by Everly Frost
“I don’t feel lucky,” I said. “My brother died for me.”
Rift flinched as though I’d struck him in the heart. “Then at least he died with honor.”
He sucked in a breath and I could tell he was burying something deep. The others were all looking to him, waiting for him to speak again.
“You need to see the source,” he said, turning me toward the tower. “You need to see what we’re protecting. It’s your job to protect it now too. It’s this way.”
He drew me along the path and as we moved, the others followed close behind, Pip staying the closest. Snowboy was next and Quake and Blaze brought up the rear, keeping to either side of the path like sentries on the lookout. I couldn’t help but think they were protecting me somehow.
Rift drew me to a stop in front of the gorgeous tree. His grip didn’t change, still soft on my arm, but his expression became cautious. Even Snowboy studied me, a strangely watchful expression on his face, as though they were all waiting for me to move.
I shook my head at them. “Why have we stopped?”
Rift stepped off the path into the shade beneath the tree, taking me with him. Beneath the shadow of the green leaves and giant, white flowers, everything was calm.
Rift was suddenly closer, his voice hushed. “See the flowers? They’re magnolias.”
I focused on the nearest one and reached for it, marveling at its size and the dark seeds at its center. Before I touched it, he caught my hand. “Don’t touch them. Don’t touch anything.”
I nodded, so he knew I wouldn’t, and only then did he release my hand.
“Each flower blooms for a single day. A mere moment in the life of the tree.” Just as he’d told me not to touch the tree, he also kept his distance from it, keeping within its shadow but remaining an arm’s length from its trunk and branches. “Much like our lives, no?”
A mere moment. Our lives were a blink of an eye compared to the normal lifespan of a few hundred years.
I bit my lip, examining the flowers and the strange darkness at their center, but not touching them. “Are you trying to tell me that this is the source? This is the source of nectar?”
When he nodded, I frowned. The tree was beautiful, gorgeous, but no different than others I’d seen. If anything, the cherry tree outside Tower Seventeen was more majestic than this one. Not that I should have assumed that the source of nectar would be a thing of beauty. I’d certainly never thought it would be a tree, although the name everyone called it—“nectar”—would make sense if it came from a plant.
I peered at the black seeds in the center of each flower, but even they seemed normal. “I don’t understand. It’s an ordinary tree. How can this be the source?”
Rift was grim. “Take a step to your left.”
I frowned but did as he said.
And then, suddenly, it became clear.
Rift said, “The magnolia tree isn’t the source. That is.”
Chapter Eight
AT THE BACK of the tree was a branch unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Black and snarled as burned coal, it stretched upward from the lower middle of the magnolia’s trunk. The branch dripped with elongated black leaves, thick and prickly with pointed tips that reminded me of an insect’s tail. There was a space around the whole branch. None of the other branches or the green leaves mingled with it, as though the magnolia kept itself at the greatest distance possible from the foreign branch.
It was as though someone had cloaked the entire branch in tar, scraped it over with a clawed instrument, and dipped it into darkness itself.
“How?” I breathed. “And what?”
“The man who took us from Seversand,” Rift began, pointing at the branch with his arm level with mine. “Did Snowboy tell you about him?”
At my nod, he continued. “He took that branch from Seversand, too. It was much smaller back then, ten years ago. He planned to take it with him to Evereach, but when he found out the Starsgardians were coming for him, he grafted the branch onto this tree instead.”
It was almost too much to take in. “I have so many questions.” All of them bubbled forth and clamored over each other. “Why can’t I touch it? You use nectar, so surely you have to touch it to get the nectar out? And where exactly is the nectar? Is it in the leaves? Or under the bark? And why do the leaves remind me so much of…” I stared at the gruesome fronds.
“Why do the leaves remind you of scorpions?”
“Yes.”
He leaned in close, shadows dancing in his eyes like he was never completely one person. “Because they are.”
Fear raced down my spine, chilling me colder than an icy avalanche. “The leaves aren’t really leaves?”
He shook his head. “The branch has no leaves. It never has. Instead it wears poisonous creatures.”
I backed away from the tree but veered farther left to see the way the leaves connected with the knotty branch. Sure enough, what had first appeared to be clawed marks and knotted bulges were the pitch-black bodies of scorpions.
“The man who brought the branch here—and you with it—did he bring those creatures too?”
“I didn’t see him cut the branch, but when we got here, he pulled a container out of his satchel and it looked like a kind of cocoon. He showed us the branch and the scorpions inside it. The cocoon was porous, so I guess the creatures could breathe. They stung him when he grafted the branch onto the tree, but he kept going. I don’t know how he could continue, but he did.”
I asked, “Then … this branch and the scorpions on it, they’re from Seversand?”
Rift’s face turned pale at the memory. He shook it off and nodded again.
“Where in Seversand? What tree is like that?”
Rift said, “Seversand has many songs. Our warriors sing them, our parents sing them, and in the cavern where I spent the first years of my life…” He gestured at Quake and Blaze. “In the cavern where we spent the first years of our life, the walls were lined with black threads, like a kind of marble you could never imagine.” He leaned in. “Like the fine black roots of a tree.”
