A Culler's Tally

A Greenwake hunter's running tally of the eastern wood's spreading ruin, kept against the day the Rootbound's patience finally has to be overruled.

Day eleven of the watch. Grey grass out from the bedding-ground another forty paces; two hares found crowned and put down; the old sow tusker now circling the stag's track instead of holding her own. The Rootbound say wait, the wood will take it back. The wood is not taking it back. It is taking the wood. I have set down here, in a hand Warden Esk can read when he stops pretending he hasn't decided, what one clean arrow would cost — nothing — against what the full rite would cost — a Culler does not say it aloud. Whoever carries this: the stag is east, where the grass goes wrong. Mind the crown. It catches the light like wet glass, and the catching is a kind of asking.