Rook thrashed in his covers, whimpering, coated in a sheen of cold sweat. He was in the clutches of the woodwolf nightmare. The dream was even longer and more complex than usual as the past few years had brought back more memories of his early childhood. It had started with the woodwolves for as long as Rook could recall.
He could hear their gnashing teeth and their blood-curdling howls that produced a chilling sensation in his spine every time. The malevolent sound of their brutally visceral barking was backed up with yellow eyes, swimming in pure malice. In the moonlight, their sumptuous white-as-virtue manes shimmered gracefully, starkly contrasting the woodwolves' menacing presence. The worst part of the dream was the sounds his parents made as they were unsympathetically executed before his very eyes. As an added act of cruelty, Rook was spared and left for dead. Though he never showed it on the surface, the experience had still warped his mind significantly.
But, to his dismay, there were recent additions to the woodwolf dream as of late. Uncle Tem tearfully begging them not to leave. His parents' carefree attitude. Suddenly, there was the first transition of the dream. He saw Varis Lodd, clear as day, in her element—but in the memory, Varis wasn't a war hero yet. She was only a callow youth eager for her father's approval.
A look of abject surprise marked her determined features as she heard the howls echo throughout the valley. She loaded her crossbow with a barbed quarrel coated with firenettle extract. Varis's eyes narrowed and her brows furrowed in concentration, before she assumed a crouched stance and leapt down to the forest floor below quietly. Wisps of dank fog wreathed around her, obscuring her vision. Rook could feel Varis's dolorous fear and his heart began to thump rapidly. As she crept forwards methodically, her piercing eyes darted around her lethal surroundings, frantically scanning for any sign of the accursed woodwolves amidst the foreboding darkness enshrouding the Deepwoods.
A pair of banderbears far in the distance exchanged heart-wrenching, bellowed yodels that rang solemnly across the lush landscape. A gladehawk on the prowl screeched as she swiftly dispatched her prey, a plump snowbird. The comforting percussive sound of the mating calls unique to woodwasps serenaded all of the denizens of the Deepwoods, lulling them to sleep – and carelessness, for the night was the time of the hunt. The nocturnal flora and fauna of the forests were just as numerous as the predators of the day, and were just as deadly.
In reality, this sequence of events had actually transpired. Varis Lodd—many years before she became the venerable commander of the formidable Librarian Knights—was on her treatise voyage and heard the howling of the woodwolves. She postponed her academics and bravely followed the ruckus to the murder scene and a banderbear nest, woven from gladegrass and snagwood, a traumatized lone boy within. The boy had been Rook Barkwater.
Still, the nightmare persisted. Varis continued to track the woodwolves into the darkness, blacker than woodink. Though young, she was athletic and her tactical and tracking skills were already legendary amongst the Librarians. The howls scared the blazes out of Varis, but she pressed on, driven by a desire to protect the defenseless.
As she entered into a clearing, enclosed by summerwood trees, Varis saw it. The woodwolves were long gone. She sniffed the air to no avail – she couldn't catch their scent. Instead, her senses were overwhelmed with the scene awaiting her.
To confirm the obvious, Varis knelt down to inspect some pawprints. The size and the impressions of sharp claws were distinctive to her.
"Blasted woodwolves," Rook heard her curse. Under the dim gaze of the moon, her silent tears glittered. This didn't stop her.
In front of her was a broken cart, baggage strewn everywhere. A couple, seemingly lifeless, died in each other's arms. Tears kept falling. Varis wiped them away emotionlessly to prevent them from clouding her vision. The smell of death and the ferrous stench of blood were appalling. She gagged and was shaken by a spluttering coughing fit. Varis had never seen something so terrible before.
The two victims had been savagely mauled and were almost unrecognizable. The woman might've been a slaughterer or a fourthling, but Varis couldn't tell.
Crimson blood splatters coated the surface of the cart. Their entrails had been ripped out. Varis hoped that they'd been killed beforehand.
She could stand the sight of the murders no longer. In her peripheral vision, something on the ground caught her eye.
"What's this?" wondered Varis. Massive pawprints, far larger than the woodwolves', were perfectly preserved in the dirt. "Banderbear! Young… Let's see. Female."
