Excerpt From Tales of the Wythenwood: The Artfulness of Stupidity
PrologueThe eagle sat watchfully, the wind ruffling its feathers as it swirled unimpeded atop of the spindle of rocks on which the eyrie sat. The foliage below swirled hither and thither in a great maelstrom of assorted detritus. Yet none came so high as to bother the winged guardian as he remained alert upon his perch looking down on the outstretched canopy of the seemingly endless Wythenwood below.
Hand over hand, foot over foot the troupe climbed upwards; silently. Their simian faces grimaced as the cold gusts of air bombarded them in a continuous effort to break their will. Never had they climbed so high, yet they knew not why they climbed and knew not what they sought. All that was known were the tempting whispers of a prize beyond prizes, the reward of all rewards that could be found uttered in the darkest nooks and deepest crannies of the Wythenwood, where all utterances came under hushed breath.
The eagle was as eagle-eyed as eagles are and had long since espied the intruders, yet he waited until the baboons had climbed high enough to ensure that any fall would return them to the soil once more, to nourish the roots of the endless number of trees that was the Wythenwood. He must send a message to those who would consider trespassing on the hallowed stones of Eramana’s needle he thought. The message needed be to clear— and final.
Higher and higher they climbed up the thrusting edifice; wrought by rain, winds and eons passed. The eagle looked down over its beak and upon its sacred charge, a ward that it had been born to guard and would also die to do just so. It bore the mottled patterning common to all eggs of eagle kind, yet this egg was swollen to an enormous size, large enough for an eagle fully grown at birth to erupt from its dappled shell. Though the shell itself was interspersed with a multitude of tiny holes and through every hole; like the most intricate and ornate of weavings grew the most impossible of vines. Leaves of red, leaves of gold and green, nestled amongst them was every shade between. Leaves of oak, leaves of acacia, pine and yew holding every color from spring to fall. It was not one tree; it was them all.
Although it seemed that the vine belonged perhaps to every tree that ever was, in some ways it belonged to none at all. For no roots did it bare to earth, instead it just lay wreathen around the great egg from which it protruded with the long tentacular strands of the chimaera vine smothering all the other eggs nesting within the eyrie in a nurturing, motherly embrace.
The eagle dipped its beak so that it all but touched the leaves of the wreathen egg and whispered so gently that even the air itself, through which the eagle’s words did pass could have barely heard.
Hand over hand, foot over foot still the baboons climbed on, eyes wild with the greed of anticipation, up and up they rose. And then it happened…
Yellow beaks and wings as black as the reaper’s cowl descended from the mists above. Gray tendrils of cloud ran amok as flailing arms grasped for them in panicked desperation, only for their brief hope of salvation to disappear into corporeal nothingness upon little more than the promise of a touch. Wrenched from the rocks by ferocity and talon the baboons one-by-one began to fall. A final glint of life dancing in their eyes with maddened fright as they plummeted to the swiftly encroaching ground.
The intruders lay motionless with eyes now glazed by death. The soil shall have them once more thought Reinhardt.
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