Children of the Wood

Chapter Sixteen of Under the Goblin Trees

Campaign adaptation by Thomas Kelly

The dim morning found me waking lost in the enormous folds of my cloak and bed roll which had grown inexplicably larger in the night. How strange! My tunic now draped loosely over my shoulders and twisted about me, and my trousers too had become several sizes large. With a head still full of sleep, I puzzled over the mystery until I heard a child’s voice near at hand asking, “What deviltry now?”

A Straight Read

I wriggled myself free of the enormous cloak to behold the dim lit shape of a boy, a human child of ten years or so, swagged in a grown man’s undercoat and waving his arms about. The unfilled loose ends of his sleeves flapped comically back and forth. His ragged breath steamed in the morning air. The commotion roused the others from their bedrolls. A redheaded child rose from the place where Ivan had laid down the night before. A mishappen gangly boy with misshapen face came around clumsily tripping over the dragging hem of his philosopher’s robe, now several sizes too large for him. A wide-eyed girl yet untouched by the first blush of womanhood slipped from Cirilli’s place beside the fire and giggled at the sight of the rest of us, “Look! We are children!” Only big old Bruin and William the goblin seemed unaffected by the enchantment.

“Tut, tut!” I exclaimed. The squeak of my hobniz child’s voice surprised me. “There’s bound to be some explanation.”

Young Belvenore replied with a pertinent couplet from the Trilesimain, “First draught he quaffed, and in his bones a fire. His limbs waxed strong; youth returned untired.” His words sounded like a schoolboy’s recitation of his book lesson; his boyish face, now free of whiskers, revealed charming dimples.

“Indeed, youth has returned!” Cirilli laughed. “Never had a riddle such a straight read.”  

William leaped around gaping at us in astonishment; the two fighting men had shrunk down to near his own size. Crilli stood only a head taller than the goblin. “Told you not to drink the fairy water,” William humphed triumphantly. “Didn’t listen, did you!”

“Am I alone left unenscorcelled?” Bruin mused as he examined his limbs. He ran his palm across his unshaven face and felt those bristling signs of manhood still in their place.

“Apparently the magic doesn’t work on dum-dums,” little Myron jabbed as he gathered up the length of his robe and girt it about to prevent further tripping. I involuntarily shuddered at the sound of his high-pitched nasal whine—like nails scratching along an edge of a course iron file.

“Look! My boots are enormous, and my trousers won’t stay hitched!” red-headed tousle-haired Ivan laughed. He stomped about comically, pulling his trousers up nearly to his shoulders.

“What now? My armor’s too big, and I can scarcely wield my own blade!” young Belvenore observed.

“Well, this won’t do. Priest, have you a blessing to remove this curse?” Ivan inquired.

“Not a curse, I think. It’s lovely. A second chance!” Cirilli was enthused. “I think I should not want the magic removed. I would be happy to have these years again, unspoilt.”

I tried what prayers and invocations I knew that might reverse such an effect, but the gods remained aloof and unmoved by our plight. Or perhaps the predicament amused them. Then came Myron’s turn. He searched his book of spells for an unenchantment or other remedy. He tried several of these, wheezing and sniffing, spending himself and all his magic in the effort. All to no avail. “It will certainly wear off. A short duration I expect,” he piped. “We’ll be back to normal in a day or so.”

“I wonder. I don’t think it is a spell,” I mused.

Not Having Fun

By the time Myron had exhausted all his failed remedies, half the day had already passed. Bruin had a good laugh at all of us and especially at me, for a halfling child appears diminutive and almost pixielike to human eyes. “I wish it had happened to me too!” Bruin complained. “You all look like you are having so much fun.”

We were not having fun. I wished to find a way to undo the malady. Yet, in body and limb, I relished the delicious forgotten childish energy, vigor, and vim of my boyhood. I wondered over it. All my years as a child I had never paid it a single notice, but now with an adult’s tired and painful sore experience for comparison, I realized what simple delight it is to be in possession of a healthy child’s body unbeset by the heaviness and weary pains of age. At the same time, I found my thoughts frustrated, circling, as it were, inside the mind of a child—all knowing and all wisdom and all learning I had acquired as an adult of these forty-five years seemed like spilt milk on the stable floor when the goat kicks over the milking pale. I could not quickly reckon thoughts as I am accustomed or organize them to sense. Thoughts and ideas stammered and staggered about incomplete, collided with one another, and interrupted one another. “Think! I need to think!” I squeaked.

“Well, thinking won’t help. We can’t wait for the spell to wear off. We’ve wasted enough of the day. We must press on,” Bruin took charge, promoting himself to lead the party.

“There’s not a point to continuing with the quest! We can’t fight in manly manner like this,” young Belvenore objected.

