goddess_nemesis
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THE MAID'S TALE
At breakfast the next morning, the soldier was still determined to figure out who had been disturbing our sleep with their laughter during the night. He moved from person to person, asking questions, glancing around the room suspiciously, and in short behaving like one of those public informers who earn their wages by turning criminals in to the law. The harpist was amused by his persistence, and readily volunteered to all in earshot that she had indeed been tickled well and thoroughly by the forester the night before, though she denied that all the noise had been from her alone. She also loudly suggested that the soldier himself had gotten a good tickling, and was going about his investigation to shift attention away from himself. The soldier scowled and hurried away from her to put a new set of questions to someone else.
After several minutes of this, a voice suddenly spoke up: "Why bother with all this? Who cares what was being done to whom, as long as they consented to it? And what business is it of yours, in any case?" To our surprise, the one who had protested was the quiet young lady whose trade I still did not know. She fell silent, blushing slightly, as we turned to look at her, but murmurs of agreement and approval went around the room as the soldier, his face like a storm, sat down on a stool by the fire and was silent.
Our hostess, always sensitive to disturbances, quickly smoothed things over by turning to the maid. "You said you had a story for us today, did you not?"
The maid set down the stack of dishes she held. "Yes, I do...if you still want to hear it."
"Of course," the Webster said, and the rest of us made our assent. So she began:
***
This is a story they tell in the village where I come from, on the other side of these mountains. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's no more remarkable than some of the things I have heard you gentlemen and ladies tell of. Anyway...
There was once a charcoal burner named Karl, who lived in the woods, away from all others, as people of that occupation usually do. His work took him on long walks through the woods, seeking trees of a sort proper to be cut and burned into good charcoal. After many years of this, he knew the forest and its ways well, but it was still a great forest with many secrets in its silence and shadows, and every so often, he would come across things unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Such was the case one summer day, in the warm drowsy hour just after noon. Karl had found no trees to cut and was weary of walking, and was looking for a place to settle and eat his lunch. Ahead, he spied a small clearing shaded by a tall pine, with a lush bank of moss growing around its roots, and he quickened his pace, glad at the prospect of sitting down - but then he stopped in surprise. He was not the first to arrive there.
Lying on the bank of moss, sound asleep, was a small woman. Her dress was of green leaves, her skin the palest green, and her long wild hair the dark rich brown of old bark. She was the most beautiful thing Karl had ever seen. He had heard tales of dryads, as have we all, but had dismissed them as nonsense invented by townsfolk unfamiliar with the woods. Yet this woman, unearthly in her delicate beauty, could be nothing else, and she was undeniably real. Karl's axe and his bag of food fell from his hands, forgotten, as he approached the sleeping dryad carefully and knelt beside her.
Now, those who know the nature of men might imagine a dark scene to follow, and no doubt many men in the same situation would have taken terrible advantage of the green lady. But Karl was at base a decent sort, and he felt no impulse in that direction. Even so, her surpassing loveliness and his own nature pulled at him, and slowly he reached out and let a finger trace the sole of one tiny bare foot.
She shifted in her sleep, a breathy giggle escaping her green lips. Her foot twitched slightly against his hand. Inflamed, Karl began to softly tickle the dryad's toes. She giggled again, and then her eyes, the dark green of wet leaves, flew open. She let out a squeal and jumped to her feet as Karl made an awkward grab for her ankle. Passion had a grip of him, and he no longer knew what he was doing, knew only that he could not let her get away. For a second he had her leg in his grasp, and then she somehow slithered loose and ran, making no sound on the thickly strewn forest floor. And Karl, heedless of his fallen axe and bag, pursued her with a clatter and crunch.
