Chapter 17
Seventeen
Time did not tell. Barely two days later, Oaklin lurched out of bed with a barely contained shout, awoken just after dawn by the sound of frantic pounding at the door.
“Oaklin! Oaklin, it’s Grer’s daughter, Ulana, please, open up!”
Oaklin threw off the covers and raced to the door, stumbling over their feet in their half-awake daze. They flung the door open to see a young girl of about fourteen panting just outside, a horse’s lead clutched in one hand, her trousers soaked from the knee down.
“My daddy and Ms. Chanda sent me,” she said. “Our whole field… They came and…can you—”
“Just take a second and breathe,” Oaklin said, and the irony of them being the one to say those words was not lost. “Your whole field what? Is it sawbugs?”
She nodded, catching her breath. “No one’s ever seen anything like it.
There’s so many. They ate up the entire squash field overnight.
Ms. Chanda said if we don’t get ’em contained while they’re all in one place, they’ll spread to all the other farms. Daddy said you can help.
Will you come? You can ride with me. Please. ”
Oaklin’s sleep-addled brain struggled to comprehend… And then, all at once, did, jolting them frighteningly awake.
“Oh! I, um, I…”
I can’t was all they wanted to say. I can’t do this. I’m not ready. It’s too soon, it’s too soon—
“It’s not too soon,” Granny’s voice whispered in their ear, barely there. “You can do this, Oaklin. You have to do this. The village needs you. Go.”
Oaklin burst into motion.
“I need to get some supplies,” they said, dashing back into the house. “Be ready to go!”
Inside, Oaklin threw their nightshirt off, checked that their chest bindings were still secure—they’d been too exhausted to remove them before bed—and dressed as quickly as their shaking hands would allow. Granny hovered nearby, speaking more quickly than Oaklin had ever heard her.
“Normally I’d have you do this with only the components naturally available to you in the field,” she said.
“But those elements are unlikely to be present in sufficient quantities for a full infestation, and you’ll need the extra power.
I know we haven’t done much work using external components to boost your spellwork, but it’ll be critical for this attempt. ”
Oaklin grabbed their bag from beside the door and shoved their arcane focus inside, along with the list of spell components Granny rattled off: dried native plants harvested from the border of the forest, jars of water from the creek, crushed flower petals, tiny pebbles that had all looked alike to Oaklin at the start, though they knew better now, and more beyond.
It had taken them months to build up the collection.
“Am I really going to need all of this?” they asked even as they stuffed the last of the jars into their bag. “If I use up all my supplies, then how will I…”
They trailed off, realizing partway through that it didn’t matter. This needed doing. If they needed help later, someone would help them. Grer’s family needed help now.
Granny nodded as if reading Oaklin’s thoughts—maybe she was—and then came forward in a blink, her ghostly hands hovering a breath away from cupping Oaklin’s jaw.
“You can do this,” she said. “Trust yourself. You’ve practiced this exact spell. You can take care of these people. Go.”
For a fleeting instant, Oaklin could swear they saw fierce gray eyes meeting theirs, rock steady and absolutely certain. They blinked, and Granny was gone.
Time to go.
Outside, Oaklin briefly considered retrieving Grumpy Horse from the barn for the ride, but it would take more time, and Ulana was already mounted bareback atop a towering, muscled beast of a horse, shifting and antsy.
She held out a hand for Oaklin, and so without any further hesitation, they allowed themself to be half hauled onto the horse by a surprisingly strong fourteen-year-old farm girl.
They were barely settled when Ulana urged the horse into motion, as fast as he could go while carrying two slim but solid humans.
Oaklin hung on for dear life, their legs spread uncomfortably wide over the broadest part of the horse as they ran through the uses of their various spell components to distract from the very real possibility of falling to the road and eating dirt.
Eventually, the village came into view, a shadowy hulking form on the horizon.
In normal times, they would loop all the way around to avoid any chance of running over pedestrians.
As it was, Ulana cut through a section of the eastern side, guiding the horse carefully through back streets with a sure hand on the reins and a lantern in her other hand to signal their approach.
Oaklin had never seen the village at night before, though the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon and signs abounded of a village slowly waking for the day.
