Book Five: Chapter 123

As they crunched through the wilderness, he heard snippets of words nearby. They were solitary thoughts, barely audible in the cold, dark of night. It was the spiders of the woods, just trying to survive until daybreak when they could warm back up and hunt for food.

But it wasn’t just the spiders he sensed. Whenever he moved close to the trees, he was under the impression that they were listening. On a few occasions, he would put his hand out to either steady himself on a trunk or move a branch, and he could have sworn that he felt the tree shift beneath his touch.

“Are their dryads out here?” he asked, looking at Bigfoot.

“Nope,” Velvet answered. “It’s always just been us.”

“But the trees...” He looked at a nearby pine. Though it looked like an ordinary tree, he could almost feel its presence in his mind. “It almost feels like they’re watching me.”

Bigfoot nodded. “The land watches you, Caretaker, as it watches us all. There are many spirits that resid