“But the cactus—”
“Gah!” He tossed his tendrils in the air. “Never mind the cactus! Books!” Grumbling about how they had no business attempting magic of any sort, Caz trundled himself back into the cottage, and Kiela followed, glancing back several times at the innocent and unexpected and strangely lovely addition to their garden.
Breath, several scholars concurred, was a key ingredient in spells that summoned new life. It was, she thought, a likely ingredient in the spell that had created Caz, but she didn’t say that out loud—she wasn’t certain if he was sensitive about his creation or not. At any rate, the substitution of breath for breeze was most likely responsible for the new cactus in their garden. “Looks like we need actual wind,” Kiela said.
“And we should have used pine tree sap instead of honey,” Caz said, showing a passage he found in another book. “ ‘When working with plants, one must bind the ingredients with a plant-based substance, not one produced by either insects or mammals.’ ”
“Makes sense,” Kiela said.
“Also, I found a copy of the same spell but in neater writing.”
She examined the syllables.Really, that was supposed to be a “fa”?If she ever met Ylindar, she was going to suggest the sorcerer work on her handwriting skills. “So basically we did everything wrong.” Perhaps they should have done a bit more research before jumping into spellcasting, but at least they hadn’t done any harm. “Ready to try again?”
“Let’s pick a tree somewhere out in the woods, in case we create more cacti.”
“You don’t like cacti?” she asked.
“I support all plants,” Caz said loftily. “But I do know whateverthatis, it’s not native to this area. More of it will draw a lot more attention than overabundant raspberries.”
Fair point. “How about the willow tree by the pond where we found the duckweed?” She remembered it had looked spindly, with sparse leaves on its limp branches.
Caz agreed, and they gathered a fresh supply of ingredients, using sap from an oozing pine tree to bind the elements together. Checking the wind, Kiela held the pine cone up so that the easterly breeze hit it, and then she wrapped it in a cloth in case the wind direction shifted.
“Attempt number two,” she said.
Together, while the late-morning sun streamed through the leaves and the squirrels rustled in the branches, Kiela and Caz strolled into the woods.
It wasn’t far to the pond, but it was far enough that no one would blame them for any abnormalities—Hopefully.As they picked their way between the ferns and overgrowth, the birds chattered overhead. She listened for the squawk of an errant hen, but she only heard the familiar calls of the songbirds, trilling and cooing and warbling. She heard a trickle of water before she saw the pond, fed by a stream, and she followed it until the forest opened.
Last time she’d been focused on the pond itself, with its light spread of duckweed, but this time she climbed around the pond and over a mossy fallen tree to reach the willow. It was a great old tree, with bending branches that swept the surface of the water with gentle kisses. Its ancient trunk was twisted, frozen mid-dance, and the old bark looked as if it had been stretched too far and cracked from the strain. In its day, it must have been a magnificent sight. She could see the shadow of the tree it had been, echoed in the graceful drooping branches. Once, those branches would have been thick with teardrop leaves, and they would have rustled in the wind as if they were singing. She thought of Larran singing the old lullaby. Her mother could have sung that to her too, but she had no memory of it. She wondered if the old willow remembered.
Suddenly, Kiela wanted this spell to work as much as she’d ever wanted anything. It felt important that the tree’s leaves sing in the wind again. Kneeling at the willow’s knobby roots, she used the trowel to dig a hole and placed the sticky pine cone in it. She folded the soil over the pine cone as she said the words, correctly and precisely and intensely.
Side by side, Kiela and Caz watched the soil.
“Odds that it’ll be another cactus?” Caz whispered.
“Eighty-twenty,” she whispered back. She wasn’t sure why they were whispering, but it felt appropriate.
“Eighty it will be a cactus?”
“Eighty it won’t,” Kiela said. She believed it would work this time. And if it didn’t . . . there were plenty more ways it could fail other than producing another cactus. Some outcomes were potentially even more dramatic. She began to wonder if any of this was wise. “It’s not doing anything yet.”
Both of them stared so intently at the roots that Kiela almost missed the moment when the leaves above began to tremble. She heard them first, a whistle and then a rustle. She looked up to see a cascade of green as branches waterfalled from the trunk of the willow. Beside her, Caz let out a gasp as the tree healed: the branches softened into supple strands instead of brittle whips, leaves popped out as thick as fur, the bark shifted to a younger, greener shade. In front of them, the roots thickened.
“It worked,” Kiela breathed. It wasn’t any more subtle than the plant-growth spell, but wow. As an added benefit, it didn’t force the tree out of season. If they could adapt it to be less showy . . . Of course, that all depended on whether this was a one-time miracle or whether the spell was replicable . . .
Caz did a little dance next to her. “Let’s make more!”
She grinned at him as she stood up and brushed the dirt off her knees. “Absolutely,” she said. She laid her hand on the trunk and thought she could feel the fresh life flooding through the tree. “It’s beautiful.”
As she marveled at the reborn tree, Kiela thought she heard a soft voice repeat in a whisper, “Beautiful.” Listening, she heard nothing further.It must have been the wind.
Chapter Thirteen
The apple orchard was a boneyard.
Every tree was a skeleton, with bare limbs that twisted like arthritic fingers. Several had shriveled leaves that looked pasted onto them, and a few had the rare apple, not yet ripe, hanging lonely on its branch, hardly a harvest. Kiela halted at the fence around the orchard and felt a lump in her throat.
