Last night a storm—the first great storm of the autumn—had thundered through the Wildwood, waking both of them from their sleep. After the first thunderclap, Idalia had turned over and gone back to sleep, but Kellen had been unable to. He’d sat up for a long time afterward, listening to the fury of the storm battering at the walls of the cabin, startling in shock at each crash of thunder and flare of lightning, unable to believe that Idalia was just sleeping through it all as if it were nothing. It seemed impossible to him that the little cabin could withstand such battering without being swept away; he imagined Demons riding each thunderbolt, seeking him out.
But not even the roof leaked.
At last he was reluctantly forced to admit that if Idalia was sleeping so soundly, this must be normal—though down deep inside, Kellen wondered indignantly how anything this noisy and chaotic could possibly be normal. He made himself lie down again, and sent himself to sleep imagining what would happen in the City if such a storm ever came to play among the bell towers of Armethalieh …
The High Council would have a fit.
In the morning, Kellen discovered that even though the storm had been what Idalia called “normal,” the high winds it had brought with it had still caused a certain amount of destruction. The two of them had spent most of the forenoon repairing the storm’s damage: rebuilding the woodpile and the cairn beside the necessary pit, and locating those objects that had been blown away by the wind. It had taken a Finding Spell to locate the cauldron, which had gotten itself lodged between the branches of a tree …
IDALIA watched Kellen moving about the cabin’s grounds with an amusement she tried very hard to conceal. She still remembered her own shock at encountering untamed weather for the first time—something not permitted to occur in Armethalieh—and Kellen still seemed rather surprised by it, to judge from the silence with which he finished his part in repairing the storm damage and resumed his work on the addition to the cabin.
Fortunately the lashings on the tarp had held fast, or they’d be looking all the way to the High Hills for it, if Idalia was any judge of winds. The storm had been strong enough to take down half the woodpile, after all. She picked up a broom and turned toward the house. There was soot and ashes all over the main room, courtesy of the winds that had gotten past the dampers and blown down the chimney, and it wouldn’t sweep itself out the door.
“Idalia! Idalia!”
A troupe of fauns—the little creatures almost never traveled anywhere alone—came rushing into the clearing, tumbling over themselves with the frantic urgency of their mission. They looked around wildly, spotted her, and bounded over to where she stood by the chopping stump, arranging themselves in a semicircle in front of her.
“Idalia!”
They looked up at her with panic in their eyes, in a state she rarely saw in the normally carefree fauns.
“Idalia!” they chorused, and began to babble.
She quelled them with a glance, then looked around and spotted several she recognized. “Jakar—Redmouse—Malky—what do you need today?”
All of them started talking at once.
“The Lady—”
“The Lady in the Woods—”
“The Oaklady—”
“She’s hurt—”
“The treelady’s hurt—”
“Lightning struck her—”
“Struck her tree—”
“The Oaklady’s tree—”
“And she’s hurt—”
“Come, Idalia—”
“Will you come—”
“She needs help—”
“She needs healing—”
“You’re a Wildmage Healer—”
“And she’s hurt—”
Idalia was used to interpreting the fauns’ chatter, and she had no difficulty in extracting from their babbling the information that, somewhere in the woods, an oak-dryad’s tree had been struck by lightning and she had sent the fauns for help.
By now, attracted by their clamor, Kellen had come from his own work to see what was going on. Today he was involved in the delicate task of splitting the logs that would become the cabin floor and then planing their surfaces until they were as smooth as possible. Once the log planks had been fitted into place, there would be more smoothing to be done. Though last night the violent thunderstorm that had lashed the Wildwood with wind and rain had made it seem as if the end of the world had come, the day had dawned clear, and that heavy tarp had kept the wood dry enough for Kellen to work.
