11
Aspen
At midnight the next eventide, I got ready to break the law… again.
Shadows crept across our cottage, draping the cupboards in shadows. A hollow pumpkin sat on the windowsill, glowing from a candle that bloomed inside its womb.
Overhead, the attic stood quiet. Fastening the tassels of my cloak, I tiptoed from my bedroom and climbed the steps, each wooden plank creaking beneath my feet. At the threshold, I nudged open the door, the hinges squeaking.
The sleeping figure rested on a cot across from the workbench, her legs entangled in a plaid blanket.
Because we had little space, and the weapons forge was usually too humid for woodworking, this attic served as a carpentry shop.
Sawdust powdered the floor, and tack cloths piled on the workbench, along with an unfinished set of drawers.
My throat swelled as I inventoried the chisels, plough planes, and half-completed projects, including small tables and chairs.
At least she was still trying.
As I stepped near, the figure stirred. A hemp apron clung to her waist, and twin braids climbed up the sides of her head. Though, some of them had broken free, creating a frazzled arch around her face.
When her eyes opened and found me, that bleary smile made my throat swell. The sight drew me to her, coaxing me to kneel beside the cot.
“Mama,” I whispered.
“Aspen,” she breathed. “There you are.”
“Here I am.”
Those eyes shone with fear, which took Mama someplace I couldn’t reach.
“I dreamed of the woods. The trees crushed you with their branches.” She lifted herself partway from the cot, protectiveness flashing in her pupils.
“It’s a message, I know it. If they come near you, so help me I’ll take them down myself. ”
“Mama, the trees don’t want to punish me,” I soothed. “Even so, I know how to defend myself. You taught me, remember?”
Pride sharpened her features. “That, I did.”
Mostly true. I had trained myself to wield the axe, but we’d practiced together.
I crossed my arms over the mattress, rested my chin atop my wrists, and murmured, “I’m leaving on a quest.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Where? What for?”
“I can’t say where exactly. It’s confidential and for the greater good.” Since I’d never outright lie to Mama, technically this was all true. “If you promise to take care of yourself until I’m back, I’ll bring you a souvenir.”
“No.” Vehement, she shook her head. “I don’t need anything. Only you.”
My eyes watered, but I covered it with a smile. “Likewise. But this pilgrimage is worth it. Do you trust me?”
“Always,” she quoted.
“And forever,” I finished.
“But it’s dangerous to venture far on your own. If you must go, I’ll join you.”
When she moved to rise, I set my hands on her shoulders. “You can’t.”
“I can, and I shall. Like hell will I let you make the trek without a guardian.”
“The Almighty Seasons have tasked me for this alone.”
If one looked at this symbolically, that was also true. At any rate, it worked. Mama wavered, then grasped my cheeks, stroking the foliage motifs germinating across my skin. “Then hone your axe,” she coached. “Mind the trees. And come back to me.”
I nodded into her touch. “Anything for you.”
After I guided Mama into her chamber and tucked the quilt beneath her chin, she passed out once more. Thankfully, it didn’t take much. I brushed a kiss to her temple and gently closed the door.
In the hallway, I blew out the pumpkin candle. My nose twitched as smoke curled from the wick, and I jerked the curtains closed.
Creeping to the first floor, I collected my axe. Stain gradients from the grip to the handle shoulder. Beveled edges with perfect curvature. A fierce tool of beauty.
But just to be sure, I picked an object off the fireplace mantel. Heavy and oval-shaped, with a patina surface nicked in silver specks.
My thumb caressed the whetstone. After years of frequent use, each pass of the blade’s edge scoured my heart with memories of a knight extending this present to me.
I gave the axe a quick run through until the rim glinted. Through the blade’s surface, my reflection stared back, symbols etching my countenance like the tangled roots and leaves of a fabled tree.
Mama had told me the story. While carrying me inside her womb, she’d been traveling and happened upon the great oak. Admiring its beauty, Mama chopped off one of the tree’s lower branches, intent on crafting a future weapon for me, something I would wield later in life.
Lore spoke of sentient trees in that region of Autumn. According to Mama, the oak bristled. Harvesting from the bark without permission was sacrilege to such trees, but she’d fled before the enraged oak could snatch her.
