Sometimes I have a thought based on one line, and I run with the idea. My brother Matt, who is a co-owner of Wet Ink Games, gave me a suggestion to look at the elves described in Into the Wyrd and Wild, to generate a piece of fiction to include in the second edition of the book. During the course of the conversation, the idea of an elf stuffing men into a tree and leaving them there was mentioned as a joke. As I thought more about it though, it seemed like a good starting place for story. Why would an elf want to stuff a man into a tree? Sometimes, when I run with an idea, it takes me into a direction I did not anticipate. That’s what happened when writing this short story. I had thought to write a story about the interplay between humans and one of the elf clans, but it turned out to be a story about mentorship.

---

The four men moved lightly through the trees, the youngest of them, Olwen, glancing around nervously. It was his first time. The other three hunters, hardened by their experiences, moved more easily. Olwen wondered if he would ever be as confident as his companions. He wondered if he would ever come back into the Wilds with them after this was over.

 Garvin looked over his shoulder, smiling at Olwen’s nervous expression. “Almost there, lad!” he said, as if they were on a jaunt through the meadow. “We’ll take one if we can, and then camp in our usual place.” The party was hunting cindershams. They’d been promised three times their normal rate if they could also find an ether rat.

“We have to stay the night in here?” Olwen asked. He couldn’t judge how far the sun had sunk towards the horizon. The thick canopy blocked nearly all the light.

Behind Olwen, Manford laughed at his cowardice. “You don’t want to be moving through these woods at night if you can avoid it,” he explained. “Especially not if you’re hunting cindershams.”

“Right,” Garvin agreed. “Better to stay put and wait out the nasty things that come creeping.”

“Nasty things?” Olwen squeaked.

At the back of the line of men, the fourth companion, Bran, chortled.

“Easy to find a cindersham at night, Olwen,” Garvin said. “But you wouldn’t want to. Better to hunt them during the day, while they rest. You come upon one in the darkness and you’re likely to end up a torch.”

“I didn’t realize that we’d have to go so far to find them, that we wouldn’t have time to get back out of the…”

Garvin halted, causing the line of men behind him to stop short. Olwen nearly bumped into his solid back. He held up a hand, stilling any questions. After a moment, he said, “Hear that?”

A soft scuttering sound rolled out of the underbrush. Olwen whispered, “Is that a cindersham?”

Garvin readied his bow and Olwen unsheathed the skinning knife at his side. Sweat dripping down the young man’s face. He wiped his arm across his forehead.

“On three,” Garvin said. “One…two…”

The brush parted and out stepped a creature, like a human and not. Great horns sprouted from her head and shoulders. She was clothed only in vines, which hardly covered any of her body. Her eyes were like pools of darkness and she flashed a wicked, toothy smile of fangs. She smelled like rot and dead wood. Olwen covered his nose at her stink.

“You wouldn’t want to shoot me,” she said, coming forward out of the underbrush. All four of the men stepped back from her as she moved. Her smiled widened at their fear. “Especially not since I can help you find the cindershams you seek.”

“We can hunt them on our own, elf,” Garvin growled.

“Not here,” she said lazily, as if it didn’t matter. “They’ve all gone away.”

“You scared them off?” Garvin asked. He lowered his bow. “Why would you do that?”

“So you’d ask for my help,” she said. Olwen couldn’t read any expression in her eyes.

Garvin grumbled to himself before replying, “But why would you want to help us?”

“I need one of you,” she said, taking another step closer. This time the four men stayed rooted where they stood. “To make a child,” she added.

Olwen nearly choked at her admission. Bran huffed and Manford sucked his teeth. Garvin rubbed his beard in thought. “What’s the matter? You don’t fancy stealing one for yourself like the rest of your kind do?”

She hissed at them, her sharp teeth seeming too big for her mouth. Her dark eyes sparkled with something sinister. “I don’t want to wait for one of them to mature,” she sneered.

Garvin looked at his three companions, all wide eyed at the horrid suggestion. “I don’t think you’ll get one of us to agree,” he explained.

“I suppose I could just take the little one off your hands,” she said, pointing at Olwen. “He doesn’t look like he’d put up much of a fight.”

“Me?!” Olwen exclaimed, his voice as high pitched as a whistle.

“Now hold on here…” Manford began, before he was interrupted by the elf.

“Or I could stuff all four of you into the nice, hollow tree I found back there until one of you volunteers,” the elf said, gesturing behind her with a smirk.

