Nerd In the North 4-15 (Patreon)

“Fuckin’ ell!”

Tormund Giantsbane jolted back from the tree with one hand still tangled in his breeches, the other gropin’ for the hilt at his hip, cock not yet sheathed, snow sting still hot where it mattered. The bark bit his shoulder as he slammed into it, cursed again louder, and finally got his damn trousers up—though they clung stiff with half-frozen piss.

He could hear ‘em. Bastards weren’t quiet, weren’t tryin’ to be. No, they were laughin’—the high screechin’ kind that meant teeth’d follow. Sounded like a crow tryin’ to fuck a goat. Ice-River bastards, four of ‘em, or he was a craven. Creepin’ in from behind, leanin’ into the snow like wolves what already smelled meat.

Tormund spun, feet crunchin’ in crusted frost, thick hands tight on the axe that’d split more heads than he’d had decent ale. His heart was hammerin’ wild, but not from fear—nah, it was the kind of thump that meant blood was wakin’ up, that sweet ache in the bones before a proper scrap.

“Ya hungry pricks couldna waited till I’d finished me fuckin’ piss?” he barked out, voice raw and loud enough to startle a rook outta the trees. “Or d’ye like the taste o’ piss on yer supper?”

The woods hissed with wind and pine, branches shakin’ loose little flurries of white that clung to his beard like lice. He didn’t see ‘em yet, not proper, but he felt ‘em. Too still, too close. The way the air hung heavy behind him, like a blade almost drawn.

He ran. 

Not ‘cause he was scared, mind—just smart enough not to fight on their terms. Snow grabbed at his boots, but he was stronger’n that, and meaner besides. Trees blurred past, black claws against the white, and he ducked low beneath a rotten limb, breath comin’ hard, hot in his beard. A laugh punched out his chest like steam from a stewpot.

He’d kill the bastards soon enough. But first, he needed space. Space to breathe. Space to swing. Space for blood to hit snow and singe.

He was wakin’ up warm. The fight was comin’. And gods help the poor fuck who got close.

Snow snapped underfoot like old bones as he stopped, bare-chested now and steaming like a forge, the cold too slow to bite through what boiled in him. The trees clawed at the wind, and in the hush before the charge, he could hear their breath. Quick, shallow, full of teeth. Cannibals. Ice-River folk. Rotten blood in their veins and piss for courage, but they knew how to die ugly, and they came grinning like they meant to enjoy it.

The first one wore no shirt, just a necklace strung with toes and fingers gone black with frost. His skin was blue-tinged and stretched over a frame like rusted wire, ribs pokin’ out sharp. His eyes were wide and yellowed, teeth filed down to jagged nubs, like he’d eaten more man than meal. He ran barefoot in the snow, and when he lunged, he screamed—not words, just sound, throat-stripped and animal.

Tormund met him with open arms and a snarl.

“Aye, come on then!” he roared, the world goin’ red at the edges, his blood runnin’ like it’d heard an old tune and started dancin’. His boots slammed into the ground as he charged, and his fists came up like hammers forged in fire.

The first punch caught the bastard square in the chest, and the man’s ribs folded like dry kindling. He flew, limbs all slack and floppin’, hit a pine with a sound that made Tormund grin—crack, crunch, thunk. Didn’t scream. Didn’t move after.

He didn’t pause. The second was already close, crouched low, arms painted with runes carved in blood, knife in one hand, jaw hangin’ loose like it’d never closed right. He looked surprised when the knife didn’t matter. Looked even more surprised when both of Tormund’s fists came down at once on either side of his skull.

The noise was wet. Sharp, then low. His head didn’t burst, not quite—but his face crumpled in on itself like butter gone wrong. Eyes popped like berries in stew, red spillin’ down into the snow.

Tormund stood there, breath comin’ hard, the fire in him ebbin’ just a touch. The red haze pulled back a little, just enough for him to see the other two.

One had bones braided into his beard. The other had a necklace made of tongues. Real tongues, dried stiff and rattling with every breath. Both of ’em’d stopped moving, eyes wide and whites showin’. Looked at each other. Back at him. One twitched his foot back.

