Having three captives presented difficulties for the bad guys. They had received no instructions for the event of any rescuers actually finding their hideout. They had tied up the large hairy one, who had struggled, and the small twisty one, who had cried. The bound pair were outside the door of the hide-out (the guards didn’t like to call it a dungeon – dungeon is such a depressing word), because the smell of the dung they had been wading through was powerful enough to kill a man at ten paces, if he had a particularly sensitive nose. The room was small and enclosed, and they had strict instructions to bring the girl in alive. They waited.
At length, another group of men arrived. There were five of them, and they all spoke in sinister foreign accents and had scars that ran across their faces, marring one eye, and hair that did not move when they shook their heads. One of them made an extremely exclamatory remark when hit by the omnipotent smell of Barney and Elfin. Celia felt a bit better. At least these were proper bad guys. She could see a pamphlet entitled “50 ways to make a bomb from two pieces of tinfoil and a rubber mouse” poking out of the pocket of the closest one’s ripped coat. It gave her a warm, smug feeling to know she warranted proper bad guys, even though she wasn’t sure why. Five of them, even! One of them kicked Barney as he went past. Celia glared. It had been nice of Barney to attempt to save her. It wasn’t his fault he was incompetent. He had been born like that.
The new gang were just one step down the food chain from the man himself, the ultimate evil guy. They did not know his master-plan. They did not know his name. They did not need to know. Their job satisfaction was derived entirely from doing things like beating people up, swearing, and kidnapping girls. They blindfolded, gagged and bound Celia. They didn’t really need to. It was unlikely she could escape from them, and they weren’t going anywhere that people would hear her scream. They just liked tying people up. It was one of their favourite parts of the job. One of them tossed her on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and they headed off. Barney and Elfin were marched in front of the group, occasionally poked with a sharp stick, and constantly ridiculed in sinister foreign accents.
The bad guys led their captives from the dungeon – they called it a dungeon, being of a less sensitive nature than the guards – through a door on the opposite wall.
The tunnel it led to was dark and narrow. In the confined space the smell made them lightheaded. It seemed to go on forever.
During that day, Elfin unknowingly achieved his dream. The first half, which involved leaving the city of his birth. It would have been miraculous indeed for him to find himself employed as a lumberjack so soon after setting out on his journey. While travelling dejectedly through the cramped and odorous tunnel at the behest of darstardly criminals, they passed beneath the city walls. However, this did nothing to raise the spirits of any of the party, because it was too dark in the tunnel to see the sign announcing "You are now leaving .... Good luck". The name of the city was smudged. They had used a defective sign where it didn't matter.
After hours of trudging through the dark, the tunnel seemed to get larger. Barney felt as though he was walking uphill, he was so tired. He didn't realise it, but he really was walking uphill. After a long ascent, the party turned a corner and emerged. Barney immediately turned around and attempted to return to the tunnels.
They were in a forest. It wasn't just any forest, either. The trees were enormous, gnarled monsters, which bent and twisted to catch their prey. Leaves blocked the sky, and the light that filtered through was greenish and eerie. It was very, very quiet. Barney knew at that moment, that his fate was upon him. Today, he would be killed by a tree. And he would die covered in dung.
Things began to go badly for the criminals as soon as they entered the silent forest. Even dastardly people become frightened sometimes. The head criminal had to be quite firm about carrying on. Secretly he was quivering inside, but you do not get to being nearly the evilest man in the world without some impressive acting ability. So he shouted and waved his favourite knife until the rest of the criminals began to march. They marched quickly and tensely, shoving Barney and Elfin roughly, so they stumbled over roots that twined sneakily across the ground. The noise of the group was quite terrific in the silence of the forest.
There were no other creatures in the forest. The trees have eaten them, thought Barney. That thought was not as irrational as it sounds. Some of the trees had enormous teeth. The patterns on the trunks formed eyes that followed them. Barney saw an enormous oak move to follow them. Oaks truly hated him. He brushed the thought aside as imaginary - he had become better at that on his journey. But this wasn't imaginary. It was his fate catching up with him.
