19 Winter, Year 2
The Secret Woods
I went back on the fourteenth to both pay Harvey and give him his birthday gift, a bag of homegrown ground coffee. I'm fine now, and life goes on, more or less. I don't really need anything from the village, so I don't have to go there and risk running into anyone from Jodi's family.
And spending more time closer to home – that is, in the forest – in winter has been useful. I've discovered a weird little kind of tuber that grows underneath the snow. Demetrius says they're called 'snow yams' and they're surprisingly healthy. I've also found that they bruise very easily and go bad quickly – they're like winter's raspberries. This is probably why they're not shipped to the city or even grown commercially, but with lots of care I did manage to propagate them.
However, I have also been spending quite a lot of my time inside, and that has done a number on my firewood.
So around 3 pm, I go into the forest with my newly upgraded axe. I don't have any trees at my farm that I'm willing to cut down, but I remember there's this big fallen tree at the far corner of the forest that I've never been able to chop up before. I think it must be hardwood and my axe was just too soft. So I'll see how far I get this time.
As soon as I reach the forest I spot a line of smoke rising from between the trees and remember that it's Friday – the traveling merchant is here. I go up to her window, which is closed while she doesn't have any customers because it's still cold outside in spite of the sunlight. She's sitting in there with her hands folded around a steaming mug, but she opens her window as soon as I appear in her field of vision.
"Hey there! Care for a hot cup of cocoa? Only fifty gold today!" she says. Most of the time her stuff is hugely overpriced but sometimes there's stuff in there that you just can't get anywhere else, so I go over.
"Hey, Lavinia. Not right now, maybe later. Got work to do. What've you got in here today?"
"Oh, I have just what you need." She peers at me with her eyes half-closed for a second, she does it every time. "I'm one hundred percent positive that you could use a coconut. Hum? Bit of tropical flair to dispel the winter blues?"
"Hang on, you sell coconuts?"
"Only today, honey. 800 gold apiece, I've got three back here."
"But where do you get them?"
"Ahh, that's my little secret, isn't it?"
"I'm sorry, right now I'm not going to pay 800 for a coconut." I don't need it anymore – I already completed that list on the community center. "I've just been trying to figure out if there's a place on this continent where they grow, because I keep seeing references to them but nobody can tell me where they come from."
Lavinia looks left and right suspiciously and then bends forward over the edge of her window.
"I smuggle my goods out of the Gotoro Empire," she whispers conspiratorially. Then she sits back as if nothing happened. "That's why they're so expensive, see?"
"Okay. I guess that makes sense." I don't need coconuts anyway. "What's that… Is that a snowman you've got in the back there?"
"Oh, that's a scarecrow. So cute, isn't it? I don't normally bring them, they take up so much space I can't stretch my legs, but I've got a few lying around in a warehouse because that scarecrow club gives out a kind of prize for people who collect all eight of them. And I doubt there's a lot of ways you can get them all, out here."
"A prize, huh? Do you know what it is?"
"It's a scarecrow club. Pretty sure it's a scarecrow," she scoffs.
"So how much do you ask for it?"
"You know what, normally it's five thousand, but I kind of want to be rid of them. Stretch my legs in here. So I'll leave it at four for you."
"Four thousand."
"Take or leave."
I have seen 'special' scarecrows sold mainly during events in town. I know Pierre sells a witch one at the Spirit's Eve festival, and if I remember well the price was indeed 5000g. I also got a raccoon scarecrow from Gunther when I brought in the twentieth object, I think it was a mineral that time. Said it had been knocking around in the basement for a while. I can make my own scarecrows, but I do think this one's funny. And winter is almost over, and I still have a good amount of savings. Why not?
"Okay, you know what? I'm gonna be hauling wood back to the farm, I don't have that kind of money on me right now but I will when I come back. Don't sell it to anyone else," I smirk. I have a hard time understanding why Lavinia comes out here in winter, I don't have the impression anyone else even comes out here. Leah, maybe, but she wouldn't buy a scarecrow.
"You got it. And you're sure you don't want cocoa?"
"No thanks. I'll see you in a bit."
