The Travelers' Song

by Brendan O'Gara

  Gadlin smiled at Johan. “Ah yes, my hate for dragons runs deeper yet.”

  “Then we do not have that in common, Gadlin. I have no hate for dragons. I do have a love for my family.” Charlotte didn’t want to insult Gadlin after sharing the story of such loss, so she shifted her tack. “If anyone killed someone I loved I would seek justice as you did. Nothing would stop me from avenging my family.”

  “Ah, then, my sweet lady, we have much in common,” Gadlin said.

  “Stop flirting with her, Gadlin. I will tell my story next. Let’s see if Miss Charlotte finds some common ground with me,” Thalin interrupted as he poked the fire with a stick to stoke it higher.

  Chapter Seven

  “Where to begin? At the beginning I suppose. My name is Thalin. Unlike Johan, I don’t have a last name. His surname is made up of the first letter of the last names of the people he ventured with before us, or so he told me. Gadlin has a last name as well; his last name is that of his father who was the blacksmith. Yes, it’s amazing the things you can learn if you listen.

  “My origin is not too similar to your origins, in that it was all about me in the beginning. I have always been the druid. I have been the Druid of The Grove Saurondi. It was my job to keep the grounds. We had intricate garden pads, in and out of the grove. It was my job to keep them pruned down, so that the patterns were easy to recognize for others. It was my job to make sure the stones in the grove were white and shining. It was my job that the grass grew to a certain height, fed a certain type of fluid. The grass in the grove was not green, it was purple. It was a privilege to wake the sounding flowers every morning. Sounding flowers can be fickle.” Thalin looked around at the faces of his companions. “Oh, I see by the look on your faces you have no idea what I mean. I would go out into a grove and see flowers that are closed up. The sun had not hit them correctly, not awakened them yet. It was my job to go out into the grove and clap loud so that the buds would wake up and open for the sun.”

  Thalin spoke with pride. “I lived outside an isolated hamlet called Kelltign. It was while I was tending to the fields that I first encountered a representative from town, who told me that his name was Modnar. No, it’s not every day that you see a man walking through the woods with arms the size of a gorilla. I mean, his arms were huge. Like somebody had taken his regular human size arms off of him and placed these gigantic arms on him.” Thalin made large motions to emphasize his point. “I mean to say he looked like one who had been eating swole cap mushrooms. Swole cap mushrooms are an interesting vegetation. When you eat them, the group of muscles that you exercise just after grows. Now, they are not permanent, but they grow nonetheless. I know what you’re thinking. Why would not the muscles that you use to masticate, to digest be the muscles that swelled up? Well I do not know. I’m not an alchemist. I just know what usually happens. When this man approached me in the woods, I assumed that he was under the influence of the mushrooms. However, I was wrong.

  “He told me of his village, that they have this illness spreading. It had begun to overtake the people. The people there seemed to be suffering from what he thought was an allergy or perhaps some strange, magical flu. Many of them had warts and other growths that became monstrous mutations. The village sent him out as a representative from the local government, only he had been turned away because of his appearance. I didn’t blame people for their fear. He was a large man. I knew I had nothing to fear. The man approached someone directly to ask for help. I doubt someone with a martial inclination would have been his first choice because, you see, stepping into polite society when you look as though you are a monster creature had not gone well for him, and so he wished to engage the druids.”

  Thalin shrugged. “I was there, and happy to help. I directed him to my elder. Modnar refused. He believed that going to the elders would take too much time. He begged me to help him, and so I did. Or so I tried to. Now, at the time, I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to speak to an elder, someone more qualified. As we made our way towards the village I could see that life had definitely changed. Many of the villagers had undergone many changes and Modnar was the least changed. Not only the villagers were different, but the vegetation in the fields was enormous. I saw sunflowers that stood twenty-four-feet tall.” Thalin took time to motion at the height, lifting his arms high. “I saw cows that had human faces. I saw a fish that had legs as well as gills. Curious, I walked along the bottom of the water to get a closer look. Many of these things were so frightening. I got back out on dry land.

