Contents
There is, on the eastern edge of the Bloom, a small permanent settlement. The Veiled-folk villages closest to it know it as the Spore Circle outpost; everyone else, when they refer to it at all, calls it the green-house, with an audible quotation around the words. The outpost has been there since before any reach-record will admit. Its current population is unknown. The Wren Academy’s last published estimate, more than thirty years out of date, was fifty to eighty members across the whole order, with perhaps a dozen in residence at the outpost at any time. Most working captains will tell you the actual count is anyone’s guess.
The order does not call itself the Spore Circle. The order does not, as far as anyone can confirm, call itself anything. Spore Circle is the reach-name, taken originally from the small ring of mushroom- fruit that grows along the outpost’s outer wall in spring. The druids, when they enter Quiet Reach villages or Copper Ring ports — which they do, occasionally, on errands the rest of the world does not understand — answer to druid and to sister or brother, and not to anything more specific.
What is said
What ordinary reach-folk say of the druids divides cleanly. The opinions, in their commonest forms:
- They are the last guardians. A reach-tradition older than the Reckoning holds that the world’s old wild green needed someone to speak with it, and that in the absence of Nymira (see The Two That Fell), the druids took up the work. This is the kindest reading. Older grandmothers in the Veiled-folk villages hold to it
- They are half-gone. A common middle reading, particularly in the Copper Ring. The druids have spent so long with the Verdant that they are no longer entirely themselves; they should be respected at a distance and not invited to dinner. This reading is held without much conviction; it is the reading reach-folk fall back on when they do not want to engage with the harder questions
- They are not on our side. A minority reading, more common among retired skyfarers than among landfolk. The argument: the druids refuse coin, refuse cities, accept goods that the Verdant might use, and know things they should not know. The reading is rarely argued aloud. It is, in private, what some working captains believe
The temple of the Seven has, in four centuries of records, never issued a formal teaching on the order. Priests asked directly will say the order is welcome at the threshold, which is the temple’s diplomatic phrase for not invited inside.
What is observed
What reach-folk who have actually dealt with the druids agree on:
- They wear green-dyed wool, undyed at the hem, often patched. The cloth is rough and the dye is not the green of any commercial cloth-dyer; the colour is closer to the green of moss in a stone shadow. The Veiled-folk villages closest to the outpost recognize the cloth on sight
- They walk barefoot, even in the cold. The reach-folk who have asked have not received an explanation. The Wren Academy has proposed several theories, none confirmed
- They do not visit cities. The order has, by long observation, never sent a member into Brassmarket, Highforge, or any of the major reach-ports. They will visit small villages, particularly on the rim-isles of clusters near the Veiled Reaches, and they will visit isles that are known to be rooted-down in private folk-judgement. They do not go to formal commerce
- They refuse coin. Every working merchant who has dealt with the order will confirm: a druid will not accept currency in payment for any service or goods. They will accept, in trade: salt, dried fish, plain iron, paper, ink, candles, undyed cloth, wax, honey, hard bread. They will not accept silver, gold, brass, any worked precious metal, glass items, or anything containing dye — with the sole exception of their own green wool. The folk- explanation, sometimes offered by the druids themselves, is some variant of: what would the green do with brightness?
- They speak little. A druid in a village will, in most accounts, speak as much as is required to complete the errand and no more. Conversations are short. Pleasantries are not refused but are not initiated. They eat what is offered, sleep where indicated, and leave at the time they had originally said they would leave
The hand-sign
The single piece of working knowledge that most reach-folk carry about the druids is the hand-sign for do not approach. The sign is the druids’ own. It has been adopted, over generations, by non-druids who live near the Bloom — sailors, harbour-masters, village headfolk — because the druids use it consistently, and because it works.
The sign is this: the right hand held at chest height, palm flat toward the watcher, fingers slightly spread, with a small downward push — the gesture of pressing something gently away. It is held for perhaps two breaths, then lowered. It means do not approach me, do not approach what I am approaching, do not interrupt this work. A druid who shows the sign is, in most cases, walking toward something only they can see. A reach-folk who sees the sign will, by working courtesy, stop where they are and wait. The druid will lower the sign, or they will not. If they lower it, the work is done; the road is clear. If they do not, the watcher will, by long convention, simply return the way they came.
The sign is now used, in some Bloom-edge villages, by non-druids in ordinary life — to signal I am about to do something private, please give me a moment — and the druids have not objected. The adoption has, over generations, become reach-folk’s gentlest way of asking for a pause. Most outsiders learn the sign within a season of arriving in a Bloom-edge village. Most never use it more than the druids do.
What they know
The hardest piece of reach-folklore about the order is the one nobody wants to investigate too closely. It is this: the druids sometimes know things they should not know.
A druid arriving in a remote village will, occasionally, ask after a person by name — a name they have no public way of knowing. A druid will, occasionally, mention a death before its news has arrived. A druid will, very occasionally, decline to bless a crossing that the village had no other reason to suspect. Most of these incidents are quiet. Most of them go unverified. Most of the verifications — the ones the Wren Academy has been able to trace — turn out, on examination, to involve the druid having been at the outpost the whole time, with no plausible courier-route for the information.
The folk-explanation, sometimes offered by the druids themselves, runs roughly: we listen to the green, and the green sees more than we do.
This is not a reassuring explanation. The reach-folk who hear it generally do not press for a better one. The druids do not seem to think it requires improvement.
The courtesy
Reach-folk who live near the Bloom have developed a small set of courtesies for druid visits. The courtesies are not difficult and are observed by most coastal households without much thought:
- A bowl of clean water at the door when a druid is expected
- Plain food, no spices, no dyes, no oil from precious presses
- A clean swept floor, not too tidy — the druids find swept- for-them rooms uncomfortable, and will sometimes untie a swept pile and move it before they will sit
- A neighbour invited, by old custom; druids do not, by trade, receive in private. There must be at least one third party at the table. The druids prefer this. Most reach-folk now do too
A village that has been visited by the order will, traditionally, not discuss the visit afterward. Asked directly, the village will say a druid passed through and that the matter was minor. The asker will, by reach-courtesy, not press. A village that has been visited more than once in a season will, by old judgement, be paying attention to itself for a while. The phrase is unspecific. The villagers know what it means.
“Sister Vell came to the harbour in the spring of my fourteenth year and stayed three days. She slept in our front room. She ate what was put in front of her. She asked after my brother by his given name, which he had not used since he had taken the trade, and which she could not have known. He had been at sea for two seasons. He came home that summer with a wound he had not had when he left, and he would not say where he had got it. We did not ask Sister Vell about him. She did not bring it up. She left on the third morning, walked the road east, and we have not seen her since. My mother lit a candle on her side of the altar that night. We have not, in our house, talked about the visit. I do not know why I am writing this down. I do not know who I am writing it for.”
— from a household notebook recovered at Pike’s Reach, uncatalogued, undated