This isn’t your forest. The ground is rocky, as though the trees burst up through some giant slab of granite. You don’t recognize the birdsong, or the patches of darkness swimming through the undergrowth. You hear music from what you think is north, water to the south.

You head northward, casually plodding, boogying and subtly nodding. You reach a grove of cinder cedars, the ground beneath them turned to ash. Some of their cherries are within reach, glowing from the fire-pits in their centers. There are rocks leading through the grove.

You pick some cherries, careful not to burn your fingers, and pop one in your mouth, extinguishing its fire-pit. Now immune to the pitiless heat, you walk through the grove unharmed. The next time you breathe a bonfire’s smoke, a cedar will grow from its ashes. Dusk approaches.

You press on, looking for shelter. In the fading light, you spy a candle framed by a far-off window. It turned out to be closer than you thought, but much smaller. A hollow tree had been carved into a home, the front door just two feet tall, the second-floor window at eye level.

You gently tap on the little door. After a few moments of what sounds like panicked action inside, the door opens outward. The resident seems to be a doll, carved from pinewood with articulated joints, with no face but a pair of boreholes for eyes. It looks at you expectantly.

The doll shakes with excitement, worried that it might be some kind of trick, before gingerly taking the cinder cedar cherry from your hand. Its own tiny fingers steam from the heat, but the doll doesn’t seem to mind. It runs back indoors, gesturing excitedly for you to follow.

You look into the doll’s little workshop. Among the tiny tools and machines, you see an automaton the size of a human. The doll pulls out the cherry’s firey pit before climbing into the automaton’s chest. The figure lurches to life, crawls out of the house, and stands before you.

The doll takes your hand in its own and rubs it against its wooden face affectionately. It closes the tiny door, and leads you into deeper, older woods in the failing light of dusk. You arrive at a hollow-tree house, an exact replica of the last one, but now full-sized.

The doll knocks. The sound of rushed movement can be heard inside. Another doll opens the door, its face covered in crudely-painted birds. It lets your friend in. You see dozens of other dolls inside, who began painting flowers on the newcomer. The doorkeeper eyes you blankly.

The guard holds up a hand, refusing the cherry. It doesn’t need one. Your friend emerges from the house, now covered in paintings of red and white roses. It holds a palette with black, green, and yellow paint. In its other hand is a paintbrush. It looks at you quizzically.

The doll gently paints fireflies across your face and arms, some fully detailed, others mere points of light like stars in the night sky. Satisfied, the guard lets the two of you inside. Dozens of dolls are busily building a single gigantic wooden doll, painted with green whales.

The colossus is complicated, but your job is simple. The dolls have you carry baskets of peat or dry mushrooms up into the giant’s chest. You’re not sure why. Eventually, you fall asleep on a bench. When you awake, the giant and dolls are gone, but you see food on a nearby table.

The pastry is flaky and delicate, and tastes of honey. On the table below it is a note.
“sleepy
thank you
eat
happy fireflies
friend
remember roses
call
trouble
not fear
love
”
You hear soft rain outside, but not on the roof. The room is strewn with tools and maps.

You find some leftover paint and loose paper.
“Dear Roses,
Thank you for the food and shelter.
I’m happy to have met you and your friends.
You were very sweet, and your giant is beautiful.
Call on me if you ever need help.
Love, your friend,
Fireflies”
The sun is rising.

The workshop is clearly labeled on the largest map, framed on a wall. You seem to be on an island, a few miles from the southern shore. To the west, lighthouses dot sea cliffs. There is a city to the north, but the dolls labeled it “BAD, NO.” The eastern shore is scribbled out.

You open the front door. It’s raining, but the wrong way. Drops of clear water levitate from the ground, pushing through the ferns and trees to hurtle toward the sky. There’s a stone path heading out from the workshop to a crossroads in the distance, offering a dry path forward.

You hold your hand out, palm down, and collect some rainwater. You bring it to your mouth and give it a taste, but quickly spit it out. It’s seawater. You wipe the rest off your hand with a nearby rag, which begins to float to the ceiling. You hear whale song in the distance.

You rush outside to a clearing. For the first time you get a good look at the sky, or rather, the lack thereof. A pale blue ocean roils high overhead, fed by rising rainwater. You can just make out a pod of whales swimming above you, with a ship close behind. You feel light.

It doesn’t take long to find a spyglass in the workshop, among a suspicious cache of nautical gear. You rush back out to the clearing for a closer look. The ship is following the whales. A shadow is closing in on it. Two small boats row ahead, full of sailors armed with harpoons.

The shadow surfaces to grapple the ship. It’s the colossus you helped build. It grabs the rowboats with a free arm, and jettisons the peat and mushrooms you put in its chest. As the rain-soaked flotsam floats away, the giant begins to fall, pulling the whalers out of the sky.

You hide behind a rocky outcrop as the giant and the ship crash. You run to the site. Rainwater pours up into the sky from tanks in the ship. Dolls crawl from the giant and run for the workshop. Clockwork sailors emerge from the ship. The rescued whales sing with joy overhead.

You rush into the wreckage, and find Roses in the crushed chest of the colossus. It’s injured, badly. Its legs are gone and its body is pinned by fallen beams. Roses sees you, and with its one free hand, gestures for you to leave it and run to safety. You can hear whalers coming.

A basket of rain-soaked peat floats by. You dump out its contents and hide beneath it, crouching over Roses. Two pairs of metal feet clang into view. The whalers speak, voices popping and hissing like vinyl records.
“Arr?”
They shift some rubble, searching for survivors.
“Avast.”

