Spike Growth

The record preserved here comes from a controlled crossing arranged after a contributor claimed that thorns were “hardly hostile spellcraft” and “mostly a gardening problem.”

The chamber was prepared with a strip of earth, moss, and low green growth.

The contributor was asked to cross it.

He later objected to the word cross.

Account of Orentha Vale

The ground looked innocent.

That was the first cruelty.

No blade glittered. No flame gathered. No beast showed teeth. The earth lay where earth belonged, wearing moss, short grass, and a few pale roots with the quiet confidence of things that expect to be stepped on.

The contributor stepped.

The ground answered upward.

Not all at once. That would have been kinder. A single spear may be feared honestly. A pit may be respected once discovered. This was smaller, lower, and therefore more intimate.

His boot sank through the green.

Something sharp found the sole.

Then another.

Then several more, each placed with the patient malice of a clerk itemizing a debt.

He stopped.

This was wise.

It did not solve the problem.

The body, when hurt from below, makes an old assumption: lift the foot. Remove the flesh from the pain. Put weight elsewhere.

He lifted the foot.

The other foot accepted the entire burden of standing in a place that had become opinionated.

His face changed.

Then his balance changed.

Then his vocabulary changed.

I record only the order.

He tried to retreat.

This was the second cruelty.

Every step out was also a step through. The ground did not care whether he was entering, leaving, fleeing, or correcting a mistake. It cared only that he moved.

The spell had made motion taxable.

Blood showed at the edge of one boot. A thorn caught his trouser leg. Another opened the back of his hand when he reached down too quickly and discovered that the problem was not limited to feet.

He froze again, bent forward in a posture that suggested prayer, strategy, and immediate regret.

A witness advised him to remain still.

The contributor asked, with admirable restraint, from where precisely that advice had been purchased.

The healer crossed with boards.

Slowly.

This detail matters.

Each board was placed as if negotiating with a dangerous animal. One before the contributor’s right foot. Wait. Weight shifted. One before the left. Wait. Another for his hand, because pride had already proven less useful than support.

The contributor followed the boards with religious sincerity.

No one mocked him.

This is recorded to the credit of everyone present.

When the contributor reached clean stone, he sat down without being invited.

When asked what he had felt, the contributor said, “It charged me for leaving.”

This was the most accurate testimony in the record.

A sword punishes the body for being struck.

Spike Growth punishes the body for trying to stop being struck.

Selanka’s Note

This working raises a simple problem: when does ordinary ground stop being ordinary?

Often later than the foot would prefer.

Many readers believe they would “simply notice” the danger before entering it. Possibly. People hold generous opinions of their own attention until the soles of their boots begin providing counterargument.

Leaving may hurt as much as entering.

This fact has inspired an entire category of correspondence concerning dragging, pushing, pulling, shoving, frightening, charming, carrying, or otherwise persuading enemies to travel through the growth after they have already learned better.

I have filed these letters under Agriculture, Hostile.

If someone is trapped within the growth, do not shout for them to hurry. The ground is already giving enough instructions. Use cloaks, shields, ropes, patient hands, or whatever else allows the person to leave without consulting the thorns again.

Above all, do not mock this spell because it resembles plants.

Plants have killed many people.

Few have been this well instructed.