 Garvin sighed heavily. “Oh, all right,” he said. “I’ll help you…get a child if that’s what you want. But we get the pelts first.”

“Hmmm…” the elf mused. “And how do I know that you won’t desert me before you can fulfill your promise?”

“You really think any of us wants to get stuffed into a tree?” Manford suggested.

She laughed. “Very well, men. I’ll help you get your pelts first.” She turned her back to them, moving back into the thicket from which she had emerged. “This way,” she called.

Olwen’s teeth chattered as they moved through the woods. He felt they would shake right out of his skull. “Are you really going to…to…with that?” he asked Garvin in a hushed tone.

Garvin shushed him. “Trust me, she can hear you,” he whispered.

Olwen squirmed in his own skin. “But Garvin! You can’t just…”

“It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever done in here,” Garvin answered. Before Olwen could answer, he reluctantly added, “Besides. I’ve done it before.”

“You have?!” Olwen hissed.

“There’s a couple of clans who’ve decided it’s easier to take men and women who venture in here than to snatch children from the outside,” Garvin explained.

“Why do they need humans?” Olwen asked, his horror only multiplying as the moved through the woods.

“We can’t breed on our own,” the elf answered. “We need you to survive.”

Garvin smiled grimly at his companion. “I told you she could hear us.”

A little time passed in silence before the elf finally stopped. “There are three cindershams hiding just on the other side of these trees, behind a fallen log,” she said, pointing to a stand of pines.

Garvin motioned to his companions. Manford and Bran moved off to the left. Garvin pulled Olwen to the right. Together, they flanked the stand of pines, closing in on the cindershams. Olwen could hear them moving lazily. There was barely enough daylight left to see them well as they came around the log. Olwen readied his knife and Garvin raised his bow.

Garvin’s arrow hit one of them in the side. It roared in pain, the fire of its tail flickering to life. Manford had managed to hit a second one and it flopped to its side, dead. The third one belched out a gust of flame at Manford and Bran. The two men screamed, rushing from the jet of fire and dropping to the forest floor. Olwen watched them frantically rolling to put out the flames burning through their clothes.

Garvin shot another arrow at the roaring beast. He missed as the cindersham turned, skittering into the trees. Olwen watched its tail light flickering into the distance. He felt entranced by it. He swayed on his feet.

“Don’t look at its light, lad,” Garvin said, shaking him by the shoulders.

Olwen blinked stupidly, then came back to his own wits. He looked to the other two cindershams, one dead, one still thrashing from the pain of its wound. Manford, hair signed, cheek reddened from burns, stood close to it, watching it struggle. He waited until the creature’s movements began to slow, then thumped it hard on the head with the end of his knife. The cindersham stilled, dead.

“Alright, Olwen,” Garvin said. “Get to skinning.”

Olwen, Bran and Garvin worked quickly to strip the cindershams of their pelts, while Manford sat on the log, rubbing salve over his burned face and arms. Olwen tried not to stare at his companion, but couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering. “Hazard of the job, Olwen,” Manford said, as if it didn’t bother him. “I’ve known men who were burned worse than this trying to hunt down the beasts.”

“Is that salve going to be enough?” Olwen asked. “The burns look bad, Manford.”

The older man shrugged. “I’ll live,” he said, as if it didn’t matter.

The sun set as they finished with the carcasses. Manford worked on building a fire and by its light, set to butchering one of the animals.

Olwen swallowed noisily. “Are you eating that?”

Manford looked at him questioningly. “It’s good meat,” he answered.

Olwen wasn’t sure. “It smells like ash,” he said.

“I won’t make you eat it if you don’t want any,” Manford replied.

Garvin had carefully scraped the hides and was busy stretching them over the log to dry. “It’s not so bad, Olwen. A little chewy, but better than an empty belly.”

“If you can stand the taste of it,” the elf said. At the sound of her voice, the four men jumped. They hadn’t seen her since she had showed them the cindershams’ hiding place.

Garvin stood, awkwardly toying with his hands at his sides. “You come back for your…eh, payment, I suppose?”

The completely wicked smile that spread across her features sent a shiver through Olwen.

Garvin nodded to Manford. “Set up camp. You know what to do to survive the night.” Manford nodded as Garvin moved towards the elf. She seemed to slither through the trees with him. She made Olwen think of a cat toying with a mouse.

The night deepened. Manford kept the fire burning. Bran was snoring within minutes of laying down. Olwen tried to sleep, but the sounds of the woods kept him awake. At every call, croak or whistle, he startled, his heart racing. Strange laughter, moaning, whispering and hissing invaded his ears. He tried not to think if any of the sounds were coming from Garvin and the elf.

