Our hero was now able to hire a botanist. The doe assumed our hero’s zeal for a botanist came from a love of horticulture.
The princess’s reign inspired true harmony between the city and the forest, such that there was a resurgence of interest in forest culture. Citizens taught themselves the forest’s many languages, they adopted the forest folk’s dress and paint, and accepted some of their ethics. As the humans had, at some point in time, derived from the forest creatures, they were also able to recover thousands of years of lost history and science, which the forest folk did not develop.
These records detailed an old sage who lived deep in the forest and was wise in the lives of plants. Our hero, though unsure of this sage’s health after the forest god’s death, sought them out in hopes of beginning some form of investigation. He asked the sisters to aid him in tracking this sage. He also sought the recruiter, who would be able to negotiate a reasonable compensation for this expert.
Our hero also took with him the fire sprite, who was once a god of fire. Though the sprite disliked his imprisonment in the healer’s lantern, he found his freedom more detestable. He had been hired as a heath for an inn, but in temperate weather he was unneeded, in colder days he received little wood, and when visitors extended their hands to him covered in frost, he was not allowed to devour them. He had been hired as a stove, but patrons liked their meat rare. He had been hired as a furnace, but metal gave him indigestion. Finally he had been hired as a candle for an author, but the author never had any ideas. The sprite was starved and dispossessed, and so joined our heroes, on the promise he would not set anyone on fire, despite the protests of the sisters whose forest had once been the fire’s buffet.
The road to the sage was long and arduous, as the signs then had long decayed, or were swept by the sands of the waste.
They encountered a sphinx, who gestured to ask three riddles, so as to eat them; but her throat was too hoarse, and so they passed her by.
They encountered a siren, who sang them a sweet song to entice them to drown; but when they walked to her rock, she became flustered and confounded, and left.
They encountered a squonk, who made to cry, and so vanished behind his tears; but he had no water to cry, and our heroes walked right past him, which made him all the sadder.
Our heroes discovered a lush oasis growing in the wastes. Large ferns obscured their vision, thick brushes blocked their path, and cheerful animals, who unfortunately did not speak the language of the forest, frolicked. They were all astounded such a thing could exist after the death of the forest god, and the sage, a dryad who alone remained of her kind, discreetly explained how this was by leading them.
In the center of the oasis was a fawn of white fur resting, around which flowers were fragrant, around which water was flowing, around which trees grew high. This was the god of the forest reborn.
The sisters rejoiced, for the forest would return, and, as the prior god had been their father, they wished to make love to the fawn. When pressed, the sage refused to return with our hero, as she needed to tend to the fawn’s needs.
Our hero looked at his recruiter; the recruiter looked at the fire; the fire looked at our hero. They all agreed to return to the city.
The sisters spread the news to the forest folk, who rejoiced. They would soon retake the lands, slay the humans, and rule the new forests with their culture again. The businesswoman rejoiced too and congratulated them with gifts: shirts for their backs, shoes for their feet, hats on their heads. That the clothing had ticks on them bothered the forest folk little, for some of their neighbors were ticks.
As the ticks feasted on their blood, and regurgitated human blood into their veins, the forest creatures felt their claws dull, their teeth blunt, their veins withered, their strength dissipated. The sisters became shorter, they became weaker, they disliked basketball, they liked cooking, and they bought frilly dresses to wear. The animals became human, they stood upright, they became nervous, and anxious for the future, they wanted savings and welfare, which the city folk provided in compensation for their employment, they stopped believing in the forest god, the oasis’s water dried, the flowers wilted, the trees became rotten, and the god of the forest stopped breathing one day.
Because the god of the forest was dead, again, the fire sprite did not break his promise by eating him, and the dryad settled for employment by our hero, lived with the grandmother, and bought a plant every week from the farmer’s market.
© 2025 Justin Lee