She was light and fleet, and no obstacle slowed her. She raced through the thickest tangles, slipped between tightly set trunks, and darted along fallen trees without slowing. But Karl was a strong young man, and in place of her supernatural agility, he had a mindless determination driving him. He stumbled and fell and picked himself up and fell again, but always he kept going. He crashed through a snarl of brambles, ignoring the thorns even as they tore at his clothes. A muddy gully clutched at his feet, and he pulled free and ran on, leaving a boot behind. A sharp branch pierced and held his collar, and he fought wildly until his shirt burst, and on he ran, leaving the remnants dangling behind. The dryad never seemed to quite outrun him, always staying just in view like a shadow flitting between the trees, but neither could he catch up to her. All he could do was keep running and hope for a chance.
At last, hot, exhausted, and with the barest tatters of his clothes still clinging to his body. Karl broke through a screen of bushes to find the dryad standing only a few yards away, her back to the trunk of a great old oak tree that stood in the center of a small clearing. Karl lunged for her, hands outstretched -- and she seized his arms by the wrists and leaped backward, -into- the bole of the tree. Karl, before he realized what was happening, was pulled after her. There was a moment of horrifying blackness - and then his face and hands passed out of the bark on the other side of the tree. But as they did so, the dryad released him, and he stopped there, the rest of his body sealed in the wood like an insect in a stone of amber. He strained, but the wood that had been as insubstantial as fog only a moment before was now unyielding once more.
The dryad stood and faced him, then spoke, and her voice was like a bird calling far among the trees. "Foolish man, my body is not for your gross touch and clumsy caresses. Many of your sort have made the error you did, and they have paid the price." Looking around as best he could, Karl suddenly saw that the tree he was trapped in was surrounded by many others, their trunks studded with protruding bones and skulls like little moons. Then fear seized his guts. The dryad looked at him thoughtfully. "Yet you did not truly mean to ravish me, I think, and your touch was lighter than those I've had to endure from your race. Therefore, while you will still pay a price, it will not be the final one."
Karl swallowed and forced himself to speak. "What price?"
The dryad smiled with disarming sweetness. "You shall amuse me." Stepping forward, she thrust a hand into the tree. Karl felt the light touch of her fingers on his chest. Then she moved her arm down, and Karl felt the fingers likewise trail downward, along the length of his trapped body, over his bare stomach. He let out an involuntary gasp.
"What strange soft skin men have! Not like bark or fur...so sensitive to every little touch..." the dryad said amusingly, fingers tracing slowly and inexorably downward. Karl tried to squirm, but not a muscle could move in his wooden prison. The dryad's fingers stopped at the very bottom of his belly, then began a slow trip back upward, fingers twitching over Karl's flesh. A startled giggle leaked out of Karl, and his face contorted as he fought for composure.
"This is like what you were doing to me in my sleep, is it not?" the dryad asked, slipping her other hand into the tree unerringly to trace spirals around Karl's navel. "What do you call it?"
Karl groaned, grunted, strained against the tree, but there was no escape from the delicate touch. "Tickling," he forced out at last, then saw the sparkle in the dryad's eyes and realized he was being teased.
"Tickling," she said, sounding out the word as if she had never heard of it, even as her hands expertly acted it out all over his trembling belly. Karl's own hands, the only part of him free, clenched and spasmed and tried for her wrists to pull her away, but she was just out of his reach. She found a tender place just above one hip, and Karl giggled again helplessly. "And do you enjoy this tickling?" Casually she found the spot's mate on the other side of Karl's body, and Karl yelped, once again struggling uselessly in his wooden prison.
"Lady, please!" he shouted, then laughed aloud as she continued to torment him. The sound of his laughter seemed to fascinate her, and her hands skittered up his sides, the laughter pouring from him unabated as her quick fingers tickled his ribs. His skin was already getting slippery with sweat from his futile struggles, which only seemed to make the tickling more intense without allowing him to move an inch further.
