The tiniest cloud bear drew closer, and she let it inspect the start of her hole.
When it withdrew, she asked, “May I proceed?”
The bear inclined its head.
So it can understand me, even if it can’t speak.She’d suspected as much, though it was unclear earlier whether it had understood her words or simply the act of bringing the basket of pine cones outside. She wondered how intelligent they were and what they thought of the islanders. Did they share Caltrey willingly? Her parents hadn’t talked much about the history of the island, but she knew people had lived here for many generations. The villagers and fisherfolk weren’t newcomers, but to a several-centuries-old tree, perhaps they were.
She wondered if anyone had studied the forest spirits of Caltrey. Cypavia had worked primarily on the islands to the west, both those on the sea and in the air. Kiela didn’t think anyone had studied these particular cloud bears.
If they haven’t,she thought,I could.
After she grew her jam shop. After she proved she could feed herself. After she healed the forest. And helped the island. And figured out what Caz meant when he’d said Larran thought she was the answer . . .
Kiela buried the pine cone.
She thought about leaving it to do its work—she’d already said the spell once when they’d assembled the remedy. But would it be enough? This was an exceptionally large and old tree.
It couldn’t hurt to say it again.
She chanted the words to the spell out loud. After testing so many pine cones, she had the phrases seared into her mind, and she was confident that she pronounced each of the ancient syllables correctly. While she chanted, it felt as if the forest stilled—the birds were silent, the breeze died, and the tree spirits were motionless around her.
As she said the last syllable, Kiela rocked backward and exhaled.
“Uh, Kiela?” Caz whispered.
All the cloud bears had drawn closer, blurring into a fog that crept around her, Caz, and the sycamore tree. She couldn’t see the forest in any direction, only the dying tree before her. She looked up at its branches, and then she felt the roots convulse beneath her knees as magic flooded the old tree.
It looked like a wave of green light, beginning with the roots and pulsing through the trunk until it split at the branches. It chased down every limb. Every branch it touched burst into life: leaves budded and then unfurled, and the most glorious scent ofgreenandlifeandspringandsummerall wrapped together filled Kiela’s nose, mouth, and body. She felt as if she were breathing in the essence of the forest, alive and full of growth. Leaves layered over one another so fast that the sky disappeared and the sun vanished into a glow of green.
Pressing itself against the trunk of the sycamore, the rabbit-size cloud bear wept tears as bright as diamonds. Its tears rolled down the bark, and where they touched the soil, delicate white flowers bloomed. She’d never seen flowers like it: they were clusters of petals that glowed with the soft, white light of the full moon.
“Wow,” Caz said. “Just a suggestion, but if you want to stay inconspicuous, don’t say the spell twice.”
“Yeah,” Kiela agreed.
A breeze-like whisper swept through the tree spirits, and they drifted apart to create a clear path away from the sycamore tree. Kiela stood up and picked up the basket. Clearly, the tree spirits wanted to lead them to the next—
A unicorn stepped onto the path.
Kiela gasped.
Caz breathed, “Whoa.”
It was like moonlit water, so bright that tears sprang into Kiela’s eyes as she looked at it. Shaped like a dreamer’s idea of a horse, the unicorn was slender and graceful—closer to a line drawing than an in-the-flesh creature. Its neck curved like a wave, with its mane as the sea foam. The longer Kiela looked at it, the more she saw that it wasn’t as white as the moon, it was iridescent, like mother-of-pearl, with purples and reds and blues that swirled through its silvery white hide. Its horn was a slender spiral of gold.
It regarded them with ocean-blue eyes.
And then the forest spirits flooded toward it, and the unicorn disappeared from view.
Kiela found she was shaking. Seeing a unicorn . . . Well, it simply didn’t happen, not to ordinary librarians or ordinary island shopkeepers. It happened in tales. Or to children, who later believed they’d dreamed it. It was a gift.
“I think we should heal more trees,” Kiela breathed.
Beside her, Caz was quivering. “Yes, absolutely.”
As the setting sun tinted the sky rose and orange, Kiela and Caz staggered back to the cottage. They’d crisscrossed the forest and used every pine cone in the basket. They didn’t see the unicorn again, but they saw wonders all the same:
Birds with plumage that draped behind them like a grand cloak.