The incident haunted Mama throughout her pregnancy.
Out of fear of retribution, she hid the piece of wood in a chest, never daring to construct that weapon for me.
But on the day her water broke, she’d been rummaging through that compartment and cut her finger on an oaken splinter.
By sunrise the next day, I greeted this world with markings scrawled across my infant skin.
The discovery plagued Mama, which intensified over the years. Although I found the motifs beautiful, she believed the tree had branded me as a target, out of punishment for Mama’s deeds. From there, she concluded every tree in Autumn scorned Mama on the oak’s behalf and sought to harm her daughter.
The foliage imprints identified me as the oak’s future victim. Mama feared someday the trees of Autumn would have their compensation and kill me. While I grew up, she restricted me from attending school, making friends, or leaving the cottage for longer than a few minutes.
Did I buy any of this? Yes and no.
Nature had magic. It blessed and cursed people in different ways.
Some people learned to communicate with each other when they shouldn’t be able to, the atmosphere channeling their words to each other the way it did between Jeryn and Flare.
Although the female couldn’t speak, the couple heard her voice in a way the rest of us couldn’t.
Other people developed bonds with the fauna like Nicu.
Or they read signs in the wind like Aire.
The oak’s reaction to Mama was plausible. But reigning figures of nature attacked on their own, not in packs like wolves. Every tree in Autumn wasn’t out for my blood, merely to avenge its kin. Otherwise, I’d be dead by now.
To me, the curse had nothing to do with aesthetics or assassination. It had to do with pain. The markings hurt whenever I cried onto the symbols or heard any mention of the tree. But even that wasn’t the issue.
No, the problem was the imprints also stung whenever I threw myself into battle. That made it agonizing to fight, hindering the ability to protect myself.
That was the oak’s true punishment.
Still, I managed. I handled my shit like everyone did in this world.
I couldn’t protect Mama from herself. But I could protect her physically. So while growing up, I drafted and forged my axe, making improvements to its construction along the way, and fell in love with the craft of smithing.
As for Mama, she’d grown traumatized by the past. Her mental state deteriorated to the point where she stopped woodworking and once chained me to my bedpost when I was nine so I wouldn’t leave our home. Formerly the Master Carpenter of this nation, she became a husk of herself.
To pacify Mama’s worries, I started wearing the hooded cloak. I made this decision shortly after the bedpost-chaining episode.
Slowly, she loosened the reins on me. But the warnings were always the same whenever I stepped outside. “Don’t let the trees see you.”
So the cloak evolved into a shield. The ultimate falsehood.
Lies became safer than the truth, soothing Mama’s phobias. I told her what she wanted to hear, then told others what I wanted them to hear. Eventually, those lies led to more, and more, and more.
To this day, Rhys wouldn’t have known about Mama’s condition if not for the Masters. Profiting off this knowledge, they forced me to carry out their dirty work, such as killing Merit in The Shadow Orchard.
Now His Royal Fuckwit expected me to extract information from Aire about his mission.
Though the king wasn’t a patient man, he’d gotten used to my messages coming at a slow rate.
Additionally, Summer’s army kept Rhys busy, and he’d finally stopped assigning minions to randomly monitor our home.
I had become a trusted source, enabling the king to parcel his cult off to greener pastures.
Based on those factors, I had a month before Rhys would follow up.
Thirty days to end this charade. Thirty days to take him down.
Mama never shared the whereabouts of that infamous tree.
No matter how many times I had asked, she feared I would go searching for it.
But the second Briar shared her own tale, the pain in my skin had flared.
And because this happened whenever someone talked about the tree of my origins, everything became clear.
Briar’s tree. Mama’s tree.
One and the same. It had to be.
From there, another uncanny clue had jogged my memory. Chiefly, it circulated around Rhys’s note today.
“My reserves have no geographical boundaries. More importantly, they’re loyal. They bow to kings. Not to old Autumn trees.”
Bowing for old Autumn trees. Spiritually, this statement could apply to any species. But only one stung my flesh, as it had when I read the note.
Two physical reactions on the same day. So now I knew where to find his spy camp. And I knew how to get there.
Only one thing was missing.
