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The Fae are shockingly adept at avoiding responsibility. Tricking mortals out of their lives and earthly possessions is no small feat. So it’s no surprise that a few fae, here and there, conceive of a way to have it done for them. Oh, there are hags– those are fae-born, of course, if generally less effective by sour reputation alone. There are witches, who often find themselves playing into Faerie whims, though those bonds, too, require effort to maintain. There are even abnormalities, occasionally, that no Faerie seems to know the origin of– little men who steal babies and play tricks, who adopt the trappings of a Faerie deal while skirting the edge of the Courts themselves. But no Faerie effort was ever as complete as the Toy Soldier.
It needed to be strong, the Fae decided, and not bend to the will of those who would attempt to deceive it. So they took the spine of a King, a great Ruler, on one autumn night when, in despair, he believed it was all he had left to his name. (They gave him his daughter’s life in return. Most of it, anyway.) They took the ear of the most caring Lover in the land– in exchange for her sister’s (temporary) well--being. They took the face of a Princess– one striking of form but vile of heart, who would damn all her lands for the sake of expanding them. These and many more they parted from their owners, undeserving or no, until only one ingredient remained.
The voice they stole from a great Orator, one who whipped the fields of battle into a bloodied frenzy. He had wished for greater prominence, that his voice would bring great men to tears and lead nations to conquest. The Court was all too happy to grant his request.
All these parts and more were taken and brought to a clearing in the realm of the Court. The night was moonless, for even the Faeries know what the Moon Herself would weep to look upon. They took the pieces, now in the semblance of some hideous, half-formed humanoid, and laid the assembled components out on the soft soil of the forest. The realm-woods shifted, and out of the roots and viscera something new and terrible arose. They took it and anointed it with their own blood. They stained the wood brown with the blood of suffering souls and painted it in poultices from the fruits of the earth, and sent it down to the mortal realm, with but a faint charm telling it what it was to do for them. It assembled quite a happy home for itself there, in a forest deep and dark, much like the place it was first given life.
Its grove was not like the rest of the forest. For many acres around its small hut, the trees grew as if carved and polished– each one a sturdy, simple statue, already worn smooth with age. When these trees were new sprung, they appeared to be stained the right color with dyes of berries and leaves, but as the decades passed, they grew to instead resemble the finest, most modern paints that money could buy. Always bright and cheerful, the trees shaded a similarly wooden ground, complete with lovely small wooden pebbles, fallen wooden leaves, and even sawdust standing in for the dirt so ubiquitous in other such glades. At the center of the curious copse was the hut itself, something wooden and carved directly out of a children’s drawing. The crooked pipe seemingly serving as chimney, although no fireplace or stove burned within, occasionally belched sawdust into the air, delighting any children who came with their parents or with requests of their own.
No birds called within the grove, nor bugs buzzed nor worms crawled. Whether they had been turned to so much wood themselves and now lay motionless out of sight, or whether they had simply fled, was anyone’s guess.
Now, many souls have heard tell of the thing in the woods who will manifest your wildest dreams. It goes by many names– the Lone Man is popular among locals, the Wooden Genie among those that have heard of it only in hushed tales around the fire– but it’s a small child’s moniker for it that sticks. (Small children have such conviction behind their words, after all.)
Small arms clutching a limp, fluffy cat, the child had simply barged in through the front door– none of the usual veneers of falsified ritual, of hesitance, of maddened doubt, just a lost, desperate soul in need of assistance. Tearfully, the child had begged it to please, please heal their best friend, to make him breathing and whole again so they could be best friends forever. Almost before the child was finished speaking, the cat had given a faint mewl and pawed weakly at the child’s chest, screaming to be let down. The child had clutched it even tighter and looked up, up, into the Fae-thing’s grinning wooden face. “Thank you! Thank you! You’re the nicest toy soldier man I’ve ever met!” The cat wrenched itself free of the child’s arms and ran off, and the child gave chase, laughing all the way home. Later, when the cat called the child by name, they would be very amused– their parents, less so.
Behind them, the Toy Soldier smiled. The edge of the Wooden Grove advanced, unseen, a scant inch further.