Chapter 27 Into the Western Forest #2
The vision did not fade or dissolve. It simply stopped moving, frozen in place, as if the forest had released the memory and moved on. Flora pulled her gaze away. She looked at Hazel. She looked at the path ahead.
"The forest is testing you," Briar said from ahead, her voice carrying through the heavy air.
Flora met her eyes. "Let it."
She kept walking.
The second test came at the dry riverbed.
The ground here was cracked and barren, the stones bleached white, the water that had once flowed through it reduced to a trickle of something dark and slow. And standing in the middle of the riverbed was a woman Flora had never seen.
She knew who it was immediately.
Tall. Dark hair streaked with early gray. Eyes that were sharp and searching, the kind of eyes that looked for an exit in every room. She was wearing traveling clothes, practical and worn, and she was holding a packed bag in each hand.
Hazel's ex-partner.
Flora felt Hazel stiffen beside her. The hand that was holding hers tightened, then loosened. A small breath escaped Hazel's lips, a sound Flora had never heard from her before, something between a sigh and a wound reopening.
The vision did not speak. It just stood there, holding its bags, its back to them, the posture of someone who was about to walk away.
Briar's voice came from ahead. "Do not stop. The longer you look, the more it will show you."
Hazel kept walking. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. She did not look at the vision. She did not acknowledge it. But Flora could feel the tension in her arm, in her shoulder, in the careful even rhythm of her breathing.
Flora squeezed her hand. "I am not going anywhere."
Hazel did not respond. But her hand squeezed back.
The third test came without warning.
They were walking through a grove of the twisted oaks when the air around Flora shifted. One moment she was walking beside Hazel, her feet on the cold ground, her lungs filling with the heavy air. The next moment she was somewhere else.
The greenhouse.
But not the greenhouse as it was now. The greenhouse as it had been weeks ago, when she first arrived. The plants were gray and dying. The root network was pale, almost white. The air was thick with the smell of decay, the acrid scent of something that had been alive and was now giving up.
She was standing at the workbench. And on the workbench were all the flowers she had ever touched.
They were wilted. Every one. The lavender she had used in her first arrangement.
The rose she had bloomed by accident. The sunflower and yarrow from the courage arrangement.
The moonpetals from Marigold's seeds. Violet's preserved rose, brown and crumbling.
Every flower she had ever touched for magic was there, dead, their petals scattered across the wood like ash.
She heard her own voice, though she was not speaking: Everything I touch dies.
"No."
She said it aloud. The word came out rough, scraping against her throat.
"That is not true."
The greenhouse flickered. For a moment she could see through it, the real world beneath the vision, the twisted oaks and the gray sky and Hazel's hand still holding hers.
She focused on Hazel's hand. The warmth of it. The weight. The way Hazel's fingers curved around hers like they belonged there.
"I do not kill them," Flora said. "I use them. I honor them. They give their lives for something that matters. That is not the same as death."
The greenhouse vanished. She was standing in the grove, Hazel looking at her with concern, Clover's face pale behind her.
"You are still here," Briar said. She had stopped ahead of them, waiting. "Good. Some people do not make it past the third test."
Flora did not ask what happened to those people.
They walked for another hour.
The forest grew darker. The twisted oaks gave way to trees Flora did not recognize, their bark smooth and black, their leaves the color of dried blood.
The ground beneath their feet had changed, becoming soft and spongy, releasing a smell of rot with every step, the kind of smell that clung to the inside of the nose and did not wash out.
The root network visible through the thin soil was black, not white, pulsing with a darkness that seemed to move under the surface like veins carrying something sick.
The air had become warmer as they walked deeper.
Not the warmth of comfort or shelter but the warmth of a fever, of something that was burning from the inside.
Flora unbuttoned her coat. Her skin was damp.
The rosemary in her pocket still held its sharp green scent, and she pulled it out and held it to her nose with every few steps, grounding herself in the familiar.
The silence was the worst part. There was no sound of birds, no rustle of small animals in the underbrush, no wind moving through the branches. Just the wet sound of their footsteps on the spongy ground and the slow rhythm of their breathing.
Hazel's hand found hers again. Flora did not know when she had let go. She did not care. She held on.
Briar stopped at the edge of what appeared to be a wall of shadow.
"The source is through here," she said. "I cannot go further. The forest will not let me. The wound belongs to the keeper, not the guide."
Flora looked at the wall of shadow. It was not solid, not exactly. It was more like the air had thickened into something that did not want to let her through.
She turned to Clover. "Stay here with Briar. Keep the flowers safe until I call for them."
Clover nodded. Her hands were on her pack, holding it close. "I will keep them perfect."
Flora turned to Hazel. "You do not have to come."
Hazel's answer was to step through the wall of shadow first.
Flora followed.
The air on the other side was warm. Not the warmth of sunlight or fire. The warmth of something alive, something that was breathing, something that had been holding its breath for a very long time and was beginning to tire.
They were standing in a clearing.
The ground was black. Not dark soil, not shadow, but black, the color of something that had been burned and had never grown back. It was cracked, fissures running through it like broken glass, each crack emitting a faint, sickly glow.
The trees around the clearing were dead, their bark peeling, their branches bare and brittle. They leaned away from the center as if they had been trying to escape and had died midstep.