Peony, reader and writer

SO, the new forbidden spell that the brim hats were trying to perfect in Thristas was healing magic.

They were in a forest of dead silverwood trees, trees that purportedly died because someone tried to resurrect the dead, attempting to find a way to utilize the single positive side effect of the silverwood parasite—healing its host.

So whoever was in charge of this little experiment was aware of the nature of how silverwood trees propagate. Maybe it was even a (re)discovery they made themselves. (Beldaruit notes that silverwood trees are said to be able to grow anywhere they can find comfort, but it’s unclear if he knows that they accomplish this parasitically through a host. It might be a bit of information lost on the day of the Pact.) And so they began trying to figure out a way to get a silverwood to take root in a human. Who can say how many people they tried it with, but Qifrey says, presumably based on the notes he read at the Tower of Tomes, that it’s rare, which implies multiple certainly.

I imagine Qifrey was an outsider both because it would make sense logistically (why abduct a witch child and get the pointed caps on your back when you could just take a child from outsiders who can’t conceivably do anything about it; also I imagine there are a lot more children falling through the cracks than there would be in witch society) and also thematically (draws another clear parallel between him and Coco). I am also certain that he was blind. Either due to a congenital condition or some kind of acute injury. (In the most fucked up version of this, they blinded him themselves.)

So the brim or brims abducted him, fed him a seed, and lo and behold, it did take root and heal his eyes. But it also, eventually, consumed him, as parasites are wont to do. So they reset him, wiped his mind completely, and tried again. The key part here is that him turning into the tree is a fail state. The purpose is for the parasite to heal, perhaps to eventually enhance but we’ll get to that, not to actually make a tree. So they keep doing this over and over and over and over again. (Considering their potential methodology here absolutely fascinates—and sickens!—me because they would have needed to be doing things to test the limits of both his comfort and discomfort to see what would make the tree grow.) Eventually perhaps they decide that this host is a wash and it’s time to iterate.

Qifrey says that his (right) eye was the only thing to sprout during the experiments. Now, he can’t mean that it was the only thing to tree-out because obviously it’s long gone, but Qifrey still has the parasite and the roots will still start rustling if Olly smiles at him too much. As such, I can only assume he means that quite literally: the sprouts that grew from his eye were the only ones that could propagate.

So they snatched his eye out so that they could get more seeds to continue their experiments, wiped his mind one last time, and discarded the rest of him.

Then approximately 20 years on, we are introduced to Ininia (and Restys) when they encounter Custas. They infect him with a silverwood seed, which heals his legs, but in the intervening decades they seem to have advanced quite a bit because Custas (and Ininia), in addition to being healed, are also both able to grow branches and control them at will, providing them with enhanced physical abilities. The seeds have advanced so much in fact that Restys and Ininia think they're ready for primetime. So they plot to deliver them to Deanreldy, both the greatest doctor in the realm and a king highly covetous of magic. And probably of especial note to Restys and Ininia, descending from a great house of healingcraft! They want healing magic to come back and they want it to come back in a big way. But alas, Custas takes root proving that the seeds are not, in fact, ready and Restys immediately scuttles the plan. Back to the drawing board.

Now, I don’t think Restys, personally, was the one who experimented on Qifrey because they simply just don’t look old enough (though I supposed with forbidden magic, who knows?). So perhaps an as-yet-unseen master or forebear of theirs. They notably do also have white hair. So they too might be a host who has taken root before. Interestingly, Ininia’s blond hair suggests that she has never taken root. So perhaps she was the most recent host before Custas and the reason why they thought the seeds were ready.

MISCELLANEOUS ADDITIONAL RELATED THOUGHTS

There's definitely something to be said for the fact that all the confirmed silverwood hosts definitely were (or very plausibly were) permanently disabled without the use of some part of their body. Custas's legs, Qifrey's eyes, and, presumably, Ininia's hands. Haven't collected my thoughts on this entirely yet, but. INTERESTING.

As regards delivering the seeds to Deanreldy, we know that the castle has an anti-magic spell, but does that extend to something like the silverwood seeds? I’m going to guess, no, and that’s because with all the focus on why Eoleo has a brushbuddy in a castle without magic, I am going to place my bet that there is a silverwood tree somewhere in that there castle, and they don’t know what they have right under their noses.

I don’t think Iguin has anything to with the silverwood stuff. Or, yeah I’ll say it, Qifrey’s whole deal at all, in general. I could make a whole other post about it (and maybe I will!), but there’s no reason to introduce not one, but TWO, new brimhat characters to carry the silverwood plot once it’s time to start doing the reveals if Iguin is involved. They’re already there! It drastically heightens the tension, in fact, with Iguin as a known malevolent factor fixated on Coco, if they were Ininia’s master who shows up at the end and they’re the one who Custas goes off with! Instead, we get Restys with their own plans and motivations, who is obviously an associate of Iguin’s but isn’t really implied to be a subordinate. (Brims seem to have a pretty flat command structure, in fact.) Because, imo, Iguin has nothing to do with this whole plotline.

I’ve seen a lot of other theories about the experiment on Qifrey having been intended to create megacharged silverwood trees or silverwood/human hybrids who would be inherently magical. They do not make sense to me! I mean obviously I’ve already outlined why I think it’s genuinely an attempt to resurrect (ba-dum-tish) healing magic, but also: a) if they just wanted to make silverwood trees out of people then taking root wouldn’t be a fail state as has been established it clearly is, b) human blood is already established to supercharge spells so it would be a net neutral development—nothing gained. And in the case of a human/tree hybrid who can use their own blood to cast, frankly, generally less convenient. Sure it might come in handy in a total emergency where there is literally no other ink available, but seems like a lot of trouble to go to for just that eventuality. I suppose you could posit that being a human/tree hybrid would inherently grant special casting powers, but it’s pretty central to the sensibility and themes of the entire narrative that magic is cast by creating seals and anyone can do it just the same given tools and practice, so I don’t see any way of getting around that ever being introduced.