Story Magic

by Beth Ball

  Her eyebrows contracted. “You do not write down stories?”

  And with the accent too, intoxicating. Cerdris flashed what he regarded as a disarming half-smile, though she seemed unfazed. “I like to think of myself as a writer.” He shrugged. “Otmund said he thinks we’ll get along. So you’re a storyteller too?” Not the most eloquent as far as leading questions went, but he’d heard worse before.

  “My people and I are made of stories.” She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Though I believe that all people are. We are just more aware of it than most.”

  This was almost too good to be true. “We being the saudad?” Please say yes.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Perfect.

  She dipped her head in a mock-bow. “Is my Torstran convincing enough that my accent now goes unnoticed?” The saudad laughed as she slid onto the opposite bench, freeing him from the need to decipher whether she was serious or not.

  “Cerdris,” he said, extending his hand to hers.

  The bangles along her wrist jangled once more. “Persephonie. Charmed.”

  This was exactly the sort of newcomer Drugas had asked him to seek out. In exchange for his cooperation with the City Watch, he’d received a shortened sentence and a reduced fine. He’d thought Drugas was joking when he first offered. The City Watch was never lenient, especially with those who bore even a passing connection to the Untamed. Cerdris hadn’t intended to be caught up with the revolutionaries, he had explained after his arrest. It was simply a case of an impassioned romance and unfortunate timing.

  Luckily for him, the dashing Captain Drugas had also been quite taken with him. Mutual attraction always helped in these situations. Cerdris could have sworn that the man studied his lips as he laid out the terms. “We want to know who’s inside our borders,” Drugas had said. “It’s a question of safety for us all.”

  Slipping information about the saudad to the captain would be harmless enough, and it wasn’t as though Persephonie was doing anything wrong. Drugas had even promised ten silver coins if he could record something useful such as the future plots of the Untamed or how long they waited to draft new potential citizens into their traitorous nets. Such a reward would free him up to travel to the lands beyond Andel-ce Hevra. He could seek the stories that grew in the wilds, as his own heroes had done.

  Cerdris pulled his sheaf of parchment over in front of himself and picked up his lucky quill. It’s fortunate I brought you along today. The barbs of the raven’s feather were still soft against the pad of his thumb. “Can you tell me an example of one of these stories? I’m curious to discover how indeed they ‘make us up,’ as you say.”

  The saudad wiggled back and forth, drawing her feet up under herself on the wooden seat. “What sort of story are you in the mood for?”

  “Surprise me.” He raised his eyebrows with his smile.

  Persephonie scrunched her features together, studying him.

  “What is it?” Had his eagerness given him away? Otmund would be furious if he found out. He refused to have any dealings with the guards. But really, this wouldn’t do any harm.

  “I am asking Cassandra which story to tell you first.” Her hazel eyes glimmered. “I will start with one I do not think you will have heard.”

  Chapter 12

  “LEGEND OF THE BLACK OAK FOREST”

  As Cassandra taught us, in the days before the parting of the seas, a great green oak grew.

  She stretched high, her canopy rising above all the other trees, and from there, the oak watched and waited.

  If anyone had paused to ask, however, the tree would have confessed she was not sure what she was waiting for.

  But fate would not hold out forever. There came a day when the tree’s fortune turned. And in this changing of her fortune, her fate affected that of so many more.

  A young woman came to the oak, desperate for love. “There is a man where I’m from who longs to marry me. I know I’m meant to be with someone else, but I don’t know whom.”

  The great green oak thought this over. It wasn’t customary for her to be sought in matters of the heart, though she was keen to try her hand at a subject readily practiced by sages across the land. “Very well, I shall do my best to help you.”

  The woman smiled and wrapped her arms around the tree. “Thank you,” she whispered. “How shall I pay you for your aid to me?”

  Laughter rustled the tree’s slender leaves. “You need not pay me, child,” the oak finally said. “But here, take this.” She dropped an acorn into the girl’s hands. “This piece of me will travel with you. Plant it where the roots of your heart find their resting place, and I will continue to guide you.”

  The young woman was overjoyed at this prospect. She tucked the acorn into her pocket, planted a kiss on the bark, and skipped off into the forest.

  That afternoon, the young woman returned home to find that she and her family would be going on a trip, leaving behind the suitor she did not wish to wed. “Where are we going?”

  Excitement glittered in her mother’s eyes. “Do you feel that, child?” she asked, gesturing to the open carriage window once they were on their way.

  The girl leaned out, and the wind rushed through her hair, but she could not find the sensation her mother had indicated. “No, Mama, I do not.”

  The bronze-skinned woman brushed her daughter’s hair back away from her face. “You will, my daughter. A change of fate drifts down from the moon and the stars. It calls to you, my child.” She smiled. “Be sure to answer, when the time comes.”

  With a nod, the young woman pressed her palm against the acorn in her pocket. Even from afar, the wisdom of the oak fluttered down to her.

