I know this is hard for her to talk about, just as it is hard to hear.
“You have heard her, I believe. She always tries to come through to you.” Lollie lets the last part sink in before she continues. “That is also why we have Ash. He came after your third life of being found went into such disarray. We knew we needed help.” That much is clear, I think.
Lollie keeps going, “Ash is a tree Being your mother and I trusted. We still do. It shouldn’t be hard for you to guess which rooted realm he rules over.” Lollie winks at me, but her humor is lost in my mistrust, and rightly so. I still have so many questions, but I ask the one weighing most on my mind.
“But what does Carya,no Ry, want with me?” His name feels funny on my tongue, when the only Carya I’ve known is my orange stray tabby, perched in the corner feeling my desperation from across the room.
“The same thing that all the higher tree Beings want. Your blood.” She looks down then.
“Your blood would make any tree Being reek of power, but you were promised to Carya. Your mother and I just wanted to protect you. We couldn’t stand by and watch your essence be drained.” She eyes me intently. Hoping I understand. “We cast your spirit into a stone to keep you safe.” At the mention of a stone, the one on my ring shimmers. I can’t seem to take it off.
“It wasn’t a simple choice. There were setbacks that Willowcouldn’t live with. With some help, we tied your soul to a mortal life. By breaking the stone, you were free to be reborn in human form,” Lollie’s words weighted.
Realization sets in. This was the stone. Pieced back together by Ry. For the sake of love or ego? Could it be both? Placing it on made me remember. Part of me wished it didn’t.
“It wasn’t perfect, but it kept you safe—until now,” Lollie looks at the ring on my left hand. “Inlaid with thistle thorns, so he can find you once your blood marks the earth. Even a drop. Or, as you’ve found out, once you put it on—you remember.” Just like that. My entire world falls apart with putting the wrong ring on the right girl.
“Either way, it’s disastrous. For your mind. For his hunger for you.” She focuses on me then with caring eyes that have seen me at my best, and apparently my worst.
“I…just…” My brain hurts. How could the life that I thought I knew everything about turn around with just the slip of a ring? My mind is a mess, cracked open, leaking all the bits I can’t hold any longer. Lollie must see this.
“Let’s head home, Jade. I think you need to rest. I’ll have Ash come by with some food.” She pulls her coat over my shoulders. It’s colder here. “We can talk more, but I think right now you just need a break from everything. You need sleep.”
With her arm around my shoulder, I feel like a child again. I lean into her. Focusing on one small but crucial detail—in the end,no oneis who they seem.
28
DREAMLAND ETHER
DETROIT 1978
Isit at the base of an old willow by a lake long lost to time. In a distant life. Or maybe this life. It’s hard to know when you’ve had so many, for they each bleed into the next.
It is no wonder human lives are so short in retrospect, for they would never hold the memories of what really mattered together if they lived beyond one hundred. They would jumble them all, much like keeping track of a grain of sand on a beach full of a million others.
However, there is a memory that never fades. Not for me at least. It is the memory of my mother. The way she smells like softness and comfort, like her newly made bed that as a child I would dive into until I got lost amongst the mounds of pillows and blankets.
The creases of her eyes when she smiles, permanently etched there from all the times she held a smile so long just looking at me as if I were her whole world. Her hands. Long, slender fingers like the boughs of a willow tree. And her hugs. Hugs that would hold me forever until I decided to let go.
And she is here now. I can feel her as I skim my feet against the water. With one hand planted behind me on the earth and the other on the smooth root of the willow, I feel the vibration pulsating through. It's been alive all this time.Shehas been alive all along.
She enters my mind effortlessly, and it makes me wonder if the ring was the answer to bring her closer all along.
‘It was never the ring, my beautiful girl—it was always you.I’ve never been apart from you; you’ve only just awakened.’
Her voice drifts into me like a mourning dove’s song, and I wait calmly to hear it again.
‘I know this must be hard to accept. Every life, I’d hope would get easier to keep him away, but the memories only got messier. I am so sorry. Sorry too that there is no way to break this spell. If I had known that then, maybe I would have done it differently. But fear took over. Fear of losing you.’
In this dreamland ether, I cannot speak, although I want to. My questions don’t come out, and I have so many. Why did you leave? I try to say, but the words don’t form. I can listen only. So, I do.
‘When you were created, you were born from me. It is only out of true love and hope that one can be created. But right away the realms knew, because being a tree sprite meant you were bound to provide power to another. It was the way of the realm, having been that way for as long as I can remember.’
I try to reach for her voice, but my fingers are only greeted by the mist her words leave behind.
‘You were bound to the Rooted Realm of Hickory and Heart before you were even fully formed. Dark earth magic has its ways of getting what it wants, and his heart was the darkest. And it yearned foryou.’
Ry’s hungry look is all I can see. Her words are truer than she knows.
