The Galloping Tree

“This seems really dangerous,” Sir Danielle Longbow said. She watched her wife, Lupita, preparing the magical experiment.

Frosty winds of the northern summer whipped stubborn tufts of grass back and forth. A tree half dead lay on its side on the horizon. Two horses whinnied, straining at the ties that bound them to the twisted trunk.

“Possibly. I talked it over with the curaduile. They think it has a high chance of success.”

“And what would it create?” Sapphire blue eyes of the knight mirrored the cloudless sky above. Goosebumps on her hands begged her to rub them for warmth.

“Some combination of undead fire horse, curaduile tree, and dragon.” Lupita’s pine needle green Royal Coven robes flapped in the wind, hiding or revealing the gold stitched Crann Kingdom Oak across the back.

“Those sound like things that shouldn't go together.”

“You have no imagination, Dani,” Lupita shook her head, curly hair bouncing on her head as she rested a dragon scale the size of a shield atop the skull of an undead horse. Inside the skull she dropped the seed of a curaduile tree.

“Nonsense, I’m imagining you naked right now.” Wearing a light gambeson and a black Nameless Knights tabard, Danielle rubbed her scarred left hand across the pommel of her sword.

“Imagining or remembering?” Lupita’s smile shimmered white, cheeks creased into dimples.

“Both of course, that’s why the image is so clear. Right now I’m picturing you,” Danielle said but Lupita held up a hand.

“Later, Dan.” She shook her head. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“I’m concentrating as well,” said the knight, brown eyes watching Lupita on her knees. Danielle pushed on the pommel, slapping the new, gold embroidered green scabbard of the sword against her leg.

“You’re unbelievable,” said the witch. Lupita smiled, her brown cheeks taking on an undertone of warm red.

“Nah, you believe it. You know better.” Without her usual armour, Sir Longbow felt feather-light and ready to drift away on the breeze. Built like the granite walls of Leonor, it was unlikely anything but the strongest gust would sway her.

“You’re insatiable then.” Lupita winked at Danielle, then turned back to her work. She painted magic runes across the skull and the dragon scale, lamenting that the seed was so small.

“Sounds more like it.”

“It’s done, get ready to run.”

“Born ready.” Danielle held out a hand for her wife, ready to grab her and beat a hasty retreat.

Lupita stood back from the bloody mess of mythological detritus. “Eirich cursach,” she said with a smile. Her brown eyes soaked up a moment of the explosion before she turned to run.

The magical words reanimated the undead horse, summoning bones from gods only knew where. Flames burst from everywhere around the horse. Even as the horse was taking shape the seed inside the skull began growing at an exponential rate. Fueled by the fire, the seed of the magical tree tried to swallow the flames.

Lupita’s feet pounded the hard packed soil of the north. Behind her the monstrosity rose as a fiery glowing tree. The dragon scale large enough to be a worthy shield was lost to sight in the chaotic growth that was tearing the form of the horse apart. A whinnie that sent a burst of flame into the sky reverberated in the deep dark places in the knight and the witch where fear is born.

Roots stretched outwards as the branches of the tree raked the sky. What had been a safe distance was ever more threatened by the reach of branches hungry for blood.

“Keep running!” Danielle grabbed Lupita’s hand dragging her wife away; they ran until their chests hurt.

“It wasn’t like that last time?” the witch asked, watching a canopy of leaves spread out above the tree in the shape of a titanic mushroom cap.

“No, the growth was dramatic before, but nothing like this. The creatures were never inside the trees before. I suppose they all fell eventually. Is it slowing down?”

“Looks like it,” Lupita nodded. “It’s incredible.”

“What’s going to come out of that?” Sir Longbow asked.

“We’ll see in a week. Seven day maturation of the curaduile should work out what’s going on in there. I suppose now we should go.”

Mounting their horses, tied up beyond the horizon, they rode south, back towards the capital, Leonor, then on to the village of Fisher’s Gasp.

“A dragon-tree-horse?” asked Prince Consort Carl, an old friend of Danielle’s, cursed to look older than he was. “That sets the imagination racing.” Grinning the old roguish smile, he started sketching with charcoal. Wild monsters spat themselves across the paper via his hand.

“This is going to be a long week,” Lupita said. She sighed. “I really hope it doesn’t look like any of those.” Her eyes widened as they scrolled across the nightmares of Carl’s making.

“Are they unrealistic?” asked the Prince Consort.

“I don’t think the dragon’s scale is going to do anything,” Danielle said looking at a charcoal horse with roots for legs and fire spurting from its mouth. “It was swallowed by the tree as it grew but didn’t seem to have any effect on the curaduile or the horse.

“The magic Lupita used will take effect during the week of maturation and awakening,” said Elswyth. The curaduile avatar had been silent until then. It was a perfect physical representation of Danielle the day they had met, except that it was entirely composed of wood and had eyes the green of a bright tree leaf and hair of dark green growing down past its shoulders. The faux tabard which had once been a perfect copy of Danielle’s had morphed into a long dress as the avatar had learned to control its own form.

