What Gifts She Carried

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  A shriek ticked at the back of my choked throat. I wanted to finish his silent scream with a wailing one of my own to let all my sadness and terror out with a single rush of air. But it was all I could do to fill my lungs through my panic.

  “Stop,” I gasped.

  He picked another thorn from the skin next to his thumb and turned toward Lily, who squirmed and writhed against Aneska’s possession. The chemical ring around us disappeared to let him through.

  A smile turned up the corners of his deathly pale lips. “Now I’ll never have to.”

  Chapter 16

  Too late. Too late. Too late. The words echoed through my head like a time bomb, but the explosion had already happened.

  I touched my hand to the lock on the gates of Heartland Cemetery without really seeing it. Nothing seemed real anymore except Tram’s dying face that had imprinted on my mind for all eternity. I was caught in some horrible nightmare, and I forgot to set the alarm to wake myself up.

  What was I supposed to do? I was the only Trammeler left, other than Darby, but I had no clue what I was doing. I didn’t even feel like a Trammeler since I stole Callum’s car to get here instead of plowing through the ground with my roots. Taking his car had felt more natural after I’d stumbled into the Monroe’s house, alone, and shriveled into myself with every sob. I didn’t even remember the drive here. Shock must have numbed my brain to the point I’d lost the ability to think.

  But I needed to see for myself that Ica’s tree really was gone. If it was, then I needed to check the Trinity grave—Trinity graves—to make sure they were still empty. If not, then I had no idea what to do. I wished for the hundredth time that Tram stood by my side with that grim look on his face whenever things got serious. Which was all the time. It was just me, though, faced with the task to capture someone who wanted to massacre me.

  So, it was time I started acting like a Trammeler Sorceress. I let the lock drop back against the bars with a clang.

  Mom? I need my roots, now more than ever, to take me to the Trinity. Please.

  The ground gave a rumble. What looked like twisted worms pulled the earth apart at my feet, forming a hole large enough to jump down into. The familiar tremble rocked through my body as I looked into its dark depths. It was just a hole in the ground, nothing more.

  If I concentrated hard enough, I could practically hear Tram’s voice telling me the same thing. Nothing would bury me alive down there. My ash tree would help me. I could do this without him. Or at the very least, I could try. I held my breath as though I was about to jump into a swimming pool and stepped out into nothingness.

  Shit. All my focus had been on the hole itself and not the landing. My roots didn’t catch me because the idiot human they connected to didn’t tell them. Too late now, because I was already falling much too fast. The meeting between my face and the ground below jolted through my body.

  I sucked in enough air to allow myself a whimper and then told my roots to go forward. Fear and shock had already wasted enough time; I didn’t have much to spare for pain.

  Cracks and snaps sounded all around me. Rough bark guided my elbows ahead through the darkness, and each step pushed against something solid and moving. Every foot forward wound more trust between my roots and I, faster and faster, until I felt as though I was flying underground. Dirt and my hair whipped at my face. The dark tunnel my roots dug in front of me gradually inclined. My calves burned, but I didn’t slow down. Finally, a bright moon shined from above, and roots shot at it then arced to its edges.

  Up.

  My feet lifted toward the hole, my own private underground elevator. When my eyes were level with the ground, I shot a hand out, and my ride ended.

  Fog hung thick in the air, smothering the night with a heavy curtain. Branches from nearby trees poked into the sky from invisible trunks. They looked as if they were floating above a dense lace, especially when the wind teased them into a bob and sway.

  I turned completely around in the hole, watching, listening, but the fog hid everything too well. After I clambered out, I realized I stood next to the ash tree. My tree. I looked in the direction of Tram’s tree, the oak, and my stomach flipped over on itself. The oak. His tree was the oak, a Sorceressi tree, and his mom happened to be a Sorceress. A Trammeler Sorceress. Why hadn’t I made that connection before? Not that it would have made any sense to me before now, but still.

  When my gaze drifted toward the left, toward the center of the Trinity and the Trinity inside the Trinity, my heart stuttered to a stop. Three figures stood in a line behind the cover of fog.

  Three.

