The Great Crimson Tree: Chapter One

Hello ladies and gents! 'Tis I, Serena M. Stellington back with a post. This isn't about writing or how to write, because recently I've been struggling with creating any posts that tells someone how to write. Directions and teaching isn't one of my strong points in the writing world, mostly because I'm constantly learning and still very new to the rules that come with being a word weaver. But I do love stories! Stories can be beautiful, and they have power to change people, entertain in a wholesome way, and help writers both young and old to delve into the creativity our glorious Creator has equipped us with.

This story will be in five or six sections, detailing a mini adventure in the world of Nintarius. This is actually a Christmas gift I've been working on for a young girl! She is very young, but full of brilliant ideas and stories. One of her favorite games to place is Nintarius, where we pretend to be characters she invents in this fictional world. The lore, characters and personalities, and world are entirely her ideas, but I took the liberty of crafting a tale from them. Spoony, by the way, is my favorite character she's ever invented.

Because this is a gift for a child, this isn't a "professional" story. I let myself go with wording and dialogue, not caring if it would please a publisher or not. This was a lot of fun to work on, mostly because I wasn't stressing about making it perfect or fitting into the rules of the writing world. In fact, it was so much fun that I found my creativity finally working smoothly, which bled into the more "professional" stories I've been cracking away at. New writing tip, folks: If you're struggling with your story, write a short scene or story where you ignore proper plotting and writing and just have a good time!

That introduction was long enough, so without further ado I give y'all: The Crimson Tree, a Tale of Nintarius

Unatarias was about to lose his mind. Completely. Utterly. Bonkers smonkers until he was raving mad and leaping from pine tree to pine tree burbling nonsense from between clenched teeth. He already felt the madness creeping in as his boots crunched through the fallen autumn leaves and pine needles through the towering trees of Caldin Forest, whispering in his ear like a twisted version of the contended bird warbling over his head. Normally such a walk would have left one speechless with awe and joy, but he was on the verge of snapping completely and screeching.

To be fair, insanity didn’t run in his family so it definitely wasn’t his fault he was going crazy. All of the blame lay with the short, plump-ish girl bouncing alongside him. She and her chattering mouth that wouldn’t shut up. With her short black hair framing her face, round spectacles perched on her snub nose, and a constellation of freckles, she had a childish smile and friendly countenance. But her ability to talk and get sidetracked reminded him of an egotistical villain from one of his many adventures.

“I have no idea why I brought you,” he groused for the eighth time in as many minutes, shouldering his leather pack higher on his shoulders.

Luhn, a wingless fairy laden with cooking supplies on her back that certainly were as large as wings, stopped mid-sentence about her observations on the squirrels in the trees to stare at him. “Una, I’m just trying to keep things lively. Goodness knows you talk a lot.”

“I talk about danger signals! And Vunyun* killing tactics, and when to be quiet so we won’t get eaten by a bear. You know, useful things.” The dark-eyed young man took a vicious swipe at a falling leaf with his sword. The gleaming blade sliced through keenly without even stopping the now split leaf’s descent. It collapsed in a golden-red pile of crimson, autumn-y glory on the ground.

Una had nothing against a good conversation, he thought as Luhn lapsed into silence and he was free to keep scanning the forest again. But he was a soldier on a mission, and duty and honor came before “liveliness.” He liked traveling by himself for that very reason. People tended to push his buttons- it was no secret his strengths did not lie in keeping his emotions suppressed. When he was happy, he was ravenously joyful; when he was sad he was inconsolable; when he was angry, it was a horror to be around. So far he had done a surprisingly good job of not letting young Luhn get to him, but sooner or later she was going to take a step too far and get screeched out when he went insane for real.

Luhn had her uses, but compared to her flaws they weren’t that special. She could cook and forage like nobody else he had ever met. Her evening tales of the world were nothing he hadn’t heard before having traveled the realm twice over, but she had a way of putting such a twist on the ordinary that he found himself listening to the ancient legends like he had never heard them at all. But she had this freaky obsession with collecting berries (freaky because she got so into it that it left both of them open for a Vunyun or goblin attack), didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut, enjoyed wandering off the beaten path (usually for berry-picking purposes), and worst of all she carried strapped to her belt an suspicious little creature she called Spoony. Una had nothing but worry about Spoony, and nothing he could say would convince Luhn to toss him aside.