“Isn’t it cruel to create something torn between two minds?” Sir Longbow asked. She sipped honey cider from a flagon and stretched, joints clicking. She gave a groan of relief. Bulging muscles tensed across her chest as she straightened her back.

“As the week progresses, they will become one,” Elswyth said in a voice that was the creak of branches in the wind and the rustle of leaves. “Lupita and I pondered that possibility long and hard. We wove many spells to ensure the pieces come together as one. We do not know what form that one will take.” She sipped water from her own cup, carved from stone.

“That’s another thing.” Danielle sat forward on her stool. “Will it be connected to other trees the way the curaduile around Crann are?”

“No, its roots will not meet ours. We will have to go to it.”

“With a cutting?” Danielle asked. Though curaduile avatars couldn’t travel far from their trees that magical bond could be cheated if the avatar took a cutting with them that was growing.

Nodding, Elswyth nodded to a pot on a shelf that Sir Longbow hadn’t noticed. “Now that you have left Leonor City I need it just to visit you here.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Danielle said to the avatar of a tree growing outside the wall of Leonor’s Old City. “It’s changed so much since I moved there,” she said. Before the defeated Empire of the Holy Proclamation had besieged Leonor, it was the smallest capital city on the continent. Crann Kingdom had absorbed kingdoms to the north once occupied by the empire and half of Afon to the west. Leonor was swelling to keep up with the population of immigrants who came to Crann from across the world.

Riding her fine horse, Sir Danielle Longbow wondered why she would ever want another mount. From Fisher’s gasp to the ever expanding suburbs of Leonor, they crossed the World Worm River which had marked the northern border of Crann until just years ago.

Forests south of the river became rolling fields beyond Worm’s Mount Castle, once the southernmost fortress of the empire. Further north the farmland thinned as the top soil grew thinner and the winters longer. Lands which had been the heart of the frozen empire.

The eruption of a volcano had covered lands far and wide with potent fertiliser, hardy northern plants latched onto the minerals. Tiny white flowers grew among the tough grasses.

Beyond the fallout zone of the volcano the cold and the wind kept down all but the most stubborn forms of life. The chilly morning air danced with vapours from the mouths of Danielle and Lupita, and the three horses.

“I hope the fire of the horse kept my fellow curaduile warm. This cold is hateful.” Elswyth nursed the sapling that was swaddled in furs. Without it the avatar could die.

“It’s gone?” The upward inflection at the end of Lupita’s last word was high pitched in astonishment.

“A third of it was horse,” Sir Longbow said. “Maybe it rode off into the sunset, spitting seeds and fire.” She tugged on her reins, scanning the horizon.

“It should not have been alone,” Elswyth said. “It’s only a sapling. Without the guidance of the forest, it must have felt abandoned. We need to find it.” Having learnt expressions while studying human body language, the avatar managed an excellent impression of concern.

“We’ll find it. Don’t worry.”

They rode to a crater in the dark ground where the tree had towered into the sky. The crater was tear shaped, the arrow of the hole in the ground pointing to the north west.

Drag marks zig zagged and stuttered from the crater. From random indistinguishable scratches they began to form patterns of four. Danielle pictured the mighty tree’s roots twisting together into legs. Hoof prints behind their horses followed the tracks on both sides, Danielle to the left, Lupita and Elswyth to the right.

Hard packed frozen soil had given way to something heavier than any horse. The prints were further apart. Instead of horse’s hooves, three pronged prints in patterns of four bounded across the land further and further apart.

Hours of riding took them to a land which had never known summer. Heavy prints in soil became gouges in snow. Their mounts shivered, not bred for the harsh cold.

At last they crossed the border of the old empire’s capital district. There the ground was still scorched by the dragon fire that had burnt out the heart of the Empire of the Holy Proclamation. Trees had sprouted in sheltered spaces. Pines loved their new home.

The pace of the running creature had slowed there, each step was closer to the last.

“Were close,” Danielle called to her companions. “Come on.”

Between the black walls of a burnt down house, stood a creature nothing like the sketches Carl had put to paper. Its every snorting breath caused a heat haze around its nostrils. Its rear legs had more in common with a cat than a horse. Its tail was held rigidly off the ground and away from its body, two thirds the length from its nose to its rear. Feet half hoof, half claw looked carved from root.

“Those eyes,” said Lupita in wonder. “Like emerald fire.”

Patterns on the skin of the beast shimmered with a vague pearlescence. Any colour could be seen, though brown predominated the scheme. With a maw as much like a crocodile as a horse, it snapped brilliant teeth. Tiny ears flicked, while it pawed the ground.

“It's impossible,” said Danielle in a whisper.

“It’s incredible,” said Lupita in a defensive tone.

