Wisp - A Scarecrow's Tale

Chapter 3 - The Patchwork Woods

Wander may not have remembered much about himself or his past, but he did have a rough idea what a forest should be: tall trees and bushes, clumps of grass along the worn dirt paths, perhaps a river crossing through here and there and an animated musical's assortment of wildlife. The forest he, Merry, and Niki now travelled certainly had all those things, there were nevertheless details that Wander couldn't help but feel weren't quite right.

For starters, he was pretty sure tree leaves should be green or in the very least the autumn range of red, brown, yellow, and orange. They shouldn't be striped, plaid, or polka-dotted with three, four, or sometimes even five other colors on a single leaf. Wander plucked a white leaf with purple and orange polka dots from a tree and found its texture was very much like that of his plaid shirt, complete with a starch-like stiffness that slowly faded once the leaf was separated from the tree. The edges of the leaves felt rough to the touch and stuck together easily, causing fallen leaves to link together like scraps of mismatched fabric abandoned across the forest floor.

The local wildlife seemed to have fully adapted to the nature of the patchwork trees. Birds collected fallen patches to build nests for their young. Fallen nests were claimed by what Niki called 'rambits': small bunnies with tiny ram-like horns. The rambits used the nests to camouflage their burrows as well as an ample source of food.

Merry flew from place to place like a kid trying to see everything at once, usually startling the wildlife in the process. Wander did his best to look after the wisp though perhaps he should've watched where he was going instead. Luckily for him, Niki had a knack for spotting upcoming trouble. She was there in an instant to catch him every time he nearly stumbled into a stream or pull him back before he walked into a thorny bush. She also helped keep an eye on Merry, stopping the wisp several times before their curiosity got them into trouble.

"Honestly," she said, shaking her head at both Wander and Merry moments after stopping them from plowing directly through a thick cluster of spider webs stretching between two trees just off the path. "Have you always been this clumsy?"

"I don't know," Wander admitted. "I mean, I did fall off my island, but I never had any trouble on my field."

Rolling her eyes, she said, "Well, yeah, but a field's just a big flat space."

"I had a hill."

"I'm just saying, Wander. Watch it!"

She yanked him back moments before his foot would've caught under a particularly gnarled root crossing the path.

"Thanks," he said, stepping over the root.

She tutted at him as they continued down the path. "Good thing I went with you; you'd be in pieces again before you managed to get out of the woods."

"Ah, so this is a forest then," Wander said.

She gave him a strange look. "Um, yeah. You can tell by the, y'know, trees."

"Didn't have any trees on my field," he told her. "Just the wheat. Lots of that, though."

"Yeah, but surely you've seen a tree somewhere else before."

Wander rubbed his chin as he considered this. "I guess."

"You guess?" Niki said, sounding surprised.

"I mean I recognize 'em now so I must have seen 'em sometime," he told her. "Probably just forgot it along with everything else."

"Hang on a sec ... you lost your memory?" asked Niki.

"Yeah, pretty much everything before sitting on my field." he admitted, "'cept my name, of course. Glad I was smart enough to weave it in my hat. See?"