Pricklewit

Pricklewits are native to overgrown garden margins, ruined orchards and the edges of wild hedgerows where soil is rich with rot. Folk tales claim they are the spiteful offspring of thorns that fed on a forgotten curse; more sensible herbalists trace their rise to wetlands and compost heaps where wilting thistle and nettles mingle with old magic. They breed in loose colonies, each centered on a favored clump of stony soil or a hollow stump filled with leaf mold. Gardeners hate and begrudgingly respect Pricklewits. The Guild of Verdant Tenders keeps a small dossier on them—notes record that Pricklewits occasionally trade for sugar and shiny buttons, and that their mischief increases in the company of feral fae. Marla Hemsworth, a hedgewitch of Brindle Row, swears a Pricklewit once saved her youngest from a stray fox in exchange for a jar of honey, demonstrating they are mischief-driven rather than mindlessly cruel. Vigorous weeding, iron tools, and a calm voice often dissuade them; fire and draining their chosen compost pile will drive a colony away, sometimes for good.

Pricklewits stand roughly 1 to 2 feet tall when upended and crouch like a compact tumble of thistle and bramble. Their bodies are a woven lattice of fibrous stem and dry pith, mottled greens and purple-brown; tiny, bark-like plates overlap over a soft core. Limbs are vine-thin and jointed with knobby nodes, ending in three hooked, thornlike digits. A low crown of stiff barbed leaves grows around a face of seedling eyes—two black beads set above a puckered seedpod mouth. Their surface bristles with fine, needlelike spines that glitter when disturbed. For scale: a Pricklewit is about knee-high to an average human and is often pictured perched on a garden fencepost or crawling out of a watering can.