The Silver Branch
A jingling Fae bough whose music drowns every sorrow that hears it.
- Category
- Minor
A tattered scrap of parchment maps a path from a particular set of standing stones: through a marsh, up a river, behind a waterfall, and into a forest of sword-sharp trees, all scrawled with Forest Folk glyphs. At the end, beyond a Fae domain, a silver tree stands where X marks the spot.
The prize is a branch a few feet long, laden with white flowers and jingling golden fruit, surprisingly sturdy and fresh forever unless its powers are spent. Only one such branch can leave the Fae domain at a time, and resisting the silver tree's soporific spell to claim it is no small thing. When jingled, its music fills all who hear it with bliss, but the magic is fragile and the listeners' bliss can curdle into ruin.
To unlock it
- find the standing stones that mark the start of the path.
- follow the map to the waterfall.
- enter the Fae domain beyond.
- navigate the sword-tree forest.
- risk falling under the soporific spell of the silver tree.
- claim a branch from the silver tree.
- make it home again.