8. Chapter Eight Aelira Ashwood #4
On the third afternoon, the child arrived carrying a stack of folded papers. Without warning, she deposited them directly into Aelira’s lap.
“You forgot these.”
Aelira looked down. “I have never seen these before.”
“Oh.” Wren frowned, then shrugged. “Then maybe they’re yours now.”
“How generous.”
“I know.”
Aelira unfolded the first page with the careful patience of someone handling evidence, though the paper was soft from a child’s hands and creased at the corners where small fingers had worried it too often.
Trees filled the page in dark, uneven strokes.
Not beautiful trees, not the charming, sunlit things children usually made when the world still seemed kind enough to imitate.
These were narrow, reaching shapes, their branches bent in the same direction as though listening to something beneath them.
On the second page, the branches disappeared entirely, replaced by roots that crowded the paper from edge to edge, tangling through one another with a persistence that made the back of Aelira’s neck go cold.
The third page slowed her breath.
An enormous tree consumed the drawing, but it did not rise toward the sky.
It descended. Its trunk plunged beneath the earth into a darkness Wren had shaded so heavily the paper had nearly torn, while roots spread outward through mountains, rivers, villages, and forests with a coherence no child should have been able to invent by accident.
The drawing was not skilled in the way court artists praised skill.
There was no elegance of proportion, no careful attention to light, no polished hand trained by discipline and expensive tutors.
That was precisely what disturbed her. The image possessed something far worse than talent. It possessed certainty.
Aelira turned another page and found the same tree waiting for her.
Then another—and another.
The pattern repeated across the stack with small variations that only made the whole of it more unsettling.
Always the tree beneath the world. Always the roots spread wide enough to cradle or choke entire villages.
Sometimes mountains rose above them like sleeping beasts.
Sometimes rivers curved around them like silver veins.
Sometimes tiny figures walked along paths that bent downward into the dark, their bodies no more than fragile lines of ink and charcoal, yet placed with such intention that Aelira felt an old memory stir behind her ribs.
In one drawing, a circle of small people stood beneath the tree’s lowest root with their arms lifted, not in terror, not in warning, but in welcome.
Aelira stared at that one the longest.
Children drew what they feared, what they loved, and what the world around them taught them to name.
But Wren had drawn something older than fear and far older than love, something buried so deeply beneath bloodline, stone, and sealed history that no nursery story should have carried it into a child’s sleeping mind.
The paper trembled once between Aelira’s fingers before she stilled it.
She did not like that. She did not like anything that could make her body remember dread before her mind had granted permission.
Wren had not imagined this.
Somewhere beneath Briar Hollow, something had shown itself to her. Aelira’s fingers tightened around the paper. “Wren.”
The girl looked up from where she had become distracted by an ant. “Mm?”
“Where did you see this?” she asked.
Wren’s attention discarded the ant. “The forest from the dreams.”
The ant lost its appeal entirely and Wren climbed onto the bench beside her and leaned close enough that Aelira could see charcoal beneath her fingernails. Most children became frightened when discussing nightmares.
Aelira kept her voice even. “Tell me about it.”
The girl smiled softly, as someone might when remembering a place they loved. “The trees are really tall.” Her voice stretched along with her smile as she described the dreams. “The roots are bigger.”
Aelira waited a beat before prompting the girl to continue. “How big?”
Wren spread both arms, then frowned at the inadequacy of her own body. “Much bigger.”
“Helpful.” Children. Aelira looked back at the drawing. “What happens in the dream?”
Wren’s smile faded slightly while she concentrated. She searched for words, and the expression struck Aelira with such sudden force that for a heartbeat she saw not a child, but a young scholar struggling to explain an idea too large for language.
“Mostly walking,” Wren said.
“Walking where?”
The child hesitated for the first time. Her gaze drifted toward the distant tree line, toward the mountains beyond, toward something only she seemed able to see. “There’s singing.”
Aelira felt her pulse quicken. “What kind of singing?”
Wren considered the question with grave seriousness, her small face tightening in the solemn way children sometimes wore when asked to explain something adults should have already understood. After a moment, she shook her head. “It’s not singing exactly.”