Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tove watched as Iona came to her, pleading for help at the base of the maple. She hesitated; it was uncharacteristic of her to be indecisive, and she was unsure what stopped her from revealing herself.
Perhaps it was her shame that kept her stuck, tucked amongst the shadows.
Shame for declining to lend aid when Iona asked for it. Shame for failing to make any connections with Liam at all, when she’d recognized him before. Shame for all those years that she’d turned her back on the humans whose lives she’d changed forever. Shame for the fear that rooted itself in her soul, preventing her from growing attached—not just to the humans with their fleeting lives, but even her own kin.
Over the decades, her heart had grown cold and lifeless. She’d let strange humans lay waste to her forests and put her grandchild in danger.
Tove watched for so long that Iona’s eyes ran dry, and only then did she approach with quiet steps. Placing a gentle hand on Iona’s shoulder, she spoke. “It is not your fault, child, it is mine.” Iona looked up then, her eyes so similar to the ones she’ d seen in her daughter, now red and weary with tears. “I stood by and watched for too long.”
Tove helped Iona to her feet. The girl looked so small, so young.
Perhaps the worst of Tove’s mistakes was preventing her kin from mingling with the humans, by spreading her fears to the youngest among them who looked up to her leadership the most. She had loved her human companion, after all.
Yes, she had lost him, but were all things not destined to be lost one day?
Even the Acernae, their lives stretching as long as that of their trees, would fade and one day, Tove would join her love in feeding the forest once more. Would it not have been preferable to spend her years cherishing the memory of him by loving the human they’d created? To love was both a pleasure and heartache she had tried in vain to prevent her kin from knowing.
Iona loved him. It was plain to see now, and Tove would do anything in her power to make things right.
“Let us see what can be done,” Tove told Iona, then pulled them both to meet the wretched men who threatened her family.
***
The situation was far more dire than Tove had expected.
Liam was bound and lying on the wet ground, the man crouching over him spitting hateful words in his face. It seemed they were alone. Yes, she had waited too long, but it did not yet seem that she was too late.
At her summons, a crow swooped down from above, landing on her shoulder. Clever, intelligent creatures, trustworthy for the task at hand. Tove whispered her command, and it flew into the forest beyond. Then she turned back to Iona.
“Free the boy. Leave the other to me,” she said, then shed her human form.
She drifted over to where the man stood and watched for a moment. Liam appeared to be slipping in and out of consciousness. Tove’s chest swelled with pride as she noticed the roots that wrapped themselves around the other man’s boot. Though thin and spindly, it was an impressive accomplishment for one with little training and diluted blood .
Tove conjured a heavy mist, calling it forth to swirl and lap at the ground around her. Only once the fog pooled at her feet and the man looked satisfactorily frighted did Tove reveal herself, a few feet from where he stood.
He jumped, startled but trapped in place. Tove smiled wickedly at the hint of fear in his eyes as they scanned over her face, taking in the strangeness of it.
“Who the fuck are you? And where did you come from?” he said to her, bewildered.
She studied him. He was so like the men who’d come before him, all muscle and menace—yet so afraid when they were not the ones in control. Tove knew how terrifying her form could be, given the right situation, and she tipped her wooded horns upwards, drawing attention to them. Like a predator cornering its prey, she gazed down at him.
“You trespass where you don’t belong. You take that which is not yours to take.” She spoke slowly, letting her words carry the threat. “I have left bones to rot in my forest for less.”
The man went white, eyes widening. “You’re not real,” he told her.
Tove let loose a cold laugh. How very human, to not believe something they didn’t understand, even when that thing stood before them. She started to speak again, but movement at the corner of her vision drew her attention.
“Iona?” Liam’s voice croaked, so small and weary. He looked at Tove, but did not seem to recognize her. Then Tove spotted the glasses, crushed and cracked in the foliage.
Iona materialized beside him. Liam jumped, then relaxed as he recognized her. “I’m here,” Iona whispered and began untying his bonds. “You’re alright.”
Tove pursed her lips at the blood that trailed down the back of his neck, the bruises left by the rope tied around his wrists, and turned her ire back on the man before her. He stood in a crop of trees, many emblazoned with orange paint, like the ones that had already been felled. She stepped forward, preparing to unleash the wrath of the forest.