Spoony’s problem was that he was a spoon. Before Una and Luhn had joined forces a few cities back to get to the mountains together, Spoony hadn’t been in the picture. But after stumbling upon an abandoned goblin fortress Luhn had spotted the blasted thing, picked it up, fallen in love and even went as far to declare it “cute.”

In Una’s opinion, any silverware with a single goggly eye that could stare at you was anything but cute. Downright dangerous, more like it.

At the moment Luhn’s sunflower-yellow cloak draped across the spoon, but Una felt its eye watching his every move and didn’t like it.

There wasn’t much time to ponder spoon psychology any more, for as they crunched around the bend in the forest Una’s hunter ears suddenly prickled with alarm. He thrust out an arm in front of Luhn and shushed her. Together they crouched, Luhn following Una’s lead as his narrowed eyes scanned the trees.

Pine rustling.

Maple whispering.

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. He began to wonder if he had misheard but kept the alert up as he continued scanning the forest. Then he heard it again: a soft, low moan coming from a cluster of bent trees. He stood and gestured for Luhn to follow him quietly.

The two tip-toed through the forest, Una wincing at Luhn’s every blunder but himself moving like a deer in silken slippers. Closer they crept, and at the opening in the cluster he motioned for the fairy to remain still. He moved in with his sword drawn. A moan could belong to a wounded animal ready to pounce, or an imitater of sounds trying to lure in a witless meal, or-

With a sudden burst of speed Una thrust back a veil of branches with the flat of his sword. Its gleaming point hovered over the face of a batter, bleeding man. Una quickly sheathed his sword and dropped to his knees beside the wounded man’s form.

“Luhn, it’s safe! Come quickly. There’s a man here and he’s hurt- Badly!”

Luhn immediately crawled in and knelt at Luhn’s side. Her lips formed a thin line of worry at the sight of the man’s state, but she didn’t hesitate to roll up her sleeves and begin prodding the man’s body with gentle, probing fingers.

She shot Una a worried glance and said, “He’s barely conscious, so asking questions won’t help us find anything. But he’s definitely not dying. Here-” She pointed to his temple- “he was bashed over the side of the head with something blunt and hard. It boggled his brains, no doubt. And there’s a good, deep gash in his side, as well as a couple of cracked ribs and a broken ankle. Bless his soul, he’s going to need-”

“W-Water!” The man’s earth-colored eyes were open and glazed but locked on the pair.

Una unhooked his water flask from his belt and gently held it to the man’s lips. The man sucked down half of it before falling back with a groan.

“Shhh,” said Luhn. “You shouldn’t strain yourself. We’re going to get you fixed up in no time. Una, I need some light, please.”

Una jumped to his feet and used his sword to clear a patch from the branches. Pine needles showered them all as a beam of crisp, golden light streamed in. It illuminated the man’s haggard features; his sunken eyes and hawk-like nose that was encrusted with brownish blood. He truly was in a horrible shape, and Una wondered how he had come to be there.

It wasn’t long before he found out.

As Luhn worked on the broken ankle and ribs, the man talked to Una between groans of pain to distract himself from the agony.

“My name is Melgarias. I’m a guard from one of the local villages. Every so often different guards take shifts protecting the Great Crimson Tree.”

Una and Luhn exchanged a glance that contained arched eyebrows.

“Crimson tree?” Luhn asked. She had unhooked Spoony from her belt and was using him to sprinkle pain killing herbs into Melgarias’s mouth. He didn’t seem to mind the fact that the spoon was staring at him, but Una couldn’t suppress a shudder.

“What’s that?” she continued.

Melgarias winced and swallowed. “It’s a tree of unfathomable size and beauty, as dark as blood and as tall as the length of the forest. Other trees stand by that are its height, but its thickness and color set it apart. It is pure magic, given to us by a kindly creature of magic who had pity upon our dying lands. Centuries ago the tree was sprouted overnight and now sends pulses of life into the roots of our trees and animals. Without the Crimson Tree we would be sitting in a wasteland.”

