Chapter 21
Twenty-One
The greenhouse had been destroyed, but Riini rushed up one of the trees, so quickly that her tendrils barely had time to release one branch before she was grabbing on to the next.
She sprinted to one of the houses and when she returned, she was bearing a delicate silk scarf.
Inside was a handful of roots, and I didn’t need to touch them to realize they were roots from the elder tree.
“This is mother’s scarf,” Sagam said, dumbstruck, turning to Tallu with wide eyes.
Tallu reached out, his fingers nearly touching the roots before he pulled back, hesitating. I didn’t need to hear his voice to know what he was thinking. His touch was poison. House Atobe had killed all the elder trees, and now he dared touch the only hope of their return?
I covered his hand with my own, gently nudging it down until he brushed his fingers over one, carefully picking it up between forefinger and thumb.
“Let me do this task,” Sagam said. “Let me take the risk.”
“I will do it,” I said fiercely. “I cannot let anyone else risk their lives for it.”
I looked at Sagam, the man who had sacrificed his life and his future, to save his sisters. The man who had given up loving Asahi freely in favor of protecting Tallu, and I couldn’t ask any more of him.
“I will grow it myself, but I do need help learning how to do it. Is there anyone here who would offer their knowledge?” I looked over the children, aware that what I was asking wasn’t fair, that they had as little reason to help me as anyone on the continent.
“I will help.” Riini looked down, and Sagam clapped a hand to her shoulder, squeezing once. “I’m the only one here who has ever experienced growing an elder tree before.” She rubbed her hands together before looking around the circle. “But with more of us, perhaps it will cost me less.”
One by one the children stepped forward. The last to move was the eldest, her eyes sharp. “Why should I help them? I watched his grandfather burn our elder trees and the people that tried to protect them. I watched his father steal our parents to work in their mines and lumberyards.”
Carefully, Tallu replaced the elder tree root in the silk handkerchief, lifting the edges to cover the last hope of the elven people. “I can only offer the promise we made to the Pirate King. When we regrow these trees, they will never be burned by the Imperium again. They will be yours entirely.”
Glancing at him sharply, I could see the belief carved into Tallu’s face. Perhaps his dream of fleeing last night had been nothing more than that, a transient wish gone as soon as morning came.
“Come.” I picked a spot nearby. I could feel the elder tree nearby, pulsing like a heartbeat, the thrum of it a distant thunder in my ears.
This time I had the good sense to sit down, the soft earth giving underneath me, already dampening my clothes. The elven children formed a circle with me, Riini sitting next to me and picking a single root out from the handkerchief.
She put it in the center of the circle. For a second, her face fixed in concentration and she clenched her jaw. Then her body relaxed, shoulders slumping. “The memories of the tree are gone. I don’t quite remember what to do.”
She looked helplessly at me, her lip caught between her teeth. I could read worry on her expression. What would I do if she failed?
I gazed up at the trees around us, the houses that the elven children had grown into them. “How did you grow those?”
“It’s hard to explain,” said one of the other children. “You offer the trees something, something it needs, and in exchange, it shapes itself how you want it.”
Riini nodded. “I gave up a year of my life to build that one.”
She pointed upward at the house she had claimed the elder tree roots from. Sagam gasped, but Joxii grabbed his wrist before he could say anything.
“I gave up a tooth for mine.” Another child grinned, showing the gap in her smile.
“I cut away the thistle, burning them so they couldn’t spread.” Another held out her hands, showing the fine scars that crisscrossed her palms.
“So it starts with an offer,” I said thoughtfully.
I closed my eyes, remembering the threads I had seen the night before. With my eyes closed, I could almost sense them. When I reached out, I touched something that vibrated up my arm. It wasn’t a memory, but a skill. My ability to throw a blade accurately, carved into my mind by years of practice.
I released the thread, searching for another. I found it quickly. It was a memory of spring, watching blossoms cover the land from the roof of my mother’s palace. I tore it free, feeling something open in my chest, an ache of sorrow at the loss.
I wrapped the thread around the root, placing my hands over it.