Tormund bared his teeth. “Well? Go on then—run or die!”

But neither got the chance.

Thunk.

The first dropped like a sack of meat, an arrow sproutin’ from his skull right where the crown met the brow. A breath later—

Thunk.

The second fell forward, nose in the snow, shaft of an arrow planted deep in his eye. Twitch, twitch, still.

Tormund’s fists loosened. His shoulders dropped just enough. He turned, lips already curling into a grin he couldn’t help.

She stepped out from between the trees, all flame-red hair and furs stitched by a hand that’d cared. Bow slung over her back now, eyes bright with the kind of fire that spoke of the gods’ blessin’. Only ten and four blooms of a winter rose, but sharp as the bite of a storm, and quicker with a shot than than damn near any grown men he’d seen.

Ygritte shook her head as she stepped over a root, snow silent under her feet.

The blood on his knuckles’d gone tacky, half-frozen, stickin’ in flakes along the ridge of his thumb where he’d caught the last one in the teeth hard enough to loosen a few. He flexed his fingers and felt the skin stretch over bone, stiff with ache but strong still, and laughed.

“Ye daft hairy bugger,” Ygritte muttered, slingin’ the bow back over her shoulder with a look like she’d half a mind to swing it at him next. Her eyes caught him sharp, mouth curled slight to one side. “Wasted yer blessin’ on the first two, didn’t ye? What’d ye plan for the rest? Chuck snowballs and pray they choke?”

Tormund let out a roar of a laugh, chest heaving like bellows, the sound crashing loud as it bounced off the pine trunks like it had a mind of its own. Cold in his lungs, hot on his skin, the feel of a fight still rushing through him like bees in bone. His beard’d frozen at the tips, matted with spit and blood and gods-knew-what else. Aye. A good scrap. The kind that reminded a man why he’d stayed breathin’ this long.

He glanced down at the dead at his feet and looked up again, as a grin wide enough to split his face, all teeth and pride, showed itself. “I knew ye’d be there, lass. Ain’t like I was worried.”

She narrowed her eyes, nose wrinklin’ like she’d smelled somethin’ foul, but the twitch of her lip gave her away. “Aye, an’ I suppose that’s why ye were squealin’ like a gut-shot boar when the big one lunged for ye.”

Tormund slapped his chest with one meaty paw. “Squealin’? That were a war-cry, girl! I was callin’ down the gods, lettin’ ’em know their fav’rite son was about to send four more bastards screamin’ into the snow.”

“Piss in the snow’s all you called down,” she shot back, steppin’ over a corpse with a glance like she were sizing it for stew. “And the only thing gods’d favour ye for is the noise ye make when yer trousers drop.”

He clutched at his heart like she’d run him through, staggerin’ a step for the drama. “Lass! How dare ye! That’s slander. This beard’s a gift. Sacred. I’ve had gods whisper into it.”

“Aye,” she snorted, toein’ the side of a dead man’s face, “and I’m sure they whispered, ‘Shut up, ye shaggy loudmouth, we’re tryin’ to sleep.'”

Tormund roared again, reached down to pluck his axe from where it sat buried in a frozen ribcage, and slung it across his shoulder like a man wearin’ a cloak. It felt right there. Heavy. Warm. His girl, old and chipped and lovely, like a wife who never asked questions.

“Ye saw the way I tossed that lanky one, didn’t ye? Straight into the trees. Near knocked the snow from ’em.”

Ygritte didn’t even look back, already marchin’ through the frost-crusted brush like she knew where the next trouble’d be. “I saw him trip over yer own feet when ye backed into ‘im.”

“Lies,” Tormund called after her, crunchin’ through the blood-thick snow to catch up. “He flew. Man was airborne. Crows woulda circled if there’d been any watchin’.”

She gave no reply but the twitch of her braid, swingin’ behind her like a tail on a fox. He liked that about her. Always movin’, even when her words stayed sharp.

He caught up easy, boots loud as ever. Let the beasts hear him. Let the wind carry his grin.

“You’ll tell the others, aye?” he rumbled, fallin’ into stride beside her, voice rich with mischief. “Tell ’em how I fought all four of ’em, bare-handed, no fear in me, pissin’ defiance while the wind howled like it knew my name?”