I get to work on the log and quickly start to get hot with the exercise, but my axe is much more effective this time around. In no time I have the large log divided in three slices of trunk. They're still too large and heavy for me to roll away, so I pull the outside piece flat on the ground and cut it in half diagonally. I have to go all the way down to quarters before I can actually lift one up. Luckily I have all day. I carry my quarter home and come back with money for the scarecrow, which I dump on my center island along with the wood for the time being.
When I've carried the four quarters of that first slice of the log home, I figure it would really be easier and quicker if I could roll my wood and start cutting my second slice in half to make two thinner slices. These do, indeed, roll, with a bit of effort to keep them upright. I get the both of them to the farm in probably half the time I needed for the first part.
I've noticed as I hauled away parts of the log that there seems to be an open space behind it, a space that doesn't seem to have any trees or even bushes growing in it. Perhaps it is this way because the trees above are grown so tightly together that hardly any snow has even reached the ground here, and it's dark in there. Still, it seems light does fall down to the ground again further in, and snow as well.
I give the last slice of the log the same treatment, cutting it in half as well, and roll away one piece. Now I only have one piece left, and I probably won't want to come back out here after I get that to the farm. If I want to explore that open space, I should probably do it now.
I can walk through the dark passage without ducking. The pine trees flanking it all seem to be centuries old and have no branches this low. The layer of moss and pine needles on the ground is so thick that it feels like walking on an actual carpet, and it muffles the sound of my footsteps just as effectively. Then I hit the snow again, cracking below my feet, and it sounds so loud in the wintery absence of birdsong. I almost feel like I'm not supposed to be here, off the beaten path, in the virgin snow, in this part of the forest where it seems no one has set foot since that big tree fell. I can mainly see tree stumps, just as large and wide as the log I just cleared, as if someone already cut down several more of these centuries-old giants here.
Out of nowhere, something bumps into my hip from the right, hard enough that I need to take a step sideways to stay on my feet. While I look around to spot what the hell did that, a sharp pain slices through my side. It's a frozen slime – they freeze you where they touch you – and it's getting ready to jump at me again. I grab my axe in both hands and meet it mid-jump. Two halves drop to the snow and immediately melt into… well, inanimate slime. I've never really understood how these creatures work, they don't seem to have internal organs or anything. You kill them, they just droop on the spot.
I quickly look around in case there's any more. This place must've been blocked and inaccessible to humans for such a long time that slimes have started breeding, just like the mine. I just hope it's no more than slimes… But a slime never shows up alone.
Just as I figure it might just be better for me to leave, I spot something that seems out of place, sticking out beyond a hedge – white stone? I inch around the hedge and dispatch another slime before it gets to me, and find a white marble statue of a jolly-looking fat man wearing what looks like monk's robes or something. There's text carved into the pedestal; I use my axe too scoop away the snow covering half of it. Old Master Cannoli, it says, and underneath in smaller letters, Still searching for the sweetest taste.
Strange quest for a monk, I would say, but what do I know on the matter anyway. Sweetest taste? Makes me wonder when the guy died. Things like stevia and aspartame are vomit-inducingly sweet. Back in the guy's day, he may have needed, like… blueberries? An apple with a lot of sun exposure? What's the sweetest thing aside from those chemicals the body doesn't actually recognize as nutrients? Sugar cane juice?
There's a little pond across from the statue, and I spot a couple of slimes on the far side of it that don't seem to have seen me yet, so I quietly make my way out of this secret section of the forest and start rolling my slice of wood away. As I pass by Lavinia, she's about to close up shop and only now do I realise it's getting dark. Was it dark in that other part of the forest? It seemed to be broad daylight…
"Hey, Lavinia," I say before she pulls down her shutter. She opens her window a smidge.
"I'm closing, dear, I'll be back Sunday."
"It's just a stupid question. What would you say is the sweetest thing known to man?"
"Ohh, you don't know? Don't you remember those special seeds I sell in velvet bags in Spring and Summer? That's the sweetest fruit known to man. Come back in two weeks and I'll show you. Nighty-night, now."
She waves and then closes both her window and her shutter.
I spend another hour getting all my wood and the new scarecrow to the space right in front of my house. I can chop it all up tomorrow and then store it in the wood storage space, but for now at least I have it, and my socks are soaked and I can't feel my toes. I go inside to make a fire with the wood I have left and warm up.