Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
The willow was so far and yet so close. Austin called her name, urging her on.
Hyacinth made the mistake of turning to see why he wasn’t racing ahead.
Hand to claw, he struggled to keep the snapping maw of Sabine from closing around his jugular.
Hyacinth tilted toward him only for him to bellow, “GO! She can’t hurt me! She needs you!”
Hyacinth was slapped by the rain on one side, then sucked into the side of the fence.
A cry of pain was pulled out of her lungs as she felt the bones in her shoulder blades crunch.
Something small but important snapped. She heard it echo in her skull.
Putting her hands and feet against the fence, she peeled herself off the metal.
When she looked out, the tornado’s funnel was right by the fence, little hands made of vines and dark clouds reached for her.
They grabbed at any inch of her they could get.
Tearing, ripping, shredding, their grubby fingers took a chunk of her hair along with parts of her dress.
The fabric didn’t even fight them, melting off her like wet tissue paper.
Hyacinth fell into a massive puddle in the yard in only her underdress.
Feet kicking at the slimy mud beneath her, she propelled herself across the grass. When the wind grew stronger, she clawed her way through the mud. Rain pummeled her, weighing her down till she was crawling on her hands and knees.
Thief!
That’s all the warning she got before bloody fingers got ahold of her hair and wrenched her back.
Hyacinth screamed, flailing arms and legs as she was sucked back into the fence.
Another crack told her something else snapped.
The shock of it caused her to yell. There was no actual pain.
Either she was too numb from the cold rain that froze her down to the bone, or it didn’t count when it was ghost hands of Sabine’s victims.
Hyacinth grit her teeth, peeling herself off the metal bars a second time before Sabine could attack again.
“This is MY body!” Hyacinth shrieked against the roar of the storm.
Sabine’s eyes flashed as four bolts of lightning hit the ground outside the house.
Hyacinth wrenched herself out of the hands of the wind funnel and dug her toes into the mud beneath her.
This isn’t her. Hyacinth knew for a fact, seeing the skin flaking off the Sabine’s cheek, made of nothing but dead debris.
This was a makeshift dryad. This was a vessel…
but it wasn’t Sabine. “And I won’t let you have it! ”
Sabine’s creature hunched over, mouth open to bare all her teeth at Hyacinth as she screamed.
Hyacinth knew better. Fighting this creature was useless.
It wasn’t Sabine. She broke left, pumping her arms and racing for the willow tree.
She heard the creature following her, the sound of it crashing through the puddles filled Hyacinth with panic.
Her veins vibrated, full of angry wasps and locusts as she leapt over roots and knocked over flowerpots.
The tornado snatched up most of the debris from around her, trying to take her with it.
And it would have if Austin didn’t come out of the rain and rammed himself into Sabine’s creation.
It howled as he pressed it into the fence with his shoulder.
Hyacinth didn’t turn back at that time. She kept her eye on the tree as Austin turned the thing into paste.
It’s shrieking died with a clap of thunder.
Hyacinth had no plan. Had no idea what she was doing.
Had nothing but pure instinct as she threw herself through the air and the spindly branches of the willow.
Her arms wrapped around the thick trunk, burrowing her fingernails into its bark. Heaving for air, she begged the willow, “Be my grove! Please, you’ve got to be my grove.”
Nothing.
The tornado’s continued to rip up everything. The rain dumped viciously over their heads. And dread crept up her spine.
Come on!
Hyacinth snarled, kicking her legs against the tree. “Please! You’ve got to be my tree! I need a tree!”
Nothing. The willow stood, unchanged and uncaring.
Hyacinth cried out, pulling back. Water stung her eyes as she slapped at the tree.
“Please! I don’t know what I’m doing! Or how to be a grove witch!
But I can’t let her hurt more people. You have to be my tree!
Please…Please!” She shrieked in frustration, punching the tree.
The vibrations ran up her arm and caused her to stumble.
Hyacinth fell to her knees at the base of the willow, scraping her palms down the bark. She didn’t care that it ripped up her skin, or that it smeared blood. Nothing mattered if the tree didn’t listen. How do I stop Sabine?
“Please,” she croaked, pressing her ratty palms against the tree. Putting all her weight against her palms, she hung her head. She couldn’t even cry because her eyes were so dry. Despite everything and the rain my eyes are still dry! Hyacinth shivered, “Please…Please…please…”
A long, drawn-out sigh filled her ears as something shifted against her palms. Hyacinth froze, feeling the bark scrape harder across her skin until something like the smoothness of a face was in its place.
Wide eyed, she glanced up through her sopping wet hair at a face.
Made of gnarled bark for the eyes, creeping ivy for the brows, and a gnarled opening for a mouth, a tongue made of sap lapped at her palms.
“The old blood. Oh, how long it’s been since I’ve tasted dream essence. What do you require, child?”
She blinked, letting branches cup her wrists. The tree continued to lap at her palms, leaving sticky sap in its wake.
“Will you be my grove?” she blurted out.
“You wish to claim this grove as your home? It’s not much of a grove, child.
The plants that grow here are rotten or poisonous.
The soils mostly full of dead things. The lich that walks these lands is kind, but not likely to tolerate a competitor.
” The face softened, the ivy rustling in the wind.
Yet, she couldn’t hear the bellowing winds or feel the rain slicing through the branches.
“That lich is my maker, and I want to protect him for once. I want to protect all of them. There’s another who is trying to rip them all apart.
” Hyacinth leaned into it, pressing her sticky palms to the cheeks of the tree face.
“This is my home, and this is my body. I won’t let her take either of those from me.
Whatever it takes. Make me a grove witch. Help me stop her.”
They sighed again, like something weighing it down had been finally lifted.
Hyacinth’s ears caught the eerie silence that followed.
None of the branches bristled and the rain slowed to a soft mist. Eventually, sunlight broke through the clouds over her head, making the damp branches glitter.
Vines of emerald green slithered out of the ground and wrapped around her arms. Little white roots rose up and pulled her knees deep into the mud.
I never occurred to her to be scared, not as something strange filled her chest. A feeling she’d only caught in passing or heard of, a feeling she knew but couldn’t describe.
Not until the willow at Rosemont Manor spoke again, “You are this grove’s witch now. Only you may draw power here. You are home.”
Hyacinth felt at home.
A feeling that made every inch of her tingle and every inch of her melt, as the tree dragged her down into the mud and underneath its roots.