The sennights of hard physical work had put a great deal of muscle on his long lanky frame, just as the constant exposure to sun and wind had darkened and weathered his skin even as it added streaks of gold to his curly brown hair. Idalia doubted that any of his City friends would recognize Kellen these days, dressed as he was in nothing but a pair of deerhide trousers and his heavy leather moccasins, and with his long dark gold hair tied back in a length of buckskin.
“What’s going on?” he asked curiously.
Did he need to know how serious this was? Probably not. “An oak-dryad’s been hurt, and you can’t move a dryad too far from her tree, or she’ll die. I’m going to go see what she needs,” Idalia answered briefly. “There’s no need for you to go. You stay here and keep on working. I’ll send one of the fauns back for you if I need you.”
Kellen grinned, his teeth white against the new darkness of his skin. “And here I thought I was going to get a rest.”
“A change is as good as a rest, so if you want a rest, brother dear, you can finish chopping the kindling. Or charge some of those keystones. Both need doing,” Idalia answered tartly.
“I think I’ll stay with the logs.” Kellen waved, and headed back to the sawhorses. Idalia went into the cabin for her healing-kit, and then hurried after the impatient fauns.
IDALIA followed the fauns through the trees, her workbag slung over her shoulder. She had to admit, if only to herself, that it was a relief to be more or less alone for a change. Kellen never seemed to tire of asking questions—though she did have to admit, he’d made a lot of progress since he’d gotten here. And it was true that if she’d had someone like herself to question when she’d begun learning the Wild Magic, she’d have asked just as many questions. If only he was as open to it as she had been …
If she were to make a guess, she’d have said it frightened him, though that hardly seemed possible … He might not think so, but in her opinion he was as brave as a young lion.
She sighed inwardly, shifting her heavy pack as she ducked to avoid a low-growing branch. She knew, just by seeing his progress over the past few moonturns, that she’d been a better Wildmage at his age than he was, and she knew, without vanity, that she would always be a hundred times the Wildmage Kellen would ever be.
Something in him always holds back—it’s as if he’s afraid of it, but Kellen has as much courage where it counts as anyone I’ve ever met.
I must say, I’m baffled. There was no reason for anyone to be afraid of Wild Magic, no matter what the High Mages said. He holds back; he won’t commit himself, but to be a Wildmage, you must have the magic in your bones and blood, understand it so deeply you don’t have to think about it any more than you have to think about breathing. You have to become the magic, until nothing happens around you that you’re not aware of, as if the world around you is merely an extension of your own body. As The Book of Stars says, “You will come to live within my pages, and my pages are written on your heart.”
But not on Kellen’s, apparently.
Was it only fear? Or was there something else going on? Whatever it was, she suspected poor Kellen would never come to the magic through the same route she had taken. It would seem, all things considered, that her little brother’s destiny was to become something quite different from your ordinary sort of Wildmage.
I do wish I knew what it was.
Her musings were interrupted by their arrival at the oak-dryad’s grove.
The oak was the Queen of the
Wood, and the oak-dryads were the greatest of the tree-spirits, but the great trees were particularly vulnerable to lightning, and last night’s storm had not been kind to the grove. Idalia could see that the ground here was littered with many branches torn loose by the storm winds—Nature’s rough mercy, pruning the weaker branches now before they were layered with a heavy coat of winter’s ice and snow—but that was only minor storm damage, part of the cycle of Life, not why she’d been called. On the largest of the oaks, one of the great branches was sheared half away from the trunk, half-charred by the lightning strike that had done it, exposing the heartwood to insect damage and frost-kill.
Its dryad sat slumped on the ground before the tree, her skin as pale as the heartwood and her ash-brown hair tangled and tumbled. She was surrounded by her sisters, their healthy golden skin and hair a sharp contrast to hers. The brownie families who made their homes in the dryads’ oaks stood in clumps in the clearing, wringing their hands and murmuring mournfully, and Idalia could see more fauns watching from the bushes at the edges of the clearing.
This is bad, Idalia thought to herself with a sinking heart. The dryad was in shock from the damage to her tree, and the tree itself might very well die slowly over the winter if the damage to its trunk wasn’t seen to immediately.