"Ah! So now you speak to me with respect, when before you were molesting me in my sleep and chasing after me like a madman!" The dryad smiled. "Tickling is powerful stuff, it would seem. I wonder what it would make of you if I did more of it?" His ribs heaved with the force of his laughter as she tickled them mercilessly, her hands finding the softness between them with unerring precision. In all his solitary life, Karl had never been so treated by anyone, and his whirling brain could not understand how a few light quick touches could leave him incapable of speech, of thought, of anything but laughter.
And then, without warning, the tickling hands darted back to his stomach, and everything was blotted out in a great howl of laughter that erupted from Karl, caught totally off guard. He was too shocked to even struggle; all he could do was scream his laughter into the silent woods. And just as he was beginning to try to squirm, beginning to regain something of his composure, she returned to tickling his ribs with equal suddenness, seeking out the spots she'd discovered the first time around and turning Karl into a helpless screeching thing once more. The dryad played this game, switching from one spot to another, always faster than he could anticipate, until she tired of it and he was completely out of breath, his face pink and streaming. She giggled at the sight. "You are proving to be more amusing than I expected...but I wonder if you have the strength to continue..." Slowly she began to walk around the tree, her hands tracing around Karl's body as she did.
Despite the pressure of the wood all around him, Karl shuddered. "Have mercy..." he croaked in a voice he barely recognized as his own as she passed beyond the scope of his straining eyes. The hands left his skin, but that was no relief. Quite the opposite - her feet were inaudible on the forest floor, and without sight of her, he had no idea where she was. All he could do was wait in his prison for the tickling he knew might come from anywhere...and wait and wait. All of a sudden, his body was struggling futilely again and he was screaming to the indifferent trees, and by the time his brain finally registered the sudden two-handed tickle on his side, the hands had withdrawn and he was left weak and shaking. Not for long, though; before he could catch his breath, she was tickling both sides of his rib cage at once, and his back arched against the hard wood as he laughed and screeched. Again she stopped as quickly as she had started, but he could still feel the lingering sensation of her fast little fingers on his ribs when those fingers dove into his armpits a moment later, touching all parts of the hollows at once and driving him into a ticklish frenzy. "No, no more!" he yelled when she finally stopped, and his only answer was a sudden, ruthless tickling all up and down his sides, from the weaknesses above his hips to the ones in his underarms and all those in between. The words "no more" seemed to have been stuck in his brain, and he kept yelling them reflexively when he had breath to do anything other than laugh.
Finally, after an eternity, she stopped. "Poor unfortunate man," she said in a voice that held only a wicked enjoyment of his plight. Her fingertips traced intricate spirals on his bare back, making him shiver like a man in the midst of a blizzard. He couldn't seem to stop giggling; every touch, no matter how light, forced a reaction out of him. "Truly you were born to suffer this way. There is much amusement to be had in you..." Her fingers were on his shoulder blades, then his lower back, then drifting further down.... He bleated in surprise when he felt her fingers on his buttocks, and she laughed and gave him an indelicate tweak, but she lingered only a moment there before traveling on to the backs of his legs. He tried to squirm away again when she touched him behind the knees, and she paused briefly there as well, enjoying his discomfort, but did not wait long before continuing down over his calves.
"Not -- " Karl gasped, then closed his mouth tight as her light touch traced over the tendons of his ankles.
"Not what?" she asked innocently. When he did not answer, she scraped her sharp little nails over the heel of each foot. Karl gasped and jerked. "Not what?" she repeated.
Without any real choice, Karl decided on capitulation. "Not more tickling..." She was silent, and Karl interpreted the silence as the possibility of mercy. "Have I not suffered enough, lady? Please..."
Another, longer silence, and then she spoke: "No, not quite enough." And her fingers, swirling and probing, settled on the soles of his feet. Fastened into immobility, unable to kick or twist or even wiggle his toes, Karl could do nothing but laugh. Her fingers moved leisurely from one end of each foot to the other and back again, tickling nonstop, driving him madder with every slow inch. Over the sound of his insane, shrieking laughter, she called, "Is this what you wanted to do to me, man? Would you have enjoyed it as much as I enjoy doing it to you? No, I don't think so!" She tickled his toes one by one until the tears of laughter ran down his face like little waterfalls.
