Deep in the boggy fen country, a village where cremation is customary is haunted by specters of the burned dead. These ghosts encroach closer and closer to the realm of the living with each passing night. The Elders send a letter, pleading with Wraithvine for aid against their supernatural tormentors.
Wraithvine sets out sure that this is caused by some readily explainable phenomenon, either by man-made hoax or mundane magic or perhaps a scorned local God. The Truth is far stranger than even this venerable hero could have imagined… -- Deathshead419
It was odd to find a swamp village where most of the structures were fortification, where sturdy -if wooden- walls were patrolled day and night by clerics working in shifts Where every possible surface of every possible structure was carved and hung about with every possible protection charm.
Well. Ze had needed a haircut for the last millennium. Might as well put it all to good use instead of bunging it in a dimensionally transcendent hairnet.
Ze listened to the mayor's story as the goodwives and children capable of braiding turned Wraithvine's hair into length after length of thin cord. Because of the great need of the village, Wraithvine insisted that they crop hir hair close. Enough to guard each creature, each house, and each foot of the walls around them all.
Freshly shorn, Wraithvine climbed to the top of the wall, and observed the restless dead. Even with the protections surrounding the area, they were inching slowly closer to the walls. Circling them from dusk until dawn, then stopping once the sun touched them. Staring, motionless, at the town from whence their living souls had come.
Wraithvine turned hir gaze next to the daughter moon, home of hir goddess. Opening hirself to the will and opinion of hir patron deity.
This is the work of something benevolent, said Ereshkygal. Odd for reanimation. The source is further out into the mire than you can see. She gave hir a direction, nothing more.
Wraithvine could feel it in the back of hir mind like a compass. Pointing the way. Hir next step was to leave the warded path and follow that lead. Ze could feel Ereshkygal walking with hir. Inside-behind-beside in the way that only gods could.
Their combined presence did not repel the ash-coloured spirits, another odd factor.
Ze quickly found that the internal compass led hir in the same direction as the wandering stream where the village routinely deposited the ashes of the departed. A ritual that had gone on for thousands of years, but the ghosts were an issue for only a handful of them.
The stream led to a small lake that had become a flourishing grove. Bountiful, even by marshland standards. Fingerlings flourished in the water. Water birds headed up long chains of chicks. Seedlings were everywhere. And what appeared to be a small Wudzgaad child, cavorting around the edges of the water.
That is no child of any species, thought Wraithvine. Ze knew it based on years of instinct, and could see it because hir goddess was riding behind hir eyes.
It was the child of the leyflow. The first son of Jack o' the Woods. Bringer of life from seed, surveyor of chicks as they crack their shells.
Piko, the maker of new life from things seemingly dead. Where his father Tapio was the lord of hungry maws and biting teeth, Piko brought forth new life for his father's subjects to eat.
Ereshkygal stepped out of Wraithvine. Child of the Green, you are playing with that which is not yours.
Piko smiled, and the eyes behind that grin were far too old for a child that small. They sent the seeds to me, Taker of All. It is in my nature to grow them.
Wraithvine found the more mundane cause. A small altar and idol, the latter no bigger than Wraithvine's fist, had become upset from their former place and fallen into the water. Ze pulled it free and set it on a much more stable footing. "There. You are set right, Lord of Blossoms. Please allow my goddess to return those who should be under Her care to their proper place."
What about the seeds? asked Piko. Can't I grow them?
"They are nourishment for the fingerlings, for the plants that you grow from the other seeds. Would you starve them for the sake of this new amusement of yours?"
He grumped and pouted, but finally said, Fine. She can take them. It's what she does.
One of the rare times that Wraithvine had to prevent the consequences of misguided divine benevolence.
[Photo by Lori Stevens on Unsplash]
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