Varis realized the she could try to find the banderbear and communicate with her. She wished to get revenge for the killings and to ask about the whereabouts of the slaver and his woodwolves.
Once Varis had finally located the female banderbear's nest, the gentle creature was nowhere to be found. Yet, there was something strange within. A young boy, swaddled in threadbare homespun barkfleece blankets, slept peacefully on a bed of spongy barkmoss. Without another thought, she knew what she had to do.
As Varis carried Rook, they passed by the site of the attack of the woodwolves and their master, a vile slaver. The scene was grisly and she accordingly made sure Rook saw none of it. If he'd seen it, the innocent bodies of Keris and Shem torn to bits, his impressionable psyche of four years would've been shattered irreparably.
The dream then proceeded to diverge from reality, as it always did at that point. Rook disappeared from her arms and instead became a helpless spectator. The woodwolves returned and killed Varis; suddenly, the dream would transition once more, to feelings of unrelenting guilt. In this part, Rook would be in front of a water trough, hands soaked in blood. No matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn't clean them.
After that, Rook would wake up in a cold sweat, permeating his quivering body. He would be awoken to his heart racing, hours before the rest of the world would rise from the land of dreams. Once his heart rate calmed, he would inspect his aching hands and find them to be quite bruised and bloodied. In a fit of rage, he would scream into his pillow, throw back the curtains, and look out the window.
Rook Barkwater peered through the floor-to-ceiling window of the apartment he shared with his friend, Magda Burlix. Their spacious living quarters were perched on the top floor of one of the adjoining outbuildings connected by several bridges to the New Great Library of the Free Glades – a massive circular construction built on timbered platforms of sturdy lufwood, jutting out over the sparkling blue Great Lake. Several covered walkways, arched bridges, and looming viaducts fanned out from the main structure; these paths served as overpasses across the main road to the various Librarian buildings, on dry land, that expanded into the fringes of the shadowy Ironwood Glade. Some were cavernous barracks housing hundreds of personnel; other edifices housed massive lecture halls, complex laboratories, industriously humming workshops, crowded mess halls, and vast arsenals bristling with weaponry. The campus had only been completed recently, and the assortment of constructions were certainly astonishing achievements for the Librarians; they had promptly repaired the extensively damaged Great Library after the war and had further added to its efficacy with supplemental buildings.
Across the crystal-clear waters of the Great Lake, the goldenrod-hued sun reflecting over its languid surface, Rook could see that the renovations to the Lake Landing Academy—the military school for Librarian apprentices—were coming along smoothly. Rook's post-war morning routine started with getting out of bed and going out onto the balcony to feel the crisp morning breeze on his face as the balmy summer sun rose over the water. Sometimes, he would find himself staring into the abyss that was the Great Lake.
It was common knowledge that the Great Lake had no bottom. Perhaps, in that cold and dark abyss, my soul dwells. Perhaps I am too far gone, with all the blood that stains my fingers. All the killing I was a party to. Fighting for the Free Glades didn't make the killing any less painful and haunting, Rook thought to himself as he angrily glared at the blasted lake, an unlikely reminder of the pain he carried in his heart from his actions performed in the Freeglade Lancers during the War for the Free Glades.
Lately, Rook's thoughts had been relegated to the war and its lasting effects on the stability of his brittle sanity. He remembered another horrible experience. In one of the final battles of the war, the Battle of the Great Library, Rook lost his beloved mentor—Varis Lodd. She had valiantly led one final attack to defend the Library. Sadly, all reports concurred that her legendary skycraft, the Windhawk, had crashed into an ancient ironwood tree. None could deny the heroicness of her actions.
Officially, she was deemed to be dead. Rook didn't agree with that assessment, despite the fact that her own father and brother had given up on the notion.
To others, Varis Lodd was a war hero, a martyr, a cultural symbol. To Rook, she was his savior. When Rook's parents were murdered by slavers, it was Varis who had rescued him and brought him to the Librarians. Varis, who taught him the ways of sky flight, provided him with sage council, and helped nurture his self-confidence.
Rook closed the balcony door and sat at the foot of his bed. He felt a painful lump in his throat. It was almost suffocating. Scalding tears streaked his face and his vision blurred. He remembered his recurring dream. Suddenly, Rook's body shuddered, and he was wracked with violent, keening sobs that echoed off of the walls of his bedchamber. He put his hands up to his eyes in a vain attempt to fend off the tears.
