by JA Andrews
Sini turned slowly, her face pointed up, taking in the trees, letting the sunlight soak into her cheeks.
The others squeezed through the trees and joined her. No one spoke as they stared, awestruck, into the trees.
“I can feel them.” Will’s brow furrowed. “They have emotions. They’re yearning for something.”
Sini breathed in the air. It felt thicker, richer. She closed her eyes, trying to read the emotions of things the way Will could. She couldn’t feel anything from the people around her, but the forest did feel like it was longing for something. The ache seeped into her, fanning a feeling she’d pushed away for years. Unbidden, the memory of her mother surfaced. Her little brothers, their faces always too thin. Lukas, laughing. The longing for all of them took her breath away. She blinked back tears.
“They miss Ayda,” Douglon said quietly from the edge of the glen. “And the other elves. This is where she should be buried.” Without waiting for any agreement, he left, and Alaric followed. They returned bearing Ayda’s body. Using whatever tools they could find, everyone dug.
The earth was surprisingly soft beneath Sini’s fingers, and before long they had dug a grave in the center of the ring of trees. Alaric and Douglon set Ayda’s body in it. Alaric set his hand on the crystal that covered her. Orange light glowed around the Keeper’s hand, and the crystal disappeared.
Sini held her breath for a moment with everyone else, as though Ayda might open her eyes, but her body was the only thing in the grove that held no life. Douglon’s hands clenched a thin blanket from his pack. He climbed gently down into the grave and pressed a kiss to her forehead before covering her. Without a word, he climbed out and began to fill the grave.
Sini covered Ayda’s feet, pushing the soft earth into the grave.
When they finally stood beside a mound of fresh earth, silence fell over the group.
A tremor ran through the ground.
Sini glanced around, but everyone else was looking solemnly at the new grave. Will stood on the far side with his sister Ilsa. Alaric and Evangeline stood next to Sini and Rett. Rass sat at the foot of the grave with a long, mournful face, brushing her fingers though the blades of grass. Douglon pulled his axe off his back and set the head of it on the ground, resting his hands on the end of the handle. Light skittered along a line of red flames carved into the shaft.
Next to Sini, Rett began to hum a low Roven dirge, haunting and slow.
Will cleared his throat and began speaking, with Rett’s song as a backdrop. “I met Ayda before going to the Sweep. I spent three weeks with her here in the woods, wondering when she was going to introduce me to other elves. Not knowing there weren’t any.” He grew silent for a moment. “She was more alive than anyone I’ve ever met. Approachable and terrifying at the same time.
“I planned to come back through the Greenwood on my way home from the Sweep and see her again. But being here, like this—if we’d just lost her, it would be almost unbearable. But to have lost every trace of the elves as well…” He knelt down and placed his hand on the grave. “I will miss you, Ayda. The whole world will miss you.”
The only sound in the grove was Rett’s humming before Evangeline stepped forward. “I only knew Ayda for a few moments, but I owe her my life, and the elfish memories she left with me are priceless and precious.” She sighed. “Ayda, I wish I could have known you longer. Thank you for your gifts.”
Sini felt another tremble.
Not in the earth, though. In the air around them. Neither Will nor Alaric gave any indication they felt it, and Rett stood perfectly still beside her with his head bowed. Not even Rass appeared to have noticed.
Sini almost said something, but at that moment Ilsa stepped away from Will, searching the grove with a dissatisfied expression. At Will’s questioning look, she said, “On the Sweep the Roven plant grass on the grave. A reminder that new life springs from the old. But…” She glanced up at the trees. “Grass feels insignificant here.”
Sini reached in her pocket for the avak pit. “I have something.” She held it out. “Avak are a bit magical, like this place.” Alaric intercepted the pit and studied it for a moment. He made a curious noise in his throat and gave it to Ilsa. She knelt down and tucked it into the fresh dirt in the center of the grave, a handbreadth below the surface.
There was so much power in the grove, Sini half expected a shoot to burst out of the ground immediately.
