In the modern world, it is easy to forget that there are still some places of mystery; forgotten, hidden places where civilization has not touched. In this forgetting, much that was one known by all who lived close to the land, and whose daily lives were entwined in the Earth, is no longer knowable but for a select few. And for those who know the words of the trees and the language of the land, many great and magical things are possible. But to hear the whispers between root and leaf can also lead to madness.

Alice was an uncommon old woman. Her family had lived in the pine forests that surrounded the tallest mountains on the continent for generations. This was a beautiful but forbidding place that very few took time to think about and even fewer ever set foot on. Hers were the “woodfolk,” or so they were once named. Alice was the last of the elders, and it seemed the dark gift of divination – the ability to see beyond sight – had skipped her. All the women in her family had some form of the gift. Some of them dreamed of things yet to come. Others had something like a waking vision of the future. Still others were able to use cards and runes to foresee what tomorrow might bring. Alice‘s mother always had deep feelings of premonition, tingles in her body that would eventually make it to her ears and speak to her in warnings. Alice always listened to what her mother said, because invariably it would come to pass. But she herself never experienced any kind of precognition.

With her children living in far-flung parts of the forest and her grandchildren sneaking to the edge of their woodland sanctuary to see the modern world, Alice was left isolated in her log cabin that sat between three enormous boulders, dropped there by the retreating glaciers of the last ice age. She was alone. But she had many friends in the forest. Mainly her pet raccoon, Dennis, and the pair of speckled doves that would nest nearby each spring, and a curious brown bear whose winter cave wasn’t far. On the eve of her 60th birthday, which she nearly forgot, she had a dream that the forest she called home was set ablaze and burned all around her, with no escape. The bear and the doves and her sweet raccoon all gathered by her side, trapped together. As the flames surrounded them, she cried out to her mother for divine protection. The ghost of her mother told her, “only the trees can save you now.” The firestorm surged and consumed her.

Alice woke with a shock, clutching her chest and gasping for air. She was in bed, bathed in cool moonlight. It was just a dream. She collected herself; tried to calm down. Dennis was alarmed by her abrupt awakening and scurried into the kitchen. Then she remembered her mother’s words. What did she mean? Alice was just happy to be awake. She went to the kitchen to make some tea and saw that Dennis had already taken a cookie from its jar to soothe his own stirred feelings.

“What an awful dream!” She sat at the table, Dennis perched on the edge of the sink, listening. “I don’t know how we’d go on if…”

The cabin door swung open with a gust of wind. Alice jumped back. Dennis hid under the sink with a screech. Alice managed to push the door halfway closed when the wind stopped. The door shuttered as she peaked her head out from behind it to see what was waiting in the dark outside.

Pitch black but for the moonlight shining through the dense canopy of trees, making feathery shapes that danced along the needle filled ground. Alice stepped outside, her bare toes grasping at the wooden porch below her. Dennis peered suspiciously through the doorway, careful to stay just inside. Alice could hear another wind high in the trees that seem to whisper between every pinecone. It was an eerie and low sounding tone that resonated through the tree limbs as if wood and wind were speaking as one.

The wind whipped around Alice, whirring and spiraling like a dust devil. Leaves and pine needles swirled all around. She could somehow make out meaning from the strange, hollow voice within the wind, though it did not speak in words. She understood that the wooden wind was trying to warn her of an evil “greater than fire” that would come to take her land away and cast out her people from the woods forever. The voice of the trees also let her know that she was not defenseless, she had untapped powers given to her by the ancients and that her people could call upon the magic of the forest itself to aid and protect them.

The wind ceased and all the leaves and pine needles settled down to the ground again. Alice was left bewildered. What was this voice she heard? What were the ancient powers the wind referred to? More importantly, what was the evil that she and her people would have to face? She looked to the cabin for some sort of comfort or support. Little Dennis found himself a place to hide and would offer her no validation. Alice looked up at the moon and thought of her mother. She repeated to her words, “only the trees… can save you…” Alice dressed and gathered her supplies for a journey. She told Dennis to watch over the cabin. He flinched and cowered near the cookie jar. It was almost dawn. Alice put on her hat and fixed her hunting knife onto her belt. It would take a full day to reach the oldest, darkest part of the forest where she hoped she could find the magical help she needed.