I packed the whetstone into a satchel, harnessed the axe, and opened the back door. Outside, a weather vane swiveled atop our gable roof. The second story overhang jutted like a pouting lip, twilight bathing the timber and plaster in an iridescent sheen.
In the front yard, I stopped beside a birdhouse. Constructed of multiple levels along a tree trunk, it included swings and ladders.
I leaned one shoulder against the tree and knocked three times. Rap rap rap.
In response, Peck peck peck .
An avian launched from one of the holes, her short wings flapping. The woodpecker twirled in front of my nose, a half-disc of red feathers running along the length of her skull, like the comb of a helmet.
The indignant bird unleashed a hoarse string of tchurs .
The Masters had once mocked my kinship with this little avian in front of Poet and Briar, years back when the jester and princess infiltrated them.
But to hell with those rotting ghosts, who’d had less imagination than their former status implied.
I ran a finger across the woodpecker’s plumes. “Take care of her.”
The avian blinked its pebble eyes, then spiraled around my head and darted through Mama’s bedroom window.
She flew faster than an arrow, her beak stabbed deeper than a blade, and she maintained a kinship with local birds-of-prey.
In an emergency, she offered the next best line of defense while I was gone.
I trekked through the beech forest and stashed my pack out of sight, then halted at the border. Corn and wheat stalks flanked the exposed brick road. Like the day before, no way was I taking Briar’s shortcut through The Wandering Fields. If I went in, I might never come out.
The watch knew me, and I had clearance into the stronghold. However, strutting past the guards wasn’t an option tonight. Not unless I wanted witnesses.
I sealed my eyes shut, hating this, hating Rhys, and hating that oak.
Then I ducked into the half-light, migrating from the brick road and harvest fields to the maple pasture.
Red leaves dripped from the boughs, the rich color gleaming through the eventide.
Taking into account every access point and blockade, I scurried across the grass to one of the maple trunks, as I had yesterday.
Flattening my palm against a ridge in the bark, I pushed inward, then twisted my wrist counterclockwise.
The silhouette ruptured. The outline of a door split open.
This particular route trenched beneath the moat and ascended into the west tower, the patrol stationed a good thirty feet from the tunnel’s exit. Checking the perimeter, I slinked from the tree and shut the partition, then craned my head toward the sky, where a fleet of hawks circled.
I counted each synchronized flight until the birds scattered to the east wing, then I sprinted to the closest entrance. A guard with skin like a flaky pie crust manned the entrance, a single-edged glaive braced in his thick fist.
Slipping out my axe, I blew out a focused breath. Then I released the weapon, letting it fly. Tumbling over itself, the hatchet slammed into the door inches behind his head.
By the time he jerked toward the thud, I scuttled behind him. And before he completed the full rotation, I tore the axe from the door, thank you very much.
While the baffled man inspected the empty space, I vanished into the corridor. Torch flames writhed from brackets. Distant voices floated from alcoves. As I crossed a network of hallways, a clammy draft flew past my clothes, and rugs cushioned my footfalls.
Beyond a gallery of pastoral oil paintings, a towering door rose to the rafters. I worked the complex latches, which entailed a sequence only the clan knew. Next, a wide stairwell plummeted into the earth.
At the landing, a set of double doors loomed. An iron crest of bronze leaves, gilded stalks, intersecting axes, and red fox decorated the surface.
The relic vault.
Briar’s ladies and Flare once teased the princess about this place. The banter revolved around Poet and a record-breaking round of smut.
I studied the layout. No padlocks, chains, or clasps. No need for a key. Instead, the vault required a code. This came from the intricately patterned brick flooring that led to the doors, which camouflaged the correct path, which must be taken in the right order.
One false move, and the floor would trap me. One wrong choice would trigger a mechanism, and the false brick would sink, enabling clamps to lock around my ankle until security arrived.
Sweat bridged across my forehead. I extended my leg to the first slab, yet the brick stayed put.
Okay. Next step. Next one.
Left, left, left, right. Backward, backward, forward. Side to side.
An eternity later, I hit the final step. With a series of interior clicks, the sliding doors reeled apart like curtains, the panels disappearing into wall slots. Relief washed over me as I swept inside, then halted as a dark figure filled the entrance.