The Forest of Twisting Cloth

This began as a shared idea with my friend Emme for a possible installation piece, and the first line sort of floated into my head. It's a fantasy, and my first real return to my favorite form of storytelling in a while, I kind of like it actually.

The caravaner's tell of a forest in the western dessert, strips of cloth dancing in an unfelt breeze. The way they tell it the forest is a place of peace and cool beauty and furthermore it is a place that absolutely does exist, but none will claim to have actually been there, and when pressed they all see that none of those who have gone to the forest have ever returned.
It is not with fear or awe that they speak of their lost comrades, those who search for the forest do so at the end of their lives, they go because they wish to die out of the beating sun. I was young and hale once, a child fascinated by stories of the desert and the adventures of the caravans, the traders from far lands. I went in search of the forest as a young man, I saw it, and I returned in fear. I am older now and you are still young, still restless, head my words and learn from my mistakes.
We were four, when we departed from the city of Carth on the Desert, my friends and I, and it was nearing the winter of my seventeenth year. My parents ran a watering hole on the outskirts of Carth, and so I grew up with the caravaner's and knew their ways, I thought that I could do them one better, finding my safety in speed rather than in weight of numbers, and my three closest friends agreed.
We were none of us warriors, Armand was the strongest of us, and he was a blacksmith's apprentice. Ihab was the fastest, a foot messenger for the temple of the Goddess of Light, and the least devout. You will recognize the name of my last companion, Rida, daughter of sorcerers. She did not walk the Dreaming in those days or speak the tongue of the Gods, but she had money and the backing of the more inquisitive of the Orders, I of course knew the desert and the camels and had the maps that I won from the caravaner's with crooked cards over the course of many drunken evenings.
Fastest of friends we were, comrades on many adventures in the city and veterans of our share of scrapes and fistfights. Long knives, we carried, and water, and Ihab had his curving bow and Armand his hammer, but we carried little food, just pressed meat and travelers bread for it was agreed upon by all that I spoke to, the forest was never more than three days ride from the avid searcher, should he depart with high heart from any point on the desert's southern rim.
There were dangers, of course, there always were for those that ventured off of the paths beaten by the feet of thousands of caravan camels, into the shifting sands of the living desert, the realm of Jemel-Shaike. Djin flitted around us after the first miles, dazzling us and trying to lead us from out course, but Ihab stood in his stirrups and brandished the amulet that marked him as an agent of Memon and they let us pass. Raiders lay in ambush for us, at the dawn of the second day, but we knew their superstitious nature and Rida recited the Words she had heard her father speak and they let us pass in awe.
Perhaps her Words already carried some weight, perhaps we had been careless, but by noon on the second day we found our water to have been fouled. I counted this no matter and we stayed in our travels, taking shelter beneath heavy canvas until nightfall when, against the crystal clear sky I took the readings that led us, parched and weary, to the nearest oasis. Naturally we were not the only ones taking water that night.
The raiders from the morning came upon us again, and this time would not be deterred by mere chanting. By moonlight we drove them back, with arrows and stones, and when those were exhausted we met them blade to blade. Our knives were shorter than their curving swords, but better suited to the fighting on foot, and camels that night refused to bear their riders. Never the less the desert sand ran with the blood of Ihab, mingling with that of his killer when Armand's hammer found its mark in her skull and by daybreak we were battered and weary but victorious.
With heavy hearts we buried our friend that day, under the vicious sign of his goddesses star, but on we pressed, as he would have wished, and by nights fall we found it, the impossible silk forest, the thousand fluttering banners.
Wasting no time we descended, drawn to the majesty of the sight, our grief for the moment forgotten, and how easily the strands parted before us. I wish I need not tell you how Armand fell, in pain and confusion, the desecration of his corpse at the hands of those... things. I wish I need not tell you what I found in the forest of twisting cloth. But I know you, or I knew myself, at your age. To end now would only be to encourage your further inquiry, hasten your inevitable investigation, and I have enough young blood on my hands.
We plunged headlong into the forest, as we did into all things, headless of our direction, unaware that we lost our way until it was too late. Blind to all things but the wonder of the music that surrounded us, and the rustling, restless cloth. It was only when I heard the screaming that I realized I had become separated from my comrades, my closest friends, my comrades in arms. Only then that I awoke from the spell, and moved with purpose all my own.
The strands of silk no longer parted easily for me, and twice I was forced to draw my long blade to carve out a path. The blood pounded in my ears and bile rose in my throat as I closed with the source of the noise, and parting the final layer between it and I, I was glad to have my blade to hand.
It was a hunched, frog-like thing that screamed in the voice of Armand, even after I slit its throat it writhed and screamed until its life-blood was spent, and then another took up the call, and another. In my madness I came upon Armand's hammer, and this I turned against the creatures whenever I crossed them, meting out the Gods own justice, until I found him. He was bound, by the cloth, spreadeagled. His mouth was open and his face a mask of pain and fear, he seemed to be screaming but no sound escaped his lips.
I tried, in vain, to hack him down, but I two became entangled and very nearly suffered the same fate as my dearest... By the time I escaped I had traveled far and knew not but that the air had grown still and silent and the cloth had stopped its dancing. I walked without purpose, in what direction the Gods saw fit to lay before me, though why I trusted to them when all else had gone so dreadfully wrong I can not say.
They led me true, however, true to the center, the heart of the forest. There grew a tree, a tree bearing strange fruits. The wrapped bodies of men and women, great and nameless, their faces ashen, soundless, and frightfully animated, swinging wildly. Chained to the base of the tree was Shaike, unreason incarnate, blind and battered howling and whimpering by turns, and before him knelt Rida, her hair blowing out behind her, crackling with black lightning.
Rida stood, and strode out without looking at me, the forest parting to show her the path, and I followed wordlessly, because she did not forbid it.
Madness, that is what I found, power, and one other thing. Swinging from the tree were not just men, not just women or camels, or creatures of the ken of men, but frog-things too, and stranger beasts, and Jemel, Third Eye, and Memon with her lantern, and Dervis the Fair, and others too.
I found the truth at the heart of the forest of twisting cloth, I found the truth and I lost all peace.