“Here she is—here she is—here she is—” The fauns who had brought Idalia rushed ahead of her into the clearing to join the dryads, some of them climbing into the lap of the wounded one to offer their own rough comfort. As if their arrival had been a signal, the other fauns came crowding into the clearing. Idalia followed more slowly, taking in the damage to tree and spirit, assessing it, making a plan …
One of the healthy dryads came to meet her.
*Can you heal her?* the oak-maiden asked silently.
“Yes,” Idalia said aloud. “Who will share the price?”
The dryad looked surprised for a moment. *All,* she answered. *All will share,* she answered, with a gesture that encompassed the inhabitants of the clearing—brownies, dryads, fauns.
“Do you all agree to this?” Idalia asked, raising her voice a little so that all could hear. “Will you all share in the price of this healing?”
There was a clamor as every voice—even the dryads’ silent ones—was raised in agreement, and Idalia winced as the shrill voices of the brownies pierced her skull. But the Wild Magic could not take what was not asked for and freely given. She walked forward through the crowd of Otherfolk, and knelt before the suffering dryad.
“Shoo,” she said gently to the faun sitting in the dryad’s lap, and the small creature reluctantly squirmed out of the way.
Idalia reached out and stroked the dryad’s cheek, then took the dryad’s hands in her own. They were ice-cold, with no trace of the vibrant green life Idalia associated with dryad-kind.
Kellen always thought of the Wild Magic as hard, as something you had to invoke and pursue with spells and proper forms, but for Idalia it was as simple as stepping aside from her workaday self, entering the greater Soul of the world around her, and letting it well up within. The Wild Magic was a thing of harmony and balance; the presence of evil or injury called it into action as much as any will of the Wildmage. She felt its presence; felt it seek out its price from all who shared in the healing, understood her own part in that payment, and felt health and strength and wellness flow through her from someplace Beyond into the dryad.
It was as simple—and as mysterious—as that. Idalia was the portal through which Something reached to set the world right with her help and consent, and in a timeless moment it was done. Strength and healing flowed into her and out again in a glorious and intoxicating verdant river. It poured into the grey void at the dryad’s heart, and gradually filled it. She saw the dryad’s skin flush gold with health once more, and rocked back on her heels as the Grove-Queen rose to her feet.
The fauns cheered and turned cartwheels, and the brownies threw their caps in the air.
*Ah, my poor tree … .* the Queen said sadly, running her hand along the bark.
Idalia stood up, staggering a little with weakness. But only a little, and only for a moment, for her work was not yet over, and the Wild Magic would not permit her strength to lapse while that work remained unfinished. She caught her balance, and walked over to inspect the split in the trunk.
“As to that, my part in this is to repair your tree, my lady. Once I’ve taken that branch off, and sealed over the heartwood with tar and river clay, your tree should stand fast for many seasons more,” Idalia said, smiling.
Tar would seal the wound, forming a sort of bandage, keeping insects and fungus out. Clay would protect the vulnerable heartwood and give the tree time to build new defenses, and cutting away the split branch would prevent further damage.
“I’ll come back tomorrow and take care of it; I need tools that I don’t have with me.”
It was a while more before Idalia was let to leave, for the brownies pressed scores of thimble-sized tankards of mead upon her, and several thumbnail-sized loaves of acorn-meal bread, and the fauns brought her handfuls of berries, only slightly crushed. All in all, it was late afternoon before she returned to the cabin.
NOW she was tired; the Magic had no more need of her, and she felt as drained as if she had run for leagues.
Kellen was waiting to greet her, looking impatient.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “It’s been the whole afternoon—”
“I was working,” Idalia answered tartly—a bit more sharply than she’d intended.