Karl was hoarse from laughing but couldn't stop as long as her hands were on him. "And did you think you could make me scream like you are doing? Could you make me beg for mercy as you are? I do not think so either, my soft-skinned toy-man..." She tickled and tickled, on and on without mercy. How far was she going to drive him? the one sane fragment of his brain wondered. How long would the torture last? Could she even get tired or bored? There was no clue to be gleaned from the steady tickling that afflicted his arches, the balls of his feet, the insteps.... And then, suddenly, she was standing before him again, smiling that impish smile and teasing him to madness with her fingertips circling on his belly, just as she had started. "You have not done amusing me...but the sun moves on, and I must be with it. Someday, perhaps, I will find you again and you can discharge the rest of your obligation to me...but until now, farewell."
At that, the wooden vise around him gave way, and Karl fell out of the tree, landing in a sprawl on the forest floor. He lay there a long time, gasping for breath, and when he finally got up and looked around warily, he was alone in the clearing. There was but one path out, which he took, moving slowly and starting at every little forest noise. Somehow, he eventually ended up at his little cottage once more. And there the story ends, for Karl never again saw a dryad in all his years in the woods. It is said, though, that from then on, that before he ever cut a tree again, he was always careful to rap on it with the handle of his axe and ask if anyone was within. Some stories also say that he eventually disappeared entirely after one trip into the woods many years later, but whether that is true or not is a matter of dispute....
***
There was much merriment after the maid finished her story, with most of us feeling that Karl had gotten off lightly. There was also considerable speculation about whether or not dryads truly existed, and many questions were put to the forester, who turned them aside with his usual taciturnity, saying only that he had never seen such a thing in his career. Finally, the harpist clapped him on the back. "Well then, if you can't tell us any more exciting stories about the women of the woods, then tell us something else! Let's have your story!"
"Tomorrow," the forester said, and with that we had to be contented.
At breakfast the next morning, the soldier was still determined to figure out who had been disturbing our sleep with their laughter during the night. He moved from person to person, asking questions, glancing around the room suspiciously, and in short behaving like one of those public informers who earn their wages by turning criminals in to the law. The harpist was amused by his persistence, and readily volunteered to all in earshot that she had indeed been tickled well and thoroughly by the forester the night before, though she denied that all the noise had been from her alone. She also loudly suggested that the soldier himself had gotten a good tickling, and was going about his investigation to shift attention away from himself. The soldier scowled and hurried away from her to put a new set of questions to someone else.
After several minutes of this, a voice suddenly spoke up: "Why bother with all this? Who cares what was being done to whom, as long as they consented to it? And what business is it of yours, in any case?" To our surprise, the one who had protested was the quiet young lady whose trade I still did not know. She fell silent, blushing slightly, as we turned to look at her, but murmurs of agreement and approval went around the room as the soldier, his face like a storm, sat down on a stool by the fire and was silent.
Our hostess, always sensitive to disturbances, quickly smoothed things over by turning to the maid. "You said you had a story for us today, did you not?"
The maid set down the stack of dishes she held. "Yes, I do...if you still want to hear it."
"Of course," the Webster said, and the rest of us made our assent. So she began:
***
This is a story they tell in the village where I come from, on the other side of these mountains. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's no more remarkable than some of the things I have heard you gentlemen and ladies tell of. Anyway...
There was once a charcoal burner named Karl, who lived in the woods, away from all others, as people of that occupation usually do. His work took him on long walks through the woods, seeking trees of a sort proper to be cut and burned into good charcoal. After many years of this, he knew the forest and its ways well, but it was still a great forest with many secrets in its silence and shadows, and every so often, he would come across things unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Such was the case one summer day, in the warm drowsy hour just after noon. Karl had found no trees to cut and was weary of walking, and was looking for a place to settle and eat his lunch. Ahead, he spied a small clearing shaded by a tall pine, with a lush bank of moss growing around its roots, and he quickened his pace, glad at the prospect of sitting down - but then he stopped in surprise. He was not the first to arrive there.
