Chapter 22
A Washer Woman
The Black Forest is not as dense or as thick as the Woodcutter’s Forest, but it has rightly earned its name.
Enormous black oak trees—ancient and undisturbed—have grown together in great groves, stretching out branches and leaves as thick as thatch on a cottage rooftop. The forest’s leafy canopies are of different heights, creating great cathedral naves with the lattice-work of thick boughs and tree limbs. There are occasional small meadowed spaces which briefly open the canopies to the sky, like murder holes in the ceilings of castle gates. They are strewn with coarse, woody debris, and filled with long grass as tall as a man’s waist. In other places, there are copses of dead trees which haven’t yet fallen. These are “standing snags,” and their giant upright c