Kellen looked immediately crestfallen, and Idalia felt guilty about being so short with him. “I healed the dryad—her tree was struck by lightning in that big storm that came through last night. I shared out most of the price of the healing, but I’ll have to go back tomorrow and see what I can do about fixing her tree, so I’m going to need to use the tools for the day. I suppose,” she added with a smile, “you’re going to get your holiday after all.”
“But I’ll help,” Kellen said quickly. “I’d like to help. If that’s all right, I mean.”
“Surely,” Idalia said after a moment’s pause. “I can always use an extra pair of hands.”
Kellen’s eagerness to help shouldn’t surprise her, she realized after a moment. He was a good lad, after all. No matter what Lycaelon had tried to turn him into. Yet somehow, every time he demonstrated his basic generosity of spirit, it surprised her. Maybe she’d lived alone for too long at that.
THE two of them spent the following day at the dryad’s grove cutting away the dead wood from the oak-Queen’s tree and sealing over the exposed wood. Though an axe and saws were not the sort of implements that would normally be welcome in a dryadic grove, this time they were tolerated (though the dryads could not look at them without shivering), and Idalia and Kellen bent to the work.
It was quickly obvious what part of the price that the brownies and fauns were paying. The brownies brought tar—they used it in waterproofing, milking rising sap from pines in the spring in the same way that they milked maples, boiling it down into tar. The fauns came back with handfuls of river clay when she’d done sealing the breech with the tar.
It was hot work—autumn might be on the way, but the late-summer days were still warm—but when Idalia looked at the finished job, her arm draped companionably over Kellen’s shoulders, she was filled with a deep satisfaction. What could be better than helping and healing, setting right what had gone wrong in the world?
She knew that Kellen felt much the same way that she did—that he could sense, at least a little, when something was out of balance and needed to be fixed. But there was still something deep inside himself that he didn’t trust to always make the right choices.
And until—unless—that last barrier came down, until Kellen really trusted his own instincts, there would always be a barrier between Kellen and his magic.
IT had been a good day. Kellen had actually enjoyed the work; he had found of late that he really got a great
deal of pleasure out of physical labor, especially as his muscles had strengthened to the job.
Maybe I should have been a stone-breaker or a bricklayer after all, he thought, wondering what Lycaelon would say if he’d seen his son sweating like a common mortal. It had been fascinating to see the reclusive little brownies up close as well, and the oak-dryads were more dignified and less inclined to tease than their sisters of the apple orchard.
“I think I’ll fill up the big cauldron and heat some water,” Idalia said as they walked back to the cabin that afternoon. “I think we could both use a hot bath—or at least a good scrub.”
Kellen grinned, and reached out to flick a scrap of drying river clay off her cheek. “Sounds good to me. But I’ll carry the water and get the fire started if you’ll make some of those dried berry scones to go with the rest of the leftover stew.”
“Deal,” Idalia answered promptly. Kellen had learned to do a number of new things well since he’d come to live with her, but cooking wasn’t one of them. “Just let me wash this clay off my hands first, or you’ll be eating it along with the scones.” She turned toward the cabin.
But the sound of hoofbeats back down the trail alerted Kellen that their plans were about to be changed.
“Wait. Someone’s coming.” Kellen slid his heavy pack from his shoulders and turned back the way they’d come.
Idalia frowned—evidently she hadn’t heard anything—but as she was about to question Kellen further, there was an enormous crashing noise from the underbrush, and a big chestnut-colored Centaur burst into the clearing.
“Idalia!” he roared. “You’ve got to heal me! Now!”
Kellen and Idalia both stared in astonishment, for this was possibly the most unlikely creature to come seeking Idalia’s help of any in the Wild Lands. It was Cormo, the Centaur bully who had attacked Kellen at the berry patch when he had first arrived in the Wildwood, but it was difficult to recognize him now. Cormo’s face and chest were badly swollen with a mass of beestings, and the Centaur was covered in half-dried black mud besides. It looked as if he’d tried to doctor himself—and failed—before coming to Idalia for help.
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