The heavy perfume of Ryn’s morning baking already hung in the air as he no doubt worked to ensure his displays would be well stocked at opening.
The horse weaved around the midwife as she hurried down a side street, kit clutched at her side and apprentice running to keep up behind her.
Somewhere, a rooster crowed, then crowed again, distant enough it was barely audible above the hoof beats.
They broke free of the streets, the lantern disappeared, and the horse summoned a last effort to speed up his steps at Ulana’s urging.
The rising sun was just beginning to kiss the side of Grer’s barn when the farm came into view, along with the small crowd of people standing on the outskirts of a field.
Oaklin spotted Ms. Chanda, Alin, Bram, Grer, his partner, and a few other younger folks who must be their other kids.
Ms. Chanda was the first to spot their approach, turning to point, then bending her head to speak to the children, who sprinted to meet them.
The horse came to a halt, breath heaving, and Oaklin half slid, half fell off his back, stumbling several steps until their legs recovered from the ride.
Once they could safely walk without bowed legs, they headed straight for the group while the children led the horse away for water and feed.
Grer took several urgent steps forward, hand outstretched for a firm shake.
“Thanks for comin’,” he said by way of greeting. “It’s bad, Oaklin. We’re already done for, but we’re hoping you might be able to contain them, at least, before they can spread to the rest of the village.”
Anxiety twisted in the empty pit of Oaklin’s stomach, a collapsing sinkhole of guilt and regret that threatened to drag them tumbling down into a spiraling void. If only they’d been better, been faster, been less useless and damaged—
No.
Something that was sounding less and less like Granny and more like Oaklin’s own voice broke through the crashing wave to draw in a breath of fresh clarity. This was a time for action. Self-recrimination could wait.
“Can you show me the damage?” Oaklin said, proud of their relatively steady voice.
Grer pressed his lips together and gestured to the empty fields next to the huddle of concerned farmers. “’Fraid there’s not much left to show. You’re looking at it.”
Oaklin frowned and moved closer, uncomprehending as they squinted at the field in the dim, barely there golden spill of first light.
At first, their eyes could only perceive the vast amounts of empty soil in the rows and the footpaths between them.
Then, the details snapped into focus, and once they saw one, they couldn’t unsee the rest: rows and rows of desiccated, skeletal plant carcasses lying limp on the ground, shivering in a haunting, jerky dance—not in the breeze, Oaklin realized with sudden horror, for the early morning wind was still against their skin.
They danced with the crawling, ravenous sinuation of thousands upon thousands of insects.
Oaklin’s stomach roiled as they surveyed the damage; the path the sawbugs had taken through the rows of squash was clear, starting at the southern end and stripping row after row, leaving behind only the feathery veins of the leaves and limp stems sucked dry of their water and sugar content.
It was catastrophic. A complete crop loss for the year.
“There are so many,” Oaklin breathed, the horror creeping along their skin like spindly insect legs. “How are there so many?”
“Boom year as predicted,” Bram said with the face of a man deeply unhappy to be correct. “Plus that storm we got the other day. Their life cycle gets triggered by wet conditions and hot weather. Inevitable, really.”
Oaklin’s heart gave a painful lurch as they took in the hollow-eyed horror of Grer’s partner, Mina, her hands caked with dirt from some failed attempt at saving the field. Grer placed a gentle hand over her pregnant belly as he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come soon enough to save them,” Oaklin whispered, almost too quiet to be heard among the hum of the sawbugs.
Grer nodded, accepting their apology without platitudes. “You’re here now. Please do what you can.”
Oaklin nodded, moving to the edge of the field and unloading their bag, opening each jar so its contents would be readily available. The same stray thoughts continued to batter at the edges of Oaklin’s mind like a frantic bird slamming into glass.
Useless.
Selfish.
Broken.
Evil.
Oaklin acknowledged each one and brushed it away, running through the needed spellwork like a mantra instead.
The pebbles first, to provide guiding anchors for the spell.
Save the water for last. They knew what needed to be done, in theory.
They picked up their arcane focus with hands that would not stop trembling.
“Oh, for grain’s sake,” they hissed, shooting a glance over their shoulder.
Everyone was watching. Waiting.
Oaklin took a deep breath. Another.
Their hands stilled.