She didn’t break step. “I’ll tell ’em ye nearly pissed on yer own boots, that’s what I’ll tell.”

“Ah, cruel girl!” he boomed, feignin’ offense, though it only made his laugh rougher. “Was defendin’ sacred ground, I was! Pissin’ in tribute. They came for me ‘cause they knew—knew I’d been marked by the old gods. That’s why they came. Not fer the kill. Fer the glory!”

Ygritte huffed. “Ye keep talkin’, they’ll come for the silence.”

“You wound me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she said, tossin’ the words over her shoulder like spare kindlin’. Her voice’d gone quieter now, just a little, as the trees thickened around them, but he could hear the smile in her words still. “Next time, I might just let the cannibals have ye.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The den was wrong.

Still. Too still. The warmth lay flat in the stone, no breath in it. No fold of heat to press against the boy’s skin, no pulse. Ghost stood, low to the ground, body stretched long with the quiet tension that came before the chase, or the kill. Air moved too soft. Fire too weak. Not dead, not gone. But wrong.

His boy smelled wrong too. Sweat soured, sharp under the furs, not from cold or fever. From the twitch. From the breath that stuttered where it should’ve flowed. Ghost’s ears tilted, pulled back, not for fear. For listening. His tail held still, low, not stiff, as he waited for his boy.

Jon kicked once beneath the furs. Not from cold. Not hunger. Ghost knew hunger. This was run-dream twitch. Prey-mind. Ghost had seen it in deer before they bolted. In men, too, right before the steel came out.

His paws found stone. Slow step. Breath low. Second step, weight spread. The fire gave no threat, no welcome. Just light. Flickering red—faint, stretched too far from the brazier to warm anything but itself.

Jon gasped. Sat up. Loud breath. Wet.

Ghost stopped. Watched.

The boy’s eyes found him. They always did. Didn’t matter the dark. Ghost didn’t move.

“They don’t stop,” Jon said, voice not for Ghost, not for any ear. Not even his own. It scratched like stone on leather. Broken. “Not since I came here.”

He wiped roughly at his face as pale fingers, free of fur, shook with each movement. The other hand reached, slow, and found Ghost’s fur. His boy leaned further in and thrust his face into the thick of his neck. Grip hard, not cruel. Familiar. Ghost allowed it.

Jon’s scent curled tighter now. Old steel. Fire smoke. Sweat. And that other thing. That thing Ghost didn’t have name for. The one that made his hackles twitch but didn’t warn.

“Do you feel it, Ghost?” the boy whispered. Closer now. Lips near ear.

Ghost’s ears tilted again. Not in answer. In search.

“In the wind? In the snow? There’s… something. Waiting. It’s real. It has to be.”

Ghost didn’t blink. Didn’t move. The heat of the hand on his neck. The tremble in it. The thrum beneath the skin.

“I dream of fire,” Jon said. “Alive. Loud. But it doesn’t burn. It… breathes. I feel it in my blood.”

The boy’s hand clenched. Not fear. Not rage. Ghost knew both. This was need. Old as bone. Jon looked down at him like he wanted something Ghost couldn’t give.

Flame jumped from the stick on the wall as his boy spat, eyes hard and teeth clenched. “Wings black as night. Teeth long like swords.”

Ghost’s left paw shifted.

“I don’t belong here. Not really.” Jon’s voice again. Low. Tight. “The Wall’s just stone. Cold stone. I thought I’d find honour. But it’s not… it’s not what I thought.”

His voice thinned at the edges. Not cracked. Ghost tilted his head.

“It’s the other side. That’s where it is. The wind’s different there. Smells different. Feels like teeth and freedom.”

Freedom. Ghost didn’t have the word, but the feel—running wind, hard snow, blood hot in his mouth—that he knew.

“I don’t know what I am.”

Ghost blinked. Slow. The boy’s scent said blood, cold, steel. But underneath—something not-crow. Not pack, either. But something old. Wild.

The hand slipped from his fur. Jon stood. Pulled on cloak. Belted sword. Ghost watched every motion. Measured it. Understood it.