When the sun rose, Olwen was surprised to find himself blinking sleepily. He didn’t feel that he had slept at all, but as he rubbed his eyes, he knew that he must have nodded off at some point. Manford was lying down now, and it was Bran who tended the fire. Olwen was surprised to see Garvin back, sitting on the log, eating some of the leftover meat from the previous night. He was rubbing his hand over one of the pelts. Olwen shifted and the noise drew Bran and Garvin’s attention to him.

“You slept?” Garvin teased. “I couldn’t sleep my first night in this place.”

The admission brought a smile to Olwen’s face. “And here I thought I was just a coward,” he joked. It was the first thing he had been able to say since entering the woods that wasn’t filled with fear.

Garvin smiled back. “This place isn’t for the weak-hearted, lad,” Garvin said. “You’ve survived one night. You can survive again.”

The words didn’t bring much comfort to him, but Olwen was still appreciative.

On the way out of the woods, the pelts strapped tightly to his back, Garvin walked beside Olwen. “Not every job will be like this,” he said quietly. “This one was easy.” In light of what had passed in the last day, Olwen wondered what Garvin would consider difficult. “We lose people in here, Olwen. Sometimes they come out and they’re never the same. And sometimes…well, sometimes they never come out at all.”

“Why do you keep going back?” Olwen dared to ask.

Garvin tried to hide a secretive smile from him, but Olwen noticed nonetheless. “It’s not all bad,” Garvin explained. “Lots of rare and marvelous stuff in these woods, isn’t there?”

Olwen thought about the pelts Garvin carried, and the stories of treasure, rare artifacts and magic he had heard from other adventurers. “Is it worth it though?” he asked. “Is it worth…what you have to do sometimes?”

Garvin gave him a shy smile. “Haven’t found a reason yet to quit.”

Olwen nodded, looking ahead to the edge of the trees, where the sun light was hitting the meadows that lay just beyond the boundary. “Well, then I guess I’ll come back with you. See if I can come to appreciate it as much as you have.”

Garvin clapped him on the back as they moved out of the boundary of the wood.   

My development as a horror writer continued in 2021, when I had the opportunity to write two pieces of fiction for the second edition of Into the Wyrd and Wild, published by Wet Ink Games in collaboration with Feral Indie Studio. The stories I wrote for the game line presented a new kind of challenge for me. For previous projects, I had been given the setting and the scenery. Into the Wyrd and Wild is designed to be used with any other game world or system, and thus the players and story tellers create the setting. At the time, I had been listening to The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek, written by Kim Michele Richardson, and Appalachia was on my mind. When writing this story, I wanted to capture the feel of people who live on the outskirts. The tale hinges on a concept from Into the Wyrd and Wild called Lunar Madness, and draws on the idea that terrible things can happen when you go into places you don’t belong.

---

“Pull that curtain shut,” Mama said.

Janna did as she was told, shutting out the bright light of the full moon. She glanced across the room to her grandfather, asleep in the chair next to the fire. He didn’t like the full moon. Janna wondered why.

Mama went into the tiny kitchen and Janna could hear her scraping clean the pan from supper into the dog’s bowl. The big dog, Buck, was scratching at the back door, whining and barking to be let in to eat. Janna stole another glance at Grandpa. He was stirring at the noise.

“What’s he yapping at?” Papa asked, coming into the main living room from one of the tiny bedrooms on the east side of the house.

“Hungry,” Janna said.

Papa called out to Mama. “Irelle! Get the dog!” He grumbled to himself as Mama called back an indistinct answer. She opened the back room and Janna heard Buck scramble into the house.

The sound of his collar clicking against the bowl as he ate drowned out any other sounds in the cabin. When he was finished eating, Janna heard Buck’s nails clicking across the wooden planks of the floor. He came around the corner of the kitchen, looking for her. She patted her lap, calling to him. The big dog bounded to her, licking her face and her hands as she scratched his ears and rubbed his back.

“Get that animal out of here,” Papa said coldly. He was stuffing his pipe with tobacco.

Janna rose from her seat at the window, “Come on, boy,” she said, tugging at Buck’s collar. He followed her outside to the yard where she tied him to his rope again. She sat down in the cool grass and leaned against Buck after he sank down next to her. The wind blew a warm summer breeze over her. She sighed as she stroked Buck’s broad, dark shoulders.