Just when he thought his crying would never end, Magda soundlessly slipped through the threshold of the door, a look of genuine concern on her face. She moved towards his bed, looking almost magical in the early morning sunlight pouring through the window.
"Rook, is it about the memorial service today? I know how important Varis was to you… and to me," Magda asked.
Rook looked up from his hands and met her gaze. Her fierce green eyes, the shade of the sytil moss that clung to the fur of banderbears, were softened by sorrow and empathy.
"Yes… I… I know that she's probably dead. But, I can't give up on her and going to the memorial would be disingenuous," he replied. "It's more about the dreams I've been having."
"What about them? The woodwolf dreams?"
"Yes. But, these past few nightmares have been slightly different. Each time I close my eyes, I see her face. When I sleep, I hear the howls of the woodwolves converging on her position and I can't do anything to stop it!"
"Can I sit?" Magda requested. Rook nodded, and she sat beside him on the bed. She put her arm around him and squeezed him tight. Rook began to cry again.
Rook spoke in a strained whisper, speaking through the tears he tried to stifle and the sobs he tried to choke back, "Some mornings, I look at the Lufwood Tower in the distance. So majestic and inviting and elegant…"
He could picture it now; the stone woodcat sentinels on either side of its main entrance, leading to a marble-floored vestibule, its floor a replica of the Quadrangle of Old Sanctaphrax. The tall structure, decorated with trestled balustrades and dotted with stained-glass mullioned windows.
Memories of his countless tea-time meetings with the wise High Master of the Lake Landing Academy, Parsimmon, and the gaunt and haunted-looking Most High Academe—the highest ranked official in all the Free Glades—Cowlquape Pentaphraxis, flooded his mind. The meetings were conducted in Cowlquape's private apartment on the top floor of the Lufwood Tower. Though his chambers were austere and sparsely furnished, the view from the windows was spectacular, offering a breath-taking look of North Lake and the faintly glowing Lullabee Island in its center.
His reverie was interrupted by Magda's sonorous and curious voice.
"Go on," she coaxed him.
"Some mornings, I just feel like hurtling myself off its top floor balcony!" Rook half-shouted through clenched teeth.
Magda took a quick intake of breath before speaking slowly and clearly.
"By Earth and Sky! Do not think like that, Rook! What would the Free Glades do without you? Open Sky forbid they have to lose you along with Varis. Would she want you to throw your life away like that? And besides, what would your friends do without you –what the blazes would I do without you? You tell me this."
"It isn't so simple, Magda! Don't you see? When I look at the Tower, I think of the sweet release, the beckoning I feel for a reprieve from these blasted nightmares! I don't much care a whit for anything else in those moments."
Magda gently placed both of her delicate hands on his cheeks and wiped away Rook's tears. She got up from the bed, wet a rag in the basin in the corner, and came back to scrub off the dried tears that crisscrossed his face like so many superficial scars.
"Rook, I'm sorry. I'm here for you. Let's get out of this apartment. We won't gain anything by wallowing in despair," Magda's voice lit up and she flashed him one of her dazzling smiles that always made him and everyone else blush. "The skies are indigo; the summer sun is shining. Why, there's even a cool breeze blowing!"
"Okay," Rook grudgingly accepted.
"We'll take a cart from here to New Undertown, stop at the New Bloodoak Tavern for a spot of cloudtea and hyleberry jam on oakbread, the Mother Maris special. Afterwards, I think a stroll down the Lakeside promenade would do you wonders!"
"You've thought this through, haven't you," Rook mused.
Magda shot him back a look that would melt the stoniest of hearts. "Don't you know? I'm a spontaneous kind of girl."
After sitting on the lumpy, misshapen bed in Rook's room for a while longer, in absolute silence, Magda sat up abruptly. She took Rook's right hand in hers and pulled him off of the bed.
"Come on, get dressed and meet me in the Library's foyer when you're ready," Magda ordered, before giving him a friendly kiss on his forehead. "We have to get going or we'll miss the memorial after our walk."
"I… I can't go to the memorial," Rook cried out in mild horror.
"You can and will be there," she responded in her most amiable voice. And, with that, Magda left the room to get ready for the long day ahead of them.