He stepped once. Twice. Turned at the door.

Ghost followed.

Left the stillness. Left the too-quiet warmth. Left the not-right dark.

The wind met them outside, sharp and honest. Snow took them in. Swallowed their heat without question. The moon hung above, pale and watchful.

Ghost did not look back.

Jon walked forward. Fast, not rushed. His jaw set. His body still wrong, but steadier now.

Ghost matched him. Paws silent. Tail low. Ears forward.

The dark pulled.

And Ghost followed.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Grhenn’vokai’thalaen-mirūn-dhai’skar crouched still as deadwood, his body woven into the bough’s curve like moss made flesh. The heartbeat of the forest rang in his jawbone. Not loud. Not fast. Just there. Always. Slow and heavy. Like deep roots shifting in sleep.

Above him, the silver curve of the middle moon was thin tonight, bone-pale. Sky breath tasted cold. Not new-cold. Remembered. As if winter had whispered this wind long ago, and now it came back to answer.

He moved one finger. Felt the bark answer.

Resin. Sap-sleep. No wound here. No axes.

Yet the call pulled.

Skar drew breath in through the back of his teeth. Pine. Wet lichen. Two days’ rain, sunk into soil so deep even stone forgot it. Beneath it: heat. Unnatural. Alive. Too new. Too wide. The forest did not birth such warmth on its own. Something had come. Something old and loud, wearing a young skin.

The call had weight now. It pressed against his ribs. It sang through the moss when he stepped. It rang in the silence after birds fled. He clicked his tongue, low, once.

Leaves shifted. Six shadows stirred, rising like mist from the trees.

Khu dropped first, palms flat to the bark, shoulder brushing the trunk with the tenderness of kin returning. Her hair caught on a leaf-vein, and she let it stay.

Roth half-turned to face the wind, head tilted so his ears caught sound no crowborn could name. His spine never quite straightened. A listening curve.

Kaer moved last, though his gaze had never left the south. A watcher. He had not blinked since the last moon.

Shael stilled mid-breath. Her head cocked, owl-precise, not listening for danger but silence. Waiting to feel what it was hiding.

Grenn shifted weight between bare feet, heel to toe, heel to toe. Not impatience. Just measure. Just rhythm.

Sae did not move at all. She never did until she meant to.

Skar exhaled.

He felt the hush settle. Not quiet—hush. The kind that came before rivers flooded. The kind that wrapped around old trees about to fall.

He let the silence speak first.

Then, low and even, words carved slow from the Common tongue: “Down. We go. Toward… that.” He did not point. The call needed no finger. “It grows.”

None answered.

But Khu pressed two fingers to his shoulder. Not hard. Not soft. So soon? she asked without voice.

Three moons. She had hoped to pause.

Skar clicked again, gentler this time, and leaned into her touch with a breath. “Tree waits. Not long.”

The slope below them breathed old. Broken stone under ferns. Forgotten deer paths. It would hold their weight.

He let his hand fall to the branch. It welcomed him. Rough, but not resisting. Ready.

“We walk until bark is split,” he said, his voice humming slightly now, echoing the grain of the limb beneath him. The words didn’t shape clean. They didn’t need to. The others heard the root of it.

Kaer dropped silently, landing so light even the owl didn’t stir. Shael followed, hair catching on mist. Roth stepped backward into a higher branch, disappearing into the green-black.

Skar felt the pulse again. Stronger now. The pull.

He blinked.

Somewhere far off, something ancient stirred in reply.

He rose. His limbs creaked quiet. His mouth tasted of ironwood.

Khu was already beside him, eyes bright and unreadable.

“We rest once the trunk is before us,” Skar said, voice more breath than tone. “Not before.”

A twitch of her lips, perhaps a reluctant acceptance. Then she dropped from the branch, catching a vine without even looking, and swung to a neighboring limb. The others fell in behind her, no signals needed, each flitting from branch to branch with uncanny agility. Skar watched them vanish into the denser gloom, then followed. He knew that were any man below, they would hear only the faintest susurration—like the rustle of leaves in a mild wind. To the Earthsingers, this was the only way to travel.

