Poke Fun PlayPhantump’s Paper Forest
A trail of folded leaves leads Phantump to a closed workshop, where a forgotten promise needs a different way home.
The leaf that would not crumble
The leaf made the wrong noise. When Phantump nudged it out of a spiderweb, it did not whisper or crackle. It snapped open with a crisp little pop, revealing four neat creases and an entirely square center. No tree in the forest grew square centers. Phantump turned it over. The underside was cream instead of green, and smelled faintly of apples, glue, and a room where sunlight had been shut away.
Fletchling landed on the branch overhead and gave an indignant chirp. Its nest had acquired three of these peculiar leaves during the night. They were excellent for keeping out wind but terrible for keeping out rain. One had collapsed over a sleeping chick like a wet hat. Fletchling plucked the square from Phantump's grasp and shook it fiercely. A blue line appeared along one folded edge, leading to a tiny painted door.
Phantump knew the forest's real doors: a badger hole beneath the roots, a hollow trunk where mushrooms grew, the gap in the wall that let deer reach the meadow. It did not know this blue door. More cream leaves lay beyond the stream. They had been folded into oak shapes, willow shapes, and one ambitious shape with too many points. Each bore the same little blue mark. Together they seemed less like litter than a forest trying to write a letter.
Leavanny was repairing a torn leaf blanket beside the stream. Phantump placed a paper oak leaf next to the work. Leavanny inspected its edges, touched the creases, and delicately unfolded it. The corners had been cut with uneven scissors. A circle on its center showed six real leaves arranged around a teacup. Beneath the circle were marks Phantump could not read. Leavanny lifted a careful foreleg toward the hill beyond the alder trees.
Years ago, that hill had held a workshop. Phantump remembered a woman sitting outside it and making shapes while the wind stole scraps from her lap. She used to visit the clearing at the first turn of autumn, carrying paper, thread, and a basket that always smelled of warm bread. Then the visits stopped. The clearing grew over. Phantump had assumed human seasons sometimes ended altogether, like flowers that never appeared in the same place twice.
It gathered the scattered leaves into the blanket Leavanny had been sewing. Fletchling protested at losing the useful dry ones, then volunteered to carry the smallest. Their trail curved uphill, following cream corners that flashed through copper undergrowth. At a fallen beech the path vanished beneath a tangle of roots. A paper maple clung to the farthest twig. Beyond it, just visible through the trees, stood a door with peeling blue paint.
Phantump floated over the roots. Leavanny climbed them with deliberate steps. Fletchling swept ahead, then came back without its paper leaf. There was something strange about the workshop, it reported in a series of anxious chirps. The windows were open, but nothing inside was moving. And the blue door was not locked. It was simply waiting.
A forest in a drawer
Inside, a kettle clicked on a little stove. The woman at the workbench looked up so sharply that her glasses slid down her nose. Her name was Mara, although Phantump knew her mainly as the person who left apple cores where the ants could find them. Her hair was grayer now. A walking stick leaned beside her chair, and the workbench had been lowered so that everything she needed lay within easy reach.
'Oh,' she said, seeing the bundle of leaves. 'You found my untidy forest.' She reached to take it, then stopped when Phantump drew back. The little ghost had imagined someone throwing paper away. Mara's voice did not sound careless. It sounded embarrassed. Fletchling perched on the kettle handle, discovered that it was warm, and relocated noisily to a spool of thread. Leavanny stood very still, waiting for the rest of the explanation.
Mara opened a shallow drawer. Inside lay dozens of folded trees, flat as pressed flowers. Some carried dates. Others had sketches of creatures asleep under branches. She showed Phantump a drawing of itself hovering upside down over an acorn. It had not known anyone remembered that afternoon. There was Leavanny making a blanket, and a Fletchling so young its tail was scarcely a tail. A whole stretch of woodland time had been stored in this room.
'I promised I'd bring the next autumn back,' Mara said. 'Then that beech fell across the path. I could have managed the old walk slowly. I can't climb over those roots.' Her fingers rested against the paper trees. 'I thought if I folded enough leaves, the wind might take a few down there. It did rather more than I intended.' She glanced toward Fletchling. 'I hope I haven't caused trouble.' Fletchling puffed its feathers with great dignity.
Phantump nudged the drawing of the clearing toward her. Surely the answer was to carry the forest here. There were pots by the window, shelves full of boxes, and a lovely open patch beside the stove. It could fill them with autumn. Before Mara understood, Phantump rushed outside and returned with real leaves, an acorn cup, a mushroom cap, and a stick that looked remarkably like a sleeping Caterpie. Leavanny watched the growing heap with concern.
For an hour they made the workshop a woodland. Fletchling brought twigs. Leavanny arranged leaves in a ring. Mara laughed, then coughed when a cloud of dry dust rose from the old mushroom. Phantump found a little bowl for stream water and set it among the trees. The bowl tipped. Water ran across a stack of painted paper, taking blue doors and amber sunsets with it. Mara lifted the pages quickly, but the colors had already begun to blur.
Nobody scolded Phantump. That made the mistake feel worse. It drifted into the shadow beneath the bench while Mara spread the wet pages to dry. A forest in a room was not the same forest. A drawer of trees was not a path. The wind moved the curtains, and somewhere outside an actual branch creaked. Leavanny followed that sound to the window, looked down at the narrow slope beside the workshop, and began to measure it with its steps.
