Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
Make certain… my heart is still.
Isobbed, raising a slow, stiff finger to touch Adrik’s lips. To ensure he had spoken. His skin was cold as ice, but he was breathing, blinking at me. The strange bark had faded from him, allowing him to speak.
His name fled my pinched lips, a pained croak.
“I told you to run,” he breathed.
I drew a rasping breath and curled myself small against him, saving a little warmth. “I figured out how to fix this,” I slurred.
I was heavy, like moving through mud, or weighed by a thousand rocks.
My eyes slid close, and it took me a long, slow heartbeat to pry them open again.
I pulled at the final strings of my power.
Faintly, I was aware that Adrik was moving, and I was not.
That he sat up beside me, while I lay stiff as a board amid the roots.
“How, Ana?”
I spoke softly, slowly. “Your magic… It shapes the world. You cannot just read memories. Emotions. You can speak your own feelings… into things. Places. The pebble… still warm. Your tea… calms. Your food… so good.” I tried to cough, but my body no longer obeyed me.
It belonged to the ancient oak, to the spirit of this forest. “You enchant it. Pour a little magic into it. A little warmth.”
I warmed with relief as Adrik’s eyes brightened. He understood. He knew what to do. I was free… free to go.
“I came to this tree hunted and prepared to die—”
“—and you spoke… anger… grief… into the forest.”
As spots crept into my vision, I strained to turn to him, but I could not, stiff as I was.
I stared into the tangled roots. Their notches turned into eyes, their gnarls into noses, their gashes into laughing lips.
How many had died here? Would I join them Beyond?
Would I go Beyond at all? Or would my spirit remain forever trapped in this tree, forced to witness seasons pass and lives fade while I remained quietly grieving in this world?
“Do not… leave me here,” I whispered, lips barely moving. “Take me… back. Burn me. Make certain… my heart is still.”
Adrik kneeled beside me, cradling my face as I had cradled his, weeping for me as I had wept for him.
“You will not die,” he snarled. “I will sooner tear this world apart. I will sooner go Beyond and tear whatever creature took you from me to shreds. You will not die, and if you do, I will change the laws of the world to undo it. I will fix this. I swear I will fix this, Ana.” I watched in terror as he took the bloodstained knife I’d dropped carelessly amid the roots.
His face darkened with understanding. “A bargain?”
He had better not attempt anything foolish. “An irreversible… bargain.”
He laughed sharply. “I am the prince of bargains, Ana. I will walk into this wretched spirit’s realm and see it undone. I will not let you die.”
“Heal… the tree.”
He did not heed me, did not hesitate another moment before he brought the knife down on his unmarred palm.
He brought the blade tenderly to mine as well and he groaned a little as a drop of my blood spilled over his tongue.
I was too stiff to fight him as he trickled a drop of his blood past my lips, as he clasped our hands together.
I felt it—the tug of the Beyond and the tug of life, waging a battle in the space between us. He anchored me in this realm, and I him, neither dead nor alive so long as we never let go.
Adrik looked achingly at me, then at the ancient oak. He said, in a voice like a song and a lament, “May I tell you a tale?” The wind stilled for a beat—pricked its ears. “Then let me tell you the tale of the King of the Forgotten Lands—and the Queen of the Wild.”
He did not tell us that tale. No, he sang it.
He sang it to the wind and to the roots, to the shivering ferns and the trembling seeds.
He sang it to the birds, and he sang it to the ancient tree.
He sang it to me. I did not quite catch the words over the whisper of death in my ear, but I knew… I knew that this was what he said:
Once, there came a warrior to these Forgotten Lands, who was battle-scarred and broken.
He came with anger and with sorrow in his heart, and he settled amid your roots prepared to die.
He spilled his anger and sorrow through you into these lands.
This town… It has a curious habit of finding the right people at the right time.
The warrior found a home here. He healed from his wounds.
He no longer carries such anger and sorrow with him, but he forgot that he left it here with you. Now, let me tell you of his joy.
He spoke softly of an old alchemist, of an ancient woman who wielded the wild, of the baker who made the best bread in the land, of the woman who wielded fire and breathed life into the mundane.
He spoke of a wild thing who danced beneath the moon—of the witch he’d kissed in a wildflower meadow.
I knew he spoke fondly of her, for his ears wore a veil of pink.
He glowed as he spoke, like a sunrise at the height of spring. Warmth spilled from him and came curling around the roots. I felt it deep below—a sigh of ease. Deep, deep within the earth stirred a sliver of life.
Adrik’s hand tightened around mine.
“Let me go,” I whispered. “Return to your people.”
He smiled.