  “Many of the crops nearest to the river had grown to great size. As I looked around at some of the most beautiful things...” Thalin trailed off for a moment before catching himself and continued to talk again. “Some of the most beautiful things you could ever see were large. The green of the grass, mist of the trees, all full of the beauty of growth, some of the flowers that I knew to be tiny when they were growing anywhere else. I could see everything in the petals and the stamens that I had never been able to see before, because of their enormous size. I could learn so much, but Modnar kept us walking.

  “We walked to town and I saw a townsperson come out of his home and walk over to his well. While he was pulling up the rope for what I assumed was a bucket of drinking water, he was transformed before my very eyes. His skin stretched, broke, and his muscles grew. I could hear his bones snap as he grew tusks. His clothing ripped off of him, and he had fur on his body. The man became enormous before my very eyes. He transformed into a huge minotaur.” Thalin stood silent for a moment as the memory seemed to be burned into his mind. “This villager tore off through his own fence. He attacked his own livestock. In a rage, he tore cows’ limbs from their body. Then he ran off to the north, in the direction of where I was told a castle sat.

  “I...I was brought to the center of...the center of town, where many elders and townspeople were huddled up,” Thalin stammered as tension gathered in him. “I met a man there, a halfling by the name of Bram Thistleclaw. Bram had been in the town for nearly a hundred and fifty years. His family were founding members of the town. The town council had made a bargain with the local wood spirits. The local wood spirits said that they would go north of the hills towards the castle, and they would stay there. They wouldn’t bother the townsfolk, and the folk would not bother them. As the weather began to change, and to rain, we went inside the local tavern. I wasn’t privy to everything that went on at this meeting, only that there had been a castle with a wood spirit. The spirit was called Akon. Beyond the castle was a great forest. The spirits were not to come further south than the castle, and the people were not to go further north than the castle. However, these things that were now happening to the town Bram wanted to blame on the wood spirits. I, being a druid, was asked to go up the hill to the castle and inquire from the inhabitants to see if they knew what was happening to the natural resources. How could I refuse?

  “I was amazed by the things I saw; the dark vibrant colors, the new growth. The animals that I knew had been gone from that realm were again in front of me. I felt safe in the wood. A druid should always feel safe in the wilderness. Much like I imagine a warrior or a bard would feel safe within city walls. The ranger and the druid feel most secure when they are in the wild, and I felt at home this day as well.

  “What was around me and what was coming, you could feel it. It’s in the way the dirt feels under your feet. It’s the way the plants grow. It’s in the sound of the insects. These things let you know there’s a predator around. The birds and insects stop making sound. That’s how I knew. I was in trouble when I started moving further up the hill.”

  Sweat formed on Thalin’s back as he recounted his story. “I heard it before I saw it, the low growl of a bear moving out of its burrow. It came out to investigate whatever smell it had gathered, however it did not just sound like a bear. It sounded like a bear in water. The wind was at my back, blowing my scent towards it. I couldn’t smell it but I could hear it. It could smell me and it kn
ew I was coming. I saw it emerge. It was hideous, this blue-green, translucent, bear-shaped figure. It was my guess immediately that it had been twisted somehow by the thing that was twisting all the people in the town. The thing was as if a jelly or an ooze had seeped into the flesh of a bear. It stood four feet tall at the shoulder and it roared fiercely. It wanted me to know that I was walking into its territory. That was when the form gave up. The ooze or jelly that held it when it was on all fours gave way when it stood up. The jelly couldn’t hold shape any longer. It fell off of the bones, destroying this creature in a wet, snarling growl.” Thalin trembled.