A different way down
The old trail climbed the hill in steep loops. Leavanny's route did something else. It followed a shallow ledge below the workshop, crossed a dry drainage channel, and emerged beside the lower meadow. Years of brambles hid it, but the ground underneath was broad and gently sloping. Mara had used it long ago to bring paper deliveries uphill in a cart. She had forgotten it because everyone called the steep trail the forest path.
Clearing a route was more work than gathering leaves. Phantump could drift through branches, but Mara could not. Fletchling tested the way ahead, marking low obstacles with bright threads taken from the workshop. Leavanny trimmed soft vines and bundled the cut ends so nobody would trip on them. Phantump carried sticks into tidy piles. When it tried to lift a stone too large for its little arms, Mara called it back and brought a wooden lever.
They did not finish that day. Rain arrived before the drainage channel was clear, and the wet earth grew slippery. Mara inspected what they had done from her window. 'If we hurry because I'm impatient,' she said, 'we'll make something that only works once.' She set the kettle on again. Phantump disliked stopping with the clearing still out of reach. Yet the next morning the loosened soil had settled, revealing a hollow where yesterday's apparently solid ground had not been solid at all.
A neighbor came to help lay flat stepping stones across the channel. He fixed a short handrail near the narrowest bend and tested it with his full weight. Mara walked each completed section, choosing resting places as carefully as Leavanny chose leaves for a blanket. One spot faced a patch of mushrooms. Another had a branch at just the right height for Fletchling. What looked like a slower path began to seem a much more interesting one.
Phantump still wanted a grand surprise. It hid a garland of paper leaves beneath its bundle and intended to hang it over the clearing as Mara arrived. But overnight dew softened the garland. By morning the leaves drooped like disappointed wings. Phantump laid them out in the sun, attempting to unfold and refold every one. Mara found it struggling beside the door. She sat down on the threshold and offered one blunt-tipped tool from her apron.
'Here,' she said. 'Press the crease, don't pull the paper.' They worked together. Some leaves could be saved, some became smaller leaves, and one became a perfectly respectable square with no ambition to resemble anything. Mara placed that square in her pocket. 'A useful beginning,' she decided. Phantump emerged from its shadow to watch. None of the good afternoons in the drawer had been perfect afternoons either. In one drawing, it noticed, Mara's teacup had spilled.
By the third day, the new route reached the clearing. They did not cut down the brambles at its edge; Leavanny shaped a small opening through them. Mara stood at that opening for a long while. Then she set down the folded square, touched the trunk of the old ash, and smiled without saying anything. Fletchling chirped once. For once, it had no complaint to add.
The table beneath the ash
They held the first gathering on a clear afternoon when the ground had dried. Mara brought a light table that unfolded from a box, a stool, and a tin of blunt scissors. Her neighbor carried the table down the new route, then stayed to repair one of its uneven feet. Phantump brought the acorn cups again, this time entirely empty. Leavanny made a canopy of real leaves above the work, leaving gaps where sun could reach the paper.
Fletchling arrived with the oldest of the ruined nest leaves in its beak. It dropped the soggy object in front of Mara and fixed her with an accusing eye. Mara examined the damage as seriously as if someone had brought a broken clock. 'For outdoor use,' she murmured, 'we need something different.' She folded a small waxed-paper windbreak and showed Leavanny how the corners joined. Fletchling tested it immediately, then returned with a second leaf. Its standards had become exacting.
The neighboring children found the clearing by following the blue threads. They brought berries and questions. Was the paper forest a forest if it had no roots? Could a leaf be a boat? Why did Phantump keep hiding under the table whenever anyone praised it? Mara answered the first two by handing out paper. For the third, she simply left a clear space beside her stool. Phantump eventually drifted into that space, carrying a twig with two particularly elegant bends.
They made maps of the new route. The maps showed mushrooms, resting stones, and the place where the stream could be heard even though it could not be seen. Mara drew no instructions promising that everyone would travel at the same speed. Instead she marked benches with little circles and steep spots with lines. A child suggested calling it the long way. 'It's shorter for some of us,' Mara replied. The child thought about this and added an especially large circle around the best resting stone.
As the afternoon ended, the children offered to hang every paper tree from the ash. Mara shook her head. Paper belonged with someone who would bring it back inside before the rain. They hung a few real leaves in Leavanny's canopy and put the paper ones in boxes to take home. Phantump helped count the scraps so none would blow into the stream. It had learned that leaving a gift and leaving a mess could look very similar from a bird's nest.
When everyone had gone, one folded square remained on the table. Mara opened it for Phantump. Inside was a drawing of a tiny ghost beside a blue door, carrying a bowl of water with disastrous enthusiasm. The colors were blurred where the wet pages had touched it. Phantump pointed at the stain. 'That belongs there,' Mara said. 'It's how I remember the beginning.' She refolded the square and placed it gently in the shallow drawer she had brought with her.
Autumn passed into colder weather. The workshop door stayed blue, the fallen beech stayed fallen, and some mornings Mara did not come down the hill at all. On those mornings the forest came as far as the window: a Fletchling with news, Leavanny with a newly mended blanket, Phantump with one dry leaf held very carefully. The old promise had not returned in its old shape. Like a folded square, it had found room for another crease.
An original fan-created story by the Poke Fun Play editorial team. Illustrations generated for this adventure.
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