow had formed along my cheekbone where none had been before. The green sheen that always sat in my hair like leaf-shadow looked duller at the ends. I stared until the rootkin stopped and looked back, expecting me to follow.

“Wertilish. Hurt,” it stated, too honest to tell it any other way.

“It is nothing,” I said, and walked on. I told myself it was the cold and that I was a little fatigued, but ultimately that I was being foolish for thinking anything of it. The next time I used the staff, I did not need an ice-sheen to tell me the truth.

Three days later, a section of root-work in the lower paths began to sag where the Yewdeep had been thawing and refreezing in small, cruel cycles. Rootkin moved through those corridors all day, carrying supplies, bringing water, dragging the contents from one chamber to another. The place was ordinary enough that people stopped paying attention to it, which is when such structures can become dangerous. I came upon it at the moment it clearly moved. There were two rootkin beneath it, both of them young enough to possess neither fear nor caution. They were chuckling as they walked, one of them balancing a basket on its shoulder, the other causing the amusement. The root-walls suddenly flexed, but I was too far away to reach them, seeing the danger arrive with a knife-thin line

I was drawn forward by an urgent pull from the staff. I struck it to the floor, and it responded with eager speed as the gem sent its spell outward. The sag and the fault sealed. The two rootkin looked up, startled, then looked at me, wondering how I had conjured safety from the air.

One of them said, “Rootkin. Saved.” I should have felt relief, but I actually felt that I had not chosen the moment of action with the care I should have. The staff had moved with me and through me. It had been waiting for the precise kind of need that made refusal feel impossible.

I crouched and hugged the pair of them. “Go,” I said. “And do not pass beneath that span until it has been braced properly.” They obeyed, still smiling with the simple gratitude of those who have not yet learned that help can have a shadow.

I turned aside into a narrower passage where the sap-lights ran weaker, and no one would see me. My fingers went to my cheekbone again, and the hollow was deeper. It was not enough to make me ugly. It was not even enough to make me less beautiful to someone who did not know the exact balance of my face. But I knew. We Dryads are shaped more by our own senses, and beauty is not just decoration to us. It is proof of us belonging to our kind.

The staff rested in my grip with perfect stillness, and yet the warmth in it did not fade. It made me think that it might be learning my habits and beginning to move before being told.

That night, I left it in my quarters and went to an older rootkin known as The Root-Singer. “Learn. Quick,” it said. “Answers. Wrong.”

“But the movements,” I said.

“Cannot. Stop.”

“I have just been looking for a way to keep them safe,” I said, meaning the young ones, the careless ones, the ones who trusted walls that had no obligation to hold.

It looked at me for a while. “Your. Cost?”

“Something that belongs to me,” I said

It nodded, expecting my answer. “Learn. Mending,” it said. “Not. Force”

I sat with it for hours, listening to its old patterns of persuasion. It was hard, and it required attention, but it did not give me the satisfaction of instant correction. I would have continued that way, withdrawing from the staff, if the Yewdeep had not decided to test the limits of my resolve.

The day the rootkin died began with small flaws. Sap-lights flickered where they should have been steady. The corridors felt faintly out of step, although the Yewdeep was no less stable than usual. I accompanied the root-singer and two younger rootkin to the span above the chamber I had corrected just days before. It held well enough, but the walls around it were still uneasy. The staff’s correction had redirected the strain elsewhere, pushing it into places not prepared to bear it, although none were aware of it.

The root-singer set down his basket of resin strips. “We. Brace,” it said. “Not. Hurry.” The staff was not in my hand. I had slung it across my back, intending not to use it, and yet I had not dared leave it behind. That alone should have warned me how weak my refusal still sat. We began the work. Resin warmed, binding cord tightened, and the younger rootkin worked carefully, their movements guided by older hands.

Then the span flexed again.

This time, the movement was more violent, a sudden downward jolt that shook frost loose. One of the younger rootkin froze, cords in his hands. Another looked to me instinctively, for I was the person who had made miracles seem routine.

“Keep. Working,” the root-singer said.

I felt panic, and the staff at my back warmed. It wasn’t burning. It was reminding me.

“No,” I whispered to myself, to the wood, to whatever readiness lived in it.

The span flexed a second time, and a hairline peel formed along the edge of the root-wall above, not just cracking but separating in layers with a piercing sound like cloth tearing.

The root-singer gave orders. “Move. Back,” he commanded.

I could resist the urge no longer and reached for the staff. I told myself I was choosing and taking responsibility. The moment my fingers closed on the wood, the staff surged with warmth, and its gem glowed brighter than before. It had been waiting for the exact kind of fear that makes refusal feel like negligence. I plunged it to the floor, and the Yewdeep reacted. The span overhead stiffened, and the flex stopped.

