Fantasy

The Wooden Generations

By Joe

Two centuries ago the flesh masters grew a servant people from seeds, planing each body from living wood and breathing them awake. They are all dead now, the masters, gone in one quiet season, and their creations simply kept going. Nobody knows exactly how the awakening was done, only that it happens to new bodies the way sap rises: slowly, then all at once. You are a Woken, fully grown from your own tree, a person of grain and pith with two centuries of history behind you. Every wooden citizen carries the mark of whoever planed them, and most marks lead back to masters long rotted to soil. The groves still grow new people, but the last seedkeeper who understood the old ways is failing, her bark splitting. If the art of awakening is lost, the groves will keep producing bodies and none of them will ever open their eyes. The workshops that shape new limbs are already running short of planing steel. Whatever you decide to do about it, the valley is watching you do it. Who you are: You are a Woken of standing in Lowgrove, two centuries old, known across the terraces as someone the seedkeepers and the joiners both trust to be told the truth. You have a history here, friends on both sides, and no easy answer.

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