Rook had crossed over the main road through the Blackwood Passage, a covered bridge that served as a bustling thoroughfare, connecting the campus complex to the New Great Library. The walls of the passage were adorned with intricate friezes, lovingly carved out of the finest cut, most diligently seasoned blackwood that the woodtrolls had in their underground warehouses. The entrancing decorated walls depicted all of the most common creatures inhabiting the Edge – banderbears, hirsute mountains of fur, with their yellowed tusks and razor-sharp claws; their natural enemies, the wig-wigs, orange furballs that posed a laughable threat when alone, but when in groups, could devour a banderbear in second, bones and all; rotsuckers, black as night, protruding snouts snuffling noisily; halitoads, about to let out deadly belches.
Rook spent an interminable time traversing the entire Blackwood Passage before he finally arrived in the Great Library. He walked through the magnificent chamber that housed the barkscrolls themselves, its dusty ground blanketed with stray sheets of bark parchment, marked with writings and diagrams meticulously inscribed in blackwood ink. Rook made his way to the threshold of the immense, round building. He crossed into the Great Library's foyer.
The first sight that greeted visitors to the Great Library—once they'd gone through its towering leadwood doors—was an imposing wooden statue of the High Librarian, Fenbrus Lodd, which presided over the vestibule – painstakingly carved by the talented woodtroll master, Oakley Gruffbark. The original statue had burned down in the conflagration that had destroyed the first Great Library of the Free Glades. During the rebuilding efforts, the woodtroll had created another statue – larger and more detailed than the one before it.
Once Rooked had reached the meeting place he'd set with Magda, he opened his trusty barkpaper sketchpad and produced a writing implement from his trousers. He began to draw Varis Lodd, bedecked in her flight-suit, a look of cold resolve defining her serious countenance. As in life, her custom-built crossbow was loaded and at the ready by her side. In the background, he added her magnificent sumpwood skycraft, the Windhawk, into the picture. This sketch was a replication of Varis in his nightmare he'd just had. Drawing the Windhawk stirred painful memories of his own destroyed skycraft, his beloved Stormhornet, blown up accidentally by Vox Verlix over Screetown.
In turn, this made Rook recall how everyone thought him dead after that crash and had given up hope—everyone, all except for Magda. During the War for the Free Glades, Magda was also shot down, this time over the Eastern Roost. He shamefully remembered how easily he had believed she was dead.
After the crash, while severely wounded and with a badly broken leg, Magda limped through the treacherous Deepwoods alone. She dragged her skycraft behind her, from the Eastern Roost to the Free Glades. Rook was still in awe with her level of dedication to the cause of the Librarian Knights. It filled him with a sense of pride.
Rook was dressed in a loose-fitting orange tunic and moss-green silk pantaloons, the same hue as Magda's irises. It was simple attire, but comfortable and perfect for the summer weather.
Rook was a handsome youth of eighteen years, lithe but with ripples of muscle in his arms and strong trunk-like legs due to his service in the Freeglade Lancers. His hair, jet-black, with eyes the color of polished sapphires. They were serious but, at the same time, strangely genial eyes.
He didn't mind waiting for Magda. After all, it gave him a chance to sketch what was on his mind. The skills he picked up creating the diagrams in his treatise, An Eyewitness Account of the Mythical Convocation of Banderbears, were too important to his sense of self for him to let go to waste so he resolved to cope with daily life through art.
Rook flipped through the sketchbook. All of the drawings were of people, usually of people who were dear to him. Vague scratchings of the half-remembered faces of his dead parents and portraits of his friends: Magda, Xanth, Felix, Stob, to name a few. The most common subjects for his sketches were Magda and Varis. With that thought, Rook realized how many people cared for him and would be devastated if he were to die.
After looking through the sketchbook a second time, Magda appeared. She was resplendent in a magenta kurta, inlaid with gold filigree, and accompanied by a plunging neckline. Below, she wore velvety indigo leggings. As was the style at the time, Magda's curly ringlets were arranged into four thick plaits of straw-blond hair, inspired by the way Varis Lodd wore hers.
