-One-
ROWAN'S RETURN

The verdant dark of Rowan’s eyes glared at the border wall of the kingdom with the same steely focus as he had the day he’d murdered his father. That day it had been a final glance back at the world he would abandon to its inevitable ruin. Now, fifteen years later, he returned.

This wall, the largest of any of the plateau’s border fortifications, curved for a few leagues in either direction, cupping the royal fortress in the easternmost point of the Kingdom. The crumbled watchtowers on its parapet menaced from a height of over a hundred feet. Rowan recalled how much the border wall’s enormity had frightened him when he was a child, the first time he escaped the fortress. Almost humorous, how much things had changed. Behind him lay the Evergrowth, the forest that stretched endlessly outward from all sides of the Kingdom’s plateau. Evergrowth was only the most common of its many names. The Evergrowth, the eternal forest, the goddess lands, the primal depths, the verdant dark, all referred to the primordial forest from which all life came and to which only humanity did not still belong. No border wall, or any man made structure, could even approach the proportions of the Evergrowth. Rowan looked out across the neverending canopy and knew that some of it was composed of trees as large as the human capital city itself, and others still larger than that. On the bloody horizon of the evening sky, farther than any human had ever traveled and returned to tell of, rose mountains of green. Some of those mountains were great masses of stone, others were the continental bodies of ancient trees grown so massive they now hosted whole forests of their own on their colossal branches. The true scale of the Evergrowth was the subject of theological mystery, an incomprehensible vastness. Yet, standing on the sloping edge of the kingdom’s plateau, Rowan could only view the canopy plain where trees of all sizes ceased to grow upwards, as if bound by some prehistoric pact. Concealed by the relatively flat surface of this living sea was an erratic topology of mountain ranges, plateaus, ravines, and cliffs. Valleys extended deeper than the human eye could see and opened their chasmous jaws so wide they could have easily swallowed the entirety of human civilization and vanished it forever in their fathomless bellies. Rowan often wondered why the Goddess had not chosen such an immediate method of execution when she condemned humanity to extinction only half a century ago. That condemnation had sent the kingdom, the only tiny clearing outside the Goddess’s sovereign, into its terminal decline and thus sparked the final war of rebellion, the birth of Rowan and his brothers, and his seclusion in those teeming depths for fifteen short years. The worlds of monsters and magic that he had come to know in the verdant dark should have far overshadowed any memory the ruined kingdom could project, and yet the fears and tragedies of his youth had not come from the forest, and it was those fears and tragedies that now crept into his heart to gnaw at its flesh as he stood at the precipice of his once home.

“It’s so straight.” Esther, Rowan’s daughter, made this observation from his back, peering over his shoulder at the great wall. A child of the forest, she may have been conceived in the kingdom but she had not once set foot in it. To Rowan, who had seen the wall when it was still subject to minimal upkeep, the erosion by fifteen years of wind and vine growth and other forces of the goddess effected a reversion to nature’s messiness. But Esther had grown up amidst the wild geometry of tree roots and tangled undergrowth and so the ediface of even masonry was her first exposure to humanity’s trademark straight lines and angles.

“Wait until you see the inside, a whole city of straight cut stone.” Rowan said.

“I think I can walk from here.”

“Show me your feet.” She dropped from his back and removed the crude leather socks from her feet. They remained marked by red blisters she’d incurred from days of walking over uneven ground. Rowan silently scolded himself again, he’d pushed their journey too fast. “Let me keep carrying you, we need to move quickly. There’ll be no cover in the salt strip.”

“I can move quickly. I’m not a baby, Mom.” Esther protested. Now fifteen years old, she approached maturity with an eagerness to prove her capabilities. In his ideal world, Rowan would have babied her for at least another decade, but the circumstances that brought them back to the kingdom were far from ideal.

“Don’t argue with me. Hop on.”

“I can keep up! Aren’t you tired?”

“I can rest when we’re over the wall. Now let’s go.” He employed a tone of maternal command and Esther obeyed, though not without a little grumbling.

With her secured piggy-back, he moved swiftly through the edge of the Evergrowth to the salt strip. Capable as Esther was, they moved faster like this. Rowan swam between the trees like one of their native creatures, listening for any sign or sound of another presence while keeping his footsteps light enough to mask his own. It was easier to stealth through here, in the forest immediately surrounding the kingdom where trees grew normal sized and mostly mundane animals roamed. The real monsters lurked in the farther depths from where they had come. Still, the kingdom, even in ruin, presented its own threats. Rowan never let his guard down. The hardened wooden flesh of his feet did not blister and he had his superhuman reserves of stamina to draw from.