Nothing happened.
Will, who’d been watching closely, nodded. “Avak belongs here.”
Alaric stepped a little closer to the grave. “Ayda was nothing that I expected her to be. She started out a curiosity and ended up…a good friend. I owe her everything.” He took Evangeline’s hand. “I will be forever grateful to her. I only wish I could have done something different so that she was still here.”
Douglon stood at the head of the grave, his head bowed. He lifted it enough to look down on Ayda’s grave. “Dwarves do not bury their dead in the ground. We build a cairn of stone around them, holding them in the eternal embrace of the mountain. When you put something under the ground it is devoured by the earth itself, and I have never understood why any people would choose this.”
Sini shifted her weight, shying away from the thought of the inevitable decay Ayda’s body would undergo. Alaric opened his mouth as though he might protest, but Douglon spoke first.
“But even now she continues to change me. Because Ayda does not belong encased in stone. She would have liked the idea of her body being given to the forest. She’d have been giddy at the idea of becoming part of the trees. Especially these trees.”
Douglon looked up at the dark branches. “When we discovered Gustav and the dragon had torn down the old Elder Grove and stolen Mallon’s body, Ayda was so angry. These trees—” he motioned around them “—were her answer. I thought what we could see from the outside was all there was. That the proof of her anger was all the world would get to keep of her. But this is what she was like, right here, the way this feels.” He left his face turned up and the sunlight fell on him. It fell on everything, soaking into the trees, the mourners, and the fresh turned earth. “This is where she belongs.”
They fell silent again, Rett’s humming the only sound aside from the rustling of leaves.
“In the beginning,” Douglon continued. “I thought she talked to the trees because…I don’t know why. Because she did nonsensical things.”
The dwarf’s hand went beneath his beard and rubbed over a spot on his chest. “When she gave me part of herself to save me from that arrow—once I could hear the trees, too—then it all made sense. Their voices soothed that deep loneliness she carried. In the trees she could almost hear the voices of the elves she’d lost.”
He looked up into the trees around them, his eyes unfocused. When he spoke again it was barely loud enough to be heard. “Because when I hear the trees, I can almost hear her again.”
No one spoke, and Sini felt a shadow of the aching loss in his voice.
A pulse rippled through the air of the grove like a silent crack of thunder, and she tensed.
Rett’s humming broke off, and Will and Alaric both started.
“You felt that one?” Sini asked.
Rass drew in a sharp breath and shoved her hands down into the grass, pressing her palms against the earth. She closed her eyes, her little brow knit.
Will looked at Sini sharply. “That one?”
Sini searched the glade, but everything looked calm. “There’ve been several. That was the strongest.”
Rass scrambled forward and spread her fingers out on the ground. “This is a waking field!”
“A what?” Will asked.
“On the Sweep we have waking fields—where the new elves wake.”
Evangeline’s eyes widened. “Yes! The Elder Grove is where elves wake up.”
Alaric’s attention snapped to her. “Are you sure?”
Evangeline nodded.
“Wake?” Douglon ask
ed sharply.
“Where they’re born,” Evangeline explained, her brow drawn in concentration. “The elves come here and put…something into the ground, and new elves are born.” She looked at Alaric. “I’m sorry, I can’t quite figure out what.”
“Will burying Ayda here create new elves?” Will asked.
“I don’t think so,” Rass said. “On the Sweep we give the waking field part of ourselves, and care for it until the new elves become more than grass. This grove needs something from a living elf to begin with, and then elves to care for it.” She peered at the trees above her. “This grove is…distant. Closed off. It’s alive, but purposeless.”
Sini sank down to her knees and spread her own hands into the grass. The grove pulled at her, drawing little licks of vitalle out of her palms before it stopped. Energy rushed past her hands, flitting back and forth beneath the surface.
“If it needs something from a living tree elf, it’s going to be hungry for a long time.” Alaric said.
The energy below her hand felt frantic.