Walls lined with black threads. I’d seen the same thing under Tower Seventeen—fine black filaments threading through the white walls of the data storage area—walls with doors that had opened and let me in with a single touch.
“My mother sang about a tree. A tree that was sung to be older than any other living person, creature, or thing. A tree that once had branches lush with flowers and fruit but had turned to coal and would soon turn to ash, leaving the human race in darkness.” His expression became far away again. “I was very young when the man brought me here. Eight years old like Snowboy. I don’t remember much about the cavern where I began my life, but I do remember the two times I was punished. The first was the day I broke my mother’s rules and crept to the surface. I lived in a pod, you see—”
“Pod?”
He smiled. “Like a very large cocoon inside an even larger underground cave.”
“I’ve never seen anything of Seversand other than sand dunes.”
“We live underneath in the cool. Our cites are in caverns. Our homes are in pods that hang from the ceiling of the underground rock, with rocky staircases and agriculture in the cavern beneath us. My mother often sang about cities—massive ones made of pods like jewels hanging in vast caverns and enormous glittering machines called Devourers that chewed through the earth. She sang about warriors practicing their skills in the rays of the sun that streamed through the solar vents.”
The pride faded from his voice. “Our cavern was small and there weren’t many other people there. Blaze and Quake were older than me, but they were the only other boys. Over time I came to understand that my life wasn’t entirely normal. I don’t mean the living underground part. I mean that there were so few of us and our cavern was so small. Enclosed. With a single staircase to the surface.
“I was forbidden from climbing it. We were told that the sandy wind would rip the skin from
our faces.”
He shook his head. “But I wanted to see the roundness of the sun just once. My mother was wrong. The wind didn’t hurt me. But above us was a courtyard and in the center of the courtyard was a tree.”
He pointed. “It was just like that. Every single branch like coal, just like my mother sang. I thought for sure that I must have fallen asleep, that I was dreaming. I knew I was awake when my mother caught me sneaking back in.”
“You said two times?”
“The second was the day the man took me from my home. But my punishment that time was different.” He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. “We don’t take nectar from the branch itself, but from the roots beneath. It sounds impossible, but since we’ve been here—since the branch was grafted on—the roots of the magnolia tree have broken through the ceilings of four levels beneath the tower. There are whole rooms filled with roots. We have to do regular checks for structural damage and keep up with repairs, but we never have to take the nectar by force. It simply rises to the surface of the roots, seeping out in small black pearls.”
“Have you ever tried to take it from the branch itself?”
“No.” His expression changed. He shot the others a look and then turned back to me. “What are you thinking?”
I exhaled. My fingers itched. “It’s the strangest thing. I can’t explain it, but … I want to try.”
“It’s what we’ve all wanted to do.”
Suddenly, the boys were closer, nodding.
“Except that we never have,” Blaze offered.
Rift said, “We’ve all seen the scorpions in our visions, and every single one of us has stood beneath these branches and wondered what would happen if we tried to go near it. If we tried to go near them.”
I glanced at the others and they were all nodding. Even Pip. “I almost did once,” he said.
A grin broke across Rift’s face and lit up his features. “But we haven’t, because … well … scorpions.”
I rounded the tree, examining it from all angles. There was hardly a space on the branch that didn’t have a scorpion covering it. As I stepped closer, they swayed as though they were waking up. Another step closer and they became alert, moving. I estimated there were maybe a hundred, maybe more.
I was within arm’s reach and the bark made me think of mythical creatures, giant dragon scales, black pearls, the mist over the ocean, darkness, and a great thirst—not a thirst for water, but for something else.
And there it was again. The connection with a vast thing. The same thing I’d sensed beneath Tower Seventeen. A presence that reminded me of fire and strength, of frozen glaciers and the deepest shadows, the brightest rays of the sun, of hope and faith and fear and life.
The scorpions awoke.
Black as the leaves around them, stingers raised, two paused in the bough between the branch and the trunk half a foot away from me. Ten more appeared higher up and at least fifty layered the branch all the way to its farthest tip, their bodies rising along its length.
I remembered the golden scorpion poised on the flower. The way it raised its stinger, a constant threat.
I could step away. I didn’t have to try. There wouldn’t be any shame in it. None of the boys had taken from the tree. Part of me wanted to walk away. Everything was too hard. Everything came with a price. Every time I found something, I lost something else. My mortality came with the loss of my brother. My freedom came with the loss of my safety. My people came with the loss of Michael.
But that wasn’t who I was. I hadn’t come this far to stop. And the knowledge that I already had nectar in my system, that I’d beaten the bears, made me bolder than I would have been otherwise.
I gritted my teeth and held my breath, moving to the left, toward the nearest three scorpions. One on the right hand side hurried after me, but the others waited.
My fingertips reached the bough. I was within inches of it. I was close enough for the scorpions to lash out.
“Go on. Sting me.” I sucked in my breath, wondering how much it would hurt, hoping the nectar I’d already taken would protect me, hoping that the sting of the creature that lived on the source of nectar couldn’t somehow counteract its healing properties.
