Ranth trailed after me as I followed Ori up the stairs. I concentrated on a mental list of what I’d need to leave the house as the nearness of him crawled up my back.
Avoiding the windows that looked over the garden, I opened the kitchen herb storage cabinet and pulled down some culinary sage, rosemary, and thyme to refresh my belt pouches and fitted the extras into my go-bag. If we were going to deal with demons, I’d need the emergency ward kits and extra maca root if I had to go planar. Maca was great for boosting my natural magical ability to access planes. I took the premades from the cabinet, along with some holy water-soaked tampons, as Ori opened her laptop.
Ranth had his back against the counter, silently observing.
“Okay, so let’s do simple stuff first. Sorrel, tell me what you know and what exactly happened up to when I arrived.”
I recounted briefly what had happened at Brenda’s, then after arriving home, and Ranth’s appearance.
Ori turned to Ranth. “How do you spell Ack-nim?” Ori asked.
“A-H-K-N-I-M,” Ranth replied, focusing on her. I strapped on wrist points while he was distracted. The mushroom leather was molded to the shape of my wrists. My leather smith friend Serena had made them with magnetic buckles and earth magnets for extra grounding, so I could strap them on fast. I hoped the silver slotted inside the straps would counterbalance the negative energy from the gold bracelet.
Ori’s burgundy lacquered nails clattered on the keys, in between mouse clicks.
“Hmmm. Not much here, but he might be telling the truth about the Ahknim wizard bit. There was a tree of life in the archaic texts, but that was supposed to be lost thousands of years ago. You’re going to have to convince me you’re that old. I can’t believe it.”
I shook my head. “Neither do I. Magic over time warps an artifact, and the magic seeps out. So super old artifacts are less potent than their modern counterparts.”
Ori’s eyes locked with mine. “And your understanding meets what’s online, which is why I don’t believe he’s been trapped in that bracelet for like a couple thousand years.” Her head tilted toward Ranth. He was rubbing his scar again, contemplating us like we were interesting ants hard at work.
“When were you born?” I asked Ranth, settling the extra herbs and kits in my messenger.
“In what you call January, I think,” he replied, walking around and looking over Ori’s shoulder.
“The year?” Ori asked, typing again.
“It was 332.”
Ori stopped typing. “Wait, that would make you over a thousand years old. Which calendar?”
He rubbed his jaw. “I’m not sure I understand the question. Calendars have months, no?”
“Come on, you speak almost perfect English,” I said.
“That’s because I’ve heard it for decades. You pick things up. But my time in the garden has enhanced my faculties.”
“And reading?” I asked.
“I read over the shoulder of a woman who read aloud. I figured it out.”
I breathed out my frustration. “So, you’ve been sentient and trapped in this bracelet since 332, or whatever?” I ran a fingerover my eyebrow. He didn’t look much older than me. This was giving me a headache.
“I wasn’t born in the bracelet, and I wasn’t cursed until years after my entrance to the Garden. I was twenty-four on my last birth day, and when I return, it will be as if I’ve not left.”
“That would mean time is parallel, and that’s only a concept, not even a theory,” Ori replied, sitting back and crossing her arms.
Ranth walked to the back door, pressing on his bracelet. Agitation rolled off him. “It’s how it works from the spell we wrought. I am not supposed to speak of it, but very well—since our lives are connected now, I suppose performing my duty relies on you.” He considered me as my brain swam with the potential disasters.
Ori straightened up, hovering her fingers over the keyboard. “What duty?” She loved the idea of an advisor to the crown as a trope—all Nostradamus and Rasputin.
“Much more important. Kelis, Rei, and I are Keepers of the Trees. It was our position to create a place to keep them safe. The Trees are moved every generation, but something went wrong. We were supposed to return to the temple after the ceremony and be the Keepers to the plane, but instead, the temple must have been lost. To return to the plane, I will need to remake the key.”
Ori stopped typing. “Hang on, what trees?”
“The Trees that grew in the beginning and unlocked all that we know.”
I looked at Ori.
