Fantasy Flora

My remarks about the Hawaiian rainforest trees (and the discussion of setting in general) got me thinking about the trees in my book.

When writing fantasy, one has to be careful about creating new flora (or fauna, for that matter). The temptation among some writers seems to be to slap exotic names on otherwise familiar greenery, so that you have passages that read like this:

"Sandar laid his sword in the zarl, while overhead the wind shivered the silver-green leaves of the talia tree. In the distance, he saw a red carpet of gushu flowers, undulating in the breeze. "

And what the writer really meant was that Sandar laid his sword in the grass under the olive tree, overlooking a field of windblown poppies.

On the other hand, sometimes a contemporary name jars: it may be too anachronistic, too Latin-sounding, or have too strong an association with a modern culture or place. In that case, it's better to fudge on the side of descriptive labels, rather than making up meaningless names. So, for instance, a Lombardy poplar or Italian cypress could become a spear tree; a live oak, stunted and twisted by the wind, might be a granny oak. And a banyan tree could be called by its more colloquial (and apt) name: the strangler fig.

Occasionally, one does need to invent an entirely new species of plant or tree, though. But in that case, the name will be accompanied by a description, and the new species will have a role in the story, and thus be more tangible and thus memorable to the reader.

I invented a tree that is somewhat similar to the banyan, though it's not as tall or massive. It is called the bakara, and it is not entirely a natural tree. The wood must get very hot before it will burn, and the smoke gives true, sometimes prophetic, visions, though the dreams are most often of things the inhaler would just as soon not know about. It also deepens strong emotions such as anger or lust. And from its roots one can manufacture a highly addictive, hallucinogenic drug called bok.

The clips below were taken from one scene; I've lifted out just the descriptions pertinent to the tree and its wood, and then something of the aftermath of the effects of the smoke.

Lower down and tucked into a long fold in the mountainside ran a grove of those ancient, twisted trees, whose roots and branches had plaited themselves together over the years until there was no discerning where one tree left off and another began. In summer the grove might well be impassable, but the trees were bald now, save for a scattering of many-fingered leaves curling against the slick brown bark like desiccated hands.
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With the ground so clear in the grove, deadfall should have been easy to find but turned out to be surprisingly scarce—the trees seemed to endlessly knit limb and twig together rather than shed them. With the woman's help, he gleaned enough small chunks to make a meager fire but soon discovered that, despite his best efforts with flint and ironstone, flames slid off the glossy bark as if unable to find a foothold, leaving it untouched while his tinder burned to ash. Thinking dour thoughts about the irritating perversity of his own gift, which could ignite stone like dry grass but disdained to help light a homely campfire, he was forced to lead the gelding back out into the pines and kick knee-deep snow aside to find other kindling.
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Smoke eddied in wisps and veils, and smelled faintly sweet, an elusive scent that refused to stay in the nostrils, but came and went, like the fragrance of violets. In the fire itself, the flames had eaten the pine logs down to cracked, glowing bars. Chunks of the other wood lay exposed in a crucible of heat, and their tough shells still did not burn but seemed to be melting away to expose a white heart, like strips of bone showing through blackened flesh.
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A snarl ripped the air, somewhere close to his ear. The woman gave another breathless shriek, and he fell back into himself with a violent snap.

The woman under him was not small and naked after all, but tall and leggy and fully clothed, and he had done nothing more than tumble her carelessly onto the fur. Skah hovered less than an arm's length away, quivering with jealousy and ready to do battle.

"Skah, down!"

After an interminable moment, the hound dropped to the ground, his fur glistening with snow, muzzle streaked with blood. Riordan pushed himself up and let the woman wriggle out from under him, clawing her hair out of her eyes. He felt breathless, disoriented, and his face burned with disgust at his own behavior, at the fact that he had just dreamed of taking a woman like an animal—a vision so real that it was less like a dream than a vivid memory.

But not his own.

He was ashamed to face her, but her attention had swooped to the fire. She exclaimed in her own tongue and began heaping earth and dead leaves on the flames, anything that came to hand, smothering the fire as fast as she could. Smoke billowed up, both acrid and sweet, and darkness flooded their bower. The icy night air rushed in behind it, as painful and quenching as a splash of cold water.

She said something incomprehensible, then switched laboriously to Tsuroi: "The white wood—it is bakara. Dangerous. It gives visions, true dreams, shows us things we don't want to see. It also makes strong feelings, of anger and…and other feelings."

The blackness was absolute at first, but shortly he was able to pick out the pale oval of her face and the gray form of the gelding beyond her. The stallion was invisible, except for his white mane floating in the air like a banner of mist. Riordan's mind took longer to clear than his vision, while tension drained slowly away, like sap settling into the roots of a tree. Exhaustion rushed in to fill the void. He was shaken at how close he had come to abandoning all self-restraint, and wanted nothing more than to sleep, to forget. But he owed her something first.

"I did not mean to act the way I did," he said stiffly. "It will never happen again."

She turned swiftly to look at him, but he could see nothing of her expression. She cleared her throat. "It's nothing. I know it was to…save me from the hound. I thank you."

He sat in stunned silence before his lagging understanding caught up, and then he thought it was a good thing she couldn't see his face. Her misinterpretation was a reprieve he did not deserve, but he was not about to set her straight.

"He…he will not bother you now," he said lamely, and was not clear in his own mind whether he meant the hound or himself. Without waiting for a response, he crawled into the tent and his furs, welcoming their chilled softness, their isolation. After a moment, she followed, having decided, he suspected, that despite his assurances about Skah, sleeping in the same tent with him was safer than keeping company with the hound.

He hoped she was right about that.

(from The Knife-Giver, ch. 57, "Grove of Dreams")