Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Why did you bring me here?” I screamed at Harold, knowing as I said it, it was the other way around. He’d grabbed me because I was on my way to the Garden, and he wanted entrance.
I had brought him.
I dug my fingers into the soil. The curse words had disappeared from my arm. We had to be dead to enter the Garden.
Am I dead?
“You should not be here,” Ranth said, appearing from the forest, his bare feet leaving a trail of dewdrop footprints in the grass.
His pants were leafy green and gathered at the ankles.
The filtered light glinted off the symbol tattooed on the center of his gleaming chest, blurring the shape.
My fingers flexed. If I was dead, maybe I didn’t care.
He flowed and glowed in the air as if he were part of the Garden itself.
“You…”
“I’m home. Thanks to you. But you should not be here.” His voice was inside of my head.
I was sure Harold didn’t hear him because Harold was talking over him. “Collector, I wish to…”
Ranth turned to Harold, but his voice didn’t seem his. “You have broken the rules, and you know well what those rules are.”
Harold dropped to his knees. “Please, I wish to be tested. I have done things of merit to offset the ill. I helped you return here. I believe I will be found worthy. I beseech you to allow me to test.” He stretched out his arms in front of him and kept his face to the ground.
“It is not my decision,” Ranth replied. But in my head, he added, “Sorrel, you must be sent back before your earthly body fails.”
My heart skipped. “I’m not dead then? But I’m dying?”
“Your spirit is here, and without it, your body will decay. As if you spent too long in the planar space, you could not return to the earth. It is the same.”
I looked at my hands. They didn’t have the planar thinness. I was here and solid. How was that possible, and how long could I stay here?
With Harold on the ground pleading, “Please, mercy,” it was hard to think at all.
Ranth’s voice soaked into me like coconut oil on sun-warm skin. “I need to take care of you first, but Harold’s presence will drag on me until the decision is made.”
He knelt down in front of Harold and touched the ground. Roots wrapped up Ranth’s wrists, and his eyes glowed greenish brown. His husky voice amplified, as if his words were someone else’s. “If you wish to be tested, then choose a tree to climb, and we shall see how far you get.”
I hugged myself with shaking hands. The voice—so not Ranth’s—was so powerful it pulled my will from me, turning me insignificant. No power should be that absolute, but here it was, controlling Ranth. And like Harold, I was at its mercy.
Harold crawled toward the forest groveling, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
To see this grand man, who Ranth had called Eminence, reduced to a pathetic desperation turned him unworthy for whatever he desired most. I anchored my attention to Ranth. “I… I want to find the Sisters.”
Ranth stood up. “That’s not possible. Only the spirits can travel to them. You would have to leave your life behind.”
“If I’m here and we visited Harold’s construct, then there must be a way to walk to other worlds.”
“Harold’s world was designed to be entered by a portal. You are here because we were cursed together. But your entrance to the Garden removed that curse.”
My tattoo was gone. “But you could travel to the other world?”
“Technically, but I can’t—”
“Then I want it back. I want the curse back so I can travel,” I called out to the sky.
Ranth’s voice was like a brush of sage leaves. “You don’t, Sorrel. I need to send you home. I need you to be safe.”
I dropped to the ground in front of him. “Please? You shouldn’t have taken the curse from me without my permission. I want it back. If the Garden is about goodness and light, then it can’t decide for me. It would be wrong.”
Ranth knelt down, inches from me, his arms slipping around me. “Sorrel…”
“I know what I’m doing. I want this. Help me. You owe me your life. You owe me a favor. Remember?” I cupped his cheek and kissed him with salty tears.
He pulled back, wiping his lips. “All right, my heart, I will ask. But remember, you made me a promise too. Regardless of the answer, when I tell you it’s time to go, you must promise me that you will leave.”
My heart was in my throat, choking me as his eyes met mine. I nodded my agreement. Tears poured freely as he buried a hand in the ground. The roots grew again, but this time they grew higher and higher until they were at his shoulders and then wrapping around his neck.
The voice that wasn’t his boomed out. “I will not bring back your curse. You must return to your place, and you will forget this one.”
I fought against my fear and lifted my chin up. “No. You can’t deny me the curse if I want it back.”
“You want?” the voice boomed, and the air crackled with energy like after a storm. “As you wish.”
Ranth pulled out his hand and fell back on the grass. “Don’t do this, Sorrel. Tell them you’ve changed your mind. There’s no way of knowing what the curse will do untethered…” His eyes pleaded with the words he couldn’t say.
Whispers filled my head, and I sank back to my knees. I covered my ears, but the whispers didn’t go away. The ground rumbled, and they grew louder. Then I saw it.
A serpent, monstrous in size with the head of a cobra and a tongue that darted in and out, slithered toward us. The whispery sound was from its scales, slinking across the grass.
“Stop,” I screamed, terrified of the monster approaching but also by what I had asked for. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to give up the chance to save my mother from the Sisters. If the curse allowed me to world walk, then I needed to have it back.
Ranth rested his head in his hands as if he had a terrible headache.
