The Forbge Forest

Here, the world is truly a part of the dark,
Though outside the sunshine dances on leaves,
Careless, as it plays on the dark forest's eaves,
Of what lies in the places where its gold spark
Cannot touch, can neither inundate nor forgive.
In those places, nightmare-black things live,
Draw breath, and do not retreat at a gaze.
There live the things that make a shrill chorus
In the places where the Elwen mind is porous.
The dark things that live between the star-blaze
And the star-dark dwell there, in Forbge Forest.

Yet not all is so sinister in the massive Forbge,
For it is a place too wide to be called by one name,
A place at once open and resistant to sun-flame,
At once dominated by darkness and ruled by day.
One might hear, during the sunrise or after,
The pure liquid chuckle of the small morning laugher,
Who seems to dwell in this place as nowhere else,
To the slender boughs of the hylea clinging,
Voicing a constant chirruping, a sweetening singing,
That heartens the traveler's heart like temple bells.
And now and then, with a sound of those bells ringing,

With a soft neighing like the sound of hunting horns,
There makes their way along the forest's edge,
Their eyes dark and wild, their coats the shade of a hedge,
Verdant and wonderful, a herd of green unicorns.
So slender they are, like the tossing of trees,
One might well miss them in the malachite traceries
That all the trees on the Forest's edge seem to show.
One moment they are there, the next they are not,
Vanishing as though they didn't care for the spot.
And always at the sight of mortal eyes they likewise go,
Into those places by most mortals forgot.

A thousand other mysteries there are to discover,
Here in this place where the dark does not seem to bind
The sunlight, where the Elwen eye is not blind,
And the trees take green-gold as their willing lover.
Never have I seen such a distance between the trees,
Corridors roofed by green and traversed by the breeze,
Walled by trunks variously brown, black, or pale,
The undergrowth in various shades of green or blue,
Ablaze with rare flowers of some striking hue.
The wind can such halls, of course, freely sail,
But that they are perilous for the Elwen is often true.

There are hyleas such as none of us have ever seen
That grow in the Forbge is springing exuberance,
Their white-gold bark polished to magnificence,
Their leaves a crown of delicious-looking rich green,
Their golden flowers lying close to the bough,
As though dreaming of some time that is not now.
And, on the first day of autumn, when the blooms uncurl,
And the singing of the hyleas spreads Forest-wide,
Then many a listening Elwen, I am told, has died,
Listening to such songs of wonder in his mind unfurl
That he no longer cared for anything of the world outside.

Everything in the Forest seems to have a duty
To shine and be beautifully terrible at the same time,
As though to remind us that all things that shine
May have a horrifying- and entrancing- mad beauty.
It is perhaps because of this that one at times sadness
Feels when the wind is right, or maniacal gladness,
Or a desire to never from the Forbge Forest sever,
Though one must depart hastily at the fall of night.
It might almost be enough to dull the hunger for light,
The temptation to lie among the trees and forever
Listen to whatever songs whisper there in dark's blight.

For, mark me, when darkness falls, then another place
Is the Forest that I almost love by the light of the sun.
So one's feelings for the Forest are never quite done,
Are unsettled constantly from loathing or grace.
The Forest can furiously shine, can like the stars glow,
But what one will feel at nightfall one never can know,
Until one sees the darkness gather beneath each bough,
Hears the strange voices that at twilight rouse themselves.
Then alfar tales long ago put up on nursery shelves
Might return as though we were young Elwens again now.
There are things in the Forbge more alien than elves,

Or humans, or any other of the peoples who hate us,
And not all of them would utter a cruel laugh, or smile
If they managed an Elwen to his death to beguile.
Indeed, most of the things in the Forbge are joyous;
Their joy is simply too alien to be seen or borne,
Unless the Elwen will leave all who love him forlorn,
And all that he loves, and embrace the dark song
That between one leaf and another dances and fades,
Will dance in the moonlight, and join old raids
That were over long ago, but which still rush along,
Since time has no meaning in the Forest's deep glades.