Below, the forest floor sank into a sprawling tapestry of ferns and rotting logs. Humans might have called it unwelcoming, but to Skar it was the living tapestry of the old times. Now, though, there was more: flickers of new spirits dancing in the peripheral edges of his vision. Tiny motes of greenish light glimmered behind mushrooms or hovered over stagnant pools. Once, centuries ago, such spirits were commonplace, though they had retreated when axes fell upon the forests. They sense the returning power, he thought, heart thrumming. They come to greet it.

He caught up to Shael, who led the group in weaving around the trunk of a massive pine. Her voice murmured in that sing-song hush: “The wind speaks of men… near.” She paused, leaning out to glimpse beyond a cluster of leaves. “Many men. Fires on the slope.”

Skar let out a slow exhale, tasting the air. Yes, he felt the faint tang of smoke, stinging the back of his nose like a warning. He closed his eyes, sank deeper into the sense of root and branch, letting his Earthsong rove outward. Flickers of vibrations told him that, some distance ahead, there was a gathering of men. Hunters? Soldiers?

“Khu, climb and circle,” he said softly. “View them from the canopy. We do not wish to meet them.” The Earthsingers had learned long ago that men rarely greeted them with kindness.

Khu nodded, slipping away with catlike grace. The rest of the group halted, splayed among branches like silent watchers. In the hush, Skar listened: a woodpecker hammered somewhere, the wind teased pine needles, and beneath it all, the land’s murmur. He heard the distant crackle of a campfire. More than two, perhaps three. Men gather in numbers.

Before long, Khu returned, dropping lightly onto a branch near Skar. Her eyes, large and dark, glittered with worry. “Armored men,” she breathed. “Green banner, pale sigil I do not know. They are not at war. They move. Perhaps two hand-spans of them.”

She raised two slender fingers.

This was no surprise—there was talk of battles to the south. The Earthsingers seldom knew the details of men’s wars, only that the world grew restless each time they collided. “We veer around,” Skar said. “The call is stronger. The trunk is near. We lose half a moon if we wait.”

“Agreed,” Kaer murmured from above, voice like a breeze. “Men never linger quietly.”

So they moved again, forming a silent arc around the distant men. Occasionally Skar glimpsed glints of steel through the boughs, but they passed unnoticed. We have no time for their doings, he told himself. We answer a deeper call.

They kept to the branches as day melted into twilight. Shadows stretched long across the forest floor, and still they pressed forward, guided by the living music that resided now in every root. Twice they paused to drink from bark-cupped water, slow trickles that formed in hollows overhead. They did not eat as men ate; they tasted seeds or small berries plucked from vines. They conversed in quiet, melodic phrases, discussing not strategy but the shape of the world, the state of the spirits.

“All is in flux,” Shael observed as she nibbled a cluster of nightberries. Her voice echoed softly in the canopy. “Spirits return, old as stone. They do not fear men as they once did. They feel a new guardian of the land.”

Kaer perched nearby, her long fingers curled around a slender branch. “The trunk calls them back,” she said, a dreamy note in her tone. “We are not the only ones summoned.”

Skar watched them both, a faint tremor in his chest. The presence that had swelled within the forest for the last three small moons was no mere shift of season. It was as though a new Weirwood had sprung to life, but not quite—weirwoods had a different aura: old, red-limbed, hungry in their watchfulness. This was something else. Younger, more exuberant, yet ancient in potential. He closed his eyes and recalled the first moment he felt it, a sudden surge in the ground beneath his feet. It was bright, almost joyous, calling any who still listened to the Earth. And I am drawn, he thought. We all are.

Khu’s voice broke into his reverie. “We approach the big wall soon.” In the language of the Earthsingers, “wall” was a concept signifying monstrous barrier. The Children rarely called it by men’s term. “We slip through at the hollowed gate or beneath where the ice cracks. The calling trunk lies deeper in the south.”

Skar did not relish crossing that giant monstrosity, but it must be done. He remembered how men said the Wall was built by some Brandon of the Age of Heroes, tall as mountains, to keep out the Others. The Children had always found ways around or beneath it. The Earth was broad, and ice could crack. In times long past, they had known hidden tunnels, though many had collapsed.