The criminal bringing up the rear glanced behind them. The entrance to the tunnel had disappeared. The trees closed in behind them, silently waiting, biding their time. He lost his head and ran. It turned out that it was also his fate to be killed by a tree. A large, red-barked tree slowly but fluidly extended a root. The man tripped. Scrambling to him feet, he tried to run, but was going in the wrong direction. It is never a good idea to run towards evil trees that want to eat you. But by this time, panic had overtaken him completely, and his only thought was to get back into the tunnel. The oak twined its root about his leg, and pulled sharply. There was a loud crack. The man screamed in pain and fell, clutching his leg. A vine slithered from the branches of the closest tree and wrapped around his arm. Another caught his other arm. They stretched him in every direction until he was sure his limbs would rip off. A root snaked over his stomach and around his waist. It squeezed. Another crept over his chest, holding him on the ground. He struggled and screamed and invoked demons. He had momentarily forgotten that the last of the demons had been imprisoned by the Gods many centuries ago, and could not have saved him even if it had wanted to. Then a thorny vine slid around his neck like a noose, and he stopped screaming, too frightened to stir. And the brambles made their move.
Brambles are the worst of the plants in the Forest of Silence. They are ornery and malicious. Jealous of the raw power held by the oaks, and the sneakiness and intelligence of the vines, they vent their fury with poisoned thorns. The man hardly had time to see them coming, thin branches angular and spiky, a strange blue fluid dripping from their thorns. They pounced violently, and tore the skin from his body with their bite. He remembered how to scream when the poison touched him, and his voice ripped the air in agony. The noose pulled tight around his neck, and he drooped in silence.
His comrades had not seen all of this. The head criminal had seen the tree trip him, and immediately given the order to hurry on. They crashed through the forest now, trying to ignore the screaming, and the silent movement of the plants around them. The forest grew darker still, as though the trees had extended their leaves overhead, to blind them. The screams died out, but that did nothing to reassure them. Elfin made several exclamatory remarks about what he would like to do to the trees if only he had an axe. A small tree very deliberately slapped him across the face with a whippy branch much like his schoolteacher's cane. He stopped making exclamatory remarks. The head criminal kept yelling at them to hurry up, and that didn't help at all. The trees followed the sound and closed in behind them. They three remaining henchmen panicked, and ran off in different directions. Celia was dropped heavily on the ground, and her blindfold fell off. She did not panic. Her sensible nature told her clearly that this could not be happening, because trees did not uproot themselves and chase people. This was obviously a very uncomfortable dream. And so there were four people in the forest of silence. One head criminal, who was nearly the evilest man in the world, and was pretending he had meant for this to happen. One angry ex-shoemaker, who had always known there was a reason he wanted to pursue a career in cutting down trees. One bewildered girl, who thought she was dreaming. And one terrified young man who was currently sitting on the ground, crying and trembling, while the trees closed in.
Shrieks rent the air from somewhere to their left. The head criminal’s courage gave out at this, and he had a sudden surge of regret at how he had lived his life. If only... he thought, if only Rose Walters had not broken his heart by running off with another man, so many years ago. Maybe then he would be having a nice, comfortable life as a bank manager, instead of being attacked by trees while carrying out the orders of a vile, cruel, evil genius, who would not even tell him why he was kidnapping people. The moment passed. It had been great fun. He abandoned his prisoners to their respective fates, and ran.
Barney was curled in a ball, with his eyes shut, holding his head. If it had been light enough, the others could have seen clean trails through the dirt on his face, where his tears ran. He whimpered and moaned and sobbed until Celia wanted to shake him. She couldn’t though, because she was still tied up. So he kept crying. These trees were not like the tree that had captured him in the garden when he was young. They were not like the oak on the way home from school. There were no woodmen in these trees. He was sure now that the woodmen were good, and he had been doing them a great injustice all these years. Something was wrong with the trees in this forest. Something so terrible that even the woodmen had been frightened away.
Elfin untied Celia. It was a difficult process, because his hands were tied behind his back, and he had to use his teeth. But eventually, her hands were free. The trees had stopped closing in. They seemed to be watching in amusement, at these creatures who thought they could escape. Celia untied her feet, and then Elfin’s hands. She tried to persuade Barney to get up, first cajoling, and then sternly ordering him. Nothing worked. Barney would not move. Elfin picked him up. There were advantages to being large.
The trees sprung to action. A vine extended from where it rested in a tree, and draped itself casually but immovably about Celia’s waist. It lifted her gently, and carried her deep amongst the trees passing her carefully to the next vine in. If she hadn’t been so terrified (for by this time, she had realised it was not a dream), she would have noticed that she was being passed deliberately above the brambles. But she didn’t.
A line of trees glided gracefully across Elfin’s path. They formed a perfect circle around him, and a thick vine lifted Barney from his shoulders, and swung him away in the opposite direction to Celia. Elfin watched his friends sail away, and angrily tried to bash his way through the wall of greenery that surrounded him. It just closed in tighter.
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