I have heard tell, from a woman who looked as though
She would faint at the mere touch- nay, the mere sight-
Of a campfire, or a lantern, or even the sunlight,
That in the Forbge lies a pool as cold as melted snow,
Though it never freezes; and that the water is white
As ice, as a swan's breast, as death never set aright.
Strange shapes flicker in it; the woman saw one,
And it was of such strange form that her mind broke apart,
And ever since then she has wandered haunted in heart,
Unable to bear the sight or the warmth of the sun.
Even speaking to her was like some new foreign art.

I have heard tell, from a man who appeared at my fire
Shaking with a cold that no blankets could relieve,
That there is in the Forest compassion without reprieve,
That if peace is the greatest thing an Elwen might desire,
It will be granted to him without thought, without choice.
He confessed, in a torn, passionless voice,
That he could no longer feel anger, or anything of the like.
No longer felt he desire, or sadness, or fear.
He had wandered in strange lands of darkness drear,
And stood unafraid before a lightning strike.
"Passion is gone from me; death is more dear."

And those are the sights of the shallows; the chorus
Of tales swells as one goes nearer and nearer the heart.
There are things in the deeps that tear the mind apart,
Things from the star-void in the deepest Forest,
Called by those who claim to know things right and true
"Lords of the forest," or simply aradu.
They take forms that can make the mind bend;
They take the forms of great black bears, or stags,
Who can leap unharmed from the heights of the crags;
They take shapes that no one can comprehend,
And that wear the will and the wit to merest rags.

But there are Elwens who dwell among these trees!
Or so they call themselves; almost daily
I doubt the true soul of shadowed Elwens, curalli,
Who can live in such darkness with such total ease.
There must be some other explanation; they must be
Shades of those who were once completely free,
And have been captured, and made to look as though
They are now those dark, silver-skinned creatures,
With dark hair and eyes, proud and cruel features,
Who so much about the cold and about darkness know.
They cannot be true curalli, for they are the teachers

Of what they claim as the Forest's deeply-set "truth."
They say their race came to the Forest in a time beyond
Still-existing records, and with some spirit forged a bond
That has endured since then, since the world's youth!
That would mean that curalli have lived, without fears,
In the Forbge for millions upon millions of years!
Yet they are still Elwen; they can still walk clear-eyed,
Though they are, as all shadowed Elwens, dark of heart,
And even the best of them dedicated to walking apart.
They live as easily out of the Forest as on the inside.
No; they must be Elwen-shaped shadows of evil art.

No Elwen could live, as they say they learn to do,
In the heart of those dark-enwoven, star-untouched glades,
And learn the secret of each dark thing that fades
From the normal Elwen mind, the secret of aradu.
No one could make peace with the creatures of dark
Who live between the stars, and hate the stars' spark,
The sparks of Elwen life; they must be openly lying.
I am sure that it amuses them, in their own climes,
To laugh about the bald lies that they manage, sometimes,
To trick other Elwens into believing, while undying
They live in the Forest, being of its own make and kind.

The truth- if what they speak is the truth, then dangers
Have come to stalk all Elwens who have a certain eye,
Who have sometimes sneaked into the Forbge on the sly
To watch in fearful wonder a world to which sad strangers
They are, and ever more, and ever must, so remain.
It strikes me to the heart with a delicious, terrible pain,
To think that possibly my soul might be captured
By the fleeting shadows I have caught, each glimpse.
Sometimes a crippled desire through my mind limps,
To go into the Forest at stardark, and be enraptured
Willingly there, in a glade where some dark thing glints.