  “The way it died was the worst thing I have seen thus far in my life. I know I should have use my animal affinity, my ability as a druid to share my feelings with the animal.” Thalin glanced around at his friends. He paused to take a draw from his mead. “Yes, I take care of the wild. I feel a kinship to the care of plants and animals, but I opted to go in a different direction than most druids You see, most druids do have an affinity towards other animals. Yes, I can wild shape, change shape if you will. I can make myself to be the shape of an animal native to the lands I am in. I went to the direction of healing others. People, I thought, needed healing. That’s why I didn’t shape myself as a bear to communicate with this... jelly bear? This bear thing, this thing that was dying in front of me.” Thalin motioned at the fire as if it were the bear in front of him. “It was after the bear thing that I began to walk, and to hear voices. Only the voices weren’t in my head. They were fully audible...” Thalin looked off to some faraway place as he spoke. “‘The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. The raindrops do not feel that they are to blame for the flood.’ The words were spinning in my head. Well, it was that kind of thing—only worse and worse.” Thalin paused

  “Thalin, you’re getting off topic,” Gadlin interjected.

  “Oh right! Now, do not misunderstand—this is a castle in the strictest form of the word. It was more like a manor house with a twelve-foot-high wall.” Thalin again motioned about the height of the wall just as he had about the height of the sunflower.

  “The stone was pristine, what I could see of it. The vegetation had overgrown it in vast quantities. Visible to anyone was the drooping timbers in the roof and the rough signs of age in the crenellations of the towers at the top of the wall.” Thalin paused to take another drink of mead. He looked around to make sure that everyone was listening to him. Satisfied that even Darr was listening, he continued. “Understand, when first constructed churches, keeps, temples, and holy sites are constructed hand in hand with religious clergy. Built in elaborate, expensive blessing ceremonies, and the casting of spells that affect permanent wards on the site. Often providing an Eldritch circle, magically inscribed in a stone of the entrance way of the area. This castle, this manor house, had such a circle. That circle and its carved inscription were present; however, the circle had been desecrated so that its protection was not intact. This was something that indeed made my blood run cold. Till this very second, I had thought that the things affecting the area could have been an accident or something that would be easy to explain. As bad as it had been, it was not unexplainable or irreversible, but this tossed that theory out the bloody window. From somewhere deep inside I heard it, the sound of an animal or a creature breathing. The noise sounded like a dragon with a sinus infection, but I knew it couldn’t be a dragon. There were no signs. The castle was intact. There were no fire marks or scorching. I crept past the entryway, entering the main lobby, when I heard the sound again, strongly to the left. I walked into the library, scrolls on shelves from floor to ceiling. That was when I saw it slumped against a large table. It was a desk that had been upturned and used as a throne.

  “At first I thought that an enormous tree had grown up out of the ground, knocked over this desk, and spread throughout the room. Then its leg moved and the upper portion of this tree moved upright. It placed an arm under what I understood to be its head.” Thalin crossed his legs, put a hand up against his head with his elbow bend poking out mocking the position of the tree creature that he had described so that his listeners could understand what he meant. “This verdant force of nature spoke. The voices I had been hearing as I entered the castle were the spirit of the treant. The tree creature,” he said. ‘Beneath knowing is understanding, beneath understanding is seeing, beneath seeing is recognizing, beneath recognizing is knowing.’ This one of the wisest statements I have ever been privileged to witness, and it came from a tree. As I didn’t know if this bark-covered being was speaking to anyone in particular or if it knew that I was in the room, I began to look around to see who this creature may be talking to. I had heard the voices before I got into the room and that’s when I noticed it. I saw the most vile yet wispy, mist-filled shadow creature from your deepest nightmares standing in front of this sleepy giant of a tree.

