Once upon a time in a not so far away land,
Where fire was banned.
There was a town up a hill,
Its name Blumenville.
A place with roofless big houses, beautiful gardens and white-picked fences. Its main street flanked by sunflowers as tall as a grown human. Every day you could see the WoodLords strolling down the streets, greeting each other at the park, going through their mundane routines. Their wooden limbs covered with clothing and jewelry made by human hands and a rope coming out of their heads, getting lost in the infinity of the blue sky above.
No one remember who was the first WoodLord or why it took human servants, but tradition has it that every WoodLord owns a group of human slaves. When or how Blumenville was founded it is also unknown. However, the human gardeners guild believes it must be not by mistake.
At every WoodLord house there were small group of humans working day and night, attending the garden, fixing meals, cleaning, and fulfilling the minutest request from their WoodLord. At the inclination of the sunflowers to the west the humans would get ready to prepare their WoodLords’ supper. You would think that creatures made out of wood would have no use for food. But, the thing about WoodLords is that they know, they know things with absolute certainty. Things like hunger, although without a digestive system there is no way for them to know they have had enough. They know of thirst, they know of pride, they know of wrath; but they lack throats to refresh, achievements to brag about, and reasons to hate.
The WoodLord supper was quite the event; they would entertain themselves by inviting each other to show off the culinary creations of their human Cooks. With no further notice to their humans, WoodLords would simply show off during the evening with a guest or two expecting to find a feast worthy enough of jealousy. Oh the jealousy, at times it seemed like the entire town was driven by it. It was with no doubt the preferred WoodLords’ game. Therefore, it took hours for the human cooks to prepare a feast for each day better than the last. Humans were such resourceful creatures that at least in Blumenville they had never let their WoodLords down. But there were rumors among them about what happened to humans that couldn’t keep up with their duties. Like the story about this cook, that forgot to include appetizers at the dinner table, and cut its own fingers and serve them on a plate with cottage cheese instead of facing the wrath of its WoodLord.
There was little time for the humans to talk with humans across the street or even at the house next door, their duties absorb all of their times. So, each house became its own little world. At the end of the day humans would go downstairs to their rooms at the basement, the only place where WoodLords couldn’t enter because of their ropes. However, just before going to sleep, humans would talk, each of them would share with the others the little news they could gather in their errands.
The Maids were usually the ones that bring news about the outside of the house (or how they call it outside of the fence), they would share information among maids at the market buying the groceries for supper. That was how they kept in contact with relatives and learned about human deaths and births. It was also how ideas travelled. It was the maid property of the WoodLord Saucelio Barbas de Rama, the one that promoted the idea that if humans serve the WoodLords the best they can, they would be rewarded by one day becoming WoodLords themselves. She and all the humans at Saucelio’s house had shaved the top of their heads so a rope could fall from the sky, connect to their heads and turn their flesh into wood.
Such ideas made the WoodLords giggle and let their servants do as they please with their hair as long as they kept their houses clean, their tables ready and their gardens beautiful. But not all humans were so enthralled about the idea of becoming WoodLords, there were those that thought humans could not be created to serve such unnatural creatures like the WoodLords. This idea was more prevalent among the Gardeners guild who learning about nature by cultivating the gardens for generations had come to doubt that nature would create creatures like the WoodLords, their very existence was against all they learned from the soil and plants. In secrecy the gardeners questioned the WoodLords origins and their stories about them being the creators of humans and wish for a day when humans would be free to plant their own gardens, cook their own meals and clean their own roofed houses.
The gardeners were not alone, little by little maids and cooks from other houses had come to the same conclusions. There were those that wanted to get rid of all WoodLords, there were those that wanted to live as equals with the WoodLords and those that wanted to enslave the WoodLords. However, they all kept their heads low as advice by the oldest human in Blumenville, only known as The Seamstress. She was born into servitude for the Bamboola WoodLords many, many moons ago. She told stories about a time were humans ruled the world, about a world with no WoodLords, about a God worshiped by humans that lived within the heavens and a feared Demon that slept in the undergrounds.
Old crazy lady fantasies most humans said. Or maybe even worse others thought. Maybe she told those stories by her WoodLord orders to learn who was a disobedient human and could be punished. Because, really… A god that lives in the sky and a demon in the underground? Such a clear WoodLord propaganda they thought: “We are heavenly creatures as our ropes are given by the sky god itself and you humans that live at our basements are demonic creatures.” But regardless what humans believed in, they all listened to her warnings as she had been right so many times before. She predicted that terrible blizzard that froze humans to dead many moons ago, and also predicted the arrival or the disappearance of WoodLords. This time, all humans were worried by her last prediction:
Fire This Way Comes.
