Harvesting a Harvester

I haven’t been in this stretch of forest since the changes started. I brought a skin of water as my Dropping By Gift, and rehearsed several new stories in my head. The forest grew darker and darker as I proceeded, but I heard no signs of any sentience other than me.

I had to plant one foot firmly so I could raise the other over a raised tree root. At the height of my motion, I felt the ground under me give way slightly, tilting me backward. Propping my raised foot on the tree root, I steadied myself and looked down.

The dark dirt of the forest floor had become mud and was slowly creeping up my ankle. It had already covered my foot.

“I see you.” My words were more mirth than warning.

The creeping mud stopped. I watched a large area of dirt around me ripple.

“Is that it? You’re not even going to try?” The mud retreated from my ankle, but held on to my toes.

I rolled my eyes with dramatic flair and deeply sighed so that even the mountains heard me. “Well, I guess I’ll have to look for my friends elsewhere then…” The mud retreated fully from my foot and solidified under me. But the entire area was filled with a sudden tension.

Like a predator lying in wait.

I lifted my foot and stepped fully on the tree root. I burst into sudden giggles and intentionally threw myself backward. If I was wrong, I was going to land on hard forest floor.

The Shamblings threw up tendrils from the ground to catch me in mid-air. They enveloped me and pulled me into their collective form. Despite the cool of the season, their embrace was warm and damp, as decay should be. I had long learned to ignore the scent, finding the putrid sharpness to be the hallmark of my allies, and thus… inviting.

I was quickly smothered by them, so that a bystander would think the forest floor had swallowed me completely. There was not a single bump, impression, or mark that I was still there.

They whisked me to a deeper mass, where they oozed under cloak and clothes, touching every inch of my skin. I allowed it, even though I was surrounded by flesh eating insects and acidic fluids, because this was how we said ‘Hello’, by being vulnerable to each other.

From them, I have learned much of the art of abiding. How no words need be said. Just Friend beside Friend.

The water was accepted and they brought me to their surface. Half-submerged within them, I finally verbally greeted them and made the small talk that travelers do.

My stories completed, they told me stories of their own. It is hard to transcribe them into words, because they would read like a biology textbook. A large mammal was caught and slowly devoured by them. It took them a week because of a sudden cold snap that froze much of their water mass. But in that week, they learned something. Scavengers are sometimes careless. What was a good meal of one large mammal (moose, I think), became a feast of that plus several smaller predators. (Solitary wolves, a fox, and something else that I didn’t recognize.)

I was surprised because this knowledge should be among the oldest of the Shamblings’ hive memory. “Sometimes when the youngers split from the elders, they do not take the wisdom with them. There is much we [this hive segment] know. There is much we have lost. We do not always know what we should be relearning.” That lament sure sounds familiar.

After stories, I stripped bare and lay myself comfortably among them. Their decay keeps them at a human-comfortable temperature. They cover me like a living blanket and we continue sharing each others space.

A ripple of alarm silences the forest. The Shamblings pull me under the mud surface, solidifying themselves above me. The roaches chitter of approaching danger and fear.

“Well, well, well… What do we have here? A spot of not frozen ground in a forest with an inch of permafrost already set in?” I feel a sudden concentrated heat source at the edge of the mass. “Yes! Magic mud!” The male is humming to himself as the heat source continues drying out the caught edge. “And a large deposit at that. Excellent!”

The Shamblings gather themselves to try and smother the heat source, but it is too great and what parts of the mass touches it, dies and dries out at once. I am reminded of the day the youngers decided to try and make lunch of me. From such heat, they are not able to defend themselves.

I tell them to flee when a ripple of pain shudders the mass. The intruder has used his heat source to carve out a chunk of the mass and is drying it out.

“He came at first during the summer, but we repelled him. He has been coming now that the ground is solid, using our winter slowness to separate us and harvest us.” Not on my watch. I merge my body with the Shamblings and am able to see what he is doing.