The clockwork sailors draw close. You can hear the ticking springs in their hearts. A gramophone voice shouts from outside the wreck.
“Ahoy?”
“Avast,” the nearest sailor replies, storming off. You and Roses are alone in the giant, but surrounded. You hear tapping in its chest.

With a shove, you get the loose debris off of Roses. The doll’s chest pops open. The little doll that was piloting from inside hops out and scampers up your arm to your shoulder. The two of you look out from the wreckage. A dozen clockwork sailors search the area for footprints.

“Any ideas?”
Little Roses pulls a cinder cedar cherry from your pocket and points at it.
“You can use that, sure. I ate one yesterday.”
The doll claps, rips the burning pit out of the fruit, and tosses it onto the wooden debris. Little Roses urgently points toward the workshop.

The flames spread quickly. You run from the wreck, Little Roses on your shoulder. The sailors spot you.
“ARR!” one shouts, but the others are too busy trying to save what remains of their ship. Something big explodes behind you, but you’re unharmed by the sudden searing heat.

You reach the workshop, and the dolls barricade the door as soon as you’re inside. You take Little Roses to the second-floor window. A giant cinder cedar has burst from the fire, having consumed all the spare wood of the ship and the giant. Little Roses gives you a thumbs-up.

The dolls are blocking up the first-floor windows with scrap wood. You do the same on the second story. Outside, you see the few remaining whalers approaching in the rain. Most are damaged. One has a harpoon. The captain struggles to keep his rain-soaked hat from floating away.

You head downstairs. The dolls have lifted the top off of the main room’s central worktable, revealing a huge coiled chain inside. You find Little Roses near the far wall, already working on a new full-size body to pilot. Some rain is leaking up through the floor. You’re hungry.

Little Roses shakes its tiny head, then flexes a little wooden arm. It’s got this. There’s a bang at the door as the clockwork whalers try to break in. The barricades shift, and the wood cracks. They’re strong. A doll decorated with bees motions for you to hold onto something.

You hold onto a workbench affixed to the nearest wall. A doll emblazoned with feathers pulls a pin from the huge coiled chain, which begins slipping through a hole in the floor. You stumble as the hollow tree workshop, soaked in antigravity rain, slowly lifts off from the ground.

The workshop rises unevenly, but you keep your footing. The anchor chain brings you to a halt about 30 feet in the air. You hear a thud, and the building tilts. You peek through a reinforced window. The whalers have harpooned the workshop, and are climbing a rope up to board it.

You find a crowbar in the workshop, and use it to pry the window open. You lean out and jab the crowbar between the harpoon and the wall.
“Avast!” a sailor yells, and they begin to climb back down. The harpoon dislodges, and they fall to the ground. The captain’s hat floats up.

You grab the captain’s floating tricorne hat, squeeze out the rainwater, and put it on your head.
“Arr!” the captain shouts as you duck back inside. The dolls pat your back. Little Roses applauds. Below, the whalers form a perimeter around the workshop. They plan to wait you out.

The dolls have detailed maps of many different worlds. Each one is surrounded by an ocean, but those oceans don’t seem to connect in the normal way. It’s clear that the sea in the sky outside is part of a different world. The antigravity rain lets the dolls travel to visit it.

The sky above you is the bottom of a frigid sea. If you reach the surface, you’ll find a single frozen landmass in that world. It has two cities, which the dolls have labeled “SCARY” and “DEER.” A current connects this world’s ocean to the sky out west, near the lighthouse coast.

Little Roses is finished with its new full-sized form. It may be your imagination, but the head looks a bit like you. It climbs inside the chest, pulls a level, and the body springs to life. Roses is back. You grab some paint, and help it decorate its new form with a few roses.

Roses walks to the window where you dislodged the invading sailors. The rain is getting heavier by the minute, but the clockwork whalers are waiting stoically for their chance to get revenge.
Roses waves a hand dismissively, and walks over to examine the maps you were studying.

Roses points to the city to the north. You look closer at the circular layout of the streets, and realize the whole city is one giant cog, interlocking with others that extend underground. Elsewhere, you see more workshops around the forest. The eastern shore is scribbled out.

Roses looks at you, and shakes its head. It grabs a scrap of paper and looks around for a pen.
“not go
please
oil bog
cracks
smoke below
sea gone
leviathan
speaks lies
please
fireflies
promise”

Roses’ head drops. It writes one more thing.
“not we”
Roses begins to walk away, but a paper catches its eye. It picks up the note you left that morning. After a few moments of reading, it holds the letter gently to its chest. It grabs the pen again.
“maybe we
not goplease”

Roses goes to a bookshelf and pulls out a heavy yellowed tome, bound in pinewood. It flips to a page titled “The Lighthouses.” The illustration shows a row of lighthouse towers guarding a sea cliff like sentinels, their lights focused on a column of water flowing from sea to sky.

Roses gives you a thumbs-up, and turns a few pages. There’s another illustration, showing ships arriving by sea, manned by figures who might be human. These were the Lamplighters, though apparently they arrived centuries ago, and their descendants dwell in the lighthouses today.

Roses retrieves a folded paper from the bookshelf, revealing a larger, more detailed map of the island. It carefully traces a path west from the workshop, following trails and rivers. A few things are labeled, but clearly not by the dolls.
You point to a feature. “What is the...

In a panic, Roses clasps a hand over your mouth. You hear a bird fly past a window. Roses lowers its hand, drops its shoulders, and grabs the pen.
“fireflies
coming
heknows”
Roses turns the book to a new chapter, “The Forest King.” The illustration shows nothing but trees.

You grab a pastry and sit down to read. You learn the Forest King was already holding court in the unsettled woods when explorers first reached the island. Indeed, his court can be found in the wild places of every world so far explored. His agents are known as wood knights.