Lying on the bank of moss, sound asleep, was a small woman. Her dress was of green leaves, her skin the palest green, and her long wild hair the dark rich brown of old bark. She was the most beautiful thing Karl had ever seen. He had heard tales of dryads, as have we all, but had dismissed them as nonsense invented by townsfolk unfamiliar with the woods. Yet this woman, unearthly in her delicate beauty, could be nothing else, and she was undeniably real. Karl's axe and his bag of food fell from his hands, forgotten, as he approached the sleeping dryad carefully and knelt beside her.
Now, those who know the nature of men might imagine a dark scene to follow, and no doubt many men in the same situation would have taken terrible advantage of the green lady. But Karl was at base a decent sort, and he felt no impulse in that direction. Even so, her surpassing loveliness and his own nature pulled at him, and slowly he reached out and let a finger trace the sole of one tiny bare foot.
She shifted in her sleep, a breathy giggle escaping her green lips. Her foot twitched slightly against his hand. Inflamed, Karl began to softly tickle the dryad's toes. She giggled again, and then her eyes, the dark green of wet leaves, flew open. She let out a squeal and jumped to her feet as Karl made an awkward grab for her ankle. Passion had a grip of him, and he no longer knew what he was doing, knew only that he could not let her get away. For a second he had her leg in his grasp, and then she somehow slithered loose and ran, making no sound on the thickly strewn forest floor. And Karl, heedless of his fallen axe and bag, pursued her with a clatter and crunch.
She was light and fleet, and no obstacle slowed her. She raced through the thickest tangles, slipped between tightly set trunks, and darted along fallen trees without slowing. But Karl was a strong young man, and in place of her supernatural agility, he had a mindless determination driving him. He stumbled and fell and picked himself up and fell again, but always he kept going. He crashed through a snarl of brambles, ignoring the thorns even as they tore at his clothes. A muddy gully clutched at his feet, and he pulled free and ran on, leaving a boot behind. A sharp branch pierced and held his collar, and he fought wildly until his shirt burst, and on he ran, leaving the remnants dangling behind. The dryad never seemed to quite outrun him, always staying just in view like a shadow flitting between the trees, but neither could he catch up to her. All he could do was keep running and hope for a chance.
At last, hot, exhausted, and with the barest tatters of his clothes still clinging to his body. Karl broke through a screen of bushes to find the dryad standing only a few yards away, her back to the trunk of a great old oak tree that stood in the center of a small clearing. Karl lunged for her, hands outstretched -- and she seized his arms by the wrists and leaped backward, -into- the bole of the tree. Karl, before he realized what was happening, was pulled after her. There was a moment of horrifying blackness - and then his face and hands passed out of the bark on the other side of the tree. But as they did so, the dryad released him, and he stopped there, the rest of his body sealed in the wood like an insect in a stone of amber. He strained, but the wood that had been as insubstantial as fog only a moment before was now unyielding once more.
The dryad stood and faced him, then spoke, and her voice was like a bird calling far among the trees. "Foolish man, my body is not for your gross touch and clumsy caresses. Many of your sort have made the error you did, and they have paid the price." Looking around as best he could, Karl suddenly saw that the tree he was trapped in was surrounded by many others, their trunks studded with protruding bones and skulls like little moons. Then fear seized his guts. The dryad looked at him thoughtfully. "Yet you did not truly mean to ravish me, I think, and your touch was lighter than those I've had to endure from your race. Therefore, while you will still pay a price, it will not be the final one."
Karl swallowed and forced himself to speak. "What price?"
The dryad smiled with disarming sweetness. "You shall amuse me." Stepping forward, she thrust a hand into the tree. Karl felt the light touch of her fingers on his chest. Then she moved her arm down, and Karl felt the fingers likewise trail downward, along the length of his trapped body, over his bare stomach. He let out an involuntary gasp.