  Their carriages drew to a halt once they reached a verdant kingdom, its borders enclosed by a protective mountain ring. Inside, celebrations stretched as far as the eye could see, from the smallest villages to the grand castle itself, where guests arrived from many distant lands. The time had come, the girl soon came to understand, for the kingdom’s lord and ruler to choose a bride. And though she was but one of many, in a twist of fortune that caught many by surprise, the young woman—of relatively minor birth—captured the affection of the lord of the land. Each day, he took her for a turn through his gardens, asking what might best please her eye and make her wish to stay.

  The girl returned his attentions with kindness and respect, which made her mother proud. But despite the elegance of the castle, still she missed the simple forests of her home, and she longed for the company of the green oak tree. Her oak possessed a wisdom, a light. When she was with the tree, the girl felt herself swept away into a grand adventure. The right suitor, she decided, would bring with him a similar sense.

  And then one night, as the girl stood out on her balcony, overlooking the moonlit gardens the lord was reviving for her, a masked suitor climbed the terrace to the girl’s rooms. She gasped and backed away as he swung onto the balcony.

  He raised his hands, covered by black leather gloves, and asked her to wait before she screamed. “I know I am not alone in seeking your heart,” the masked suitor said, “but please, will you give me a chance?”

  The masked suitor perched on the balcony’s rail, and the girl leaned against the ivy-covered castle wall. He wove stories for her about realms and worlds beyond any she’d yet seen. His tales whisked her away on an oak-scented breeze.

  She hurried through each day, anxious for the return of the moon and the moment when she could sneak out onto her balcony. There, she would find the masked suitor, even in the rain.

  He made her his offer, the opposite of the lord’s. “Come away with me,” he would say. “Let me show you these distant lands. We’ll adventure together, travel hand-in-hand.”

  The desire to accept grew and blossomed in the girl’s chest. But his stories had brought with them a stronger sense of her tree. Each night as he held out his hand and asked her to leave, she paused, listening for the oak’s melody on a distant breeze.

/>   And without fail, her tree answered her. Wait, not yet, came the oak’s whispered reply.

  “Not tonight,” the young woman answered.

  The masked suitor bowed his head and rose. “Then I shall return to you tomorrow.” He planted a kiss on her hand and slipped away.

  The lord of the land, at her request, wove a colorful tapestry of fragrant blooms across his gardens. Courtiers journeyed over the mountain passes to visit the enchanting flora, the living testament of love and patience that would win the young woman’s heart and convince her to stay.

  On midsummer’s eve, the lord appeared late at night outside the young woman’s door. “Take a starlit stroll with me,” he asked. She expected her secret suitor at any moment, but she was in no place to refuse a man of such great power and influence.

  The lord led her to the fountain that had been erected in her honor, depicting a shy forest nymph that bore the young woman’s face. “Marry me,” he said, kneeling down on one knee.

  Pain flashed across the young woman’s face. “I cannot.” She clutched his hand in hers and revealed the secret she had determined to keep. “There is another whom I love, though I do not know his name.”

  The lord lowered his head, his hands fumbling at something by his side. Watching him, her heart raced. Did the lord mean her harm, here in the beautiful garden he’d made? Or could he accept being second in her heart, the first place shared between the man who told her stories and the wise oak tree?

  When he looked up at her once more, a familiar mask covered his face. “My darling,” he said, “did you truly not recognize me?”

  The woman and the lord married in a ceremony of feasting and light, and the sun smiled down on the kingdom for a year and a day. In the center of the flower garden, the bride planted the oak’s acorn, a reminder of her home.

  But a shadow fell upon the kingdom in the woman’s second year as lady of the land. A blood sickness afflicted her, arising shortly after she conceived her first child.

  The lord and the oak did all they could to save her, but the magic of their love was not powerful enough to undo what fate had wrought.

  A great storm arose, come to claim the young woman’s soul.

  Lightning crackled in the sky overhead. The lord cried out as his wife’s body fell limp in his arms. “Will no one help her?” His voice lashed across the air. He leaned outside to beg the sapling oak planted below. Her branches quaked in the swelling winds. “Can you not save her?” The lord’s voice broke, and he clutched her body to his chest.

  The tree’s young heart had grown brittle as the sickness took its toll. She could not bear the darkness that had taken hold of her mistress. Another lightning bolt cracked nearby. A branch crashed to the ground, shorn from the trunk of the tree. She screamed in agony. The broken branch gazed up at her, weeping freely beneath the rain.

  “The young woman is sunlight to me,” the tree screamed at the sky.

  Silence glared down, cloaked by the black storm clouds.

  The lord’s sobs pattered all around her, acidic drops of rain.

  Very well, the tree resolved, then I shall grow of my own accord. I need not your light and will learn to feast on shadow instead. The oak dug her roots deep, severing her connection to her friends nearby. They cried out in pain and withdrew.

  Plunging beneath the fungal forest at her roots, the oak found the darkness she had promised to seek. Tied to the Shadowlands, the oak feasted, her roots wrapped around rocks, breathing the still, clouded air.

  Her trunk rippled and waved. Leaves writhed at her fingertips.

  Globs of green light splatted onto the ground around her. The tree’s wounded neighbors slurped them quickly up. They lifted their roots and crawled further away.