“I have part of a living elf,” Douglon said, so quietly Sini almost missed it.
The dwarf still stood at the head of the grave, his face stony, watching Will. “Whatever she gave me when she saved my life, you said you could feel it inside me. Can you take it out?”
Will started to shake his head, but Douglon blew out an impatient breath. “It needs something from an elf. I have that.”
Alaric began to object, but Evangeline touched his arm. “So do I.”
Will studied both the dwarf and Evangeline with a troubled expression. A ripple rolled through the grove again, but Sini couldn’t quite pinpoint whether it was in the ground or the air. The sunlight still rained down on her. But it couldn’t just be the sun. Maybe the very air of the grove was alive somehow. A vibrant flower flung its petals wide on the nearest tree. Sini stood and moved over to it. The bloom wasn’t just bright red. Thin lines of energy trickled across the surface. She stretched up and brushed her fingertip across it. A rivulet of crimson fire rolled down her finger like water. She pulled her hand back and the red light dissolved into the air.
“It will work, won’t it?” Douglon continued, his voice low. “What we have is what Ayda had.”
Will toyed with a small silver bead braided into his beard. “What is in each of you is a single thing. I can’t take part of it.” He hesitated. “And if I take it all, I think you’ll both be back to…” He shrugged apologetically. “Normal.”
Douglon’s hand tightened on his axe. “We won’t hear the trees any longer?”
“I’ll lose the things I know about the elves?” Evangeline asked.
“Most likely.”
Evangeline’s gaze ran along the trees. “But you think it will help?”
Will glanced at Alaric and gave another helpless shrug. “I don’t know. What you have feels like what the grove could be missing.”
“Feels like?” Douglon repeated. “Could be?”
“Yes. That’s how certain I am. And even if it is exactly what the forest needs, I don’t know whether what you two have will be enough. There’s a chance I would take it from you and still the grove wouldn’t wake.”
“Even if it works,” Alaric broke in, “there are no elves to care for the grove.”
“There are no silvii, no tree elves,” Rass pointed out. “There are plenty of other elves.”
Will looked at her sharply. “You could do…whatever needs to be done?”
“I think so, but I’d need to stay here.” Rass gave him a grin. “I’ve never met a silvii.”
Will knelt down next to her. “I can’t stay with you.”
Her little shoulders straightened. “I don’t need you to—”
“I could stay,” Douglon raised a hand to ward off Rass’s objection. “Not because you need me to, snip. Just because I’d like to…help. However I can.”
Her irritation faded. “I’d like it if you stayed, uncle.”
Alaric looked at Douglon, Evangeline, and Rass. “Are you sure about this?”
“For a chance to have new elves?” Evangeline said. “We have to try.”
“Why are we still wasting time talking about this?” Douglon asked.
Will motioned for Douglon and Evangeline to come closer and glanced at Alaric. “There isn’t any vitalle here.”
A shocked laugh burst out of Sini before she could stop it.
“I mean,” Will clarified, “I can’t take energy from the grove when I’m trying to help the grove.”
Alaric nodded and Sini pressed her lips closed against another laugh. Why could no one else ever see it? “We can use the sunfire.” At their blank stares, she stepped up to Will and set her hand on his forearm where she could touch his skin. “You start. I promise there’ll be enough fire—vitalle—for anything you want to do.”
The two Keepers considered her for a moment. Alaric looked as though he might question her, but Will nodded. “I believe you.”
With Evangeline and Douglon standing before him, Will closed his eyes. He stretched his fingers toward Evangeline and she held still, her body stiff. Will twitched his hand and Evangeline let out a shuddering breath.
Douglon’s hands were curled into fists at his side, his jaw clenched, as Will turned toward him. The dwarf fixed his gaze toward the nearest tree. Will glanced up at him once, then with an expression caught between determination and regret the Keeper made a small pulling gesture. A spasm flashed across Douglon’s face.
