Kurushi!!

okay so basically qifrey has a magical parasitic tree growing inside of him. these type of trees attach to a living host, usually an animal rather than a human, and once the host is sufficiently calm and comfortable the tree takes that as a sign that this is a safe place to take root and it begins to rapidly grow and subsume the carrier.

unfortunately for qifrey the thing that makes him feel safe and comfortable is his boy best friend who loves and accepts him even though he's an shady amnesiac tree person.

so the solution olruggio comes up with here is that he will erase his own memory of finding out qifrey's secret so that qifrey can continue to be stressed and anxious enough to not Die. except it doesnt work in the long term because the exact same thing just keeps happening repeatedly

qifrey so very often tends to clasp his hands together, rubbing them against each other or simply clinging to his long robes. a gesture so telling of just how uncomfortable due to silverwood he constantly is, always slightly nervous, always tip-toeing around the edge of a cliff.

and he's been doing so since childhood! his emotions are so closed-off when it comes to casual body language, which is both an indicator of his character and the ways in which he deals with his curse. unable to trust even his closest friend, he chooses the only vaguely soothing thing: to curl into himself, to detach, to distance.

meanwhile olruggio, despite his scruffiness, generally comes off as a more open, "simple" man, hands flying all over the place when he's agitated. he expresses his emotions freely, without restrain.

qifrey curls into a ball for comfort, meanwhile olly splays like a star, comfortable in his skin an in qifrey's presence

and what happens when they start to interact?

olly keeps reaching for qifrey, talking some sense into him with his hands, with spontaneous and emotional physical touch.

he does so even upon first meeting

he keeps and keeps reaching out to qifrey, both literally and symbolically. no matter how hard qifrey tries to run away, to hide deeper into himself, olruggio will always be there to offer him a friendly hand or otherwise

this particular parallel is especially dear to me:

they changed so much, but they also haven't changed at all

and the culmination of this dynamic in a single image for me is this:

For context, I wrote that previous post in 2020, a few months after chapter 40 of Witch Hat Atelier came out. The post was among the early ones to comment on the parallels between Qifrey and silverwood trees, and to draw a semi-detailed story theory from it. One early commenter coined the term « Treefrey » (I don’t remember their username and can’t find them in my comments or tags, sorry for not crediting them!), and the post spread through the fandom as the Treefrey theory.

After the silverwood tree parasitism entered the plot in chapter 85, five years later, the post lit up again. On the one hand, I received a lot of uplifting and hilarious notes: thank you so much for those! I’ve never had a theory blow up and become a fandom artefact before, so that post was very fun to monitor. On the other hand, most of you have been over-generous about my deduction skills: I was wrong on a lot of counts.

So here is a status report on the Treefrey theory as of chapter 93:

Short status report: I speculated that Qifrey is a tree that was turned into a human, but it looks like he is a human who is cursed to turn into a tree. Rookie mistake.

Long status report: My initial theory went something like this:

(1) Silverwood trees are a non-human sentient species that went nearly extinct after necromancy experiments wrecked their forest in Slistas, so communication between them and witches, and knowledge of their sentience, have been lost;

(2) Qifrey was born, or more accurately sprouted, as a silverwood sapling, but was turned human by the Brimhats using a new form of forbidden magic; 

(3) The Brimhats took his eye to gain the ability to make magic out of their own blood (to bypass the scarcity of magic ink, since most of the remaining silverwood trees seem to be under the surveillance of the Pointed Hats). Having access to Qifrey’s eye would explain why Iguin can use his own blood as a super-ink that enhances the power of simple spells in chapter 12;

(4) Qifrey fears that those experiments blur the line between magic and humans, and threaten the world order created by the Pointed Hats. This world order is based on the sanctity of the human body (no spell should be performed on a human under any circumstance, except for memory erasure). To enforce it, the Great Hall keeps tight control of who knows the secret of magic, who uses magic, and how. Qifrey believes that losing this world order would lead to chaos and war, so he wants to destroy his stolen eye and the research that led to his transformation from tree to human.

