The Heartwood Crown

by Matt Mikalatos

Baileya became suddenly serious. “A Guardian of the Wind?”

  “Yes! She flew off when we heard you all.”

  “You are an exceptional man,” Baileya said. “I am glad to be at your side again.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “North,” Shula said. “Either through the carnivorous forest—”

  “Bad idea!” Jason said.

  “—or the firethorns.”

  “I vote firethorns,” Jason said. “And then across the lake to the Heartwood Crown?”

  “What did . . . the dragon . . . say?”

  Jason grinned, embarrassed. He scooped himself under Madeline’s other arm and helped her as they walked north. “I sort of sent the flying cat to talk to him. She said that he said that the lake is cursed, and the first person to cross it will die.”

  Madeline didn’t say anything to that. Shula looked to Baileya, who looked away. So they all knew this already somehow. “So,” Jason said. “That dude with the tree growing out of his head just sent me away to keep me out of his hair. His moss. Whatever. So, what’s the plan? You’re going to just go sacrifice yourself? I thought Papa Tree was going to heal you.”

  “He can’t,” Madeline said.

  “Why are you doing this? What if there’s another way? Another magical potion? Or even a treatment back home.”

  “Jason. There’s nothing.” He could see the distress in her face. “There’s not a . . . cure, Jason. So here’s a chance . . . for me to . . . do something good. To really save . . . the Sunlit Lands. It’s better than . . . waiting . . . in a hospital . . . bed.”

  Jason didn’t know what to say to that. If they kept talking more, he would end up telling her his own thoughts—his plan to swim across before her and save the Sunlit Lands himself. And maybe, just maybe, somehow Madeline could be healed. It would be worth it to sacrifice himself for that chance.

  Baileya was looking back at him, as if she could see exactly what he was thinking. He needed to distract her. “Oh! And I saw your brother!”

  Baileya’s eyes widened. Distraction: accomplished! “Bezaed?”

  “Yeah. While I was in the carnivorous forest. He didn’t want to come in there, so I was sort of hanging out in there so he wouldn’t kill me. We had a long talk, and he’s agreed not to kill me for a while.”

  Baileya stopped walking so she could give him her full attention. “Bezaed? My brother? The bloody prince of the Kakri agreed not to kill you?”

  “Yeah. He said he didn’t want me to marry you because I wasn’t a Kakri, and I told him how Mother Crow invited me to come into the desert and learn from her. I told him I was going to do that, and then I would be Kakri, and then there wouldn’t be a problem. He said he would wait to kill me until after that. I promised not to marry you until I had gone into the desert, and then he left me alone in the carnivorous forest, and then I came to find you, and here we are.”

  Baileya grabbed him by the back of the head, yanked him close, and kissed him full on the lips. Jason went weak at the knees and had to reach for her shoulders to keep from falling over. It was their first kiss. He felt like someone had shoveled a pound of hot coals into his belly. She pulled away, and he tried to stand up, but his whole body felt like jelly. He tried to think of something to say, something profound or at least suave, but all he managed was a weak “More, please.”

  Baileya laughed heartily and rapped on his chest with the back of her fist. “In time, Wu Song, in time.”

  He went back to Madeline, still shaky on his legs, and put her arm over his shoulder. Baileya gave him a smoldering look as she led them northward again, and he almost stumbled. Madeline laughed, her voice raspy. She squeezed her arm around his shoulder. “Smooth, buddy. So . . . smooth.”

  “You think so?” Jason asked. “No, really, was that smooth?”

  Madeline and Shula both laughed, and Madeline squeezed him again.

  They hiked through the darkness and on into morning. When they reached the firethorns, they stopped for a break. Shula crouched down near the strange plants, studying them. Jason had told them there were Elenil in the forest, so they didn’t want to wait long, but it was slow going with Madeline.