“You asked for your curse. Only the Serpent can grant it—it is that which guards the gates and the Trees. Your curse was lifted from you to purify you for the ascent here. But now that you are leaving, he could return it. But Sorrel, why?”
“Because it will allow me to come back. To find you again.”
Ranth shook his head. “Mine is also gone. We aren’t linked anymore.”
“It can’t be gone because I feel you. Your voice is in my head.”
“That’s because we are together in the Garden.”
My heart shattered. “But you brought me here. The curse did. It pulled me through and allowed me to travel here.”
“It sucked you here because mine was being removed.”
The world began to lose color. “It can’t be that. It…” I gasped. If his curse was gone, and we weren’t linked, then I’d never see him again.
This was it—the last time. The thought strangled me.
“Sorrel, it doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry,” Ranth said, eyes glistening.
I threw myself at his chest. “Come back with me.”
His arms wrapped around me. “I can’t, and you know you don’t want that. I put you and all your friends at risk. The world at risk. My place is here, and I wished for this position. In another life, another time…”
I clung to him, sobbing. “But I need you. There are things you haven’t taught me yet.” My voice cracked.
Sandalwood and amber mingled with crushed leaves in spring rain. I sucked in breaths, willing it to memory.
He stepped back, grasping my shoulders so he could look into my eyes. My heart shattered. I snuffled and swiped at my nose.
He pressed his right hand over my heart.
“You know your strength comes from here. That’s the place you always need to start.
” I caught it and turned it over, kissing his palm and then bringing it to my cheek.
Tendrils of golden light surged in my veins.
He staggered forward, and our lips met. The taste of him was sweet and green, like fresh wheatgrass juiced with apples and cucumbers.
My cells filled with it like a summer cactus getting the first winter rain. I drank him in.
“You are bonded?” A breeze whipped across the Garden, scattering leaves and petals. We broke apart, and I gasped at the chill that settled on me as Ranth stumbled away.
“What does he mean by bonded?” I whispered.
“You are promised, bonded, connected?” The voice came again.
“No longer,” Ranth replied. His shoulders squared, and his spine straightened as he faced the unseen voice.
“If you have touched a mortal after ascending, then you are unworthy to be a guardian.”
A combination of fury and despair ripped through me. “Wait, what? They already accepted you back.”
“I was accepted to be tested for my position.”
“You mean you have to climb a tree? Like Harold?”
“The test for guardians is different. That also explains why Rei and Kell aren’t here.
I must not be accepted yet. But…” Ranth turned toward the forest and crouched down on the grass.
He lowered his head and placed his hands reverently together in front of him.
“Are you saying you won’t accept my petition? ”
“You are the chosen one, but you have changed. I do not know the outcome.”
“Explain what’s going on,” I demanded of the Trees.
They didn’t respond. Ranth rose from the grass and turned to me. “This is my journey to take, alone. You only have hours left in your time, and your friends are in danger. You must go back. Besides, you can’t be sure Fabra isn’t killing you right now out of fury.”
Ranth was right. Fabra could murder everyone I knew. My family and friends might die if I didn’t return to take my place. Who would fight the demons that came through? Hundreds might die because I wasn’t there.
But not my mother, for she was already dead. The best I could hope for was to release whatever husk of her was left behind and allow her to ascend to the next spiritual level. I had a plan, but I didn’t know if it would work.
“Okay, I’ll go back. Send me back. You’ve convinced me.” With fear and uncertainty sticking in my throat, I thrust out my arm, expecting the words to reappear. The ground rumbled as a massive presence, which I assumed must be The Serpent, moved toward us. I widened my stance to remain standing.
A colossal misty creature appeared in front of us. Not quite a snake or dragon, its scales shone of sunlight, shifting as it undulated, making it impossible to determine a true form.
Shaking with the enormity of its energy, I cowered, protecting my head as Ranth stepped next to me. “The curse can’t bring you back to the Garden. If the Serpent can return your portion, the tattoo will appear in your world.”
“But it won’t link us again?”
Ranth shook his head.
I wasn’t sure what good it would do then, but something was telling me it was the only way I could get to my mom. I wasn’t happy to leave Ranth, but his place wasn’t with me.
“Fine, what do I need to do?”
Ranth smiled; my fingers ached to stroke the little hairs on his jaw. To feel the silkiness of his skin. But that chance was over.
“You’ll need to embrace the Serpent.”
“You mean hug that?” I blinked at the terrifying scaled entity looming over us.
“Your touch will allow it to give you the curse back. You’ll have to trust me.”
Those two words hung in the air. Trust me. I did trust him.
Hands balled up for extra courage, I approached the Serpent.
Its scales glistened silvery black and bronzy brown with a belly of the cream of…
camel’s milk. The voice in my head was Ranth’s.
I reached out with my palms flat as he had done to the grass.
The Serpent’s scales were like wet shale, and my hands slid over them.
Then with a flash of green leaves and a glimmer of dusky rose, the belly of the serpent split open and sucked me into a vortex where thought couldn’t track.
My skin seared with light, blinding me; my nose filled with the scents of sweet fruit, dusky resin, and stone.