That was when I noticed Snowboy. He was pacing on the path. His eyes met mine and it seemed the only permission he needed to try to stop me. Before he reached me, he slammed into Rift’s arm.
“She can do it,” Rift said. “If anyone can, she can.”
The moving scorpion was now a mere inch away from my fingers, its tail raised. Doubt raged inside me. Would I be fast enough?
I mentally chose a piece of bark, a slightly raised piece, my fingers tingling as I pictured myself prizing it away from the tree. I didn’t want to break it, just move it enough to get to the sap underneath.
“You can do it,” Rift called, and the others raised their voices to his.
The creature dogged my movements. As I swayed, just a little toward the piece of bark I wanted, the creature swayed with me, creeping closer with me. I paused there, waiting for the scorpion to strike. Waiting heartbeats for it to act. Waiting as it waited, too.
That was when I remembered something else.
The scorpion in my vision never attacked. Its stinger never found its mark. Instead, I had been the one to mimic it, to strike out and protect myself.
I contemplated the creature for a moment. I discarded my plan to shift the bark and opened my hand instead, my open palm toward the branch right next to the scorpion’s body.
I didn’t take my eyes from its black body and its raised tail as I asked, “Rift, when they sang about this tree in Seversand, did it have a name?”
Rift answered. “They called it ‘the tree of life.’”
Without another moment’s hesitation, I placed my hand on the tree.
Chapter Nine
LIGHT EXPLODED inside me.
A shimmer began beneath my palm and spread through the bough, where the blackened branch met the magnolia tree. My hand closed of its own accord, my palm pressed fully against the pearly scales, gripping the branch from fingertips to wrist.
A glow, like a buzzing firefly, bounced from the bough to the end of the branch and back again, a wildly careering thing, as though joy itself had taken the form of a shooting star and the branch was its universe.
The breath hitched in my throat at the sight that unfolded before me.
The scorpions rested down on the branch and the bark beneath them began to change, growing full and moist, the darkness receding and a deep brown blush surfacing. The scorpion that had dogged my steps shifted closer and as it did so, it revealed a tiny growth. There was a small leaf, not much more than a bud, appearing next to it, growing with every passing second until it was several inches long.
I couldn’t move as the scorpion pushed its pinchers beneath the bottom of my palm and wrapped its tail around my wrist, a light weight prickling my skin, making a bracelet of itself.
My skin tingled as it pressed against me, but only for a moment. It didn’t sting me. My skin buzzed where its body pressed against me. Within moments, other scorpions joined it, pushing their bodies beneath my palm and laying their tails up my arm, but none of them tingled like the first.
The boys hadn’t moved, their eyes wide.
I couldn’t help it. I began to smile and then to laugh. I could barely form words, but I said, “Look, it grew a leaf. I touched the branch and it grew a leaf.”
Then the boys crowded around me carefully, eyeing the scorpions.
“How is this happening?” Blaze asked.
Quake bent to peer at the branch. “It has tiny follicles on its surface. I can see them close up. They must react to touch.”
One by one, the boys each laid a hand on the branch. The remaining scorpions scuttled toward them, covering their fingers in the same way they covered mine, like conduits between the tree and our bodies.
That was when I saw what the boys must have seen in me. Their eyes lit with s
omething that didn’t belong on earth, their bodies glowed as the branch glowed.
Alive. No longer thirsty.
The vast thing I sensed had become peaceful.
“The leaf,” I said. “It’s green.”
As I looked more closely, there was a single drop in its center, a drop of black liquid.
“The tree’s giving you nectar. Take it, Ava,” Snowboy said beside me, glowing more brightly than I thought possible, his smile lighting his whole body. “It’s yours.”
I hesitated, scared for the first time since touching the tree. “You all saw what happens. I can’t. What if I damage the tree? What if I hurt you?”
Snowboy wasn’t convinced. “You need to learn to control it and why not now? We’ll help you.”
“Nobody can help me. You saw the bears.”
I almost let go of the tree, but he reached for me with his free hand. “Ava, you’re forgetting … You remember the leaf I gave you. How frozen it was? You’re forgetting that none of us were hurt when you exploded.”
I frowned as he smiled and lifted my free hand, touching the center of my palm.
“I protected all of my brothers when you exploded. I’m here to cool everything down. Why do you think I was still standing after the explosion? I admit, I didn’t protect the bears, but I won’t let your fire get out of control. I’ll balance you out. I promise.”
I’d thought the same thing about Michael. That in a perfect world, we would balance each other: his immortality and my mortality. My legs buckled, I slipped from the tree, my fingertips clinging at the last moment, unable to break the contact, but unable to stand. The scorpions clung as Snowboy caught me.
“Ava, what is it?”
I pressed my hand to my heart, leaning in to him. “I miss him. I can’t tell him I’m alive. I’m here, but I can’t—”
I began to cry. For the first time since everything had begun, tears shook out of me as Snowboy held me close in the crook of his arm.
“You can do this, Ava. Just take a breath. One after the other.”