  The plants stuck out of the ground like thin pipes. They had the look of old-world roses, with too many thorns and not enough leaves, and small cuts and holes along the stalk, almost like some sort of flute. From time to time the stalks let loose a pungent gas, which caught flame and shot out of the holes. The stalks were almost like canes, hard and blackened near the holes. There was no doubt that to walk through them would mean catching on fire occasionally. Shula could see why the Elenil were so meticulous about keeping them from spreading through Aluvorea.

  She used her magic and let the familiar feeling of the flames come into her hands. She held them up close to the nearest firethorn and turned the heat up as high as she could. When the thorn lit its own flame, it wilted under hers. She must have burned something in the stalk that prevented it from catching itself aflame, because it collapsed on itself. It fell to ash.

  Shula saved them from the firethorns, but it was Jason who came up with the plan. He said he had been working on “changing his story” and that fire might be seen as an inconvenience, but maybe it could also be a strength. He sent Shula ahead of them, because when she was aflame she couldn’t be hurt by the firethorns, and she burned a firebreak for them. Baileya and Jason followed, holding Madeline between them.

  They made decent time, though Shula’s friends had to be careful to wait a short time before following her, because the ground was hot enough to burn their feet. She learned that if she burned the firebreak wider, they wouldn’t be so hot as they followed behind her. Shula was thankful Baileya was with them—the Kakri woman was stronger than Shula or Jason and had more stamina. Shula didn’t know if they would have gotten Madeline this far without Baileya’s muscle.

  A hummingbird circled them in the late afternoon. It looked as exhausted as their entire party, and Shula didn’t know how it could see them through the smoke, but it descended and landed on Madeline’s shoulder. A faerie rode on its back. Madeline asked the others to give her some space. She needed a break in any case, so Shula burned a larger space than usual, big enough to set Madeline down in the relative coolness of the center.

  Madeline played a game of charades with the faerie for a long time, and when she was done, it chirped twice, then flew over the firethorns to the east. Madeline gave Shula a sad smile and then raised her arms to Baileya and Jason. They helped her to her feet. “A message from Darius,” she said, and they continued on their way. Shula frowned at this. Darius should be here, not sending messages. She didn’t understand how he could choose not to be with Madeline at this time—didn’t understand how he had chosen, for that matter, to stay in the Sunlit Lands instead of coming home with them. He had left Madeline to Shula, and she was thankful for their time together. But Darius should be here. But there was no time to think about such things. She had work to do—they could not move through the firethorns without her leading the way.

  Shula was thankful to be at the front of their small party. Thankful for a few minutes alone to put her thoughts in order. She knew the feeling of loss, knew it more intimately than almost any other feeling she could think of. She felt it pushing in now, taking up more and more space in her heart. She was thankful her back was to Madeline, so her friend could not see the hot tears streaking her face.

  Darius had climbed two stories, and there were many more to go. Messenger birds flew in and out of the tower in a flurry, which meant the gate must have fallen to the Pastisians. The Sword sang in his hands, though he doubted he had dealt a single fatal wound, given the healing magic of the Elenil. Still. They could not stop him.

  He kicked a guard in the knee, parried his blade, grabbed him by the wrist, and flung him into the empty center of the tower. He didn’t stop to watch the guard fall, instead using the spare moment to glance out the window. He could just see the airships in the distanc
e. Soon he would be in the archon’s chambers, and then he could set out to find Madeline.

  Madeline wanted to rest. She knew she couldn’t say that to the others. She couldn’t let them know just how little strength she had left. How much the smoke from the firethorns further agitated her breathing.

  She didn’t have regrets, not really. She wished she had seen Darius again, somehow, here in the Sunlit Lands, but she had said good-bye to him once before. It was a strange thing, saying good-bye, because you never knew when it would be the last time. And how strange to have some deep conversation and farewell and then to see each other again a few days later.

  She wished she had seen more of her dad. Wished she had been able to forgive her mother. David’s words were weighing on her, but she couldn’t see the way through to it. Wished things had been different, wished they had never been to the Sunlit Lands, had never met Hanali, had never made their infernal deal that left her gasping for breath and dragging herself through the blistering heat and sulfurous air of the firethorns.