I feel shamed to admit that we fell to quite a lot of childish bickering. Every slight and injury of ego seemed much magnified, and we found ourselves given to impatience and irritation and even unbidden tears of frustration. Myron and I had already been at it with one another most of the day. I am afraid that some sharp and wounding words were exchanged that could not be withdrawn.

All this while, William leered devilishly, grinned, snapped his teeth at us, and swaggered about in condescension. He no longer accorded the reverence and deference to which we were accustomed. Having ascended several rungs in his own estimation, he even went so far as to pinch me a few times. From then on, if we crossed him, he took tones with us and bared his teeth at us. He felt at liberty to chide us and scold us. Only a smack up the back of his head from Bruin’s big hand put the goblin back in his place.

Bruin insisted, “If you children cannot go on with me, I must continue on alone or become a wolf at the fulness of Luna. Then what of all of you? I have my own enchantment already. I have no choice but to go on to Goblin Trees and sever the head of the wolf or die trying.”

“But I thought you might have been cured by the magical waters,” Cirilli suggested. “Didn’t your fever leave after the draught? Perhaps you have not become a child like us because the magic took another effect, one enchantment cancelling another.”

Bruin held up his hairy hands before our eyes to display his prominent index finger. The nails of each digit looked sharp and thick like unto claws.

Retracing the Way

“Let us return to Nyssa’s sister, the Lady of the Pool! She will have the art to remedy her own magic. We will pay her a ransom or whatever she ask,” Ivan suggested. “If this is her doing, she alone can undo it.”

William blanched at that and protested, “No, no, no!”

“I have no want to return under the Old Weald. Enough unseelie tricks we have suffered today. But neither can I go on as a squire boy to face our foes,” Belvenore lamented.

Myron groused, “Why the waste the time? By the time we have returned to the naiad’s pool, her spell’s duration may already have elapsed.”

Nonetheless, Bruin agreed with Ivan and decided that we retrace our way to the Dawn Pool where it was supposed that we had imbibed the enchantment. None resisted his decision. We needed an adult.

Another hour was spent trying to refit clothing, boots, belts, armor, and all our belongings in accordance with our smaller frames. Supplies and gear that we could no longer bear were stowed in saddlebags or given to Myron to conceal in his wondrous deep pocket. Belvenore’s plate armor we stashed in the woods with some other larger concerns, intending to return to retrieve them after being restored to our natural age.

Saddling the steeds and girding them up depended chiefly on Bruin. Ivan and Belvenore situated themselves upon their mounts, but Myron’s unruly mare became all the more unruly under the lighter load; she knickered about and tried to shake him off. I could not even mount my pony without Bruin’s help. He gave the beast over to Cirilli and sat me on it in front of her. He put the reigns into her hands and told her, “Hold on to him. See that that the lad doesn’t tumble off.”

All the remainder of that afternoon we retraced the previous day’s journey from the pool. Ivan led the way. His woodcraft went undiminished. He kept us to the path we had yesterday travelled, recognizing our tracks and the signs of our passing such as the manure of our horses. There could be no question of having lost the way. Yet we came not to sunlit places where the trees grew thin, nor did we find the pool where we had left it.

“Predictable,” Myron scraped. “Waste of time. Damn fairies.”

Lyrannikin

On the morrow, light of morning pale beneath the boughs found us as children back on the geas despite what new enchantment hindered us now. None dissented nor further raised objections, for we had not another course but to continue on that way and feign as if we soon would fare well enough. I the malady might soon fade from our bodies like a case of the autumn sneezes or a Fireseek fever that lasts but a day or two.

Presently, this being the fourth day of Readying, we drew nigh unto what Ivan termed, “The edge of the Goblin Trees.” In this part of the wood, we moved among trunks of hardwoods wider and older than those before encountered. “These are not so large as the Goblin Trees yet. We will know them when we see them. Those ancient dekla grow nine or ten spans,” said Ivan with all the enthusiasm of a boy telling his father a fact he had only just learnt himself.

Could there be trees yet larger than these already around us? Each one looked wide as a widow’s cottage and taller than the eye could tell. They towered up all about us, disappearing into the dimness above, making us feel small, indeed, even if not for our diminishment. Their thick limbs climbed parallel to the trunks, thrusting up to join the overshadowing canopy of darkness far beyond the light of torch and lamp and sunrod combined. Nothing lively grew between the trunks, no shrub nor foliage nor fern but only occasional burst of pale white mushroom or a shelf of yellow lichen thriving between the mighty pillars of those massive giants. How small and insignificant we felt. We were like mice scampering on the floor of a room crowded with tall men, weaving between their legs where they stood.

“Cautious now children! These are the haunts of my master, the Lord Wulurich, and his folk! Many snouts he has to sniff us out,” William warned. A note of glee tinged in his voice.