Relief broke across the younger rootkin’s faces, but then the correction continued. The staff did not merely hold. It now reorganised. A tremor ran through the structure, reconfiguring it. The strain that had threatened collapse above was shoved sideways. The staff judged this to be weaker and tried to solve it. The root-platform at the edge of the hollow peeled again, more violently, and this time two rootkin at the boundary lost their footing in the same abrupt moment. They did not cry out. There was no time for that. Their hands scrabbled once against the roots, then they vanished into the dark below. I lunged forward, reaching out with my hand, but the staff moved first. A thick root-growth erupted from the floor between me and the hollow, surging suddenly upwards. It sealed the opening as if it had never existed. It closed so completely that no hand could slip through and no body could follow. The staff had chosen an outcome and made it final.

I slammed my palm against the new barrier and felt its implacable resistance. “Open,” I said, my voice shaking with panic. The barrier did not respond.

Behind me, the root-singer spoke. “Too. Far,” but a little of the calm in his voice had gone, replaced by the rawness of loss.

“I held it. I stopped the span.”

“Two. Taken,” it said. “Our. Children.”

I stared at the sealed barrier and understood that the staff had acted efficiently, selected a cost and paid it without hesitation because it did not value what they valued. It valued outcomes and solutions, not lives.

Nausea rose in my throat. I set the staff on the root-floor as if it were something poisonous and stepped away from it.

The root-singer instructed me. “Not. Touch,” it said.

“I won’t.” I looked at my hands and saw the cost in them. The skin along my knuckles looked drier, tight and faintly greyed. The hollow at my cheekbone felt suddenly obvious and no longer subtle. The dulling at the ends of my hair was no longer an imagined flaw. It was an exchange in progress, and I had been feeding it.

That night, I sat alone and forced myself to look at my reflection in a shallow bowl of water. I was still beautiful. The degradation was subtle, but that made it all the more cruel. It was not ruining me all at once. It was altering me in increments that made me feel I could endure, justify and ignore it. I decided that it ended there. Now. I would seek other magic.

But that could not bring the two lost rootkin back. Nothing could.

When Wryke came, I met him in a high hall where the sap-lights were dim. The root-singer stood with me. The staff had been sealed away, deep and tight, in a resin-bonded container of Wryke’s design.

Wryke looked down at me through glowing eyes. “You used it,” he said.

“I did.”

“And it took from us,” he replied.

“It took rootkin,” I said. My voice was wavering in pain now.

Wryke looked at the root-singer, who nodded once.

“The staff is sealed in the vessel I gave you?” Wryke asked.

“Sealed. Safe,” the root-singer said.

Wryke’s eyes returned to me. “Did you understand the cost?”

“Not fully,” I said. “But I saw it was there. I told myself I could bear it.”

“And that it was not only you?” Wryke said.

“No.”

Wryke stepped closer and looked properly at my cheekbone and the faint greying in my hands “You feared losing what time would take anyway,” he said. A simple observation that sounded like a judgement to me.

His words made me feel seen in the place I least wanted to be seen. I begged him. “Please, I have stopped. I am not using it now. I can’t”

“And you think stopping makes you harmless?” Wryke replied.

“It makes me less dangerous,” I said, which was a remarkably honest admission.

“That is not the same,” Wryke said.

The root-singer spoke. “Rootkin. Judge.”

“You will,” Wryke agreed, and then added, “but you will not keep the staff.”

The root-singer resisted “Staff. Keep.”

“It will be used again if it stays here,” Wryke said. “Not necessarily by her. Someone will justify it. Someone will be competent or tired or will believe they can manage it better.”

I felt shame burning because I could hear myself in those words.

The staff was brought, sealed and inert, and Wryke took it. “It wants hands,” he said.

“Let it be deprived of them,” I said.

“We will see,” Wryke said. “Tools do not become less hungry because someone regrets feeding them.”

He turned and carried it away, but I remained.

The judgement that followed was not loud. They did not throw me out. They asked that I be put elsewhere. The root-singer delivered their sentence, voice slow. “Wertilish. Gate.”

I knew where I was going and why. It was not to serve, but to wait and contemplate the wrong I had done. When I was alone again, I sat in a quiet pocket of the Yewdeep and was visited by one I thought of as a friend. Cylaen found me there.

“You look like a shrine someone forgot to finish,” Cylaen quipped, stepping from the dim with her usual grace, “All this waiting. All this reverence. Trees do that to you. They teach patience until you mistake it for virtue.”

“They endure better than you or I,” I retorted.

Cylaen chuckled, amused. “They rot standing and call it wisdom. At least things that fall admit what they are.” She circled me, then spoke again. “Come. It has been decided where to put you, and it isn’t here.” I rose, and Cylaen offered an arm, as one might offer a handrail. And with that, she led me out into the waiting passages, toward imprisonment and service.

Power will always offer to make you more than you are, but it does so by deciding which parts of you are expendable. And then promises you could keep it longer by surrendering it first.

Tales from the Woldwood is a free 40-story descent into the Marchlands. The forests, ruins, people, monsters, bargains, and histories that shape the world before the first novel arrives

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