"What strange soft skin men have! Not like bark or fur...so sensitive to every little touch..." the dryad said amusingly, fingers tracing slowly and inexorably downward. Karl tried to squirm, but not a muscle could move in his wooden prison. The dryad's fingers stopped at the very bottom of his belly, then began a slow trip back upward, fingers twitching over Karl's flesh. A startled giggle leaked out of Karl, and his face contorted as he fought for composure.
"This is like what you were doing to me in my sleep, is it not?" the dryad asked, slipping her other hand into the tree unerringly to trace spirals around Karl's navel. "What do you call it?"
Karl groaned, grunted, strained against the tree, but there was no escape from the delicate touch. "Tickling," he forced out at last, then saw the sparkle in the dryad's eyes and realized he was being teased.
"Tickling," she said, sounding out the word as if she had never heard of it, even as her hands expertly acted it out all over his trembling belly. Karl's own hands, the only part of him free, clenched and spasmed and tried for her wrists to pull her away, but she was just out of his reach. She found a tender place just above one hip, and Karl giggled again helplessly. "And do you enjoy this tickling?" Casually she found the spot's mate on the other side of Karl's body, and Karl yelped, once again struggling uselessly in his wooden prison.
"Lady, please!" he shouted, then laughed aloud as she continued to torment him. The sound of his laughter seemed to fascinate her, and her hands skittered up his sides, the laughter pouring from him unabated as her quick fingers tickled his ribs. His skin was already getting slippery with sweat from his futile struggles, which only seemed to make the tickling more intense without allowing him to move an inch further.
"Ah! So now you speak to me with respect, when before you were molesting me in my sleep and chasing after me like a madman!" The dryad smiled. "Tickling is powerful stuff, it would seem. I wonder what it would make of you if I did more of it?" His ribs heaved with the force of his laughter as she tickled them mercilessly, her hands finding the softness between them with unerring precision. In all his solitary life, Karl had never been so treated by anyone, and his whirling brain could not understand how a few light quick touches could leave him incapable of speech, of thought, of anything but laughter.
And then, without warning, the tickling hands darted back to his stomach, and everything was blotted out in a great howl of laughter that erupted from Karl, caught totally off guard. He was too shocked to even struggle; all he could do was scream his laughter into the silent woods. And just as he was beginning to try to squirm, beginning to regain something of his composure, she returned to tickling his ribs with equal suddenness, seeking out the spots she'd discovered the first time around and turning Karl into a helpless screeching thing once more. The dryad played this game, switching from one spot to another, always faster than he could anticipate, until she tired of it and he was completely out of breath, his face pink and streaming. She giggled at the sight. "You are proving to be more amusing than I expected...but I wonder if you have the strength to continue..." Slowly she began to walk around the tree, her hands tracing around Karl's body as she did.
Despite the pressure of the wood all around him, Karl shuddered. "Have mercy..." he croaked in a voice he barely recognized as his own as she passed beyond the scope of his straining eyes. The hands left his skin, but that was no relief. Quite the opposite - her feet were inaudible on the forest floor, and without sight of her, he had no idea where she was. All he could do was wait in his prison for the tickling he knew might come from anywhere...and wait and wait. All of a sudden, his body was struggling futilely again and he was screaming to the indifferent trees, and by the time his brain finally registered the sudden two-handed tickle on his side, the hands had withdrawn and he was left weak and shaking. Not for long, though; before he could catch his breath, she was tickling both sides of his rib cage at once, and his back arched against the hard wood as he laughed and screeched. Again she stopped as quickly as she had started, but he could still feel the lingering sensation of her fast little fingers on his ribs when those fingers dove into his armpits a moment later, touching all parts of the hollows at once and driving him into a ticklish frenzy. "No, no more!" he yelled when she finally stopped, and his only answer was a sudden, ruthless tickling all up and down his sides, from the weaknesses above his hips to the ones in his underarms and all those in between. The words "no more" seemed to have been stuck in his brain, and he kept yelling them reflexively when he had breath to do anything other than laugh.
