With my last bit of strength, I heave myself over the rocky shelf and onto the soft, flat island center, roughly fifty feet in diameter. I brush away some of the sand that coats the surface, revealing rings beneath. Bands and bands and bands that meet in the center, several cracks running throughout. Words and thoughts spiral away as emotions swamp my every sense.
“No,” I say. “No, this is not Lucan’s Tree.”
Maxian stands at its very center. “Did you think we’d build a palace around just any tree?”
Lila sways in horror. “You—you cut it down.”
He shrugs. “Well, not me personally, but my grandfather took the branches. My father used the trunk.”
“For what?”
“To build the throne.”
“It’s not Lucan’s Tree,” I repeat. “It can’t be. Lucan’s Tree is sacred.”
“Oh?” He quirks a brow. “I mean, I guess it would be more accurate to call it Lucan’s Stump.”
Lila shakes. “You—”
But I am already dropping to my knees again, palms pressing into the soft wood. I send my genius out. My moth flutters down my arms, through my hands. It is like hitting a nerve, a network of nerves, all severed, all screaming.
Screaming, screaming.
Alive.
My ears flood with a thousand shrieks, my brain pulsing with a million synapses of pain.
This can’t be. This cannot be.
“But…” Lila crouches beside me. “The wood isn’t rotted. It isn’t petrified, either.”
Only for the sickly, oily, parasitic magic that latches into its pith and will not let go. Reign magic that keeps it alive, tortured, bent in a frozen state of submission. I try to distinguish a singular voice, a nature that I can speak to, that I can beg for forgiveness and ask:What can I do? How can I help?
“It’s still alive,” I gasp.
“Did you know this?” Lila demands of the king.
Maxian crouches down before us, his thumb scraping across a dark bubble that forms on the surface. He brushes the liquid against his lips, closes his eyes, and breathes. When he opens his eyes, they glow golden.
“It is the only way to get the sap,” he says. “It’s why we let it live.”
“Let it live?” she cries.
But the voices keep screaming, screaming, and no matter how many times my moth signals,Let me help, let me help,there is no coherent reply.
“You call this living?” Lila cries. “You have mangled it, tortured it, used it. And still you keep it alive?”
He stands tall again. “Dead things don’t serve us.”
Pain and fury rip through me, singe my veins, like I am being sawed in half.
“This…” my friend gasps. “This is why it’s called the Pith, isn’t it? You…you severed the spine of our people! You destroyed the sacred for the convenient!”
Exhaling, I block out their conversation, to quiet the shrieking and the chaos and the thousands upon thousands of cleaved lives.
What is your story?I ask calmly, gently.
Finally, the voices respond, all at once, a thundering cry.