The trees soon thinned completely and between them and the great wall lay only the salt strip, a thin band of land around the eastern kingdom that had once been tilled with salt as a defensive measure against the encroaching wild. Even back when the kingdom sustained functional governance this measure had only half-succeeded. Tenacious plants of one kind or another constantly took root in the acrid soil, detoxifying the land as quickly as a declining kingdom could poison it. Had a field in the Kingdom’s own western farmlands been salted the same way it would have laid fallow for generations, but the wilds belonged to the Goddess and her will compelled nature's relentless encroach on human lands. Now hardy tall grasses choked the earth along the strip and stalks of pale blue flowers thrived. However, no trees had yet reclaimed the territory, meaning anyone atop the wall with a decent eye could have spotted them as they crossed the open field. There was not likely to be anyone watching, at least Rowan hoped not, but it only took one sighting for rumors of a runaway prince and a young human girl to spread through whatever population remained within the city.

“I’m going to climb up as quickly as I can, okay? Are you ready?” He asked her. She squeezed his shoulders affirmatively. “Hold on tight.”

Rowan sprinted across the strip and hit the base of the wall with his outstretched hand. ‘Hand’ was perhaps no longer an accurate term for the unshapely mass of gnarled roots his left arm ended in. Hand or not, he still possessed control over it, and according to his will it penetrated the wall with the kind of irresistible force with which a root can grow through stone. In nature, even the fastest growing trees take years to accomplish such a feat. Rowan, gifted with borrowed power from the Goddess, could do it in the blink of an eye. Loud cracks opened across the bricks as his ‘fingers’ established a hold in the edifice. His half wooden arm hauled them both upward with incredible strength. One of his feet riddled the stone with its own growths, followed by the other foot. Then his hand snapped free of its hold, leaving its fingers embedded in the stone. From the broken stumps grew new tendrils before it touched down higher on the wall where they again grew into it. Repeating this, he scaled the wall without ladder or even rope. It had once taken practice to coordinate his transformed limbs, but after years relying on them in the deep Evergrowth, he could perform feats like this with ease. Esther clung tightly as they ascended. As an extra measure, Rowan grew a root tendril into small but strong safety line that emerged from his shoulder and wrapped around her waist. They reached the parapet in a little over a minute, which Rowan hoped would be quick enough to avoid any watchful eyes.

Esther dismounted to peer at the forest scape they left behind, crouching so as to just peek her eyes over the balustrade. Raised below the canopy, this perspective on the Evergrowth was novel to her. Rowan sat to catch his breath. He was no longer as limber as he once was. Barely over thirty was far from aged for a typical human, but Rowan was, of course, not typical. As Esther marvel at the verdant vastness, Rowan concentrated on his left arm. It’s bundled tendrils now approximated the shape of a human arm and hand even less well than they had at the bottom of the wall. He willed the roots to grow again, trying to mold them to match his still mostly flesh and blood right arm. They wanted to move not as human flesh but in the chaotic asymmetric growth patterns native to them. Though Rowan retained basic authority over their form, the more he used them, the bolder the roots became, and the cruder his motor control. Try as he might, his left hand remained a gnarled mass of branching growths with too many fingers. He settled for breaking off the excess with his right and leaving it at that. Then he rolled up the sleeves of his tunic and his pant legs to check the war between flesh and wood playing out across the battlefield of his body. It was a war of attrition that his flesh was losing. The hardened wooden flesh of his arm had already progressed up to his shoulder. Both his calves were completely petrified, and half of his right thigh too. Dark striations along his abdomen indicated the development of new sites of the spreading petrification. He had no mirror to check with, but the last time he’d got a good glimpse at his face in a pond reflection he had seen a foreboding new splatter of large dark freckles across one cheek. For the first several years since his bargain, any plant matter he summoned would convert back to his human flesh without issue. But with each passing year since then, the conquest of his original form advanced at a steadily increasing rate. This time last year he’d still had two knees and elbows.

“Womb of the Goddess!” Esther exclaimed when she switched sides to get her first ever glimpse of the Kingdom. A exclamation she had picked up from her mother, who himself had picked it up from his elders in his youth within the city they now looked down on. Nestled up against the inner side of the wall sprawled the royal fortress, once the central node of governance and military power for both the capital and the entire plateau. Its importance was not represented in ornate architecture – it was built near-exclusively of austere black stone – nor in height – at its highest point it did not surpass the height of the border wall. Size was the measure of its significance. The structure, enormous for human constructions, occupied a full fourth of the total inner city. Its many fortified concentric rings surrounding the central royal tower spoke to its defensive function. Able to withstand uprisings from the west and assaults from the east.

Around the fortress spread the criss-crossed roads and domiciles of the capital’s civilian population, now emptied. Far from a perfect grid, but a more even pattern to a human observer than anything to be found in the Evergrowth. Beyond the city the rest of humanity’s plateau extended westward in leagues and leagues of abandoned farmland.
"It's bigger than I thought,” Esther said, “and everything is rock.”

“There’s plenty of wood too, just less than what you’re used to.”
“It's so empty.”

“That you can see. Keep your head down.”

“And everything just stays out of here?” By ‘everything’ she meant the various denizens of the Evergrowth.

“For now, it seems that way. It’s probably the safest place for you.”

“For us.” Esther corrected.

“Right.” Rowan lied, not without the sting of guilt. “There are still plenty of people who’d like to get their hands on you if they find out you exist, so we should be just as careful here as we are out there. Do you have your disguise and your spear?”