  I was too late. Ica had already been resurrected and had sprung free One and Two. Together, they would be unstoppable. The Core would open, and all the magical beings would escape their prison.

  Every organ in my body plunged to my feet. The sliver of confidence I had followed. Tram had been gone for less than an hour, and I’d already failed him. Me against those three would hardly be a battle at all. It would be suicide.

  None of them moved. Maybe they faced away from me and didn’t know I was here. It was impossible to tell with the fog.

  I chewed on my still bloody lip, thinking. Should I hope they weren’t looking so I could sneak up behind them? Or should I blaze a path straight for them with my roots? I had to do something. Standing around staring at them wouldn’t solve anything, no matter how much I wanted it to.

  I ducked down into the fog and crept forward. I would have to use the cover to my advantage if I was going to take them down. The heavy clouds hid everything from me, including the sound of my footsteps. But not the sound of my heart.

  Nothing materialized in front of me until I was near enough to brush my shoulder against a headstone or snag my hair on the tip of an angel statue’s wing. Before I could turn my head to see what I’d run into, images of skeletal hands reaching for me flashed through my mind. Everything that touched me, every slow creep forward, knocked my heartbeat harder into my ears.

  Behind the shield of a tilted headstone, I stopped to will the rush of blood in my veins to a low roar so I could hear better. It didn’t do any good, though, because nothing made a sound. Silence clung to the night just like the thick lacy blanket gripping the earth.

  The quiet grew too loud. I should have heard whispers. Something. I dared a peek over the headstone. A couple yards ahead and to the left, Ica’s tree trunk stood above the layer of fog. Two sections curled outward from the deep split in the middle, making most of the branches dip into the fog and disappear. Leaves that looked like curved fingers hung limply against the bark.

  I patted my hand around my waistband, but all my ash tree keys must have fallen out. If I’d had a clearer head, I would’ve stocked up when I’d popped my head out of the ground. God, I really sucked at this.

  I ducked down again and gripped the headstone with both hands, readying myself for some kind of action. Even if I did manage to capture all three of them, I couldn’t put them all under my roots. Tram had said it was best to keep them separated, in case they conspired somehow or turned themselves into spiders and escaped again. So I needed one of those keys to turn Ica into a tree again. Adding blood to it would be the easy part since my front was drenched in it.

  A whisper of a breeze swirled large holes into the fog. Now was not the time for the stupid Kansas wind to kick in, but it was, growing stronger and taking my cover with it. My breaths came faster, as if they could somehow piece the misty wall back together again.

  Time was up. Now or never. On the count of...four, I would make a run for the tree and aim a handful of plucked keys at anything that moved.

  One. I gripped the headstone so hard, bits of it crumbled between my fingers.

  Two. A shaky breath seeped out of my clenched teeth.

  Three. I risked another peek. A single figure stood outlined against the dark just yards away. Only one. Oh, no. Where had the others gone?

  Four. I ran. Without the muffling fog, my boots crashed ove
r the ground. I didn’t dare tear my gaze from Ica’s tree for one second. Not even when a blur of movement shot to my left. Not even when twigs cracked right behind me. Because I was almost there.

  Almost there.

  I wound my hand around a cluster of keys and yanked. Someone gasped. Maybe it was me, because when I spun around and brushed the keys against my bloodied shirt, Ms. Hansen stood in front of me.

  “Leigh, what are you doing? You can’t be here,” she said, shaking her head hard enough to lose the ends of her hair from her mouth. The rest of it flew around the hood of her green sweatshirt in wild tangles.

  “Did you see them?” I asked, my voice screeching.

  “Them? Who? Herman, Mrs. Rios, and I are the only ones here.”

  “You...three?”

  “Yes.” Ms. Hansen touched her hand to my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. My nerves were miles past the point of ever being calmed. She folded back her rejected hand and looked at me under bunched up eyebrows. “Did you see someone?”

  “Margery, I thought I heard...” Another figure approached down a nearby path and stepped out of the shadows in a matching hooded sweatshirt. A pair of brown eyes half-hidden behind pixie bangs widened when they landed on me. “Leigh. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I—I know. I thought I saw... Where’s One and Two?”