They traveled through the next dawn, or perhaps two dawns—Skar did not count them closely. In the hush of the canopy, conversation was minimal. The forest was thinning, the trees stunted by the creeping cold near the great ice barrier. But the call did not fade. If anything, the beckoning presence pulsed stronger, as though urging them to hurry.

Eventually, the land sloped upward. Barren patches replaced the rich greenery behind them. The wind sharpened, carrying flecks of ice. The Wall, Skar thought grimly. He felt it before he saw it. An unnatural hush in the Earth, a break in the land’s heartbeat. Then, around a craggy line of pine, it came into view: a colossal bulwark of ice and snow, rising so high it snatched the breath from one’s chest. Even after many centuries, the sight unsettled him. This is no natural formation. Men built it, but with help from the darkest powers and earliest magics.

Roth crouched beside him, eyes narrowed. “Stone and snow,” he muttered. “Deadening the Earth’s breath. The power within that wall feels…rancid.”

Sae stood behind them, small hand pressed to her mouth. In the hush, she whispered, “I wish to remain in the forest behind. The trunk’s call is strong, but the Wall chills my spirit.”

Khu spun lightly to face Sae, her leaf-cloak brushing pine needles. “We are so near, sister. You feel it, yes? The call from the trunk is warmer than the cold, stronger than this gloom. Once beyond the wall’s shadow, we will be free of its stifling effect.”

Sae’s gaze flicked from Khu to Skar. Then, with a sigh, she lowered her head. “I yield to the group. If the trunk’s call is mightier than my dread, I shall go.”

Skar reached out, touching Sae’s thin shoulder. “There is comfort in the Earth,” he said quietly. “Even beneath the men’s wall, the roots do not forget us. We will pass swiftly.”

In the next few heartbeats, they made their descent. The group found a steep ravine near the Wall’s base, thick with brambles and half-frozen mud. Skar knew from memory that centuries ago, a hidden crack in the ice opened to an abandoned passage. They scurried across the ravine’s slope, fingertips pressed to stone, silent as shadows. Then, behind a massive outcrop of granite, they found what Skar had hoped for: a ragged cleft in the Wall’s foundation. Streaks of ice glistened in the narrowness and gloom of the passage, entry-way half-collapsed and decrepit as it was unknown to the men who walked the walls. Yet, it mattered little, for they too were just as little.

The chill inside the passage stung Skar’s eyes. Overhead, thick layers of ice pressed down, some crusted with old, foul magic. He inhaled, tasting dust and ancient wards. The swirling power of the trunk’s call felt muffled, but still present. Around him, the others crept, huddling close to one another for warmth. In times long past, they had used these corridors often, retreating or advancing as men rose or fell. That was many centuries gone.

A jagged chunk of ice fell, shattering near Skar’s foot. He froze. Ahead, Kaer gave a low hiss, and the entire group halted. Echoing footsteps? A trick of the wind? They listened. Nothing. Then, with painstaking care, they squeezed deeper until, at last, a faint crack of light appeared. Moments later, they emerged onto the southern side of the Wall, exhaling in relief.

The difference was immediate. The wind felt gentler, the Earth’s heartbeat stronger, as though the trunk’s power spread through soil and root. Skar breathed deeply, letting that warmth flood his senses. We are closer. The call thrums in my bones.

He turned to see the group gather behind a cluster of boulders. Shael pressed one ear to the ground as though listening. Khu perched on a half-buried log, scanning the horizon. Slowly, she nodded to Skar. “East,” she murmured. “Another half cycle of the sun, I think, or fewer.”

They moved again, more fluid now that they were past the dreaded barrier. The forest thickened here—scraggly pines giving way to stronger oaks and tall spruces. With each trunk they passed, Skar felt pulses of new vigor. Sap coursed with fresh energy, leaves sparkled with hidden brilliance. He glimpsed ephemeral shapes darting from root to root, old nature spirits revived.

The group exchanged glances of shared wonder. Kaer even laughed softly—rare among the Earthsingers—to see a red fox trailing a swirl of glowing motes behind it.