Esther nodded and drew the primitive weapon from the sack she carried, an old infantry’s knife affixed to the end of a walking stick.

“Good. Now let’s see if we can find that old friend of mine.” Rowan started scanning the fortress for the most discrete entryway, but Esther tugged on his arm.

“You said we could rest.” She said, planting her feet with characteristic stubbornness.

Rowan suffered another stab of guilt. “I’m sorry, baby. Do you need a break?”

“You need a break, Mom. You’ve been carrying me all day, and I saw you checking your legs and arm.” Though she was susceptible to the kind of overconfidence typical of adolescence, it was only because her capabilities were indeed growing. A tough life of survival had put her on the fast track of development, including mentally, as evidenced by her keen awareness of her mother. It was harder now to hide things from her.

“Alright. You’re right.” Rowan said, aware that he could not win an argument about this. “One of these watchposts could be a good place to sleep. We can get into the fortress early tomorrow, before the sun is up.”

They chose a watchpost that was half collapsed in on itself, overgrown with vital throngs of creeper vine. Rowan used another substantial expenditure of his wooden flesh to break an entrance through the rubble, willing his arm to spread through the cramped interior. This kind of growth his roots accomplished most readily, growing with their own kind of agency over the walls and ceiling. Rowan directed their main task, but the roots decided exactly how it should be done. They bolstered the structure and, importantly, filled in the entrance behind them. With only an arrow slit to allow the last slivers of sunlight in, the secluded stone den was a secure spot to settle for the night. They could sleep together through until morning, no point in keeping watch.

Esther busied herself preparing their bedrolls, rationing out the water and foodstuffs they carried. “We can find somewhere to wash tomorrow. There’s probably tons to scavenge in the city, right?” She said, planning out their daily tasks as if they might go on living here the same as they had in the forest for so many years.

Rowan had other things on his mind. “Esther, come here. Let me hold you a bit.”

“I have a bedroll. I don’t need to be rocked to sleep anymore.”

“This is for me, baby. Please? Just a little bit and then we’ll sleep.”

Being each other’s constant and near exclusive companions for over a decade meant they could exchange volumes of information in a quick volley of subtle expressions. After a brief wordless dispute, Esther relented and climbed into her mother’s arms, one of which groaned into a new shape to more comfortably cradle her body. A lifetime of scarcity had not allowed her to grow as large as she might have in the old days of the kingdom, but she was no baby anymore either. She lacked only a handful of inches on her mother now and just as built of wiry muscle. Their bodies fit together a touch awkwardly, but Rowan did not mind the boniness of her butt. He was content to lean back against the brick and stroke her long black locks, so much like her grandmother’s, in the meditative calm of nightfall.

Their bedrolls lay unfurled and unused that night. Sleep arrived quickly in the total black of the watchpost. Esther first, followed shortly by her mother. Both of their bodies were eager to sink into deeper depths of unconsciousness than the vigilance of travel through open forest had allowed. Perhaps in those depths Esther found rest.

Rowan, however, did not. He found himself running through the halls of the royal fortress. His bare feet smacked the cold tile floors as they had done many times before in dreams and once in reality. He did not need to look around the replaying scene to know its every detail, but the visions came nonetheless. The hall extended endlessly on, darkened by its lack of windows, with few servants left to light the sconces in those last days of order. His left arm was darkened also, not yet by wooden composition but by a thick syrupy coat of blood all the way up to the bicep. His father’s, and the dozen poor soldiers who had gotten in the way. His other arm dragged a string of brothers behind them, hauling them as fast as their little legs could keep up with. Oleander first, his long black hair stuck to his wet cheeks and whipping Aster’s face behind him. He carried Fern, the youngest, only five back then, who wailed as any baby would when snatched from their crib in the middle of the night. Cedar stumbled along behind Aster, half running and half dragged. He did the least to conceal his crying, though he did try. Not that it mattered with Fern making a racket. Even emptied of staff, the fortress’s remaining soldiers would come investigating. Maybe they had already found the King’s mutilated body. Roots can kill as effectively as a blade, though not as cleanly.

Fortunate that the fortress was located so close the border. They only needed to reach the wall. They would not be followed into the Evergrowth, at least not until the Kingdom’s forces had fully realized what had happened. But in the dream, escape never came. The infinite hall echoed forever with wailing and distant shouts.

Then the fever broke and he opened his eyes to the quiet of the borderland. Only the voices of distant eastward creatures carried faintly through the night. Esther’s body slept soundly against his. He made a silent prayer of thanks to the goddess for allowing him still more time. She did not, however, spare him reminders that his end of the bargain was long overdue. As usual, he woke to three numb, motionless limbs. It would take only a minute to force ambulatory life back into them, but he saved himself the effort. He would return to sleep soon. Until then he brought his last animal arm up to pet Esther’s hair. In the morning he would braid it, maybe for the last time. This was his second return over the eastern border wall. Soon it would be his third time leaving the kingdom by the same route, and this time he would leave alone.