  “Below Our Trammeler’s roots. I was just down there when I heard voices. The three of us will guard the graveyard together until Our Trammeler can capture Ica, and you should stay far away from here until he does.”

  Our Trammeler. They didn’t know. Of course they didn’t.

  “He’s not coming.” The building knot in my throat shrunk the words to a whisper.

  “Of course he is,” Ms. Hansen said. “The three of us will help him however we can, but it’s too dangerous for you. Go on home.”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Rios reached out a tentative hand. “Leigh, Ica won’t hesitate to kill—”

  I jumped back from her soothing touch and the words I already knew to be true. “No. I know that. I just—”

  How was I supposed to tell them? And why was it always me who had to break the news? I was the one who’d answered the phone when Grandma died and had to find the words to explain it to Dad when he got home. I was the one who’d told Darby that Mom had died because Dad could barely function. Neither of those memories made me want to relive them. Yet, here I was, forced to tell of someone else’s death.

  But I couldn’t not tell them, especially since so much was at risk. I flicked my gaze from teacher to librarian while opening and closing my mouth like a dying fish. The silence grew, just as the realization did in both their eyes that something was terribly wrong.

  “What happened?” Mrs. Rios asked.

  “The Counselor,” I started, tearing at the hem of my t-shirt. “My mom switched two of his babies, two of his and Gretchen’s babies with two other babies, I guess, before the Counselor could take them to the Core. Mom made a deal with Gretchen just before she captured Gretchen so the Counselor wouldn’t take Gretchen’s last two babies. If she didn’t switch them, then the Counselor would use the triplets somehow so he could live forever. He said he wants immortality.”

  “The Trinity will bleed,” Mrs. Rios said and sucked in a breath. “A Trinity made out of beings instead of trees.”

  Ms. Hansen’s face paled. “He’ll bleed the Trinity power right out of them just to make himself immortal?”

  “He said he wants the Core to open so he doesn’t have to be Counselor anymore. When he can walk the Earth as an immortal, he’ll wipe it clean of people he sees as unworthy,” I said.

  “Everyone,” Ms. Hansen whispered. She looked down at the ground, blinking rapidly, and striped her hair across her cheeks and into her mouth.

  “You saw the Counselor? He told you all of this?” Mrs. Rios asked.

  I winced. “In the seeping flesh.”

  “And Our Trammeler is...” Ms. Hansen shook her head, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of it.

  “His real son. And Lily, Lily with the flower in her hair, is his real daughter.”

  “Not Lily,” Mrs. Rios breathed and posted her hands on her knees.

  Tears streaked Ms. Hansen’s face while her eyes fell closed. She placed a hand on Mrs. Rios’s back who made a strangled kind of sobbing sound.

  “His third kid, a daughter, found them. The Counselor...” I tried to swallow to help get the words out, but the tangle of helplessness lodged in my throat wouldn’t let me. So instead, I took a long breath. “He took them both.”

  Mrs. Rios’s shoulders sagged, and it looked like she might crumble to the ground. “He killed them, you mean. Lily and the only Trammeler we have left.”

  They looked at me with such expectation in their expressions that I desperately wanted to lie to them. But deep down, they already knew the truth. The tears in their eyes proved it.

  “Yes,” I said, and I hated how that one word could drag out everyone’s hope and stomp it into the ground.

  Mrs. Rios’s legs wobbled, and Ms. Hansen rushed to keep her upright.

  “Ica will win,” Mrs. Rios said, clutching Ms. Hansen’s sweatshirt. “Her tree had blood in it, possibly Trammeler blood, and someone gave it to her without anyone seeing. Without us seeing or hearing, and we were here, just below the ground. They brought her tree back to life so she could escape. She has too many people on her side, and if One and Two get free and the Core opens...” She shook her head, her dark eyes flitting to both our faces. “We’ll all lose.”

  “No, we won’t.” My voice broke the quiet night with its strength, a strength that started with the simmer in my gut. I couldn’t deny the fact that it stung at how little faith my teachers had in me. “Don’t you remember who I am? What I am? I survived all of them once, even the Counselor and his freaky daughter, and I can do it again.”