Finally, after an eternity, she stopped. "Poor unfortunate man," she said in a voice that held only a wicked enjoyment of his plight. Her fingertips traced intricate spirals on his bare back, making him shiver like a man in the midst of a blizzard. He couldn't seem to stop giggling; every touch, no matter how light, forced a reaction out of him. "Truly you were born to suffer this way. There is much amusement to be had in you..." Her fingers were on his shoulder blades, then his lower back, then drifting further down.... He bleated in surprise when he felt her fingers on his buttocks, and she laughed and gave him an indelicate tweak, but she lingered only a moment there before traveling on to the backs of his legs. He tried to squirm away again when she touched him behind the knees, and she paused briefly there as well, enjoying his discomfort, but did not wait long before continuing down over his calves.
"Not -- " Karl gasped, then closed his mouth tight as her light touch traced over the tendons of his ankles.
"Not what?" she asked innocently. When he did not answer, she scraped her sharp little nails over the heel of each foot. Karl gasped and jerked. "Not what?" she repeated.
Without any real choice, Karl decided on capitulation. "Not more tickling..." She was silent, and Karl interpreted the silence as the possibility of mercy. "Have I not suffered enough, lady? Please..."
Another, longer silence, and then she spoke: "No, not quite enough." And her fingers, swirling and probing, settled on the soles of his feet. Fastened into immobility, unable to kick or twist or even wiggle his toes, Karl could do nothing but laugh. Her fingers moved leisurely from one end of each foot to the other and back again, tickling nonstop, driving him madder with every slow inch. Over the sound of his insane, shrieking laughter, she called, "Is this what you wanted to do to me, man? Would you have enjoyed it as much as I enjoy doing it to you? No, I don't think so!" She tickled his toes one by one until the tears of laughter ran down his face like little waterfalls.
Karl was hoarse from laughing but couldn't stop as long as her hands were on him. "And did you think you could make me scream like you are doing? Could you make me beg for mercy as you are? I do not think so either, my soft-skinned toy-man..." She tickled and tickled, on and on without mercy. How far was she going to drive him? the one sane fragment of his brain wondered. How long would the torture last? Could she even get tired or bored? There was no clue to be gleaned from the steady tickling that afflicted his arches, the balls of his feet, the insteps.... And then, suddenly, she was standing before him again, smiling that impish smile and teasing him to madness with her fingertips circling on his belly, just as she had started. "You have not done amusing me...but the sun moves on, and I must be with it. Someday, perhaps, I will find you again and you can discharge the rest of your obligation to me...but until now, farewell."
At that, the wooden vise around him gave way, and Karl fell out of the tree, landing in a sprawl on the forest floor. He lay there a long time, gasping for breath, and when he finally got up and looked around warily, he was alone in the clearing. There was but one path out, which he took, moving slowly and starting at every little forest noise. Somehow, he eventually ended up at his little cottage once more. And there the story ends, for Karl never again saw a dryad in all his years in the woods. It is said, though, that from then on, that before he ever cut a tree again, he was always careful to rap on it with the handle of his axe and ask if anyone was within. Some stories also say that he eventually disappeared entirely after one trip into the woods many years later, but whether that is true or not is a matter of dispute....
***
There was much merriment after the maid finished her story, with most of us feeling that Karl had gotten off lightly. There was also considerable speculation about whether or not dryads truly existed, and many questions were put to the forester, who turned them aside with his usual taciturnity, saying only that he had never seen such a thing in his career. Finally, the harpist clapped him on the back. "Well then, if you can't tell us any more exciting stories about the women of the woods, then tell us something else! Let's have your story!"
"Tomorrow," the forester said, and with that we had to be contented.