Una looked around appreciatively at the beautiful forest. “It’s certainly doing its job well.”

“But not for long.” He smiled grimly. “The guards failed. I failed. For so long the duty of guarding the tree had been nothing but a tradition. We were few and out of practice, so far apart the other night that we never even had a chance to fight back.”

“Fight what?”

“Goblins. They came out of nowhere and set upon us like bees to a bear cub. There were hundreds of them, cackling and screeching and swarming over our beautiful tree like- like-” His voice choked off and he convulsed, panting.

Luhn dove to help him. She poured herb infused water into his mouth and smoothed his hair back from his sweat-soaked forehead, shushing him softly. “Shh, now, calm down. You’re upsetting yourself.”

Melgarias took a few moments to settle into a calm breathing pattern. He closed his eyes. “I ran. All of us did. But the goblins chased us and struck my friends down. I escaped, but it was dark and I fell off a cliff. It was a miracle I managed to drag myself here, though I know not how.”

Una let out a long whistle. “That’s quite a tale, Melgarias. I’m sorry for the loss of your friends and the tree. The goblins-”

“They’ll destroy it! They brought axes and great machines. I saw them as I ran; surely they will chop down the Crimson Tree and this land will turn bitter and brown. We are doomed. Doomed, I say.”

“And you’re doomed if you keep upsetting yourself like this,” Luhn said sternly. “You will live, but you must sleep. We’ll do what we can to help, but we won’t get far if you make it harder. Now sleep.” She rapped Spoony against her hand for emphasis.

Though his face still shone with sweat and he was clearly in emotional agony, Melgarias sank back into a sleep of exhaustion. Una covered him with his blanket then gestured for Luhn to follow him outside of the pine cluster. She wrapped up her supplies, slipped Spoony back into his place and out of sight, then drew her hood over her head and followed.

Una took a breath of fresh air, feeling trapped from the horrors of Melgarias’s story. He was sure his face bore the same pale color as Luhn’s.

“Poor man,” she murmured. “We must help him, but he’s never going to fully recover. That ankle will take ages to heal.”

“And he’ll never forget how he failed at his job. That will haunt him more than an ankle.”

“I know.” She let out a sigh.

Una looked up at the sky. It was so warm, so bright, yet inside the trees lay a man in anguish over the soon-to-be loss of the forest, though he had his doubts about how quickly the goblins would be able to fell a tree of such size. Yet if they had come prepared…

He shook his head, disgusted. “Goblins will destroy anything of beauty.” He trembled with rage at the thought of this peaceful forest turning brown and broken. What monstrous emotions aroused in a creature’s breast to turn them to such wickedness?

“It’s hard to believe him,” said Luhn. “This forest is so strong and beautiful. But we have seen mightier things than this Crimson Tree, so I don’t doubt that it’s true.” She looked at the ground, pressing her lips together. “I wish there was something we could do.”

Una gasped, then grinned, then spunt to grab her shoulders, his former irritation at her forgotten as his blood began to pump with excitement. “Why don’t we?”

“Ahh!” She jumped back and stared at him like he was crazy. “Why don’t we what?”

“Do something? We’re- well, I’m a trained warrior-”

“Hey!”

“And you’re a trained... handler of spoons.”

“I resent that.”

“Surely we can slip over to the site of this tree and check out what’s happening. Maybe I can wreak a little sabotage on the axes of theirs while we're at it. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to at least sneak over and spy.”

She still looked doubtful. “But Melgarias… Una, he’s hurt badly. We can’t leave him.”

“Of course we can’t, but surely there’s a village nearby.”

She snapped her fingers. “Cloverdale! We passed it not twelve hours ago. There was a medical center we could check him into. They might even know him.”

Una nodded. It was final. They would take some time off from their journey to get Melgarias situation, then onwards it was to this Crimson Tree. Hopefully it wasn’t the ravings of a man on the verge of madness from his wounds.

Now if only Una could keep Luhn from tripping over things and getting them killed by the goblins.

*Vunyuns are some sort of monster creatures that Una is running into. I'm not quite sure what they are or what they look like, so to avoid offending their creator I left them out of the story. I couldn't really glean too much information without raising her suspicions that a Christmas gift was underway