But I am an Elwen still, not a creature of night!
Ever I have sought the Forest only by brilliant day,
And on nights when my restless soul cannot stay away,
I have gone in guarded by moonshine and starlight.
So long as some light in the Forbge fleetingly dances,
I cannot be trapped by longing looks, glinting glances.
I must believe that- for I cannot control my fascination,
The longing that drives me more often to the skirts
Of the Forest where my commonsense with danger flirts.
Each seeming Elwen is- it must be- a Forest-creation,
And I cannot bond with the Forest. That thought sore hurts

Me, but I know that it is, ultimately, for my soul's best.
If I could learn to love the darkness between stars,
Those things that no rationality and no sanity bars,
What nightmares would come screaming to haunt my rest?
I have met several haunted souls who, after nightfall,
Dared to brave the Forest. More never returned at all.
I cannot join them. I know that I cannot; I will not!
Each Elwen who comes out and tells compelling tales
Must be seeking to lure into the Forest's travails
Someone who all warnings of sensibility has forgot.
I will not end my life on those frustrating trails-


I write this now with a weary and a shaking hand,
And a plea for forgiveness to all who might love me.
I must go. Something has called down from above me,
And my soul cannot help but hearken to the command.
When I looked up from my writing earlier, I saw
A sight that overcame me and filled me with much awe:
A snow tiger, a heavy white-black beast with green eyes.
It sat on the edge of the Forest, and stared at me.
Those eyes spoke as I have heard sometimes the sea
Speaks to some, and others have heard sing strange skies.
Of the love of the Forest I should never be free,

And I must follow the tiger into the curalli's home.
There I should learn much of what is not known to be true,
Of the creatures of star-dark, of the aradu.
The deepest ways, the darkest waters I would roam,
And know strange feasts among the strange trees,
Of wailing flutes in the shadowed Elwens' sanctuaries,
Of trees that spring up from the blood of the dead,
Of snowfields where a thousand memories freeze.
All of those things, and more- more than these
It pressed on me, and an anguish flooded my head
As I tried to ignore it, lunging for the starlight that frees.

But the starlight had darkened; all dark it was,
And, as I fled, I still saw the snow tiger's shining eyes.
All ways would lead to this; and, if I were wise,
I would yield at once to my spirit's true cause.
Otherwise I would die mad, screaming in silence,
Or I would die at the hands of curalli, with violence,
For they know those Elwens whom their home calls,
And wait with open arms and a welcoming palm.
But they also carry bows, with inexpressible calm
Shooting those at whose feet the tigersong falls,
Convinced they are granting those tortured souls balm.

I closed my eyes. I would prefer death by madness,
Or death by arrow, then going gladly into slavery,
Of all fates an Elwen can suffer the most unsavory.
But there was in my soul a sweet spreading gladness,
A yearning to sail on the Forest's dark ocean,
That was wildly happy my uneasy, fixed devotion
Had been noted by the Forest's soul of white cold.
For one moment, my defiance might have resurrected
Itself, but then the snow tiger my mind intersected
With visions of glory silver, and elation gold.
I breathed out a sigh, and then passionately accepted.

I write this in haste. The curalli stand watching me,
And I can see the arrows that are strung on the bow.
They shift and stir, like horses impatient to go.
If I make the slightest move to run, they will see,
And then the arrows will leap like birds from the string,
And through the air with deadly accuracy sing.
I go now- not by, and yet by, my own wavering will.
I cannot tell others to avoid what I did,
For in the Forest an uncanny madness lies hid,
And will take those who belong to it, or else kill
To make sure that the outer world is rid

Of those who are prey to the Forest's siren song.-
The curalli are singing, sounds that seem to compel
Me, so that my hands shake. I now say: Farewell!
On the benighted path to darkness I now rush along,
In the ways between the trees I love gone forever.
Nothing can my soul from my destiny now sever.
The siren song is a thousand songs, is a chorus
Pulling me from the page, pulling my spirit far away.
Farewell! I turn my back on the light, on the day,
And walk with the curalli into the nightbound Forest,
Into the tiger-haunted, the star-untouched Forbge.