Presently the boy Ivan bade us hush and stop, for he heard from on ahead some commotion in the wood. We reigned the steeds to halt and gave ear to whatever might be heard in the hush under those towering trunks. Then William’s ears did twitch, and my own caught wind of a faint cry, a shout, a crashing in the wood…

“Wait here until I see what hazard,” Ivan said bravely, and with that, he tethered up his steed and stole off afoot into the dim ahead. While we waited the commotion drew nearer, and I discerned the sound of shout and battle. Presently Ivan, all in a rush, returned and bade us follow, “A battle in the wood! A troop of ranger men, hard pressed and hard at it.”

Without much thought of how children might assist a troop of ranger men at battle, we charged off into the dim, following our guide to folly or what may fall.

In short space we came upon a strange fight. Three men in the cloaks, boots, and gear I knew for Geoffmen beat their blades against a tree. That sole tree, it appeared, made the target of their arrows, for many feathered shafts stuck already in its bark. Were it standing still, stationary, rooted and unmoving as an ordinary and unenchanted tree should, the whole scene might have struck us comic, but not so, for the great mass of it moved and swayed and swung long heavy limbs in like manner of that servant of Nyssa we had seen outside the Witch Tree. Four times the height of a man it towered. It strode upon its roots like a man walks upon his own feet, and the broad swing of its limbs crashed down upon its foes. So we saw the tree snatch up one of those poor Geoffmen in its great gnarled hands of branch and raking twig. Strong crooked fingers tore the helpless man asunder and spilled his gore all about.

The child Ivan ran ahead to the attack, eager to assist those fellows, but his heavy axe proved too much for his childish limbs to wield. He struck the menace from behind. His axe did not bite the bark. The old tree did not feel the blade.

Came Bruin mounted to the battle, shouting, “After me!” Upon his sturdy charger, swinging his great sword like an axe, he struck the tree such that the blow severed a hand, as it were, from the end of one swinging limb. No matter. Treant had several more, and so he scooped up another Geoffman from the ground and tore him asunder as he did the first.

Now came young Belvenore, handling his great warhorse like a noble knight and bearing his long magical blade as it were a jouster’s lance. This he sheathed into the trunk and up to the pith, but not without injury. The treant knocked him from his steed. His child’s body flew far into the dim and landed hard. The treant pulled Belvenore’s blade from its trunk and cast it aside.

Myron worked the magic of his hands, launching spells and missiles, and I employed the spiritual weapons of my own prayerful art to strike against this foe.

The third and last of the Geoffmen stood his ground and used his sword to bat away the limbs while Bruin brought his steed about to strike again. Strike he did, but one mighty kick from what might have been the leg of the tree sent his horse sprawling out from under him. Bruin rolled some way head over heals before recovering himself. As he searched about in the near darkness for his sword, his poor steed fled panicked into the ever night.

Myron used some spell of his to ignite the wooden shafts of those arrows already lodged in the bark with the hope that the lick of the flame might better hurt the treant. Fire leapt upon the protruding shafts but did not much ignite that wicked old wood. The burning arrows illuminated the tree so that, for the first time, we could see its hateful glittering eyes deep set beneath the bark and its cruel frowning mouth, twisting, opening, and mawing at the air as a fissure in the trunk.

I beheld that Bruin rose now with sword in his hands. He lifted it only on time to block and ward away the crash of a heavy limb. That arm he cleaved clean away at the elbow so to speak. The treant roared as if pained by the severance of the bough. Its crown of withered winter leaves shook with fury. The tree being fixed his black glittering eyes upon Bruin and lifted a mighty rooted foot that would crush the man if it could land the blow, but Bruin ducked away before it fell upon him.

The pony under Cirilli and I threw back its head and cantered away for fear of the sight of the battle. All at once I remembered that acorn Nyssa had given to me, saying, “In time of great need, plant it in the soil, and my servant shall sprout forth.” I thought to myself, Surely the time of great need has come upon us. I fumbled about in my side sack for the blessed thing while clinging to my prancing mount.

Meantime Cirilli slipped from behind me and lit upon the ground. With no weapon in her hand, the brave girl went into the way of the battle, waving her arms and shouting to catch the attention of the wicked tree. In the space of a few strides, she stood before the flame-lit hulk, a mere child beneath a fearsome giant. It loomed over her and lurched forward as to peer more closely upon the young girl who, with hands now placed defiantly upon her hips, looked up to meet its gaze and shouted demand in shrill pitch of a girlish voice, “Be gone from us!”

At once, without delay or hesitation, the treant turned away from her and fled into the darkness of the Goblin Trees. For some way I could hear its heavy crashing and also see its retreat as the last flickers of the dull red light from the flames upon its trunk faded into the dim.  

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Artwork: Lyrannikin, ChatGPT4 + DALL-E