Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The little house was exactly as Tove remembered, if a bit more worn by the years. How much time had passed, since she’d last seen it? It was so difficult to keep track. The longer she lived, the quicker the seasons seemed to cycle. She sighed to herself as she approached.
It had certainly been too long.
As soon as Tove laid eyes on the boy Iona brought along, the realization had struck that all those years were lost. The boy was related; he had to be. The unkempt hair, the soft eyes… features too similar to those she’d first encountered decades prior. To see them again stirred the memories that haunted her, awakening the pain she’d all but forgotten. To seek out the pain, to relive those memories, was all she could do to keep herself from drowning in them.
The house was empty and dark, swallowed by the mist surrounding it. Tove approached, climbing up the steps of the tiny wooden porch. Her wards had protected the wood over the years, keeping it from rotting in the damp climate. It was the least of the parting gifts she could have offered. She placed a hand on the door and closed her eyes, letting herself remember. Wood held onto memories, retaining echoes of the life it witnessed. Tove felt every aching moment wash over her as soon as her hand touched the door .
Tove did not know how much time had passed when she noticed the girl behind her. Iona would have sensed her presence, of course, and it was little surprise she’d shown up. Tove recognized the look she’d given the boy and knew how much his absence would pain her. It was a look she herself had given a boy once, and she still felt the pain of his absence, too.
“What are you doing here?” Iona asked, her voice unnaturally cool. She was dressed in that same sweater that Tove had noticed the other night, one she hadn’t seen Iona wear before. Iona had made herself scarce, since Tove denied her request for aid against their logging problem, and Tove felt the ire that decision had drawn.
The two had always been close; Iona reminded Tove of herself in ways which were both endearing and frustrating, the similarities between them too reminiscent of Tove’s painful history. No, there must always be a distance between them, for whenever Tove grew too close to Iona, the aching hole in her chest grew heavier. In the past weeks, that hole had grown so heavy Tove thought it would drag her underwater.
“I came to remember.” Tove collapsed into the wooden chair beside her and rested her head in her hands. For her entire existence, Tove had kept herself together, never letting the cracks show to her kin. She was their leader, and humility did not have a place in her command. She was ancient, and powerful, but sometimes as prone to emotion as any human. Tove lifted her eyes back to Iona, aware of her slipping composure but unwilling to stop it. “The sweater, it’s new.”
“It was given to me, made by Liam’s mother.” Iona was standing awkwardly, worrying the hem in her delicate fingers.
Tove smiled at that. She’d known, of course, recognized the handiwork immediately. The needlework was clean as it had always been, the knitting that Tove herself had taught so many years ago.
“They’ve left the valley for good?” Tove asked.
Iona’s expression betrayed her answer, her nod so lifeless that Tove took pity on her. There was more common ground between them than Iona had ever realized. If any among her kin could understand, it would be Iona.
“Come sit.” Tove gestured to the steps beside her. “I have a secret, which none of the others know. It has burdened me for so long, and I do not wish to carry the truth with me any longer. Let me tell you what this place means to me.”
***
Tove had been among the first of her kin to awaken.
There had long been humans in the valley, who existed in harmony with the forests and all its inhabitants. They took what they needed and cherished it for the gift that it was. In turn, they cared for the trees and the life where they made their homes. If life had continued on that way then perhaps Tove and her people would not exist, but that is not the nature of things. Those who settled the land were different. Pale. And greedy. As mankind's relationship with the gifts of the forest changed, the Acernae were created to protect the balance of life.
Other such beings had existed in other places—those touched by greedy hands much earlier than their little valley—but none exactly like the Acernae. Tove awoke with two others who were no longer with her, to protect that which was theirs. When the humans took without respect, harvesting more than they ought to have, the forest fought back. Tove watched, over time, as they settled and waged war with their environment. Most often, the humans lost.
It was easy in those days, when the trees were sturdier than the tools used to fell them. Harvesting the timber was difficult work, and early men could easily be deterred by the small tricks of the Acernae. A particularly hard winter was enough to drive all but the most resolute away. Many left, letting their building be reclaimed by the forest, letting go of their imagined stake.
As if man could truly ever own what was wild.
Time passed and Tove watched as the forest bloomed and withered each year. Human inhabitants came and left. Her kin remained hidden, tucking themselves into the shadows between trees, careful to avoid revealing themselves. Even after the threat to their forests faded, the Acernae chose to stay and watch from the edges of the forest. Tove was quite content in this way.
Until some decades ago, when a man caught himself on a stray root. He had injured himself at the bottom of a steep ravine and was unable to crawl out. It was a harsh autumn day, with heavy clouds that threatened rain, and the man was alone. Tove was stirred to act, to aid this man who would likely die without intervention. Even then, she knew it was a mistake to interfere, if only for a different reason than she’d expected.
The man she met was gentle and kind. Tove had not met a human man like him before, had never spoken to them, but knew from her experience watching them this one was different. After she’d ensured his safe return, Tove lingered, eager to know the man she’d saved.
His brilliant orange hair was like her own in it’s vibrancy, and dark splotches of color painted his cheeks. Despite his striking appearance, what struck Tove most about Brian was his nature. He cared for the forests as she did, working in them and taking what he needed but giving back in equal measure. Brian respected the natural world in a way that his peers did not.
She hadn’t expected to fall in love, hadn’t thought herself capable of it. But fall in love she did, and the two of them became inseparable, building a life together beneath the moss. He loved her trees as much as she did, and she came to know the humans better through him.
