whatever grows in the crevices

The closer they get to the border, the more yellow-green the trees become. Peeking through the greenery, Saffron can see the mountains of the Glaciers and even distant snow-topped trees in the Taiga. This is the closest to the South she’s been. 

Their arrival is unmistakable, as they’re hit with the sudden rich scent of fungi and wet soil. Distantly, frogs croak and crickets chirp, and here the forest is no longer gold but a hazy, murky, olive green-yellow. Saffron inspects the trees around them, looking for doors and entryways, or signs of life at the tree tops, but finds nothing. Eventually, she spots it—the biggest tree she’s seen in the Wood, or Solivan, yet—but only when she searches the forest floor. 

It looks as though something, someone, chopped the grand tree down lifetimes ago, and now, this is a village living on what’s left of the tree: a single stump. 

When they arrive in the village, Saffron looks at the people around, who are either resting or are hard at work. Some work outside of the stump, where there are huge, plate-like mushrooms growing from the stump’s bark that they harvest with what looks like great effort. Those working in the stump scrape lichen, mold, and small mushrooms from the ground, from their homes, the walls and roofs, and sort everything they’ve gathered. 

It appears as a shock to the residents to have a visitor; the man who spots the girls first walks over with his mouth in a perfect ‘o’ shape before a gloomy look takes over his face’s real estate. “Are you lost?” he asks.

Saffron looks to Claribel, who looks forward placidly. “No,” she says. 

Now the man’s expression is more depressing. “Clavona is… not the place you want to be, girls. You’re not the type to be here.”

“What can you tell me about Clavona?” Saffron says, trying not to scare him off. “I’m a map maker.”

“Ah. Well…” He looks around. “Once upon a time, there was a big tree. They cut it down for its wood. Then someone thought it would be a grand idea to build a town on it. And now you’re caught up.”

“What do you do here?”

“Fungi grows on the stump and we take it and sell it.”

“How do you harvest it?”

“Go see for yourself.” He hefts a basket of fungi onto his shoulder and retreats, leaving Claribel and Saffron alone again. 

Saffron is scoping out the farmers when Claribel asks, “Is this helpful for the mapping, ma’am?” It pulls Saffron out of her curious stupor. Is it?

Probably not. This doesn’t have anything to do with how Clavona looks topographically, or spatially, or geographically. And yet, the idea of mapping somewhere she doesn’t understand, of leaving a place without fully knowing the people, the place, feels dirty to her. 

“Yes,” she answers. 

Claribel walks on the Stump in a particular way. She avoids holes and discoloration, and Saffron learns to copy her movements after stepping in a patch of damp black wood that crumbles beneath her foot, the mushy parts clinging to her boots. 

They go to the outside of the stump and walk along the perimeter, watching the workers gather as much fungi as they can. There’s no discrimination in who’s working. Anyone from stocky men to middle-aged women to the elderly is hard at work harvesting. Not just working on the stump: its tired old roots, bursting up through the ground, have fungi too. Some elves have shovels they use to try and access the roots that haven’t surfaced. There may not be enough mushrooms to go around. 

“This is so hard on my joints,” Saffron hears an old man complain, reaching high above his head to peel a strand of fungus from a crater in the stump’s bark. 

“You should take a break,” someone tells him, but he shakes his head.

“Pah. I can’t. I have to reach quota. I’m so far behind…” 

Other elves look like they’re making the best of it. Some of them are singing a call and response song Saffron has never heard before, voices varying in strength but never faltering. Others have made a game of it, trying to see who can lift the most baskets or find the most mushrooms. 

But above all else, there is a brume of resentment. 

“We shouldn’t stand for it. Living like this,” a woman grumbles to her fellow workers, “while the rich crank it in the sunlight.” 

“Watch out. Roseanna’s doing her sermon again,” someone deadpans in response. She spots Claribel and Saffron as they walk by, and meets their eyes. “Welcome to the Wood.”

There’s not much bark left. Most of it looks like it has flaked off or been broken off by Clavonans, leaving the stump weary. 