By the time the next moon rose—one pale arc that glimmered behind clouds—they had reached the domain men called the Karhold. Skar knew the name only from ancient memory of men’s tongues. He felt the land shift underfoot: the slope gentled, the forest canopy soared higher, and the hum of the trunk’s call was nearly deafening in his mind.

At last, it rose.

Not tree. Not stone. Not weirwood, nor oak, nor green-blooded kin of the old roots. The shape had limbs, yes, and leaf, but the rhythm of it was wrong. Or right. Unnamed. Skar felt it first through the soles of his feet—drawn slow up the spine, a warmth older than fire, younger than spring. The air carried no scent of blood, no metal, no man. Only soil, wet with promise.

He crouched. Felt. Listened. From the crest of the slope, its crown bloomed—wide, deliberate, heavy with pulse. Not towering, but present, as if it had always been and only just remembered to rise.

Face.

A young face.

The bark curled around the hollow not carved. No axe. No hand. No mark of haste. A face, shaped as wind shapes cliffside, as rain shapes bone. Eyes wide-set. Mouth curved—in calm joy, nor grief. Simply open.

Kaer breathed behind him, breath soft as bark lice on stone. “It sings. It pours into the soil—like morning after drought.”

Skar rose. Each step taken not forward but with. The pull came not from branch or root, but from what was becoming beneath them. A song still forming. The others moved when he did—Khu, slow and watchful, skirted the path like a shadow cast by ivy. Roth bowed without kneeling, his eyes dimmed to listen. Shael turned her ear side-on, chasing some tone the wind had hidden. Sae knelt without moving, still as a fern under snowfall. Grenn’s hands flexed against his thighs, but he did not speak.

The bark’s breath met his fingers before his palm found the trunk. Heat. Not sun. Not fire. Living heat. Like breath in the belly of the earth.

Skar closed his eyes, though they did not matter. The rhythm came through skin. A low, resonant thrum—neither voice nor sound. Knowing.

“Traveler-who-steps-on-roots-like-sky,” the root-song, the words not words, the meaning pressed into marrow, you tread near my dreaming. Shall I open a path?”

Skar had no breath. His heart lurched at the voice. It spoke in the language of the Earth, not in men’s words. An Elder of his kind might have fainted from the shock, but Skar simply stood wide-eyed. A living trunk that speaks Earthsong?

Skar’s chest beat once, hard. His jaw slackened. Not fear. Not joy. The thing before them did not command worship. It was worship. Old as hunger. New as bloom.

He bowed. No flourish. Brow to bark. The rest followed without signal—half-circle of breath and pulse and dirt-worn bone, like moss gathering round stone.

Khu’s hand found his shoulder—question or trust, he did not know. The soil beneath them darkened. Not wet. Not water. Alive.

Roth whispered, “This ground bears time. Many… turnings. But it breathes like an infant.”

Khu replied, voice like a reed in the winds. “It is not of the Old Green. Nor of Man’s gods. A third root. A new limb.”

This was no mere tree. It was something akin to a child-god, an awakened guardian of the forest, or a new presence grown from ancient seeds.

Skar closed his eyes. We have come to find you, to answer your call. But words felt inadequate. His mind tried to shape a response in Earthsong. His entire spirit quivered with the awe of it.

The trunk’s massive face shifted—he sensed the gentle motion of living bark. The bark shifted. Not forward. Not back. Inward.

Then the voice continued, low and warm:

“No need. Dry your eyes, Kokiri of river-stone-land-tree.”

The name—Kokiri.

The phrase sounded like an old word for “seedlings who dwell among roots.” A name from legends older than Men. A tear he had not known gathered in the crook of his eye. He did not wipe it.

He stood. The others stood.

Above, from the canopy, light began to fall. Not fire. Not starlight. Points. Motes. Moving with purpose, slow spiral, like breath made visible. Tiny bells chimed—not metal. Not wind. Resonance.

One drifted low. Danced.

Skar flinched. The mote circled his brow once, then hovered. His lips parted. His breath caught. The air shifted around him.

The mote shimmered once. Twice.

“HEY!”