  The words pumped courage to the parts of my brain that still had doubts, and there were many. I wasn’t too stupid to realize that many people had helped me survive that night in the graveyard. Yeah, some of that help hinged on luck, but I knew a little more about myself now and what I could do. That had to count for something. That had to even the odds in this deadly game at least a little.

  “We don’t mean to have reservations about y—” Ms. Hansen started.

  “Yes, you do, but I understand why. It’s true that I’m only slightly sure about what I’m doing. I’ve only known I was a Trammeler Sorceress for a few days, but I can do some things. You’ve seen me do a fraction of what I’m capable of. I’ve only seen a fraction of what I’m capable of, but if we just give up, if we don’t even try, then yes,” I said and looked both of them in the eye so they would know I meant every word, “we’ll lose.”

  “Leigh, listen to me for a second,” Mrs. Rios said through tight lips, rougher than I’d ever heard her before. “Ica will come for you.”

  “I know that.”

  She threw up a hand in front of my face to shut me up, and I snapped my mouth closed again.

  “And when she does, I’m betting she won’t just kill you. She’ll hurt you. She’ll make you pay for being the real Three, a real Trammeler Sorceress, for taking her spot in the Trinity grave she so desperately wanted. She’s that crazy.”

  “Power-hungry people like her can’t be reasoned with,” Ms. Hansen said. “Especially since you trapped her inside a tree while you were inside the Trinity grave. Her grave. That was likely a giant slap to her face.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I’m high priority on Ica’s to-be-killed list, but she made my shit list when she first shoved that furry microphone in my face. I sure as hell won’t run away or get all mopey because the world’s going to end. Right now, it isn’t. And I’m going to try my hardest to keep the Core closed. It’s my duty as a Trammeler. A Trammeler Sorceress.”

  The two teachers looked at me with their mouths open. When no one said anything for the longest time, I thought maybe I’
d offended them or something.

  “Excuse my language,” I mumbled.

  Mrs. Rios grasped my arm, and this time I didn’t shrug off her touch. “Then let us help you, Our Trammeler.”

  “Our Trammeler Sorceress,” Ms. Hansen corrected.

  I pulled in a breath. Our Trammeler. It felt weird to hear it directed at me when that title should refer to Tram since he was the official Trammeler. Had been the official Trammeler. ‘Our Trammeler’, with or without the Sorceress, sounded so singular, so...heavy. The weight of responsibility for saving the world fell on my shoulders, a fifteen-year-old girl who had no clue what she was doing and who couldn’t even keep her bootlaces tied.

  I sighed as I looked down at them and at the series of holes I’d poked in my shirt. Their Trammeler Sorceress had some obvious mental issues, too, with an obsession for ripping clothes up and sleeping underneath beds. And I didn’t even dress like a real Trammeler.

  Ms. Hansen cleared her throat, making me wonder if she’d guessed what I’d been thinking. “We’ll continue our watch over the graveyard to make sure she doesn’t come here with Gretchen’s cult and be buried alive in the new Trinity,” she said. “We’ll watch over One and Two. We’ll do whatever it takes to help you, but you really shouldn’t be standing in the middle of a Trinity in case Ica does show up.”

  I nodded. “But what if she does?”

  “Then we’ll let you know,” Mrs. Rios said, squeezing my arm. “We can trade cell numbers, but in the meantime, go home. Get some sleep. You look like you haven’t slept in days, and even Trammelers need their rest. Tomorrow you can start hunting Ica.”

  I liked the sound of Ica hunting. No camouflage or big orange vests or duck calls required for this kind—just me, my blood, and a seed pod. But I wouldn’t wait for tomorrow. Sleep could wait until I was dead. Really dead.

  Once numbers were traded and programmed into phones, I wished them an uneventful night then followed the rocky path toward Mom’s grave. A brisk wind had dwindled the fog into a haze that hung around my ankles. Gusts rushed over the spikes of grass next to her headstone, weaving through them so they twisted together for added strength. Clouds blotted out the moon. Luckily I’d memorized every dip and curve in this path so I didn’t need to see.