In the Land of Stories Old

Chapter 30

It all began when a master fletcher on the Isle of Caray ran out of arrow-wood and sent his apprentice out with a few coins to fetch some. The apprentice came back without the requested wood and informed his master that the price had gone up significantly on the wood they normally purchased, due to tax or tariff or some such thing according to the merchant. As the new quoted price was considerably higher than the old, and the fletcher had a pre-paid order to fill for their local nobleman, this would simply not work. And so he sent his apprentice out on a different task: finding some hardwood which could be turned and made into arrows. The master pulled out an old map and gave the boy some direction for finding a place where he himself had gotten freewood in the past, and then shooed the him out of the shop with the admonishment not to come back until he had enough wood to fill the order and then some besides.

Now, it had been many years since the master fletcher had fetched his own wood, and so it turned out that the wood he had pointed his apprentice to was no longer where he had said it would be. Because of course it wasn’t. And because the thoughts that most occupy the minds of young apprentices involve how they can put forth the least amount of effort possible and not get into trouble, the boy at once sat down on a stump in the now-woodless area and thought about what he should do next. He could not go home empty-handed, but he did not want to traipse around for the rest of the day and night looking for trees that might not exist either. And it was then that his eyes fell on a smudge of black some little distance away which he knew to be a forest, and he wondered if there might be branches fit for making arrows in it. The forest was supposedly cursed or haunted or something, but he told himself it was all just tales and made up his mind that the Black Forest would be just the place to get what his master needed.

Or at least, his mind was made up until he reached the Black Forest and discovered that the shadows under the reddish-black trees were deeper and darker than he really thought they should be and that the entire place seemed to ooze with foreboding. Unfortunately this warning was not enough to outweigh the idea of running around looking for suitable trees for possibly the entire night, and so his only concession was to make up his mind that he would collect wood from the edges of the forest and not venture into it at all. He attempted to gather some sticks from the ground, but they were brittle and not fit for arrows so he instead took live branches from the trees until he had a large bundle and then hurried back home to his master.

The master fletcher was glad to see such a large bundle of branches, and in spite of their unusual color gave little thought to where they had come from; he had told his apprentice to go to a particular location to get wood and wood had come back, and that was that.

The next morning, bright and early, the master fletcher got to work. He took one of the smaller branches and shaved and shaped it, fitted it with a metal head and his standard fletching, and then took it out to try it on a target of hay and sailcloth that he had set up specifically for testing his own wares. The arrow flew well and did not crack or splinter, so he made up his mind that this batch of wood was a good one and got to work filling the lord’s order, pleased that there were enough branches in the bundle to make that many more arrows again as well and so add to his stock. And the dark wood polished up very prettily, having a rusty reddish sheen to it, so he even thought he might be able to charge a bit more for them than usual.

When he a few days later found some spots on the target corresponding to a large rotten spot in the bale of hay, he replaced his target and thought no more about it. Hay is prone to rotting when it’s damp, after all.

It was at about that same time that the duke who ruled the Isle of Caray went out to hunt with his new supply of arrows. He first spotted a large hare just outside of the wood and easily brought it down, but when he sent a servant out to fetch his kill the man came back saying the hare had been diseased and would be unfit to eat. The duke instructed him to leave it where it fell and went in search of something else. After a little bit of traipsing around he finally spotted a healthy buck in the underbrush and sent an arrow winging its way; the buck was startled by some sound or movement, however, and so the arrow only went into one of its hindquarters as it went leaping out of sight. The duke sent his servants out to trail it, hoping it would eventually give in to the injury, but they came back saying it was long gone and so he resigned himself to returning home without it that day. He did have a look of his own at the hare, however, and decided that it was not diseased at all but simply discolored by the coating on the arrow, and instructed a servant to run the carcass home and have it prepared for the evening meal.

Deep, deep in the woods, the buck finally managed to knock the arrow out, but the damage had been done. As he was just a deer, however, he did not know this and wouldn’t have understood it even if someone had explained it to him.

In spite of the duke’s bad luck at hunting with them, the polished reddish-black arrows quickly became quite popular and the master fletcher sent his apprentice back out several more times to gather more of the wood. Which he did, still without telling his master that the wood was coming from a completely different place than expected. He had even refused to allow his master to hire someone to help him bring back a larger load, truthfully saying that he didn’t want anyone else to find the place and perhaps start harvesting the wood for themselves. And as a bit of avarice is a necessary trait in all of those who go into business, his master agreed with this at once and even gave him a coin for thinking of it.

I am sure you know, Dear Reader, that there is no way this is going to end well for anyone.

fanfiction In the Land of Stories Old