Warmth swept over me like sunlit waves. Sparkles danced in the dark and nestled into the corners of my vision, blurring my sight.
The world swam—became brighter and softer, blurred at the edges.
We stepped together beyond the veil into the realm of the spirits.
Adrik helped me gently to my feet, and as I turned…
Amid the tangled roots, where I knew he and I were dying on the other side of this veil, something stirred. A sigh came from it, and the kiss of a warm breeze. I blinked. There perched, as if the roots were a throne and the ancient oak its palace, a creature.
Its face was a knotted, twisted thing adorned with a crown of white blossoms. From its grass-covered head sprouted two curled wooden antlers.
Its beard was long and thick, hung with moss and summer berries.
It raised its spindly arm, long as the branch of the tallest tree.
A gnarled, lichen-bearded finger came for me—
I held my breath in anticipation.
I did not fear the creature, for I knew it.
I knew the odd thing made of bark and sap and leaves, as faint as a wisp to these human eyes of mine. I knew this spirit of the wild as I knew the trees and the river, for it was all of these things.
It brushed its finger, gently as a breeze, to my dying heart.
We breathe life once more, sang the wind who was no wind at all.
The eldest spirit of the forest, the guardian of the wild, spoke with a lilting voice.
I thank you. Dewdrops gathered at the corners of its glowing green eyes.
Forgive me for the grief I caused. I hungered for life.
I hungered for warmth. I felt your presence, wild witch.
I hoped that you would feed me. I attempted to lure you to me.
I thought that you would come, if I showed you my pain.
That you would see me as you saw him—the uncursed king.
That you would ease me as you eased him.
The little fox… The whispers in the wind. The visions. I had felt its anguish. I had heard its pleas. “Forgive me. It took me long to understand.”
Be free of guilt, it sang.
I wavered a moment, afraid to ask. “Was it you, who granted me this power? Was it you, who heeded my mother that night?”
I remember a scared girl beneath an old elm. In another life, perhaps, I granted her a sliver of my power to save her. In another life, beyond another veil. Time flows differently here.
A wisp drifted close to its bushy green brow, another near the ribcage woven from branches. There floated wisps in the wind and above the pond; glowing things that hid within blossoms, in the moss, behind rocks.
A world unseen and full of life.
The spirit of the wild groaned. The uncursed king has called for aid, witch. He comes. A shudder—one so deep, it rustled the trees far and wide. He comes.
There came a breath of darkness. Stillness fell over this strange, blurred world.
In the midst of the meadow, Adrik knelt amid remnants of ice and snow.
His gaze was black as the moonless night and his lips moved frantically.
I did not see to whom he spoke; there was a stain on the world a few paces from where he was kneeling.
I squinted fiercely at that stain, but whenever I caught a glimpse of a black-cloaked thing, my eyes skipped over it and settled on the oak-throne instead.
The spirit of the wild laughed softly. He does not like to be seen.
No, he did not. Still, I knew this dark spirit, too. I remembered it like looking through that misted glass again. I bore its mark now thrice on my palm. The spirit who adored barter. Who loved all things balanced. Who delighted in the art of trading.
Adrik bowed amid the thaw.
I caught a sliver of a smile on his lips before darkness fell over my vision.
I returned, with a frantic gasp, to our side of the veil.
Adrik’s arms were around me again, as if we had never left our deathbed upon the roots.
Our hands were no longer fused. I felt desperately for his palm, fearing the worst. It was healed, not a scar in sight.
I gaped at my own, unmarred but for the knotted thing I’d worn since I was eleven.
There was not a trace left of the strange bark that had taken us.
“What did you do?” I asked with no small amount of fright.
Adrik laughed as he plucked a near wildflower to tuck behind my ear. “A bargain, Ana. The spirit of barter felt mirthful and generous with spring. I am, after all, its prince. It was glad, for a small price, to bestow two favors upon me. Our lives.”
“What was the price?”
“That I should never speak to him or hear him again. Neither his many, many siblings. He does not like to be seen. Two lives in exchange for my magic. It was a fair trade.” A small sob burst from me.
“Ah,” said Adrik brightly. “I do not need this magic anymore, Ana. I spent much of these past five years basking in the good memories of others. I am quite overdue to start basking in my own.”
I kissed him tenderly on the cheek, ice against ice. The earth sang with spring but thaw would take its time. We huddled beneath that ancient oak, sharing the last slivers of warmth. My mind was feeble from the strain of such curious magics, from balancing the line between life and death.
Perhaps that oak would become our tomb after all. Such cold—
In the distance came the thunder of hooves. A head of stark-white curls emerged from the trees.
“I found them.”