Her appearance was almost a spitting-image of Varis – how she must have looked at the age of twenty. He felt a heavy weight in his heart, but just as soon as he felt it, it was already gone. Rook couldn't deny that Magda looked impossibly beautiful. Even though they were just friends, her breathtaking prettiness was not lost on him. It was more than her physique – it was mainly her courage and determination that drew Rook's eye. All of his observations and contemplations took place in the span of perhaps five seconds. Once Magda spotted Rook, she walked over to him, a look of slight inquisitiveness on her face.
"I'm sorry I made you wait so long. Getting my tangled hair to resemble Varis's was such a pain. Let's catch a cart to the New Bloodoak," she said.
"Will we find a cart going to New Undertown at this early hour?" Rook asked. He looked around him at the deserted Great Library.
"Yes, they're always making supply runs. The route is constantly in use, no matter the hour," Magda responded confidently.
"Lead the way."
"Gladly."
The pair of them left the foyer, strode off of the massive wooden platform that housed the Great Library, and proceeded towards the vast cart stables located adjacent to the building, on dry land. At the end of the row of stables was a mean but functional cart drawn by two ancient-looking hammelhorns. A slaughterer lass was replacing one of the wheels when Rook and Magda approached her. She soundlessly toiled away on the wheel without looking up at them. Rook inhaled the earthy smells of the Free Glades as motherly sunshine dappled down to the forest floor, filtered through the treillage of branches above him. His senses brought back memories of his parents and the long treks they'd used to go on when he was a young'un. After five minutes of waiting, the cartwheel was replaced and the lass finally looked up from her work. Her face cracked into a wry smile when she realized it was Magda.
"Magda, how're you doing? And up at this hour?" the lass inquired.
"I'm fine, Tanis. I have someone I'd like you to meet. I know I always talk to you about him and I feel this is as good as any a time to make an introduction," Magda replied.
Magda beckoned Rook closer and gestured towards him.
"Tanis, this rascal over here is the famed Rook Barkwater."
Rook shot out his hand and Tanis clasped it and shook it firmly. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
"Hi, I'm Rook," he said.
"Charmed," Tanis grinned. Looking to Magda, she continued. "Magda, you never told me he was this dashing! Though I sense sadness in him."
"Tanis!" Magda reprimanded unseriously.
"Sorry, Magda, he's just so good-looking. Sky Above!"
At this point, Rook was blushing profusely, so much so that his face almost matched the color of Tanis's. He suddenly became desperate to return to the comfortable apartment and stare wistfully out of the windows.
"Tanis, Rook and I need to get to the New Bloodoak Tavern in time for breakfast and a walk before Varis Lodd's memorial ceremony. You know, where we're going to unveil the new marble statue of her that Xanth Filatine chiseled?" Magda proceeded, the previous exchange already forgotten.
"That'll be fifty gladers. No receipts or refunds available," Tanis japed.
Wartime provisions had just been repealed by the Freeglades Council, reinstituting the usage of currency for the exchange of goods and services.
"Tanis, while we're still young. Skip the jokes and let's go!" Magda retorted.
"Relax, I was just kidding," Tanis replied bashfully. "I can take you there, but first I have to drop some supplies off at Lake Landing."
Magda sighed in annoyance.
"Don't worry, you won't be late. Qarne and Marne look old, but they're not slow by any means," Tanis explained. "Hop in the back and we'll set out forthwith."
Rook and Magda moved some provisions out of the way so that he could mount up in the back of the cart. The pair sat down heavily—Rook in the cargo bed and Magda beside Tanis—as Tanis took the reins and prepared to set off.
"Everyone aboard?" Tanis vacuously asked.
"Clearly," the pair replied in unison as their short journey towards the town began. The ride was rickety, but Rook was too preoccupied with his broken heart to notice this. Solace still eluded him.
Yet, Magda's optimistic words came back to him, reminding him that a positive attitude could change the course of the day. Rook knew that his negative thoughts were mostly within his power to control. It was easier said than done, however.
But, as Magda had said before, the weather was particularly pleasant at the moment. His father had once told him that the key to happiness was sunshine and pickled tripweed. Unfortunately, Rook absolutely abhorred pickled tripweed – like his mother, grandfather, and so on.
"Magda…," Rook said. "How are you feeling today?"
"To be completely honest, I'm feeling hopeful," responded Magda, transfixed by the morning sun peeking between the treetops of ironwood pines.