“Tove?” Liam’s voice carried across the field and stopped her in her tracks .
“Yes, child.”
“Don’t kill him.”
“He has harmed you, and harmed our forest.” Tove looked back at the boy, whose eyes were open and straining to focus. Despite his pain and exhaustion, he stared at her with an intensity that nearly broke her—the look was so like his grandfathers. Instead, she turned back to the man, wearing a slight frown. “Are you deserving of mercy?”
The man bobbed his head with such force it looked as if it might fall off, but Tove was not convinced. Men with so little regard for the balance of things rarely found it in one encounter.
There were other ways the Acernae could teach the lessons.
The Elders arrived in that moment, appearing beyond the edges of the clear cut and taking in the scene with wide eyes.
“This man has led others in the destruction of our forests, and the harming of two of our own. My grandson has requested his life be spared.” Tove spoke clearly, letting her voice carry.
Rae’s face scrunched up in disbelief. They dropped their voice so the humans would not hear. “Grandson?”
Gael and Innil mirrored their confusion. Tove sighed, closing her eyes. It was not something she should have kept from any of them. If the roles were reversed, she would be displeased to find such a secret among any of her kin… but this was not the time.
“We shall discuss that fact later,” she conceded, and turned her attention back to those gathered before her. “Iona, bring me Elias, please.”
Iona looked back and gave a little nod before disappearing into the forest.
“I was visited by Vall this morning, who had suffered grave injuries at the hand of this man. Thank you, for aiding them.” Gael spoke to Liam, who still looked too exhausted to do much more than nod. “What is your judgment, Tove? Why have you brought us here?”
Tove did not answer. Instead, she turned back to the man.
“Come.” With a wave of her hand, the roots holding the man in place receded back into the earth. “What is your name?”
“Andrew.” He kept his head down as he stepped forward, now feet from where Tove stood at the base of an older Douglas fir .
She rested a hand on the trunk. The energy housed within hummed beneath her palm with a wisdom, not as powerful as the maples the Acernae were tied to, but wise and strong all the same. She smiled to herself—this tree would do.
Innil raised his eyebrows, the first to realize what Tove intended to do. The other Elders gathered around, lending her their strength.
In one motion, she grasped Andrew by the jaw, her inhuman strength no match for him. With force, she shoved him against the base of the tree, his back and shoulders flush with its bark. She pulled the buttons of his shirt so it hung open, revealing a thin undershirt and the flesh of his chest covered in sparse black hair.
In the clearing, Iona returned with Elias. He looked curiously at the scene, but like the others, he did not speak. Tove turned her attention back to Andrew.
“Your life will be spared, but make no mistake. You, who have little respect for the life which you destroy in the name of profit, will suffer for your actions. This… will not be pleasant.”
Tove placed a hand in the center of his chest, where she felt his heart hammering. She called forth the energy of the tree, fusing it with Andrew’s essence. Spearing him with it.
Horrible, agonized screams erupted from him.
Rooting tendrils wormed their way from the tree behind him and through his flesh, finding their home in the center of his chest. From the point beneath Tove’s palm, bark rippled outward, consumed the skin of his chest. His muscles contracted under her touch, now rough and textured like the tree itself, as he screamed himself hoarse. He pitched forward, and the roots severed.
Tove’s energy drained from her, but it was done. His fusion with the tree was complete. Her hand fell away, and Andrew crumpled to the base of the tree he was now tethered to.
Tove, however, was not finished with him. She stepped closer, ignoring his whimpers as she approached, and forced his chin up so their eyes met.
“Now, your life is tied to this tree, one you’ve marked for death. You will live as long as this tree stands, and not a moment more. You will feel the pain of every tree you fell in this world. You will assume the burden of sprouting new life in its place. We are the wardens of this forest, and all forests. You are now one of us.”
Andrew’s eyes simmered with pain and fear, his breath coming quick and ragged. His chest was now mantled with bark, pink puckered flesh surrounding the edges of the new growth. His hand went to it, a look of utter horror overtaking him as he looked down at the strange deformity.
