For several days now, the wind had changed tone in the enchanted wood. It no longer whistled joyfully through the branches. It murmured. Deep, low, almost painful. The leaves themselves seemed to fold in on themselves, as if for protection..
Diben was not at peace.
Normally, he liked to wander among the roots, greet the snails, nap on the back of a sleeping badger, or tease the frogs in the little stream. But in the last few days, everything had changed. The stream was barely audible, and the frogs had fallen silent..
One morning, very early, while the mist still clung to the ferns, Diben called a council.
A silent owl swooped down from its hollow trunk. A dull-furred fox emerged from its burrow. A family of hares had gathered at the foot of an old chestnut tree. Even the usually nervous red squirrel had come, its whiskers tense with worry.
Everyone had noticed the same thing: something strange was eating away at the wood.
Trunks cracked for no reason. Moss turned black. Strange mushrooms, swollen like balloons, growing too fast, in too many. The birds had moved on. The roots had become capricious, cracking underfoot. There were also dead branches, fallen to the ground as if the wood were trying to shed its weight. And swellings on some trunks, where new shoots were trying to sprout again... in unexpected places.
And then there was the oak.
The great oak in the center of the woods. The one the animals always greeted as they passed by. The one whose bark bore the traces of a hundred winters, a thousand games, whispered promises, and murmured farewells.
One morning, two of its largest branches had fallen. Cleanly. As if broken from the inside. Diben had spent hours in silence, caressing the veins of these fallen limbs, as one watches over a sick friend.
That morning at the council meeting, there was no great revelation. No magic solution. No ancient spell. Just heavy looks. Silences. And a decision: to be present. To watch. To continue to love this wood, even if it was suffering.
The fox offered to watch the darkest places. The owl would take care of the heights. The hares, the clearings. And Diben? He would go and talk to the stones. To the roots. To the sounds of the earth. Perhaps the forest itself wanted to say something.
Days passed. Nothing improved. A tree had collapsed, another had frozen. The stream had changed color. And in some corners of the woods, the air seemed heavier.
But something had changed: no one was alone anymore. Everyone was watching. Everyone was listening. And even the stones, sometimes, vibrated very gently.
Because in an enchanted wood, magic does not only reside in the beauty of the leaves or the song of the birds.
It's in the way we worry. The way we watch. The way we hope without knowing if it will be enough.
And Diben knew this better than anyone.
07 - Something is eating the wood