The Place
Glimmerwood is a forest of pale light and moving paths, a wood that does not stay in one place and does not let you stay in one place either. It stretches eight kilometers from the black river to the white hills, and the eight kilometers is a measure you cannot trust, because the wood has been known to be seven and nine in the same day, and the day has been known to be one of each. The trees are silver-barked and slow, their bark the pale grey of old bone, and the ground underfoot is soft, a spongy dark that gives and does not remember the giving. The light does not come from the sky; it comes out of the wood itself, a pale shimmer that moves from tree to tree like a rumor, and the shimmer is the color of a promise, which is to say it is a color you cannot name and cannot stop watching. The sky above, when you can find it, is a flat grey, and the grey is the only color the wood does not make. It smells of wet bark and old sugar, a smell that is sweet until it is not, and the one sound is the whisper, a low rustle under the leaves that is not the wind, because the wind is not in the wood, and the whisper is the bargain being made. There is no landmark the way a forest has a landmark, but there is one: the Glimmer Tree, a silver-barked giant in the middle of the wood, the oldest tree and the first bargain, and the tree is the door, and the door is the light. What makes Glimmerwood itself is the remember: the trees remember the bargains made beneath them, and the remembering is the bargain, and the bargain is the light, and the light is the wood.
How They Live
The Fae Folk keep this place in the remember, living in holds of carved silver-bark and woven light, their chambers cool and their entrances low, and a hold is laid down one bargain at a time, because a bargain is the season and a bargain is the calendar. Light is the glimmer, pale and faint, and the pale light makes the fae look new and the bargains look old, and the fae like it that way, because the new look is the honest look. Food comes from the bargain: the offered meal, the traded name, the kept promise, and the memory, and the memory is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is drawn from the wood's springs, which the bargain-keepers tend the way you tend a rumor, carefully and at a distance, because the springs are the bargains and the bargains are the law. Heat is not something the wood offers in the long season, and the long season is the season, and the fae have stopped asking it to. The defense is the glamour itself: a visitor who steps into the wood is already in the bargain's path, and the bargain is the alarm, and the alarm is the sentence. The day is measured by the promise, because the promise is the only clock the wood has, and the clock does not lie about what is owed. Every fae that is born must make one bargain with the Glimmer Tree before the wood will call it one of its own, and the bargaining is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the light ever gives back.
People
Home of the Fae Folk, whose holds are counted by promise. Eleven promises are kept at last count, and the count is kept in the light, which is to say the count is as reliable as a promise, which is to say it is reliable until it is not. The bargain-keepers lead, and rank is decided by the keeping, because a keeper who keeps a promise the wood has forgotten is the keeper the light trusts. Nothing that cannot keep a secret is welcome, and the secret is not needed, because the wood has a bargain, and the bargain has a memory, and the memory has a ledger. A surface traveler who once walked the wood, the last one to find his way out, called it the only forest where the path makes you pay before you take a step, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the light paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where nothing is free, and the price is the promise, and the promise is the memory, and the memory is the end. Uaellaen has been in the wood once, and the bargain took his name as payment, and he has not spoken his name in the wood since. The name is still in the trees, and it is still his, and the fae have never asked him to take it back.