21. The Truth at Last #3
“Even though you thought I was Ordinary?” Maida called out while swinging out and away from him. She was gathering speed. Another branch whipped against her arm, and the swing went sideways for a second before righting itself.
“I was so relieved when you tested negative for magic!” Buffalo paced back and forth.
“You have no idea! I was thrilled. I didn’t want you to have anything to do with magic.
After all that had transpired, I was willing to live out my own days without ever shifting again.
I started a business in the human world and cut magic out of my life entirely.
No looking back. It hasn’t been all bad, has it? ”
“Ow!” Maida tried to slow the swing. The higher she swung, the more tangled she was getting in the long branches. They whipped her as she flew past. “Speak for yourself. You wouldn’t even let me make a wish on a wishbone! You put me in time out once for crossing my fingers!”
“I couldn’t take any chances, Maida. I just wanted you to be safe and have a normal life.”
Maida attempted to say something, but the words stuck in her mouth as a thick rope of tree tendrils rapidly twined up from between her legs, reaching around her shoulders and throat.
At the top of the swing’s arc, she had to let go of the swing’s ropes to claw at the choking shoots.
The swing swung out and away from her. Desperate to save herself, Maida wrapped her legs around the bundled branches, pulling them away from her neck and face.
She gathered the branches in fistfuls, holding on for dear life as she gasped for air.
She felt herself rising, and fast, up, up, up into the tree.
“Maida?!” Buffalo’s voice sounded distant, and growing even farther as the branches rocketed her skyward.
“Dad!” she sputtered.
She gulped lungfuls of air. The tree seemed less interested in choking her to death and more interested in her locket. The branches slithered around her torso like snakes, curling under her shirt and around her waist.
“Shadow of a serpent! I thought we were old friends!” Maida cursed, fighting the willow and kicking at its boughs, to no avail. The more she struggled, the worse things got. Like quicksand. She had to force herself to remain calm and stay still.
Now would be a good time for her newly minted magic to manifest, she thought. What was the point of having magic if you couldn’t use it to stop a tree from acting like a vindictive snake?
No sooner than the thought crossed her mind, a half dozen snakes slipped from the tips of the tree’s trailing branches where they touched the ground.
She watched them as they slithered away.
They only made it a few feet past the tree’s shadow before changing back into willow branches.
Maida shuddered. Had she somehow done that?
She peered through the greenery forming a mesh around her.
Her father was gone. The place where he’d been standing moments earlier shimmered and shook like a mirage. There was a great cloud of dust being kicked up and then she heard thundering hooves as Buffalo, truly a buffalo now, charged at the tree.
The first blow shook the tree so hard it felt like an earthquake.
There was a pause, but the tenacious branches quickly resumed their careful exploration of her collarbones, moving on to the locket’s chain.
They tugged at it, attempting to slide it off over her head.
But the locket would not budge. It also fought back, sending out shocks which filled the air with the smell of singed wood.
This only seemed to discourage the tendrils for a moment or two.
Fresh green wood sprouted from the charred areas.
The second blow shook the tree even harder than the first. It caused some branches to break off. One of them hit Maida’s head, and she saw a brilliant swarm of bright stars swimming around her face and head.
Suddenly, the tree lurched sideways and Maida felt as though she were seated in a slingshot. The branches that cocooned her whipped her around and spun her in a spiral, twisting and untwisting her as she dangled.
“Hold on!” a voice bellowed out and Maida saw Will and another man racing through the garden, toward the tree. She struggled to maintain consciousness. She imagined she saw Granny Luna in the tree beside her, slashing at the branches with the sharp edge of a crystal dagger.
Maida felt a searing pain across the back of her neck as the tree yanked the locket’s chain even harder. Almost as if it meant to behead her with it.
“Oh no you don’t, you slithering eel weeds! Not on my watch!” Granny Luna bit into the willow bark, baring razor-sharp fangs that cut clean through the branches.
The third blow to the tree felled it. Maida felt herself falling again and shut her eyes tight.
Just before she ought to have hit the ground, a pair of long, muscular arms caught her. They belonged to someone with an unequal amount of golden glints in each eye.
It was Arthur, and she remembered him this time—not just from California.
“I saw your antlers,” she whispered. “We were right here.”