Harvest is very much the appropriate word. He has a large jar and is using the heat source to dry out the chunk and crumble it into the jar. I notice he is dressed very modern, with a variety of talismans and symbols hanging from his neck. He looks like a neo-pagan one would find at a renaissance faire, trinkets and symbols everywhere, and not a lick of sense.

The heat source is an oversize soldering iron. I note he has a portable butane torch as well. He has brought nothing for the Shamblings, and is assuming the “magic mud” is without any sentience. To harvest the magic mud, he uses the soldering iron to carve out a chunk of Shambling. Then uses the butane torch to dry out the stolen piece before crumbling the inert material into the jar.

The weather is cold enough to stop the Shamblings from rushing him at once. And the iron sears them to the point where the cost of defending themselves is too great. Even though in the long run, he could very well destroy the clusters in this forest by himself.

Not on my watch.

I separate myself from the Shamblings, and call my clothes around me while submerged. While he is preoccupied with crumbing the next clump of mass, I move to the far side where there is a tree stump. Let’s see how well he knows his fairy tales. I tell the Shamblings to follow my lead.

Pulling myself onto the tree stump, I glamour myself to match his ethnicity. What perches precariously on the stump is a twenty-something white girl, with a hella lotta friendship bracelets, a few mass-produced trinkets, frilly clothes ill-suited for the environment, and a trembling lip.

“Ahh! No, go back! Go back! Shoo!” ~cries~ “No, I don’t wanna die here! This isn’t like what they told me!” ~more crying~

The Shamblings swirl in confusion at my sudden despondent cries. They know my words do not reflect my depths. They gather around the stump, unsure what to do. A muddy tendril reaches up the stump. While I know it is meant to console me, I shriek piercingly. “No! Don’t touch me! Help!”

The elders in the mass realize what I’m doing, and withdraw from the youngers to cling to tree roots around me. The youngers double in their attempts to scale the stump.

“Who’s there? No one is supposed to know how to get here!” The guy looks up and peers into the dark wood. On spying me, he dismisses me with, “You’re a trick! Just another forest ghost!”.

I whisper to the youngers an apology for their impending demise, but if the hive is to survive, sacrifices must be made. They seem to understand and pour themselves into the act of threatening me, pulling bark off the tree stump in loud shatters.

“Oh dear goddess! Another human! Hey! HEY!” I wave my arms frantically. “Do you have fire? My lighter ran out and I don’t have matches!” Another piece of tree stump is cracked away and thrown for good measure.

“Oh shit! You’re not a ghost! You’re real!” He stands up and starts towards me, but remembers the unburnt mass still within reach. “Hang on! Yea! I got fire! Lemme burn this bitch up!” He opens his butane torch valve to maximum, and proceeds to burn a path towards me. Most of what he sets on fire is inert debris. I know when he reaches me, the youngers around the stump will be destroyed. I urge them to start fleeing, but the elders force a few to remain in place.

“I… I can jump from here… Don’t get too close!” He continues burning a path. I can feel the dying squeals of the sacrificed youngers.

“No, I’m almost there! Just stay put!” I can see his face as he starts to realize his sudden vulnerability. I wave as if I’m going to jump and allow my bodice to slip slightly. The sudden amount of cleavage brought his focus back to me. “Yea… you… uh… Just remember I rescued you.”

Behind him, in the shadows of the trees, the elders pulled themselves upright into mud-folk. Remembering the lesson of bipedal movement they learned by merging with me, they moved silently behind him. Too late, he realized he was walking into a trap.

He broke the valve on the torch, causing the flame to blow out for a couple feet. His intention was to swing the torch around him.

He had no intention of me grabbing the nozzle.

“What…” He looked at the red hot nozzle held firmly in my hand. It is clear the temperature does not harm me. “You’re not human!” He shoves the torch upwards into my face. The glamour is destroyed at once, revealing my otherworld face. The sight of a burn-scarred face and dead eye staring back at him shocked him into releasing his grip on the torch.

The ambulatory Shamblings grabbed him at once and pulled him away from the stump. As they merged into each other, tightening their grip, I allowed the butane torch to immolate me. My cloak unfurled and took the fire, becoming great wings of bright orange flame.