For a moment I hesitated, unsure what to do next.
Riini had started it last time, and neither of us had the knowledge we needed, but then a pair of tiny hands pressed on top of mine, and then another and a third until the entire circle of children was weighing my hands down.
Their magic spooled around us, and I could feel it even if I didn’t understand what they were doing; I could sense the pattern of it, and realized that they had never done the magic by themselves. Just as Sagam couldn’t have done his magic without Joxii beside him.
Elven magic, forest magic, was pulling from all of them even if they didn’t realize it.
One of them made the sacrifice, but just as the tree roots in a forest touch, passing nutrients and knowledge between them, the magic of the elves relied on others.
Their power brushed each other, drawing together to do the task required.
That was why Riini had struggled on her own. She could no more grow the elder tree by herself than I could sail a massive fishing vessel by myself. Only when I had joined, with Na? and Lady Chaliko adding to our number, had the children’s task become possible.
Something heated under my palms, the root moving like a living thing before it sank down into the earth, shifting as it grew.
For a moment, I thought the single memory would be enough, but it was clear that memory was insufficient, so I reached for more. A memory of Spoiled Brat lounging in my bed, his tongue hanging from between his jaws.
The tree grew, and the children shrieked, scattering.
I wondered what the tree would give me this time, but I already knew. In my mind, the knowledge of elven magic opened like the first spring blossoms. The elder tree the night before had given me a taste, but now I knew in my bones what to do next.
I no longer needed to use the children and their magic.
I could do it myself. The elven magic thrived with more people—it was a forest, one entity made of many trees—but I could do it without them.
The dark parts of the magic called to me, the darkness of the deep forest, where trees grew on the corpses of the ones who had fallen before.
Someone could practice the magic by themselves, as Riini had, but she had been too young, too childish to know what was needed beyond her instinct. The elder tree showed me the way, the swirling promise of magic like the fluorescent vines that had nearly drowned us on our way to shore.
I stood, grabbing the silk scarf from Riini. I strode away, ignoring the voices calling out for me.
Selecting the next root, I placed it on the ground and weighed it down with my hands.
The way to reach that dark part of the magic, the part that needed no other trees to make a forest, was simple.
I needed to give up more than my memories, I needed to give up the feeling that always curled around my heart, dulling my love for Tallu, weighing down my loyalty to my mother.
I chose another memory at random, pressing it into the root, my hands nearly sinking into the spongy soil with the root.
When the children had grown their little houses, their echoes of the village the Imperium had stolen from them, they had gifted the trees more than their teeth and their labor.
They had given the trees their grief, the pain in their hearts that was unending and as rich as the finest compost.
They might not even understand, they might only know that they had sacrificed, but they had grown something and taking that action had helped them feel lighter.
But I understood. I poured my grief at losing my home into the root, and under my hands it became a sapling and then a tree, blocking out the sun, rising above the pale willows around it.
I was already moving, even as the children circled the tree, pressing their hands into it, gasping in wonder at the gifts it provided, the memories of their people, the knowledge of generations of elves.
I found another spot, placing a root in the ground and choosing a memory of my sister, when I had caught her crying one night, when she had asked me why we needed to be sacrificed and I had repeated what our mother always said, ignoring the pallor of her skin, the crescents she had cut into her palms with her nails.
I poured my grief into the soil, giving it away, and realized that in giving it away, I was letting other emotions take hold inside me. Without grief, I began to feel forgiveness, but also anger. How dare our mother demand this of us?
How dare she ask children to fight her war for her? Were we worth so little?
I grabbed another root, running away from the hands that tried to hold on to my shoulders, shoving the root into the ground, placing with it a memory of my mother stroking my hair and singing me a lullaby, even though I was long past the age where I needed such comfort to fall asleep.
I had been sacrificing for so long, grieving a future for my country that would never come to pass now that I had Tallu by my side, and all that left room for in my heart was anger at the woman who had demanded it, at the nation that had not been strong enough to defend itself against the Southern Imperium, and so had claimed my sister and me as sacrifice.