room8/TreeTops

8.1.2023 ROOM EIGHT : Tree Tops

Scaling the ladder is not easy because it is falling apart. The rope is not especially sturdy being made from twisted nettles and has become brittle with age. You manage to reach the top. There is a wooden platform with a view over the marsh. You see the walk-way by which you arrived at the small island disappear into the fog which surrounds the place. 

Opposite the swamp path are tree-tops of different heights. Most of them are below the platform you are on while several others extend as tall again above it. To your left and right are two rope-and-plank bridges, walk-ways extending from this platform almost parallel above the forest, each connecting to another platform beyond. This pattern repeats several times. There appears to be a long, narrow clearing in the centre of the island with the walk-ways around either side. 

At the far end you can see where they converge on another platform. This one has a small hut on it, built from sticks in the fashion of wattle-and-daub although there is no mud, it is only a weave of sticks and thick reeds. It appears dilapidated from this distance of perhaps eighty feet. 

You decide to travel clockwise around the perimeter of the island along the treetop path. From here you can see down to the swamp. The mists are thick and you cannot see deeply into them. Strange animal sounds occasionally spook you. 

The two parallel treetop paths connect on the platform in front of the hut entrance. Like the wooden platforms its floor is surprisingly sturdy. The hut has no windows and extends some way back to another door which leads to a wooden rail at the edge of the platform it is built on. There is no way down here other than jumping into the swamp which of course is a stupid idea. Below you can see a little wooden jetty pointing out from the island with a small boat at the end. 

The most surprising thing about the treetop hut is the ghastly contents of its interior. The walls are lined on either side with stacked rows of hundreds of human skulls, all of which appear by the prevalence of scorch-marks to have been cleansed by fire. The size and shapes of the skulls indicates they are from both genders and cover a wide age range. There is nothing else in the hut. 

You decide to climb back down the ladder. From the ground you can either;

Go South through the tunnel of trees to the clearing at the centre of the island, or

Leave Swamp Island and backtrack toward the plains to the North.

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