But not alone.There, said a spider who crawled in his stick’s path, redirecting it, making a jagged line.And there, said a worm who poked its pink head from the ground, then back under, creating a looping smudge in another glyph, changing its meaning. The shape of a millipede scuttling crookedly across a broken stump reminded him of a paraglyph he’d seen before in a book but couldn’t quite recall.Sleep,he thought it was, as he added it.
By the time the sky turned from white gold to blue, he had composed a new spell.
There was no one word for it. Some of the glyphs he knew by heart; some he’d never seen before, so he made their meanings. Some were new – his creation, and the forest’s.Heart, will, flight, bind. Palingenesis. Transmigrate. One soul into another vessel.
The first impediment was also the largest: a spellscribe’s magic did not work on animals.
But magic did not look the same below the open sky, below this canopy of leaves, as it did in storied institutions. Above the moss-drenched humus and endless roots, magic did not require glyphs; and glyphs, when used, could have meanings previously unimagined.
It looked like Perrine’s; straightforward, a freely given exchange. It looked like David’s sleeping spell opening Sy to arealm where the forest could reach out its tendrils and tap into his dreams.
It looked like the witch’s curse turning Anya into a creature of the moon. She was other than human, now, and the magic still changed her.
A spellscribe’s magic may not work. But the forest’s magic? Now, that was another story.
Magic, soul, vessel, earth. The longer he lingered, the longer he listened, the less the distinctions mattered. He suspected whatever magic the phoenix possessed was but a concentrated, more powerful iteration of the magic he had felt since stepping into the trees; the magic he felt entwining with his body, his spirit. The forest’s very heart.
Entwining, or consuming. He couldn’t say. Perhaps this was but another, slower version of what the forest had done to Terrence, had tried to do to Sabina. Less an eagle tearing carrion skin to shreds, more a fig slowly digesting the still living wasp, lured by the fruit’s scent into its warm, eclipsing cavity.
If he was the wasp, he sensed he was running out of room, of will, to escape. But once digested, the wasp became a part of the fruit. Of the tree. Of the forest.
With the rising sun igniting his bones, he climbed the warming outcrop and found a large, smooth, flat stone to sit on, giving him a bird’s eye view of the paraglyph he’d made in the dirt. Carefully, he removed his kit. He copied the spell a dozen times with his pencil, each time perfect, each time precise. For breakfast, he ate one of the apples, but only after checking it for blemishes. Satisfied by its nicks and bruises, he choked it down, then fed the core and the rest of the apples to a nearby stream.
In return, he sought a test subject. Two. Two vessels. Two souls.
A toad he heard croaking and dug from the mud by the stream. A beetle the size of his curled fist, plucked from the bark of a fallen maple.
He corralled his test subjects into haphazard enclosures made from gathered sticks, clumsily catching the toad when it tried to hop over and away.
Using his pen, he wrote the spell forstill.There was enough of the dust for both his subjects; he doled it out accordingly.
“Don’t move an inch,” he said to them as he sprinkled the dust over their heads, “until I’m done with you.”
Neither did. It was only by the toad’s breathing he was sure he hadn’t killed them both. Then...it worked. He allowed himself a moment to savor the small victory.
But the next bit was the bit that mattered. He used his own blood and wrote the new spell with his pen. Slow, careful, deliberate; not pressing too hard, or too light. Frightened, all the while, that merely writing it out would backfire, turn him and everything around him to some horrid creature, to dirt, to ash.
But it didn’t. He cupped the paper in his palms; he blew. It made the same ruby dust as ever; he still had all his bones, all his organs.
A fair bit less blood, though. Ignoring the way the forest floor swam, he applied the spell to both the toad and the beetle.
It had no visible effect; although, he wasn’t exactly sure what he thought he should be seeing.
Wincing with a whispered apology, he killed the beetle, cutting open its soft underbelly with the skinning knife. He wrote the spell again, this time in the beetle’s blood and using his sharp stick instead of his pen. He applied that spell to the toad.
Again, nothing.
With the beetle now deceased, he needed another subject. Remembering the guests he had attracted when he had been dead weight in his enchanted sleep, he set out his stolen seed bread, the linen peeled back enticingly toward the undergrowth beyond his small camp. He crept behind a tree, and sat silent and still, watching.
And watching. Not silent and still enough.
Wary of spending too much blood, he promised himself he would only attempt it once. He wrote the spell forstill, and, after ensuring he was in a comfortable position, and had the empty apple sack nearby, rubbed the dust on the back of his neck. A shudder ran through him before his limbs went weak but rigid, stiff as a stone cut from the earth.
Once more, he waited, now as part of the landscape as the tree at his back.
It was not long before a wood mouse shuffled out of the low grass, sniffing around his bag of food. He waited impatiently for the spell to wear off, testing his muscles so he would be ready the instant it did. The mouse was happily chewing through the molding bread when he lunged forward, trapping it in the empty sack. It struggled against the cloth as he crafted another stunning spell. When he opened the bag, it peered up at him, frozen, terrified.
“Feel no fear,” he entreated as he stunned it. He lifted it in his palm. Its scampering heartbeat slowed. “Feel no pain.”
