“I tried thinking up what sort of thing would most appeal to you and—” He fluttered his fingers.
I looked up the dark trunk to the twisting branches above. “This is the only tree like it?”
“In all the world,” he said, looking pleased with his creation.
I felt as if a battering ram had struck me in the chest. “It’s all alone.”
My words hung in the air, impossibly small and sad.
I knew what it was like to be unique, a thing different from the rest of your brothers and sisters. Hand-selected by a god, but not. It set you apart, made you unable to fit into any space you occupied.
His eyes softened, as if he instantly understood my distress. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said hastily, and snapped his fingers, once, twice, three times. Enough snaps for a whole orchard, enough trees to ensure that the original was never alone.
When he was finished, the hillside was covered in wondrous shades of green and pink. The flowers danced in the breeze my godfather himself had stirred, working as a master artist might before a blank canvas.
“It’s so magical,” I whispered. My arms were outstretched and my head was thrown back as I spun in circles, trying to capture every beautiful detail of this newly created grove.
“Not magic,” my godfather corrected me, sounding sharper than I’d ever heard him.
The swift change in tone was so abrupt, I stumbled in my dance, coming to a stop.
“Power,” he said. “There’s a difference between the two, don’t you see?”
I didn’t, not truly. I had never experienced magic and had never held power of my own. I couldn’t begin to think what differences there were between the two. Both seemed far, far away from anything I could ever attain.
He wandered over to a nearby boulder and perched on its edge.His dark robes spread out over the onyx surface, wafting from him like so many layers of mist. He gestured for me to join him and I did, my feet moving most reluctantly toward this old god.
“Magic is nothing—a trick of the mind, a sleight of hand. It’s mechanical and perfunctory. A skill performed well, but a simple maneuver nonetheless.” I nearly jumped out of my skin when he reached up and plucked a gold coin from behind my ear. “See? The coin was always here.” The disc tumbled across the ridges of his first knuckles and he tucked it neatly between his fingers, secreting it away with deft grace.
“Is that what you gave Mama?” I asked, taking the money from him and trying to replicate the trick. “Hidden coins?”
He made a thoughtful noise as he considered my question. “Yes and no.”
“I guess I don’t understand, then,” I admitted, letting the coin come to rest in my palm. I couldn’t hide it as easily as he did. Every time I raised my hand to pull it from thin air, it rolled free, dropping to the hard ground with a clink.
“Those coins already existed, but they weren’t hidden between my fingers or squirreled away in any pockets in this.” He lifted his shoulders, letting the swell of fabric rise and fall around him.
“It does look like a really good place to hide things,” I told him, and he let out a loud laugh.
“It is, Hazel. It truly is.”
“If this is ‘magic,’ ” I said, dismissing the word in an echo of my godfather’s scorn as I waved the coin back and forth, “what’s that?” I nodded toward the trees.
“That’s power. Real power. Creation.” He held out his hand and we watched another green shoot form. It wasn’t as full as the trees; itwas only a little flower. Wide, waxy leaves unfurled around a single stalk. The petals were a deep purple and shaped like an upside-down bell. “And destruction.”
The petals darkened, turning themselves and the leaves black. They dried into raspy husks before crumbling like ash.
“That flower didn’t exist anywhere until I made it. And it only disappeared when I willed it.”
“That seems awfully magical to me,” I admitted, tracing my fingertip over his palm. The sooty remains of the flower, indiscernible against his skin, stained my fingers with stark contrast.
“I suppose to a mortal it must,” he allowed. “We’ll mull over these concepts a great deal, I think.”
“We will?”
I looked across the grove of shimmering pink trees as I tried to picture what my life here would be like, what my days with my godfather—with thisgod—would look like. How everything wouldbe.
He offered a gentle smile. “Yes. You see, Hazel, I have for you another birthday gift.”