“It’s afraid.” Elswyth slowly stepped down from her horse, handing the reins and the swaddled sapling to Sir Longbow, the avatar approached the creature at a snail’s pace. Echoes of the wind on clattering branches filled the air around Elswyth.

Pine needle green thorn-like branches grew from between the plates that covered the beast’s back. Looking more like a hedgehog, it turned side on. It tensed the muscles in its legs, ready to turn and run or pounce.

It would have to duck down to bite my head off, Danielle thought. Her right rested on the pommel of her sword, ready to draw it from the scabbard. The swaddled sapling rested in the crook of her left arm. Her heart pounded.

Elswyth slowed her approach to an ever more frustrating pace. The avatar’s right hand reached out. The beast’s slitted eyes shimmered green, widening and narrowing. The head turned from Elswyth to Danielle, to Lupita, and back.”

Baring teeth that were fit to puncture the best plate armour, the head bowed lower. The eyes focused on the avatar’s hand. The walking curaduile’s fingers touched the snout as a haze of rippling air burst from the nostrils.

“Caraid,” said the avatar, patting its chest.

The beast’s head tilted as Elswyth repeated the old tongue word for friend, the language of the trees. It was the language of magic, imbued with power.

It coughed out sounds with the same rhythm as caraid, twisting to look at Elswyth from a different angle.

“Eirich cursach,” said a voice of snapping twigs and brushing leaves.

The light in the eyes vanished, leaving two orbs the size of Danielle’s fist wide in panic. Roots sprung from its feet into the ground. Leaves carpeted the back in bright green.

“Tha mi duilich,” said Elswyth, apologising to the beat. “Now we can talk,” said the avatar to the knight and the witch. “I can teach it.”

“What should we do?” Sir Longbow asked.

“Pitch your tent. This will take time.” Elswyth rested a hand on the trunk of what was becoming more tree than anything. Branches sprouted from the back, twisting up towards the light of the sun.

No longer brown, the wood of the treelike creature had undertones of golden purple. Frozen in fear, the once glowing eyes were the yellowish green of new leaves with midnight black slitted pupils.

Elswyth built a fire by the creature's side and fed her sapling to it. The magical curaduile cutting rooted itself by Lupita’s creation.

“Won’t you be stuck here?” asked the witch.

“Until this tree is large enough to make another cutting, yes.” The avatar was resigned to its duty.

Pitching their tent by the fireside, Danielle and Lupita watched the two magical trees in conversation. The knight brought firewood and the witch fed the flames with her magic.

Sir Longbow hunted in the lands around, finding only mice that burrowed below the ground. Their rations dwindled. There was water aplenty in the snow around them, which they melted on their own fire.

The curaduile and the creature did not have to talk vocally by the time their roots connected. The tree shared knowledge and memories with its offspring using a binary version of the root network all of the curaduile in Crann used.

“It is a curaogine, that it names its kind, of which it is first,” announced Elswyth one frigid afternoon. “It names itself Djeithir. It means-”

“Haste,” Lupita interrupted with the overeager energy of a bookworm who knows the answer. “That’s a beautiful name.”

“Djeither wants to meet the other curaduile. I have explained that I can no longer leave this place. I will wait here and prune a cutting from this tree when it has grown enough. You will ride him back to Fisher’s Gasp. We both hope you will return here to use up the other dragon scales you have, to give Djeither a family.”

“Ride him?” Danielle asked in a voice high with shock.

“Of course,” Elswyth’s features mimicked confusion perfectly.

“But Djeither can talk, to ride him seems insulting to say the least.”

Elswyth smiled a sarcastic smile. Turning to Djeither she said, “eirich cursach.” The roots withdrew from the soil. The branches retracted beneath the plates of its back. Djeither looked something like a horse once more. “Every life has a purpose, Danielle. A horse to ride. A crop to eat. A child to live when the parents die. His first memories trace back to being the horse whose soul was trapped in that cursed skull. It had been bred to ride. It lived for the bond between it and the rider.”

“But I can’t ride it,” protested Sir Longbow.

“Djeither does not want you to. He wants Lupita to ride him home, it was she whose magic helped bring him to life.”

“Yes,” said Lupita, too loudly. She rushed forwards, putting her right hand on the curaogine’s long nose. As it exhaled she jumped back, swearing as the heat almost burned her. “Stay away from the nose, noted.” The witch waved to her mount to move down. After tilting its head it kneeled to let her climb up.

“What have we done?” asked Danielle as her wife rode away, whooping with joy.

“Brought a creature of great beauty and Wonder into the world,” answered Elswyth without pause. Don’t let it be the last.

“No worry about that, Lupita wouldn’t let me. Goodness, it's fast.”

“I think Djeither is holding back for Lupita’s sake.”

“It’d better.” Danielle‘s brown eyes reflected the tendrils wrapping around the witch in an organic saddle and belt. It accelerated, tearing across the horizon. Deep tracks wound through the snow, revealing the charred black world beneath.