(5) Qifrey keeps his mission secret from the Great Hall and Olruggio in particular because his very existence is forbidden according to the laws of the Pointed Hats: he expects his own community to treat him as a monster and a criminal if they find out, and that anyone who sides with him will be punished as well.

As of chapter 93 (2026), we can sort out where I went right and wrong on those different points:

(1) Silverwood trees are a fully sentient species: inconclusive. Their parasitism reacts to animal and human emotions, but this seems instinctive, like reacting to chemical signatures in their host (waiting until the host is at peace as a signature of a safe environment to grow). We got more bits of legends in chapter 47 about humanoid silverwood trees gifting magic to humans, but there’s no confirmation that this goes beyond mere legend yet.

(2) Qifrey was born as a tree then turned human: wrong. I got this one backwards! I am not sure how planting a seed inside of Qifrey counted as « a new form of forbidden magic », since infecting a host seems to be the normal behaviour of silverwood trees. Thoughts welcome on this.

(3) Qifrey’s eye was stolen to produce a new kind of magical ink: mostly wrong. Iguin had no need of Qifrey’s eye to use his own blood as ink, since human blood is shown to naturally react with magical ink and lead to « wild and unexpected magic » in chapter 63. I have to assume this requires a lot of blood, otherwise magic would go berserk whenever a witch gets a nosebleed or a paper cut… As for why the Brimhats needed his eye: in chapter 93 we learn that Qifrey’s right eye sprouted and turned full silverwood. Qifrey speculates that this might have helped the Brimhats overcome the silverwood trees’ lack of compatibility with anxiety-prone human hosts. Maybe seeds produced by Qifrey’s right eye are more tolerant to humans, and have been used on Custas and others?

(4) Qifrey wants to stop the Brimhats’ plans because he wants to preserve the divide between magic and humans: correct-ish? He mostly wants to stop these guys from doing insanely cruel experiments on kids. But he does also seem worried about the new compatibilities between silverwood trees and humans that these experiments may have provoked.

(5) Qifrey is keeping his secrets because his existence is a crime according to the laws of Witch society: mostly wrong. He isn’t about to boast to the Knights Moralis about his skull terrarium situation, but his main worry is the parasitic silverwood that will kill him the moment he lets himself be at peace. Him erasing Olruggio’s memory is a convoluted strategy dating back to their teenage years to keep Qifrey stressed and miserable, because sharing his burden with his friend would provide lethal levels of comfort.

As for my thoughts on the latest chapters and the silverwood parasitism (and I do have to admit that the Silver festival arc went on for so long that I grew exhausted and tuned out chunks of it, so I might have missed details). An evil curse that will kill you if you find happiness works well as a metaphor for post traumatic stress disorder: it shows the hypervigilance that can sabotage a person after they have escaped a violent situation, found safety, and are trying to rebuild their life.

My main issue with Qifrey’s silverwood parasitism, as presented in the flashback, is that it weakens the conflict between Qifrey and the Great Hall / Knights Moralis / Representatives of Witch society’s system of power (including Beldaruit and Olruggio!). I was so interested in this conflict: Qifrey is trying to be loyal to a society that saved his life and nurtured him, but this same society also denied him justice, tormented him by forcing him to live underwater, keeps threatening to take his job, kids and memories away from him, and ultimately cannot see him as human. Sometimes his rage against the Brimhats feels almost like denial, like redirecting his resentment away from the Great Hall and towards an easier outlet. Many of the non-witch characters, especially Custas, have similar conflicts of feeling indebted but also resentful towards the Pointed Hats. I would have loved for them to confront Qifrey on those feelings. Maybe this will play a role later. But the flashback seemed to take away a lot of Qifrey’s anger and agency?

Also, I did love the idea of Qifrey not being human: silly little alien tree man, his existence breaks every cardinal law in his adopted home, getting obsessed with human things like cooking. « At first I thought that having to find, prepare, masticate and digest food was a very inefficient substitute to photosynthesis, but then I found out about picnics!!! *_* »

So I was rereading the manga and I realized that even with the recent revelations there is still so much we don't know about the silverwood and I find particularly interesting how Qifrey's and Custas' silverwood seem to behave differently and it got me thinking.

