Alison rubbed the line with her fingertip and then pulled his jaw to her, kissing him on the lips. She was pleased that the action still left him dazed as she pulled away, even though she had done it dozens of times over the past few weeks. “I’m sure. It’s going to be fine.”
“Are you sure you don’t need the branches?”
Alison had summoned the spriggan in the spring with a bundle of branches the Wildcat had suggested, but Alison was nearly certain that it had caused him offense. “Worse comes to worst, we come back with them tomorrow.”
There had been no need to worry. Alison heard a familiar creaking just moments later, and her eyes caught the movement as they came around a large spruce.
The spriggan walked forward from the grove in his ordinary form, which was much like a man made from a tree, his body the trunk and arms and legs the branches. Like the rest of the forest,he had grown a number of leaves since Alison had seen him last. “What brings you here, my friends?”
Alison gave Keir a pointed look on the word “friends.” “Two reasons,” she said. “No, three.”
The spriggan gestured to them. “Come, sit in my shade and tell me your reasons three.”
He walked onto the trail and planted his feet into the ground. And then he grew upwards, his body extending and curling over as his limbs grew down and out into the shape of a bench. Alison took a seat on one of his legs without hesitation. Keir took a little more coaxing, but he joined her.
Willow looked up at a little nook where the spriggan’s shoulders curled over its body. “May I?” she asked it.
“Of course, little one.”
Willow climbed the spriggan’s body and rested in the nook, nearly beginning to sharpen her claws in its bark but stopping herself.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Not at all,” said the spriggan. “Now, the three reasons.”
“The first reason is to see how you are and how the forest is,” said Alison.
“Ah,” said the spriggan. “This is not truly the first reason, but it is nice of you to say so. The forest is well. It has been a good spring with plenty of rain. Is it not a thing of beauty?”
The spriggan was not easily fooled, but Alison could see he was not offended that she had not come to visit him sooner, and that he knew they were there for more than just niceties. “It has been a lovely spring indeed.”
“The second reason?”
“There is another threat to the town and to the land that surrounds it. The king is coming, and he intends to see that a dam is built across the river. These lands will be flooded, possibly for miles.”
The spriggan bent forward more, his bark creaking as he considered. “A blow to the forest to be sure, but little compared to how much the people take already.”
“True,” said Alison. “But it would be an end to the town. The stone circle. All of it buried beneath the water.”
“A town at the bottom of the lake. A strange thing, undoubtedly. But what would you have me do? I have not been able to keep the trees safe. There is only one of me and so many of you.”
Alison didn’t have much of an answer to this. “I don’t know, to be honest. We aren’t sure what we’re going to do to stop it. But if there’s a part for you to play, would you play it?”
“I will always come to the aid of those who protect the forest. What is the third reason you have come?”
Keir, who had been sitting as still as a statue on the spriggan’s knee, turned to look up into its face. There was fear in his eyes, but also a fearsome protectiveness towards Alison that compelled him to speak. “You once felt the hold the old magic had on me. Do you feel any of it in Alison?”
Alison laughed at Keir’s somber tone. The spriggan looked at her, confused by her reaction. “I promised him we’d ask, but the entire thing is preposterous.”
“What part of it is preposterous? I told you when I met you that you had a whisper of the old magic in you as well. That whisper is louder now. It’s more like a murmur, the difference between the wind blowing through bare branches and the wind through the leaves. The breeze is still light, but it’s growing.”
The spriggan moved its arm, causing Alison to jump in alarm. “No, child, I will not hurt you or restrain you as I did to him. The magic in you is not beyond your control, though it seems it may have been beyond your notice.”
“Where did it come from?” asked Keir. Alison could see the guilt in his eyes.
“I suspect it was always there, but it was awakened by you.”
“I knew it,” he said. “I knew it all the way back when you recovered from the head injury so quickly. You could have died. You should have been unwell for weeks, yet you were on your feet and fine the very next day. I knew it then but couldn’t admit it.”
