Carrying the basket of pine cones, Kiela scooted out into the garden. “We’ll help as many of you as we can,” she said to the forest spirits. “Who’s first?”
A midsize bear led the way. Around them, the others streaked between the trees like scraps of mist at dawn after a rainfall. They clung between the leaves and then dissipated, until Kiela wasn’t certain she’d seen them at all. It was as beautiful as a meteor shower.
The sun fell through the leaves, filtered through the green, reminding Kiela of the North Reading Room in the Great Library with its stained-glass windows that cast patterns on the tables. The forest was hushed just like the library as well, but it was the hush of focused attention, not of sleepiness—a heightened silence that flooded everything. She and Caz didn’t speak.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what Caz had said about Larran. Why had he said that? It didn’t make sense. She didn’t have any answers. She hadaccessto answers, but that wasn’t the same, and, besides, Larran didn’t know about the spellbooks. Wait, no—Caz hadn’t said Larran thought shehadthe answers.
He said Larran thinks Iamthe answer.
She turned those words over in her head.
I am the answer.
She shook her head.
Nope, still doesn’t make sense.
A cloud bear hovered on top of a fallen log, waiting for them to catch up, and the other tree spirits streamed on either side. She kept catching glimpses of them between the ferns—eyes watching her. It should have been unsettling, but now that they were between the trees, there was something oddly comforting about it. They were deep into the forest, climbing over mossy rocks and logs, far from anything familiar and so very different from the city she’d been living in, yet it felt as familiar as a childhood dream.
She tried to keep track of their path: left beside the tree with a triple trunk, straight by a boulder made of pink quartz, across a stream that trickled over mossy stones, but after a while she fell into a kind of meditation.
Everything felt soft and alive, and she felt as if she were welcomed within.
As they crossed the forest, though, she began to notice hints of decay: a stunted tree, a bare grove, a trickle of water that had once been a river. When the cloud bear in the lead stopped, she should have been ready for what they’d find.
A dying tree.
She knew that would be where they were being led, but what she hadn’t guessed was the vastness of the tree. It was enormous, with a trunk wider than her arms could possibly reach and mottled bark that looked like a painting. Its thick limbs spread above them, like open arms that wanted to embrace the sky. Only a few leaves clung to its branches, the rest were bare.
A rabbit-size cloud bear danced around the roots and then curled as if in need of comforting between two enormous exposed roots that threaded through the mossy ground, while a massive seven-foot cloud bear hovered nearby, in a patch of ferns. The tree had to be at least two hundred years old.
“It’s old,” Caz said. “Do you think the spell will work?”
“There is a bristlecone pine tree that’s nearly five thousand years old.” Kiela laid her palm on the trunk. “A cypress on the island of Illirna is reported to be as old as the island itself, which is said to be two thousand years old. A fig tree on the island of Oteg has been worshipped by the islanders for over a thousand years. And an olive tree that’s said to be as old as time itself. They’d consider this tree a child.”
“Very nice, but what if the remedy fails because the tree has reached the end of its natural life?” He kept his voice low. “Do you have any idea where in the forest we are?”
She shrugged, unconcerned. “It’s an island. Walk far enough, and we’ll reach the shore.” Tilting her head back, she looked up at the stripes of blue sky between the bare branches.
“If they let us go,” he said darkly.
“They haven’t threatened us,” Kiela whispered back. “Don’t assume the worst.”
“Oh? You haven’t read theTales of Nivve,collected by the scholar Idya Warne, have you? In one, there was a child lured into a forest by tree spirits, and he walked out as only bones.” He dropped his voice even lower. “He’d been stripped of all his flesh.”
She dug through the pine cone basket, searching for the largest one. “I am certain scholar Cypavia would say that was metaphorical. Bones can’t walk. Also how did Idya Warne know that the forest spirits were to blame? Are they even solid enough to hurt? And why would they want to?” Glancing at the cloud bears that were drifting between the bushes, she added, “I don’t think we should be having this conversation now anyway.” It was a bit too late for doubts about the wisdom of following incorporeal creatures into the woods.
Kiela pulled out the trowel and knelt between two of the great roots. As she stabbed the mossy ground with the tip of the trowel, a keening noise rustled through the bushes around her.
“In another tale,” Caz whispered, “the spirits swallowed an entire village because they objected to them chopping down trees to build their houses and fill their fireplaces.”
“I feel like this book is anti-tree propaganda,” Kiela said. “Whom did the scholar credit as the author, and did he own a lumber mill?”
She peeled a square of moss back and dug into the soft earth.
The keening grew louder.
Looking up, Kiela said, “I have to bury the remedy between the roots. It won’t work otherwise.” She’d recited the spell to plenty of pine cones—all the ones in the basket, in fact—but the spell only activated after it had been buried. She was positive it was necessary. “I’m sorry for harming the moss.” She wondered if any of the tree guardians belonged to the moss and if they’d be offended. Gently, she pushed more of it aside, hoping its roots would stay intact and it could regrow over the spot where she was digging.