  The oak shook as the shadows took hold. Their darkness splintered up her bark. Her branches rasped, water and sunlight no match for the writhing dark that stretched so deep. The leaves along her branches turned black, and she laughed in her despair. “Here, now, fate will see what destruction her negligence has wrought.”

  The lord’s grief erupted once more, thunder ricocheting against the billowing clouds.

  “It is time, my lord,” the oak cried. “Together, we shall make them rue this day.”

  As the young woman’s spirit seeped forth from her body, the lord and the oak ripped their lands free of the threads of fate, tearing them asunder from the weave of their world. As the woman exhaled her last breath, the grasping dark gripped the edges of the lord’s lands and drew them into the umbral realm below.

  Back in the girl’s homeland, a web of shadows reached the great green oak. They whispered grievous news—the young woman she loved was no more.

  The oak’s screams echoed up from her roots, floating out in twisted scents upon the breeze. She sagged onto the forest around her, but there was little the smaller trees could do. The saplings growing in the shelter of her shade had not the wisdom to aid the oak in her grief.

  “We can help you,” the shadows whispered, “only let us inside.”

  A gap in the center of the tree yawned open, split where the girl’s kiss had been planted. “Can you fill what was taken?” the broken oak asked.

  “No,” the shadows replied. “But we can make the void grow so that you know nothing else.”

  “Is there no hope, then?” The oak clung to her final moments of freedom from the drowning waves of her loss.

  “None that we nor any around you can provide.” The wording was so careful, we cannot say the shadows lied.

  “Very well, do what you must.” The oak bowed her head as she welcomed the shadows inside.

  They howled through her depths, claiming each space that was free.

  Like her daughter oak, planted in the young woman’s garden far to the north, the tree rained green droplets of light on the forest around her.

  “We will all know the loss of the young woman,” the smaller trees cried, slurping up the green light that fell around the oak’s sides. The verdant beads twisted, tainted, maimed, and mangled.

  “And we will remain, and wait, for revenge on fate,” the oak said.

  Sprawling out from the oak, a black forest took root. At its heart waits her new, twisted form. Gnarled branches and bark stretch toward the sky above, and dark poisoned roots reach into unseen lands below.

  As the years passed, the trees’ grief grew and spread. The black forest crept up and over mountains, expanding their range. Gradually they advanced, the scent of death their perfume.

  Chapter 13

  “You’re certain?” Senator Antonus Ignatius paced back and forth before the oread’s cell.

  “Yes, my lord,” the fae creature wheezed. Her gnarled hands swirled over the milky crystal ball. Inside, a dark-haired figure sheltered close beside Antonus’s son. A burbling fountain spit water behind them. “The saudad girl is not alone,” the creature explained, unaware of the irony. “Nor is she unprotected. But her spirit spells doom for you and your line.”

  His true lord had warned Antonus that a female caster might try to interfere. But Lucien had neglected to adequately describe the adaptive calculations through which the traveler would bewitch his son Rennear.

  Antonus’s jaw clenched. Must these beasts always speak in riddles? “And what of my son?” Rennear remained flighty despite his training and the heightened stakes. Soon, Antonus had promised Lucien, without the senate to coddle the city, and without the false spiritualists to lead them astray, the subjects of Andel-ce Hevra would be brought in line. Rennear, as one of the captains of the guard, would have no choice but to comply. But rid of the saudad’s spell, he would see the wisdom of this in time.

  “She will divide you further from the one you call your own,” the oread said. A grating cough racked the creature’s lanky frame. “Her magic is powerful, an antidote to your efforts, though its breadth she does not yet know.”

  He threw up his hands. His son was a romantic, just like his mother, regardless of the lycanthropy running ra
mpant through his veins. “Very well, seer.” He nodded to the two guards who stood watch over the fae. “It may eat today.” His eyes flashed over the oread’s cage. The fae’s bark-like skin had faded, smoothed, during its incarceration. If it lived long enough and served him well, there might come a day when it could pass for human, at least from a distance.

  “I expect more precision upon my return.” The senator swept his cloak to the side and spun out of the room.

  Two more of his guards joined him in the hall, his servant Rigalto sniveling close behind. “Where is my son?” Antonus freed his hands from his gloves one finger at a time. “See that these are cleansed.” He pushed the soiled leather into Rigalto’s chest. He had not been forced to touch the creature this time, but he would not risk having even a mote of its green magic found on his person. “This too.” He swept the cloak from his shoulders and tossed it to the servant.

  “Yes, sir.” The elderly werewolf bowed.

  “He’s out riding, my lord,” the tallest of the guards replied.

  “Well enough.” Antonus scowled. He could not reveal the half-truth of this claim without explaining the fae creature and its seeing orb. “Find Eustace for me.” Though the werewolf had underperformed at the scene, he might still prove himself worthy of redemption. “A violation of the Green Law has come to my attention. I’d like him to see to it.”

  “As you wish, sir.” The two guards bowed and left his side. Antonus swept down the hall to his office. A senator’s work was never finished. They would need to act carefully and outside the council’s knowledge, but with a clever plan, an elite group of his werewolves could wipe the saudad from the city streets.