My genius sparks, rising through my mind, down my arms, contacting the plane. Magic crackles around me, a tapestry of nerves and feelings, currents of life that weave throughout the entire space, brushing against the stones, the door, down the drain behind us.
My genius works against the current of magic under the pads of my fingers, pushing, pushing into the door. Then a rush of information, a flood that washes back into me, overtaking my senses in return.
Chestnut wood. The door used to be a chestnut tree, eighthundred years old, blooming full and tall and lush in a grassy meadow. Columns of cream flowers sprout from branches, clusters of spiky spheres holding sweet nuts. The drop of leaves, then snow, the burst of new life and warmth. White, slender birds building nests in its crooks.
The sound of a child laughing. The feel of little hands, pulling on branches, a chubby cheek against the trunk.
What is your name?the child asks.
Baffling, I have none. I do not need one; I am many things, I am a leaf and a forest.
Will you be my friend?the little creature requests.
What is a friend?I wonder.What are you?
A faerie,the child says.A friend.
The child remains in the shade, collects nuts, insists on planting along the meadow. Saplings spring up from the grass. A growing network, a family, someone with whom to share roots.
The creature and I grow together, expand. One time, the child brings water in a dry summer; another time, it cries in my boughs. The child brings its child and so do the birds. A circle of little lives, woven around me, through me, spawning outward—
Pain. A visceral, deep cutting. Dragging, stripping of the skin. Pressing, grinding, sawing, sanding, harnessing together, nails driven into nerves. Screaming.
So much screaming. But no other creature to hear. No other life to feel, to harbor, to speak to along roots that rot under a meadow, an old faerie, an old friend weeping over stumps.
Slamming.
Pounding.
Strange magic pushed under the grain, burrowing and sprouting like fungus. The others shove a word in me to command, a word that does not ask, a word that cannot be refused.
It spreads its spores through me.
The strangers slap me, feeding the fungal magic, letting it fester each time they command. I become infection more than life, andstill, I cannot die. The magic has intertwined with my essence, a parasite keeping a host alive so that it can always feed.
Creaking when opened, and still, they ignore the last of my protests. Generation after generation, that word, the hated word, a violation each time they conjure it, the blight twisting around remaining nerves. Then silence.
Years of silence.
Darkness.
Never peace, as the blight remains and so do I. Never the birds and chestnuts sprouting, the earth cradling and connecting. Never my friend again.
Silence, until the touch of magic once more.
Now, a wiggling insect, worming into the grain, grasping for what the others hooked into my pith. It pokes at the darker magic, the word clamped to my core.
Don’t say it,I beg.Please.
The little creature, the moth, wraps small, fuzzy legs around the dark magic. It tugs. The last of me rips. I scream for it to stop—screaming, screaming once more.
And it does. The moth moves back, waits. It sends a message along the threads, but not like the others. It is a gentle ask, a quiet one. A request, instead of a demand.
How should I help you?
A spark of light in this night. Help? Why would this flittering thing want to help?
What are you?I ask.