From her place atop the hill, she looked out over the valley. A stream separated her hilltop cabin from the next hill over and Janna could see, even in the pale darkness, the line of trees that started at the base of that hill, running up and down and up again all the way into the low mountains. The night creatures were quiet. Just a few chirps and hums from a cricket or two broke the silence of the night. She gazed up at the full moon, again wondering why Grandpa hated it so much. Janna thought it was lovely. It cast everything in the most beautiful silver glow. She looked down the hill to the stream, where the water sparkled like jewels. Buck was snoring beside her. She patted his head and rose from her spot on the ground, heading off down the hill to the stream.

She didn’t get far before she heard footsteps. She turned to see who was following her and was surprised to see Grandpa standing there. “What in the hell are you doing, girl?” he asked. His eyes were wild with fright. He grabbed her arm and began dragging her back up the hill before she could fully answer. “Get yourself killed out here, you will! You can’t be going around under the moon like that!”

“Grandpa!” Janna called. “Let go!” But he didn’t release her. “I was just going down to the water!”

“Too close,” he muttered. “Too close. You’d never be safe.”

Mama was waiting for them in the doorway. Buck was standing at attention, watching as Grandpa dragged her into the house. He barked once and tried to follow them, but Mama shut the door on him. His barking only intensified, and he scratched at the door. “Mama! Get Buck! Let him know I’m okay,” Janna said, as Grandpa pushed her down into a chair at the table.

His eyes were still wild. He came very close to her face. “Never ever go out when there’s a full moon, Janna,” he hissed.

“Now, Pa, don’t you think you’re being a little hard on her?” Papa asked Grandpa from his chair by the fire. His tobacco smoke had already filled the small room and Janna wrinkled her nose at the smell.

“No!” Grandpa argued, glaring at his son-in-law. “You can’t know how horrible it might be, Jed. You weren’t there.”

Janna looked from her Grandpa to her Papa. Both the men had fallen silent as stone. “What was horrible?” Janna dared to ask.

“Hush,” Mama said. “Go get scrubbed up for bed,” she instructed.

Janna gave a Grandpa lingering, pleading look, silently hoping he would tell her what made him so afraid. He lowered his eyes from hers, turning his head towards the fire. “Do what your Mama tells you girl,” he said stoically.

Janna felt a heaviness on her that she’d never felt before. Seemed like everyone but her was in on some dark secret. It made her feel small and scared. What could be so bad that they couldn’t tell her? “Grandpa?” she asked, reaching for his hand.

“Ah!” he gasped when she touched him. He was shaking and Janna saw tears brimming his eyes. “The madness of it!” he whispered, not looking at her. “The madness,” he said, scrubbing at his face. His features twisted, screwed up tight like he couldn’t breathe. Janna clutched his hand tighter. “Grandpa?” she whispered. “Are you alright?”

“Janna, you’re upsetting your Grandpa. Run on, now. Get to bed!” Mama came around behind her, pulling her up from the chair. Janna tried to argue but Mama had a firm grip on her as she hauled her towards the door of her tiny bedroom. Mama shoved her inside then shut the door tight behind her.

Angry and embarrassed, Janna thought about barging straight out her room and confronting them about what they were hiding. As her hand came to the handle, she thought better of it. Someone was wailing, and she could hear low arguing. The fighting grew louder and after a few minutes she could make out the words Mama and Papa were saying.

“You can’t hide it from her now, Irelle!” Papa yelled.

“What good would it do?” There was a pause. “Just look at him! What good does it do to drag it up out of the past? Would it stop these fits he has at the sight of the moon? At the thought of the woods?” Grandpa’s moaning and wailing had continued through the arguing.

“She won’t forget this, Irelle, and she’ll wonder,” Papa said, his voice angry and hard.

“She’s a good girl, Jed! She won’t want to send him into a fit!”

There was a scuffling sound, and Janna wondered what was happening. She heard a chair scooting across the floor and outside Buck was barking again. But the arguing was done and so was the wailing. She pressed her ear to the door, holding her breath. She could hear low murmuring but nothing else.

She flew across the room at the sounds of footsteps approaching her door. She hopped into her bed and ducked under the covers to hide the fact that she hadn’t changed into her nightgown yet. Her door creaked open and Mama stood there in the doorway, looking as hard and bitter as the ice on a pond. “Bed,” she said, sounding like ice too. Mama wiped a hand across her face. “Don’t you ask about things you don’t know about again,” she said. She quickly shut the door.

