Moss clung along the exposed roots of an ancient hardwood; every inch was dandy, like a springy, verdant carpet. The primitive plant drank the dripping morning dew; condensed by the night's push for dawn, water trickled down from the cool tree bark and dampened the moss. Between the exposed roots and the lowest branches, the master shaman roamed. He stooped down, without slowing his steady march, and ran his stiff fingers over the sprawling greenery. Its life spoke to him, telling hushed secrets about the far beyond—troubling word about Dheathain's foulest swamp.

"The rumours might be true," he conceded to the spirits of the undergrowth.

Those Dheathain trees, with Suthainn oak the tallest of the exotics; they were worlds within a world. Together, they rolled across the continent like moss to the giants; but, alone, each tree was a living anchor, flourishing in a sea of life. For the fibrous moss was home to bugs, slugs, frogs, and snails. Along the tough trunk travelled ants as big as your eyeball. And the birds in the branches cheeped like a chorus of schoolyard snitches.

"A wretched witch?" the shaman asked of the canopy's flutterers.

Hundreds of years made the oak strong. Strong enough to endure its duty: to be the centre of a universe populated by creatures large, medium, and small. But even the mightiest among the the towering trees could be taken by imbalance. If the jungle creepers, the devil's ivy, grew greedy then, not only would the oak fall, but life itself would fall. The choking grip of tangling vines rode the trunk and branches to the bounty of vital sunlight soaking the canopy. There, dressed in trumpet flowers, its parasitic endeavour could be forgiven as the blooming ivy offered nectar for the butterflies.

Do Mugu stopped and sat, cross-legged, beneath the Suthainn oak. "The vines are growing too strong?" he asked. His vision was absorbed by the branches, stems, roots, and leaves of the forest. Hints and hearsay flowed like sap from all creation and into a river of knowledge. Through his sacred vision, the shaman dared to peek on the foul swamp.

"I cannot see," he said to the rainforest.

The forest answered its human steward. "Death," they said through a chorus of a million spirits.

Like the unfettered vines choked the oak, an unfettered witch had choked the swamp.