  She would have liked to have seen Hanali one more time so she could give him a piece of her mind. Would have liked to have read, somehow, the last, unpublished book from the Meselia series. It was strange, these small losses. She wanted to know what would happen in her favorite book series. She wanted to see the movies coming out next summer.

  But she was thankful, too. Darius had been her rock. Jason had been the most loyal friend she had ever met, unless Shula surpassed him. Little Yenil. Baileya. She had an embarrassment of riches when it came to friends. She was thankful for her parents, too. The realization surprised her, but it was true. She didn’t know that she needed to forgive them for all of this, because they had given her so many other things. She felt like maybe she had always known, somehow, what her mom had done. She felt she had forgiven her long ago, had forgiven her and forgotten about it, just like her mother had made the deal with the Elenil and forgotten.

  On one of their breaks, she fell asleep. Only for a moment. Her breathing was so bad, it was a sort of fever dream. Hanali came to her in it. Here in the Sunlit Lands, she wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined, if they were making a true connection or if it was only a dream. But Hanali came to her, all in cream and gold with a long crimson cape, a strange sadness in his eyes. “Madeline!” he said. “Why? Why have you come to Aluvorea?”

  “Why did you curse me?” she shot back at him. “Just so you could get me to the Sunlit Lands?”

  He recoiled in shock. “My dear girl. I brought you to the Sunlit Lands to heal you.”

  “But you made me sick in the first place, stole my breath, prevented me from getting treatments at the hospital.”

  “No! Never. That was my father, Vivi. Your mother had promised you to him. You were meant to come into our family . . . He said you would be my adopted sister. When your mother told him that he couldn’t have you, he was furious. He put the curse on you. He said it was because of something your mother had done many years ago. I have always had . . . an affection for your parents. I do not properly know why. I argued with my father, begged him to reconsider. He always thought I was too lenient with the humans. He agreed, finally, that if you came to the Sunlit Lands for a year and followed the traditional ways of our magic, then you could be healed by those means. I could use my authority as the recruiter for the Sunlit Lands to heal you.” A sad, puzzled look crossed his face. “But you rejected that.”

  “So you can lift the curse,” Madeline said. “Patra Koja said the agreement was between you and my mother.”

  “No,” Hanali said, crestfallen. “Patra Koja said the agreement was between your mother and me? This I do not understand. My father crafted both the original agreement and the curse, not I. And he crafted it so the only way to heal you was for someone else to give you their breath. A stranger . . . that is woven into the curse as well. So the only bargain I can offer is the same bargain as before. But to heal you in that way, we need to keep magic as it is. You must not go to the Heartwood Crown, must not reset magic. We will find another to give you their breath, and you can be whole again.”

  Even in this dream state, she wasn’t tempted by that. Not much. A single thought of Yenil sent the possibility bounding away from her. Hanali was fading. She was waking up. “Why did you come to Aluvorea?” he asked again, mournful.

  “Because they need me,” she said. “Because I promised them.” The seed glowed in her arm. Or rather, her shoulder. The green light flared bright, and she and Hanali both winced. She didn’t know how to say the rest. How this was going to cost her everything, but she had less everything than the others. She was going to die—it might as well be to save her friends, to save this beautiful place and make it something better.

  She felt a pang of sorrow for her parents. How could they have been expected to know how to deal with the Elenil and their twisted bargains, their strange value system? Their statements were layered in half-truths, in lies, in misdirection. Even now she wasn’t sure Hanali was telling her the truth. Vivi had seemed only kind in her brief interactions with him. But then again, Hanali often seemed harmless. He seemed to truly like her, like he really was trying to help her . . . sometimes, at least.

  “Do you regret your time in the Sunlit Lands, then?” Hanali asked. Something in the way he said it . . . she sensed that a great deal was riding on this answer for him. She could see in his face that he deeply, honestly wanted her to have enjoyed being here. He wanted it to be a gift to her. He wanted her to be well, and she could see that he had never meant to harm her, as difficult as that might be to believe. He honestly thought he was doing the right thing, the best thing, the caring thing. So—did she regret the Sunlit Lands?