Custas seems to be "fine" for the most part, until he finds comfort in Dagda's embrace and his silverwood sprouts all at once erupting into a massive tree and once his source of comfort is taken away (aka Dagda dies) he reverts back now sporting stylish silver hair, which is likely a visual clue for hosts that have sprouted and that have been detangled from their trees at least once since silver hair has always been associated with Qifrey before. (suspiciously side eyeing Restys right now)

Meanwhile, Qifrey's silverwood seems to behave more like a chronic illness. It causes him pain and he can feel it writhe inside him every time he experiences comfort. It sprouts slowly with small branches growing first before fully becoming a tree and even when we see him become a tree in the flashback arc it's smaller than Custas' tree and, unlike Custas, Qifrey mantains awareness while the silverwood grows out of him, at least enough to have a full argument with Olly.

It's almost like Qifrey is able to partially resist the tree somehow, leading only to a partial sprouting.

This seems to indicate that either Qifrey has a higher tolerance for the silverwood and so it takes more to sprout from him, maybe due to the multiple sprouting and un-sprouting he went through, or that the two have different stands of silverwood implanted in them and that's why they behave slightly differently.

I'm more partial to the first explanation though, since in ch. 93 Qifrey clearly states that he thinks that Custas' silverwood must be related to his right eye somehow and in ch. 87 both Ininia and Restys seemed surprised that Custas' silverwood sprouted so easily, which only makes sense if they based this on their previous experience with Qifrey during their experiments.

Speaking of the experiments, in ch. 92 Qifrey says this quote:

"My memories are erased and I'm restored over and over again... like a plant split, then replanted"

Which got me thinking... what if this is exactly what the brimmed caps did?

Like, they make him sprout and they take a part of his tree to create a new seed that then they can implant into a new host and then they erase his memory to make him turn back into a person ready to sprout again. This would make him the originator for all new silverwood hosts we see, like Custas and probably Ininia.

There is then this quote from ch. 93:

"My right eye was the only one to sprout during the experiment."

That implies that either there were others like him, implanted with silverwood that never sprouted, or that he was implanted with multiple seeds but only the one in his right eye took root. But the fact that he thought he was the only host until he saw Custas makes me think it's the latter case or if there were other children he either doesn't remember or doesn't know about them or they were implanted after he was found by Beldaruit.

In any case, it's clear that Qifrey is a special case even among other successful silverwood hosts since he has resisted the tree for at least 20-ish years at this point and his right eye seems particularly important.

So, let me give you an unhinged tinfoil hat theory:

Could it be that Qifrey is one of the original silverwood hosts that were created during the age of magic?

I know, I know! Crazy. But here me out!

We all know the fairytale of the star and the silverwood maiden and how it's used to explain the birth of magic but while that is clearly allegorical it must have some semblance of truth. Someone in the time of yore must have discovered that the silverwood woodcruor can be turned into conjuring ink and do you really think that in a time with no regulation over magic nobody had the though to home grow a silverwood forest out of people for convenience?

I actually think that the forest of Thristas was exactly that before whatever killed all the trees happened. It is one of the places tainted by forbidden magic, specifically a magic to resurrect the dead, it wouldn't surprise me if it was also a planted silverwood forest of formerly human hosts and whatever happened that killed the trees was actually a spell that tried to un-sprout the people there. That could count as some kind of resurrection right?

Anyway, for the sake of my crazy theory let's say that this happened and that Qifrey was one of such hosts, turned into silverwood to have a steady supply of conjuring ink before the day of the pact was made. He somehow lived on as a tree, basically in some form of stasis, until the brimmed caps found him and reversed the tree with a memory erasing spell and then proceeded to use him as their lab rat to study the silverwood for whatever reason they might have and then they discarded him when they didn't need him anymore.

My question now would be why did they bury him in a coffin and just got rid of him?

I mean, even if I'm way off the mark with my theory, Qifrey seems to have been an important research subject for the brimmed caps when it comes to silverwood so something must have happened to make them toss him away like a used napkin.

But I don't think we have enough info to piece that together yet.

Anyway, let me know what you all think about my theory or if you have any other insight!