Bindings

A branch alone bends. Two bound crosswise hold. The cord is small, but it is the cord that makes the frame.

Lay branches, then lash them with cord or pin them with pegs to build frames, litters and sleds.

Branches laid on the ground can be bound where they cross. Bind enough of them in the right shape and they become something new.

Laying branches

1. Hold a branch in your main hand.
2. Hold Ctrl + right mouse. After a moment a ghost of the branch follows your aim, green where it can lie and red where it cannot.
3. Let go over green to lay it.

To cancel, aim until the ghost turns red, then let go. The branch lies the way you face, its near end at your aim, and fits itself to what is already laid:

• At an end, facing along it, it carries the line on, overlapping. This is a splice.
• At an end, facing across it, it makes a corner, resting on top.
• On the body, facing across it, it crosses at a right angle, at one of ten even places along it.
• Beside it, facing along it, it lies parallel, one, two or three metres apart.

The ground must be level and within two blocks of where you stand, and the branch cannot lie under your feet.

Lashing

1. Have a cord to hand: in either hand, or lying on the ground at the crossing.
2. Look where two laid branches cross or overlap and press B.
3. Hold steady for three seconds. One cord is used, and a knot is tied.

Lashed branches cannot be picked up. Untie them first.

Pegging

A peg and a hammer pin a crossing instead of lashing it. Hold the peg in one hand and the hammer in the other, or lay the peg at the crossing and hold the hammer. Press B. Three strikes drive the peg home.

If you hold a peg and a hammer, you peg, even with cord to hand.

Untying

Empty your main hand, look at a lashed or pegged crossing, and press B. After a moment the cord or peg drops free.

When a binding breaks

If either branch is picked up, burned, or knocked out of place, say by digging the ground beneath it, the binding breaks and the cord is lost.

What bindings make

When a shape is complete it becomes one thing. The branches, cords and pegs go into it.

• Stretching Frame (2 × 2 m). Four 2 m branches in a square, lashed with cord at every corner. Carried with both hands. A frame for drying hides.
• Sled Handle. Four 1 m branches in a square, lashed at every corner.
• Litter Bed (1 × 3 m). Two trimmed 3 m branches laid parallel as runners, with ten trimmed cross-pieces laid over them, each pegged to both runners. Twenty pegs in all. Set a sled handle on it and it becomes a sled.

Only an axe can break up a sled or a litter bed.