  She smiled. “No.”

  She did not regret the Sunlit Lands. She loved them. She hated the way she had come here, but she had seen such wonderful things. She had flown on giant birds. She had eaten strange fruit in the marketplace with Shula. She had seen magic, had performed magic. She had walked with the gorgeous Elenil people, had put her hands on their graceful architecture, had heard the music of their fountains and listened to their stories. She had seen the beautiful Scim people, who hid their deepest selves from all but their closest friends. She had breathed the sweet air in Far Seeing and seen the Ginian Sea sparkling in the distance. She had met the Peasant King and spoken more than once with the Garden Lady. She had moved between worlds and had friends in them both. She had done all those things and many more, and she had done some good in the world . . . her own and the Sunlit Lands. In the end, she had been true to herself.

  Madeline woke on the burned-out circle of ash that Shula had made for her. It had been a dream, yes, but maybe not only a dream. She didn’t tell her friends about Hanali. She was finding it harder to speak, harder to stay focused. Jason and Baileya helped her to her feet, and they started through the forest again.

  When they came at last to the end of the firethorns, Madeline made them keep walking until they had moved away from the noxious fumes of it. She could smell water now, and pine sap, and somewhere nearby a citrusy, floral scent from the woods. Baileya said it was night flowers opening now that the sun was going down. Baileya helped Madeline lie down beneath a broad-branched tree that was heavy with purple flowers. Baileya sat, making a pillow for Madeline with her lap. Jason lay down beside Madeline, putting his head in Baileya’s lap too, and held Madeline’s hand, and Shula sat on her other side, wiping the sweat and ash from her face.

  No one spoke. They sat together in the quiet and listened to the gentle wind in the leaves above them. A bird called to another in the trees. Night insects started their evening greetings as the sun began to set. The cool breeze wicked away her sweat, but Madeline still felt hot. It was time. She wasn’t ready, didn’t know if she would ever be ready. Her friends sat around her like a shelter, like they could protect her from what was to come, but she knew better. What good friends they were!

  It was Baileya who sensed it first. She rose and helped
Madeline to her feet. Shula took the other side now, and Jason walked ahead of them. “We are not far now,” Baileya said. “Courage.”

  29

  THE CROSSING

  If darkness falls while we labor,

  let us light a lantern.

  A small candle defeats even a great darkness.

  FROM “THE SEED,” AN ALUVOREAN POEM

  The water lay silent, unmoving, still. It did not gleam or sparkle—instead it seemed to swallow up light. A slight breeze moved the leaves in the trees, but on the water there was not so much as a ripple.

  It was dusk when they arrived, moving on toward night, so Jason didn’t think much of the dark water, not at first. The day had passed faster than he thought it should, as if every hour had been shortened by half. He mentioned it to Baileya, who nodded and said only that the magic of the Sunlit Lands which kept Far Seeing bright through day and night sometimes made the days strange in other parts of the world. So the dark water was the least of his worries when they arrived. But the longer they stood there, these four friends, the more the still darkness of the lake bothered him . . . like the feeling of someone standing in the shadows behind him, watching.

  Jason wanted to lighten things with a joke, but he couldn’t find one. He felt heavy and sluggish, like someone had sapped him of all his strength. “So this is it,” he said. “The cursed river.”

  Shula knelt and touched the water. It moved almost like a normal pond, but not quite, as if the water resisted even giving way to a finger.

  Jason took off his shirt, folded it neatly, and placed it on the ground.

  “What are . . . you doing?” Madeline asked. She looked so pale and tired. He remembered, in a momentary flash, seeing her on the track team freshman year. He had tried out, back before he realized that he hated running, and he had seen her sprinting alongside their classmates, blonde hair streaming behind her like fire, a beaming smile on her face. She had been young and beautiful and full of life, and now she was so sick that even speaking four words hurt her.