“I’m sorry about this,” Claribel murmurs to her. “This isn’t a happy place to be. It’s not a good impression of the Wood.”

“If this is an accurate impression, then I would disagree.”

Claribel winces. “It’s just… everyone avoids Clavona.”

A voice behind them chimes in. “Yeah,” she hisses. “Of course everyone avoids us. Who can stand to be around the Clavonans—they’re sick and lame and poor.”

“I didn’t—”

“I know you,” the woman says to Saffron, sharp shadows on her face giving her anger a piercing edge. “I know your kind. Another one to leave us out of the story. Don’t map us, don’t write about us, don’t think about us… You all think, let the mold kill them. They’re expendable. Just like their tree was.” She turns on Claribel with a finger crooked in her direction. She tries to straighten, but it’s clear her posture is crooked. Her tail has been docked. “And you… another Top here to gawk, here to change the quota again, here to destroy another home…”

Claribel’s shout is a shock to hear. “I’m not! I dressed to look nice for her, okay? I’m a roots-dweller, and she’s mapping all of the Wood. We’re not trying to do anything like you said.”

The woman shrinks back and squares her shoulders. “I see,” she says. Then she looks at them head on. “Then why do you want to pretend we’re not here, little girl?”

***

The first smile Saffron sees in Clavona is one born of politeness. Burgh agrees to sit down with them—only has time to do so because of an illness—and answer questions, and his instinct to be a good host is calmed when Saffron tells him he doesn’t need to cook them dinner. 

“Thank you,” he says, with that rare smile. “I didn’t know if I had the supplies to spare, but you must be hungry, coming all this way…”

Claribel bows her head. “Really, it’s fine, mister.”

“Of course. I’m happy to tell you what I can about Clavona then.”

Saffron digs her notebook from her pocket and opens to a fresh page. They’re sitting in his little shack of a house, made of the same moist wood and bark of the Stump. “Who are the people living here?” she asks.

Burgh's eyes twitch as he thinks of how to answer. He pulls a worn blanket tighter around his shoulders, and answers, “Clavona is where you go when Tops don’t know what to do with you. If you’re too weak to be a laborer in Smelton or Runerre, then Clavona you go. If you can’t behave in public, Clavona you go. If you get people thinking, Clavona you go.”

“Is fungi easy to gather?”

He chuckles. “Not really. If we didn’t have quotas, it could be.”

“Quotas?”

He waves a hand and sniffs. “‘Get us this amount of supplies by this time.’ Supplies come from the stump itself, of course. Even its roots—fungi grows up from the roots and we take that too.” He closes his eyes, letting out a sharp breath, and holds there for longer than a moment. 

Claribel, looking nervous, asks, “Where do the supplies go?”

“We sell them at the Main Marketplace and get a cut.” His shoulders drop. “In a perfect world, maybe it’d be a co-op.”

Saffron tilts her head. “Why not make it independent?”

Burgh purses his lips. “Yeah, and why not become rich, while we’re at it? And learn to fly too?” He shakes his head. “If it were that easy—if it were possible—then sure, we’d aim for it. But it isn’t.” He turns his gaze to his ceiling, which is unstable to the point of beginning to crumble. Black mold crawls up the walls. 

“What happens,” asks Saffron slowly, “if you don’t reach the quota?”

He smiles at Saffron bitterly. “You gotta reach quota.” When she waits for him to go on, he hesitates, looking around like someone might hear. “Otherwise, well, they gotta make up the supplies somehow,” he adds, with a numb disdain. “Maybe they’ll take the wood from your house. Do what the mold is already gonna do in seconds.” He coughs—a rough, wet sound—then rubs his eyes. “It’s not good wood. They don’t even need it.” 

“Are they going to take your house?” Claribel asks gingerly. 

“We’re just barely scraping by. They keep expecting profits to keep going up. Line goes up, they say…” He looks at Saffron and Claribel. “I hope—and I do mean this—that this is the only time you visit Clavona. But maybe it’s the only time you’ll be able to.”

Beneath them, the old stump rots.