  “The mist creature was waving its hand about as if he was attempting to pick up a jar that had a glowing liquid inside. The liquid was oozing, spilling out onto the floor, going down the wood beams and through a hole in the floor. It appeared to have been pouring for quite a while and this mist creature couldn’t reach it. He—it—was trapped. The mist creature had an area of the room that it could move about in but couldn’t move out of. Then it saw me. It couldn’t attack me from its place. Then the giant tree turned and noticed me. The giant tree attempted to move and shift itself. The tree was held in place by the same kind of weird mist that made up the mist creature. The mist nightmare creature and tree spoke at once. I heard the mist and noticed it looked like an image of a knight. The mist knight said, ‘Give it to me.’ The two creatures had engaged in a game of chance, a drinking game. A contest. The tree had lost and the shadow wanted its prize. It wanted the jug of fluid; however, being a mist without a physical hand, it couldn’t pick up the jar. It called out for help. It had tied up the tree with its abilities until backup arrived. I heard the tree being speak, attempting to drown out the shadow mist. He said to me that the shadow mist being was attempting to steal from him. The tree was pinned down and held for many days. The jar held the botany creature’s healing essence and the shadow mist knight wanted to steal it. The tree growled, ‘Does not belong to him.’ The tree told me that the shadow couldn’t leave of the area. It, the tree, told me to get some kind of container, scoop up some of the fluid, and cast it at the shadow knight. The magical properties, the light from within, would banish the evil mist back to its own plane, the Place of Mists.

  “I didn’t know what to believe. I decided to fall back on my druid training, trust what I knew about nature. My time in the forests, my knowledge of the good spirits of the forest, taught me a lot. I moved to the fireplace and got the coal shovel. Carefully I moved about, crawling across the limbs and parts of the tree, who was quite amiable about the fact that I was crawling across him. The mist knight tried to convince me that I was siding with the wrong living thing. He said he had won a bet with the tree fair and square. He begged me not to listen to the tree, but I decided to listen to my spirit of the wild and trust the tree. I scooped up some of the liquid and, after a try or two, I did indeed cast it towards the shadow knight of mist. As the tree had said, the magic and healing within it banished the shadow to its realm. The mist dissipated. Immediately the bonds that held the tree down disappeared. I half expected this creature who had been held down to turn on me and attack, even though I was his savior. I was happy that he didn’t do so. He merely reached over and stood the jar up. He then thanked me. I asked him what the jar was and he explained that he, like many trees over time, would become damaged from storms, lightning strikes, or from other forces of nature. When he did his sap would come out as a healing salve and he collected it in a jar until he was healed. Sometimes when he had enough he would drink it and use it as a growth formula. This time, he had been collecting for the last ten years. He was most grateful to me for my assistance.” Thalin gestured with his wine sack the way that the larg
e treated wood drink. “Having defeated the shadow and being very apologetic about the whole thing, the tree went about leaving the area. I explained to him the things that had been happening to the town and the animals in the surrounding areas. He ran down to the town with me. He took the jar and worked to heal every single person and every creature that had been infected by the magic flu. He was so apologetic for unwittingly causing such a terrible blight. He went to each farmer’s crop and blessed it with vital nutrients, growing whatever crop was in the field at the time. And if a farmer had nothing in the field, then this force of nature would put something in the field by magical means.

  “When all was back to even better than before in the town, the tree turned to me and told me to tell his story to the Keepers of the Grove I was from. He then gave me an acorn from his very own branches. He told me to give it to the master Druid of my Grove and that the master would then present me with a proper reward. I thanked him. Then I set off on the journey back to my Grove.” Thalin reached into a pouch on his belt and produced a golden acorn, showing it to everyone there. “I never did make it back to my Grove, as I ran into you lot while I was heading home. I decided that you needed my help more than I needed a reward for doing what I thought was right.”

  Charlotte and the others sat there in silence for a few moments. Then Thalin stated, “You do not believe me.”

  “Stop,” Charlotte interrupted. “Yes, I do believe you. I have seen the magnificent tree folk before. You, Druid, are compassionate and noble.”

  Darr huffed. “We didn’t need help. We saw you walking and thought you needed us. We were just fine before we met you. I’m a paladin. I need no one but my God of Light. I chose to travel with these people and accept you.”

  “Tell your story then, Darr. See if you can impress this woman. I have obviously touched her heart a bit,” Thalin said.