“I have questions for him. A moment, dear friends.” They uncovered his face and allowed him to cough out the penetrating mud. The turned him in their grip so that he was facing me.

“What was your intention? To harvest magic mud and sell later?”

He struggled against them, but their grip solidified like concrete around him. He was allowed only enough space to breathe. He said nothing at first. The visual sight of my form on fire with fire wings stunned him. The butane torch ran out of fuel and sputtered cold. My flames remained. I wanted his last sight of me to be that of living flame.

“Y-y-yes. It’s only mud! No one told me the forest had a guardian! I’m sorry! I’ll pay for what I took!”

“Who else harvested mud with you?” With deliberate motion, I crushed the canister in my hands, taking great care to make the ball of steel tighter and tighter.

“No one! I told no one! Are you kidding? People pay me lots for this shit! Because I’m the only one that can come here!” He laughs nervously. “Everyone is afraid of some forest monster that eats people, when it’s just mud and quicksand!”

“Just mud? Just… mud…?”

“Yea! It’s magic mud… there’s some freaky necro shit I can do with it… but it’s… just…” He glances at the bipedal Shamblings holding his head. “Oh dear god. The mud is alive. I’ve been cutting up living things.” His eyes showed a deeper fear.

“What kind of ‘freaky necro shit’ have you been doing with the Dead Flesh of Magic Mud?” I’m now playing with the steel, melting it in my hands and pinching it like clay.

He hesitates in answering. I nod at the Shamblings. They set their roaches at work on his feet. He screams as the insects begin to burrow into living flesh.

“Curses! And wards! Ahh, make it stop! I’ll tell you! I sell it as graveyard dirt! I can feel them chewing my feet! THEY ARE CHEWING OFF MY TOES!” The Shamblings pause their meal. He sobs. “Stuff it in dolls and curse people. It kills plants when you put it in a garden. Hide it in a room, and it calls roaches and bugs and shit.” He breaks down into more crying. “I didn’t know… I didn’t know… It’s only dirt…”

“I don’t believe you.” His crying stops and panic begins to creep in. “Most of the shit you are wearing are for show, but there are a few bindrunes in there specifically to ward against wights and nature spirits. You came armed with two sources of heat. You knew you were going into an area with inhuman activity. Your first words to me betrayed you knew of false-women. You are crying innocence now, but your very actions tell me otherwise.”

I mold the mass of steel into a certain shape, and force it into the stump I’m hovering above. “Be thankful I can not pull the rest of you here. Be mindful you are getting your due sooner than you normally would. And once your form here is fully eaten, and you are released to your waking world, remember there is always a price. And the payer doesn’t always get to set it.”

“I’m done with him. What metals you can not eat, leave it on this stump. You may find it to be a different kind of bait for a different kind of prey.”

I folded my inflamed wings about me, extinguishing myself and hiding in the shadows. The Shamblings quit their bipedal forms and poured over the intruder, drowning him with worm-ridden mud. He thrashed wildly in their embrace for a moment, then stiffened in one last jerk.

“His flesh does not begin to pay the debt for what he has stolen. However, he can steal no more from you. You can begin healing the clusters he has ravaged.”

I turn to leave the forest. A mud tendril wraps around my ankle, stopping me. “You did not warn him, this time. You went straight into trapping him for us. We have seen a change in you Many-Words. Are you well?”

“My changes are still ongoing, dear friend. I do not know what will come at the end. I guess you can say, I am losing my domestication.”

“We do not know the sound, ‘domestication’. Does this mean you are becoming better, worse, or something else?”

“From the view point of my friends, I am becoming better. From the view of those that would hurt me, I am becoming worse. From my point of view, I am becoming something else. Domestication is how wolves became dogs, how aurochs became cattle, how boars became pigs. I am reversing that.”

The tendril let go of my ankle. “When you need help shedding this ‘domestication’, we will help.”

I only nodded, silently noting they already had, and strode through the depths of the forest, passing from Dreaming to Waking.