“She’s right,” Erith said, and she rushed to get her seeds out of her pocket as well.
“Maybe we should ration them,” said March. “We don’t know what else is up there—we might need them more then.”
“You’re right,” said Silas. “We might need more later. It only took five of us to create the first bridge. Let’s try to do the same now.”
A moment later, Helen, Seth, and Mimi dropped their seeds on top of the other ones, too, and this time we were all prepared. We were all moving back, waiting for the moment the branches would sprout from the floor,explodethe way they had before.
Only…they didn’t.
“More.” Levana turned to look at March and me. “We need more!”
Something about the way the gears turned in my gut.
It waswrong,they insisted. It was a bad idea, and we still had no clue what awaited us higher up—and we still had no idea what awaited ushere, either. I doubted those flowers had been joking when they warned us, but at the same time, there was a part of me that hoped it would be the same now as it was a level below. A part of me hoped that if we just went upas high as we could, we were going to reach the top eventually. It was common sense—except I wasn’t sure how much common sense was worth in the Tree of Years.
Either way, when March dropped his seeds on the floor together with the others, I did the same. So be it. Whatever came next, we’d figure out a way to handle it without seeds. We were already doing this.
A second ticked by, then another.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” Levana whispered.
“Well, we don’t have more seeds,” Erith said.
Silas leaned down and raised a hand over the seeds like he’d done earlier. Closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, and…
“No magic,” he whispered. “There’s no magic in them whatsoever.”
“But there was plenty of magic in them earlier,” Helen argued.
Silas shook his head. “There isn’t anymore.”
“It’s evident,” Reggie said—he, too, had leaned in to feel the seeds. “There’s no energy, no warmth to them.”
“So, let’sgive itto them, then,” said Russ. “We can fire them up. We can give them our own magic.”
“They didn’t need our magic down there,” I said reluctantly, but Seth shook his head.
“That was another level. It’s worth a try. C’mon let’s try.”
We did.
Russ, Seth and Levana were kneeling all around the little hole full of seeds, their hands out, their eyes closed as they called for their magic. And we waited.
I expected the smoke, the colors. I expected a mix of them to fall upon the seeds any second, half hopeful, half dreading that it wouldn’t work.
But the colors never came.
“Fuck!” Levana shouted, panicked now. “My magic isn’t working anymore!”
A terrifying thought, indeed, especially when we’d discovered minutes ago that wecoulduse it like never before. That still didn’t stop the rest of us from trying, though. From being hopeful.
Until we failed, all of us, one after the other. We all failed.
The heat of the magic that was usually humming in my chest whenever I looked for it wasn’t there. It was like I’d been stripped of it completely. Like it didn’t even exist anymore.
Wrong, wrong, wrong,said a voice in my head. Screamed it.