Sini felt an ache of sympathy for them both. Will shuddered beneath her hand. He looked down and his hair hid his expression, but she could feel the tightness in his arm.
He could feel their emotions. She clenched her hand on his arm at the thought, suddenly terribly glad she couldn’t. Will knelt and Sini sank to her knees.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the sunlight, letting the warmth tingle across her cheeks. A trickle of energy flowed out of her hand into Will. He opened up a path for it to flow into the ground.
A wave of sunfire crashed down onto her. It poured into her like a drenching rain, flowing through her into Will.
It swelled and her hand grew hot against Will’s arm. She dropped her other hand to the ground, letting the vitalle pour directly into it. The vitalle streamed down from the sky, pouring through her into the eager ground. More sunfire than she’d ever moved, more than she’d ever imagined.
The gems on her ring began to glow. This was too much for them—too much energy rushing through her hands. She tried to rein it in, but the sunfire ignored her. With two small snaps the gems in her rings split, burst from too much energy. A jab of loss shot through her as their light drained away.
The earth pulled at her, desperate. She braced for pain at the sheer amount of fire flowing through her. But there was only a buzzing tingle across her skin.
Will let out a grunt of pain and shifted his arm under her grasp, clearly feeling more than a tingle. Sini turned the energy away from him, funneling most of it into the earth.
More and more fire rushed through her, growing to a raging river. The vastness of the power threatened to overwhelm her. She tried to pull back, to cut it off, but it raced through her unchecked. She was part of the grove, part of the sky and the sunlight and the trees.
Will shoved something from himself into the earth, and the ground below her rang with a new power. The avak pit, not far from Sini’s hand, shot out a burst of energy that flared through the ground. The grove drank it all in, stirring, stretching.
A wild glory sang out, blazing through the grove. The fire from her hands filled the ground, surged up the trees around them and spread out through the vast Greenwood. The forest wrapped around her, a living thing, unified, drawing her into itself. The voices of the trees rang through her mind. The earth flexed. She was exhilaratingly, terrifyingly, part of this fierce, swirling life.
“It’s working.” Rass’s awestruck whisper came through the tumult.
W
ill groaned and pulled his arm away, sinking back.
The path he’d made broke off and the flow of fire disappeared so abruptly that Sini toppled forward onto both hands. The sunlight winked back into sunlight, pressing on her head with nothing more than summer warmth.
The grove was just a grove again. She was utterly cut off from it. Beneath her hands she could feel the energy, calm and purposeful, moving heedless of her presence. She had provided what it needed, and it had drawn back into itself. The memory of that vibrant life echoed hollowly inside her, leaving her alone and insignificant. The grove had no more use for her. She was shut out.
She opened her eyes to see Rass kneeling in the grass with her hands splayed into the dirt. Her face beamed with joy. “It’s waking up.”
Sini pressed her own hand into the ground, desperate to feel it again, but there was nothing. She turned to Will. “Where did—?” The question died on her lips.
Will and Alaric stared at her.
“How…?” Alaric started
“She’s not even burned,” Will said
“Channeling that much…” Alaric shook his head slowly. “You should be dead.”
Sini’s skin tingled in memory of the fire. “I’ve never done that much before. It was the grove. It was so hungry. And the sunlight was so…eager.” She rubbed her arms to drive away the feeling.
A part of her was amazed at how much she’d channeled, but she couldn’t focus on it past the emptiness left by the grove. “Couldn’t you feel it?”
Will looked at the red patch on his arm where she’d held it. “The only thing I felt was an unbelievable amount of power from you.” He flexed his hand. “Thank you for not sending all of it through me.”
Alaric studied her like she was the most interesting person he’d ever seen. “I’ve never heard of a Keeper this powerful.”
Sini shifted, feeling self-conscious under their attention. Her gaze caught on the dull, cracked gems in her rings. Her heart sank. Lukas had made those for her to help her channel magic.
Will leaned forward and looked at the rings. “Don’t worry, we’ll teach you to move energy without needing burning stones.”