Cabinet · Mycelial Threadwork
The Rimewrights of the Under-Ice
Field Notes, Terra Incognita, Plate V
June 1, 2023 · “What touches one, touches all.”
Widdershins Project Archive · File 3A-9
This is the plate where I stopped keeping a bestiary and began keeping a census. The creek was frozen bank to bank, and the water had drawn back under its own lid and left a chasm, a room of ice with the roof still on. I got down into it. I had expected, at most, one more sleeper. I found a works.
They were building. A whole small people of them, at labor under the ice the way a town is at labor that you fly over at night, hauling and fitting and shoring up the very strata that hid them from me. It is the first of these creatures I could not draw as one animal. It has to be drawn as a place.
The ice was going even as I sat in it, dripping, ticking, complaining overhead. Whatever they were racing to finish, they were racing the thaw. Miss the week and you have missed the nation.
An earlier telling of this plate, recovered with it. Kept as found.
Amidst the crystalline expanse of the frozen creek, where an icy tapestry had woven itself over the once flowing waters, a revelation unfolded along the southern bank. The erosive touch of the water had carved a chasm, unveiling uncharted realms beneath the ethereal ice bridge. A clandestine microfauna society, engaged in industrious construction, toiled obliviously to my watchful gaze. Their delicate existence hung precariously, laid bare to capricious elements, covertly reinforcing the very strata that shielded them from anthropomorphic scrutiny.
In this secretive tableau, an urgent preparation unfolded, shrouded in mystery. The sun, refracted through hoarfrost suspended above, cast its luminous glow upon stratified communities nestled below. Droplets from the ice bridge resonated within the cave’s depths, their echoes reverberating through unseen chambers. Creaking protestations of the diminishing frozen slab served as a spectral warning—a harbinger that this frozen wonderland might be transient.
Undeterred, I traversed the icy thoroughfare to the opposite terminus, where an ascent awaited. As I prepared to bid adieu to my newfound companions, the guardians of this miniature realm, I knew their diligent custodianship would endure, at least for the present. The tiny architects of this clandestine world would persist, their secrets and fortifications secure, as I ventured beyond the confines of the enigmatic ice bridge.