Lore Segment: Thornwick, the Bark-Skinned Wanderer

From the collection of Maren Quill, Keeper of Wandering Songs

Entry dated: Seventh day, frost month

I have spent the better part of three evenings attempting to coax this particular ballad from a minstrel who claims he learned it “from the roads themselves.” When pressed for specifics, he became evasive in that maddening way travelling singers do, suggesting the song “arrives when needed” and “belongs to no one in particular.”

Extraordinarily unhelpful, but I have learned not to push too hard. These wandering folk guard their repertoire jealously, and I am fortunate he agreed to sing it at all.

The ballad concerns Thornwick, a figure I have encountered in no fewer than seven regional variants across MirMarnia. Each version differs slightly - in one he is described as having skin of birch rather than oak, in another he speaks aloud rather than working through carved signs - but the essential character remains consistent: a wanderer of the deep forests who guides lost travellers through intention rather than direction.

What strikes me most is the moral weight these songs carry. They are not mere entertainment, though they serve that purpose well enough by tavern firelight. They function as teaching, as warning, as comfort. The roads of MirMarnia are long and often lonely, and a song like this offers both practical wisdom and something harder to name. Hope, perhaps. Or simply the reassurance that the forest watches, and watching, cares.

The minstrel sang it through twice before I could commit it to paper, and even then, I suspect I have missed nuances that exist only in performance - the particular pause before certain lines, the way his voice dropped to barely a whisper during the refrain. I have done my best to capture the words as he gave them.

Whether Thornwick himself is real, I cannot say. The forest keeps its secrets. But the song is real, and has been for generations, passed from minstrel to minstrel, from firelight to firelight, carrying its quiet truth forward.

That, I suppose, is what matters.

- Maren Quill

(From Maren Quill's careful transcription, I've shaped a song. What follows is my interpretation of how this ballad might have been sung by firelight, the melody carried from one tavern to the next, changing slightly with each telling but keeping its essential truth. Listen, if you will. - Chaiga T. Cheska)

Come gather close, ye wandering folk,
And still your restless feet,
I’ll sing of one who walks alone
Where root and shadow meet.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.

His skin is knotted oak and elm,
His veins run gold as sap,
The forest bends when he doth pass
As though it felt his step.

No mortal womb did birth this man,
No cradle rocked his sleep,
He rose from roots in ancient times
When first the wood grew deep.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.

He gathers up lost intentions
That fall from hearts grown flawed,
The wishes whispered unto trees,
The promises ill-stored.

He holds them close in wooden hands
Until their meaning clears,
Then carves them into signs and marks
For those who walk in fear.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.

A token left upon a stump,
A carving by a stream,
A pattern cut in weathered bark
To wake a buried dream.

And those who heed his wordless gifts
Find courage where they stand,
As though the forest breathed a truth
Their hearts could understand.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.

But mark ye well, ye travellers
Who roam by dusk or dawn,
The gifts he leaves are not commands,
Nor paths that must be drawn.

For Thornwick guides but never binds,
And those who choose with care
Shall find the Eldertrees walk beside
The choices that they bear.

Yet those who scorn his quiet signs
Or twist them to their gain
Shall find the ancient forest still
And watch them with disdain.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.

I’ve seen him once at twilight’s edge,
Or thought I glimpsed him there,
A figure tall as elder trees
With moss upon his hair.

He turned his head as though he heard
My footstep on the ground,
And in his eyes the forest lived,
Green depths without a sound.

He raised one hand in silent greeting
Then faded into night,
And where he stood a carving bloomed
Upon the bark, moon-bright.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.

So raise your cups to Thornwick’s name,
The wanderer of the green,
Whose footsteps echo through the boughs
Where mortal eyes have been.

A blessing, curse, or spirit old,
No scholar dares to say,
But those who honour what they seek
Shall never lose their way.

For Thornwick treads the greenwood paths
Where mortal souls have strayed,
And leaves his signs in bark and stone
For those who’ve lost their way.