In 1958, they had a child together, named Maggie—a proper Irish name, Brian said. He was an excellent father, taking to parenthood better than Tove ever had.
Maggie took after her father, and the deep red of her hair could be easily explained from his Irish background. She bore none of the strange qualities that marked Tove—no horns or pointed ears, her skin pale and pink. They decided that Maggie should be raised among the humans.
It wasn’t until she was older that Maggie began to manifest the kinship with the forest that Tove had hoped for. She was mildly gifted, able to perform lesser versions of the tricks of the Acernae, though she would tire quickly. It was a wonder to watch her grow. Her very existence challenged everything Tove knew about the world she lived in. Motherhood had bound her to something much larger than her maple tree, her forest—it was life, true life, that she’d created.
Tove soon learned the price one paid for such deep roots, that those very connections that brought her such joy could also ruin her .
It was a truth she’d long sought to ignore, to delay acknowledging as long as possible. Human lives are finite and painfully, brutally short.
Sometimes, Tove learned, the end was not pretty.
Her love had died before his time, from a sickness that rot him from within. Much like many of the older maples developed heart rot, the man began to wither before Tove’s very eyes. No longer the strong and capable man she had come to love, he was frail in his dying moments, his body decaying around him. It hurt worse, perhaps, that his spirits remained high in those final months.
It would have been easier on Tove if he’d been as mournful as she, or as angry as Maggie had been.
He said it was his fate, like all life in the valley, to rejoin the soil and provide nutrients for the things which would grow there in the future.
“Life is just borrowed,” he’d say. “Just time to pass my spirit on to the next.”
A crack split the ground between Tove and Maggie after he passed.
Despite their closeness while Maggie was young, she had grown so quickly—now nearly an adult herself. The time felt as if it’d slipped through Tove’s fingers.
Maggie inherited her mothers love of the forest and a bit of the power Tove had to give. But her stubborn human spirit was the gift given by her father, and in those gifts, Tove saw only him.
They were so similar.
It became increasingly hard to ignore the fact that Maggie too was human, and bound to depart from the earth long before Tove would.
The crack between them grew, until it was a chasm that Tove could not bear to cross.
She gave in to the cowardice, and left, tucking herself away inside her tree and hoping the pain would eventually fade. But her grief, her misery, never faded. Instead, it turned to coldness, scarring like a broken branch. She’d been too ashamed to admit this to Maggie, unable to return and face her own daughter until…
Until the boy stood before her and Tove realized how wrong she had been. How many years had passed, how many moments in Maggie’s life that Tove had missed. A grandchild, her own descendant, and Tove hadn’t known of his existence until they’d met face to face.
The pain, the regret she’d been harboring came flooding back, and it was all Tove could do to confess, if only to Iona.
***
“All these years,” Tove said at the end of her tale, “I encouraged our kin to stay away from the humans. Because they are dangerous, yes… but also because feelings are dangerous. Love is dangerous. I did not want any of my kind to suffer as I have from the frailty of human life.”
She looked over at Iona, whose face was splotchy with tears, barely visible in the dimming light.
“That makes Liam…” Iona trailed off, her eyebrows knitting together.
“My grandson, I suppose.” The words felt strange on her tongue, and even stranger in her mind. It was an anomaly in itself to think she’d produced offspring, a feat she hadn’t known she was capable of until it had happened. But the form she took was human enough, after all, and it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that things would work the way they did for any other human woman. To be bound by family ties, unlike the ties that bound her to her maple, felt like gossamer strands that could break as easily as they had formed.
“That makes him like us, then? Of course, I should have noticed sooner—but he doesn’t know. The whole time he was here—” Iona’s words were rushed as she paced about the foot of the stairs, and she leveled a piercing gaze at Tove. “You should have told him. If his family is to leave the valley for good, he should at least know what he’s leaving behind.”
There was truth to the words, Tove knew, but there was also foolish hope lurking beneath. Iona was upset that Liam had left her behind, and none could relate to such pain as Tove could. Her pity for the young Acernae only grew.
“Child.” She placed a hand on Iona’s shoulder. “You should not dwell on this. Such feelings, when allowed to blossom, will only wither to thorns. His gifts are diluted; it will be possible for him to live happily outside the valley, as Maggie has. It is better they go on with their human lives, and we should continue with ours.”
The words did not appear to soothe Iona as Tove intended. Instead, she stared back, her resolve seeming to strengthen. When she spoke, her voice was steely, and more passionate than Tove had thought her capable of. “Do you not regret the life you’ve cast aside? Do you not feel the bonds of family tying you to him still? Maggie lives, and yet you do not wish to know her. You call yourself cowardly, and it is true.”
Tove did not flinch, letting the words wash over her. In the darkening forest, coyotes called to one another, the sounds of their joyful hunt echoing through the trees. The chill of the night air bit through her woven shawl and she pulled it tighter around her shoulders.
“I am tired, Iona. You are young, and do not yet understand the toll time takes upon the spirit. Centuries I have watched over this valley and I will likely watch for centuries more. Like the rest of them, Maggie will die. She has already lived most of her life without me. There is little point in upending it now. I have nothing to offer.”
Iona pursed her lips tight, biting back the words Tove knew clawed at her. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again, her face growing heavy with sorrow. “You are family, and you will always have something to offer.”
Iona disappeared into the night, leaving Tove alone once more with her thoughts.