In the morning, Grandpa seemed his usual self, though Janna kept a close eye on him at breakfast to satisfy herself that he hadn’t lost his wits. Despite her scrutiny, there was no sign of the wildness she had seen in him last night. Whatever had disturbed him had vanished like the moon in the face of the sun.

When dusk came, she made sure to close the curtain before Mama asked. She sat outside with Buck after he’d eaten just like she normally did, but she made sure to stay close to the house. There were clouds in the sky tonight, but she didn’t think clouds would prevent her Grandpa from fearing for her if she wandered too far away again. The air was full of sound tonight, not like last night, when it had been unnaturally quiet. Janna wondered about that too, gazing down the hill, across the stream into the woods.

               “Janna!” Mama called from the doorway.

               She gave Buck a scratch behind his ears, hugging his neck before she rose from her place beside him. Brushing off her skirts, she went to the house, sure that Mama would instruct her to head straight for bed. She’d pass Grandpa, nodding off in the chair by the fire, and Papa, silently smoking his pipe, just as she always did at night time when she was sent to bed. She’d lay awake for a time listening to the night sounds of the summer.

               When she passed into the house, she frowned at what she saw. Papa and Grandpa were sitting at the kitchen table, stiff backed and stern. Mama shut the door behind her and gave her a little nudge forward. “Sit down, girl,” she said, before she joined the men at the table. Janna swallowed nervously. She tried to think what she might have done that would get her into trouble. The only thing she could think of was what had happened last night.

               She slowly slunk into her chair at the table, trying to make herself small. “Am I in trouble?” she asked timidly.

               Grandpa smiled, then reached for her. She gladly took his hand as she met his gaze. “No, girl. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

               “Then why do you all look so stern?” she asked. She sat a little taller in the chair.

               “Do you want to tell her?” Papa asked. Janna wasn’t sure who he was asking.

               Mama cleared her throat. “Janna, something bad happened to Grandpa,” she began.

               Fear clutched her. “Are you hurt?” she asked, her eyes feeling too wet.

               “It was a long time ago,” Grandpa said. His face twisted with grief for just a moment before he continued. “It’s why I was afraid for you last night. When I saw you, going down the hill…” He broke, his sentence ending in a rasping gasp.

               “Grandpa, you don’t have to say if you don’t want,” Janna offered.

               He shook his head, dismissing her concern. “Not even your Mama knows all of it,” he continued, composing himself. “But, I think maybe I should tell you what really happened the night we lost Abel.”

               Abel. Her uncle she’d never met. Something bad had happened to him. Mama didn’t talk about it and neither did Grandpa. Janna’s thoughts raced. Could it have something to do with the strange way Grandpa acted about the moon? Could it have something to do with the woods?

               Grandpa squeezed her hand. “I can’t talk about without going a little…strange…” he struggled to say. “It’s like something is in me that doesn’t want to come out. Like something cast a spell over me to keep my tongue behind my teeth.”

               Janna’s heart was hammering now. She tried slow steady breaths to calm herself, but it didn’t work. Still her heart thudded against her ribs like it meant to burst from her. “Did you go into the woods, Grandpa? Did something happen?” she asked. If Janna could ask him questions, then maybe he wouldn’t have to talk. Maybe they could understand without him having to say any words at all.

               Grandpa nodded, his face twisted with pain. He made a noise like he was choking and clutched at his throat. Breathing rapidly, raggedly, he squeezed her hand tighter, until it hurt. Fear was slithering through her, like a cold, creeping spell. She shivered.

               “Stop!” Mama called. “Pap, please. Don’t talk of it. You know you can’t!”

               Janna’s fear for Grandpa overpowered her curiosity. “I don’t need to know, Grandpa,” she whispered. “Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. I promise I won’t go near the woods again.”

               He nodded again, and the terrifying purple color began to drain from his face. “Can’t say. She won’t let me say,” Grandpa gasped.

               Janna couldn’t help herself. “Who?” she asked softly.

               Grandpa only shook his head, rubbing his throat as if it pained him.

               “The woman who took Abel,” Mama said softly.

               Janna’s eyes flew to Mama. “What do you know?” she asked.

               “That’s all we know,” Papa said. Grandpa got up from the table, slowly moving across the room to his chair by the fire.  “That’s all we need to know,” Papa added.

               Janna watched Grandpa for a time, rubbing his throat and his face, before falling asleep in the chair like it was any other night. Outside Buck was scratching at the door like he always did. Janna wondered if he was afraid of the woods too.