It was an odd sort of magic, one that had not been used in many decades, when the Acernae had dealt with such greedy men more frequently. For them, the best lesson had been to learn what it meant to depend on the life of a tree, to feel those stakes. It was easy to fell a tree when one was not tied to it.
There would be little difference, really, between him and the rest of her kin. With time, he might even learn to embrace and master the gifts he’d been given. But he would need guidance.
“I am certain the transition will not be easy for you, Andrew. But I do hope you remember the generosity I’ve shown you.” Tove glanced over at Elias, who had watched the events with an impassive gaze. “Elias, here, will watch over you while you… adjust to your new life.”
Elias raised an eyebrow at her, clearly unhappy to be assigned the babysitting, but knew better than to argue. There were few others who she might trust with such a task, but Elias was a leader, and she knew he was capable of the work required to guide Andrew.
“You may start now, Elias. I have more important matters to attend to.” Tove turned from Andrew, still bent over in the mud, and approached Liam.
He looked no better, really, though Iona had cleaned the blood off him and fussed over him as best she could.
“Are you alright, my child?” she asked gently, and smiled at the truth behind the endearment.
“Just a pretty bad headache. And it’s freezing out here,” Liam answered. He was indeed shivering, even with a dry blanket wrapped around him.
Tove’s gaze fell upon the roots rising up from the ground in front of him, the ones that had restrained Andrew. “Did you summon these?” she asked.
Liam nodded. “I tried. It about knocked me out, though. ”
“You’ve done well, Liam. Now let us take you home”
She bent low, and scooped him up into her arms. Tove did not look back to at Andrew, before stepping through the forest. Taking Liam home .
***
Andrew thought dying would be quiet, like falling asleep. It turned out that dying was many deafening sounds all at once.
Most urgently there was the screaming.
The sound came from him, but it felt like something separate, alien, even. Voices drifted past him as the hole opened up in his chest, the air sucked from his lungs.
Except he hadn’t died.
It took several long moments to realize what had happened. He lay in the mud, sucking in breath after ragged breath, waiting for the forest to come back into focus.
When his senses returned, they were different.
He braced his hands against a nearby stump, feeling the anger radiating off of it. All the trees nearby seemed like they were buzzing, pressing down on him.
It was all so loud.
Only then did he dare reach up, fingers skimming along the collar of his shirt until he felt it.
Like bark, the skin was tough, the malformed shape growing outwards like roots beneath the skin. Worst of all was the feeling—it felt like his skin. The sensation churned his stomach.
Andrew turned and retched into the bramble at his knees.
Behind him, someone laughed.
“You should be grateful that you live,” a cool voice said. “It is lucky that the boy took pity on you. Luckier still that Tove has a soft spot for him, enough to heed his wishes.”
Andrew whirled around, wiping the sick from his lips. The man who’d spoken was a freak. Tall, lanky, and green, with antlers growing out the base of his skull.
“What the fuck is this?” Andrew hissed.
“This,” the man said, approaching Andrew where he kneeled in the cold mud, “is a gift that you’ve been given. The opportunity to right your wrongs. ”
Still unable to stand, Andrew tried to pull himself together. He felt his lip curl up into a snarl. “Who are you?”
“I am Eli. I’ve been ordered to guide you through this… adjustment period.” He sighed. “Trust me, no one is less thrilled about it than I.”
Eli reached a spindly hand down, and Andrew spat at it. Preferring to stay on the ground rather than accept the help.
Eli pursed his lips, looking unsurprised, and wiped his hand against the leg of his pant. Then he crouched, running a curious finger along the bark at the center of Andrew’s chest. The touch sent another strange shiver through him, and at the risk of being sick again, Andrew scrambled backward.
“I’ve not seen one created, like you. I am curious to see what effects it may have,” Eli drawled. Then his piercing green eyes snapped down to meet Andrew’s and narrowed. “But I will tell you this—things will not be easy for you, and you will need every friend you can get. I will help you, as I have been directed to, but you might consider making yourself worthy of it.”
“Fuck you,” Andrew spat back.
Eli only smiled. “We’ll meet again, soon.”
Then he disappeared.