No man can study the hidden secrets of the world without danger. I have survived attacks from men who hoped to keep their mysteries hidden from my sight. I have braved the traps of those who guarded their lore through artifice. I have survived even those secrets which were dangerous in their own right. The greatest of those dangers, the peril that threatened to destroy me, did not come from the genius of mankind. It came from the wildness of the woods, where civilization has no hold over the world and instinct rules over intellect.

I went to the little village as the color of autumn began to give way to the bleak white of winter. I am being generous when I say that it was a village, for it was nothing more than a humble cluster of huts that huddled together on the edge of a forest. It did not border one of the great forests of the world, but the trees were still tall and the shade was still dark. It was still enough to inspire stories, and it was one of those stories that brought me to the village in the first place. I had found scraps of it in a book, but I needed to hear the whole tale. 

The elders of the village turned me away when I asked them to tell the tale. I had hoped that they would be eager to speak with me, for the elderly rarely have anything better to do with their time than to speak. They said that I had no business with them, and urged me to leave in peace. I am not one to yield. I went to the young men, the men who would take any excuse to avoid their day's work. I gave them a small purse of gold to share, and they gave me what I wanted.

They told me of a more barbaric time, a time before their people had left the stifling embrace of the forest, a time when they lived as painted savages and knew the ways of the land. The forest fed them and clothed them, it sheltered them from their foes, and furnished their tools of war. It was like a mother and a father to their tribe, and they repaid the forest for its kindness. They had a sacred grove of willow trees, and they would take a victim to that grove as dawn broke over the first day of the year. They would pierce the victim's skin with thorns and strike him with branches. When death began to claim him, they would open his veins and feed the grove with his blood. They did this so that they could feed the forest which fed them.

They lived in that way for many generations. Some people among them questioned the offerings, and those were usually the next to be given to the grove. The questioning grew with time as they had more contact with the outside world, until one year the sacrifice was delayed by the great debate that had arisen among them. They argued within the bounds of the grove itself, and the trees listened to their words. The men told me that the trees themselves took offence at the argument, and acted to end it. They reached out with their branches and lashed out at those who spoke against their offering. They struck again and again until their blood stained the ground, and in doing so they claimed the sacrifice of their own accord.

That was the last time that anyone spoke of killing for the forest. It was one thing to repay the forest for that which it gave them, but it was another thing to live among trees that would kill to sate their own bloodlust. The tribesmen took up their axes and cut down the bloody willows, and then they left the forest and built their new village on the outskirts. Fear drove them to accept civilization, and they have had that fear deep in their hearts ever since that grim day.

Why did they fear the forest? They were afraid that some ancient tree had escaped notice and still lingered there, ready to feast on those who came upon it. I was skeptical of their claim. The whole story was as likely to be fiction as not, and even if it was all true, what were the odds that a tree from that time had survived to the modern day? Even so, I had learned what I set out to learn. The time had come for me to see if the stories were true.

I went forth into the woods without any delay. I held a bright torch in my left hand, and a stout axe of shining steel in my right. Fire and steel raised men up from barbarity and allowed us to conquer the wild places of the world. I trusted them to keep me safe from the wildness of that forest.

I began on a path, but I abandoned it in short order. I sought a place where people feared to tread, and so there could be no path to it. I walked between trees and I stumbled over roots. When I had a choice of directions, I chose the way that seemed to be darker and more dreadful than the others. The trees grew closer and closer together as I made my way deeper into the woods, until all at once I came to clearing. It could not have been natural. I saw a muddy stream with raised stones placed along the bank. I smelled the scent of ash on the breeze.

It was the breeze that showed me that all was not as it should have been. The breeze was light and gentle, but the trees at the edge of the clearing bent and rustled as though it was a hurricane. They grasped at my hair and my shoulders as I stepped away from them into the clearing. I stood in the center of the clearing, and they all reached out towards me as though all the wind of the world was blowing towards me. 

It was a promising sight. I could see why the place might have gained a story about hungry trees. I resolved to test their blood lust, and so I opened a vein in my arm and walked around the clearing. I began at the edge, and I walked in a spiral until a trail of blood lead to the very center of the clearing. I waited.

I waited, but not for long. The rustling grew louder, but it was not the branches that assailed me. I watched them, I expected them to reach out and claim me, but it was the roots that were the threat. They came up from the ground, as though the ancient savages had cut down their sacred trees but left their roots to live and fester in the dirt. They wrapped around me and they dug into my flesh. They drank my blood, and the sought to drink my life.

Fear and surprise ruled me, but only for a moment. A man of science does not yield to nature. I cut at them with my axe and I burned them with my torch. I fled, but as soon as I came up to the living trees I found myself tangled in their branches. They touched every part of me save for my left hand, the hand that held the burning torch. I realized that quickly, and I began to cut and burn my way to freedom, but the trees kept a firm grasp on my head. I felt them reach towards my eyes, and I shut them tightly, but my eyelid was no protection. A branch pierced my right eye and drank deeply from my blood and pain. I felt another branch reach for my other eye, and in that moment I acted. 

I held my torch up to my head and plunged my face into the flames. The trees burned and recoiled, and I was free. I ran, and although I was burned and bleeding, I was alive. I smothered the flame on my face as I ran, but I did not stop running until I was out of the forest entirely.

I will not return to that place unless it is at the head of an army of lumberjacks, but I do not regret the journey. All knowledge has a price that must be paid, and only a coward would choose to let legends remain such in order to avoid paying it.