When it became obvious what was happening, Shannon slowly dropped to her knees, hands raised, beseeching gently. Addl’laen required submission. Shannon could acquiesce, but she could not allow Addl’laen to do all the talking this time. She needed her say.
At this sign of her subservience, the Great Tree knew her as worthy still, and it reached down with its limb to rest a barren set of eight, leafless twigs within the cupping of her palms. They touched her, and Shannon could hear the Addl’laen’s voice rushing into her.
‘I can see the choices have come before you, young Firea’csweise.’ The Great Tree began immediately. ‘As I have said, so have you made those choices, and even now, I can see your purpose. All of your fate is understood below me now, and I would tell you if you would but ask.’
‘No need my lady.’ Shannon’s response could have been less rude, but she didn’t need to know her purpose any more. Her fate was irrelevant now, for she was here to do something about it, or at least attempt to, and that was all that mattered. She laid her fingers upon the bare twigs and gently pulled them close.
She closed her eyes and prayed her idea would work. She bent her thoughts to the talk of the White Leaves that Deh Leccend had been gracious enough to share at her request. The keys to the locking away of the Powers of Elseworlds. It was no doubt, no simple matter. She fully expected to fail to fully grasp all that might be required in the weaving of the lives of eight otherworldly, extra-dimensional juggernauts with tiny frail leaves. Truly, she didn’t think she had it in her to bind such mammoth entities of powers she couldn’t comprehend to a sort of stasis and wrap that magic into the life of the lost White Leaves granted new life. But she had to try. It had to work. Blasphemy or not, there was no other way to stem the coming of the Powers.
‘Please. Please.’ With this pleading, Shannon breathed a breath upon the limbs, blowing lightly upon them as she gestured for the White Leaves to regrow.
As thus, her heart’s desire became nothing short of the power Deh Leccend had insisted it to be. Her breath took on light and power like steam in a winter’s chill, forcing the limbs to growth. At once, eight little bright green buds appeared upon the twigs. They then swiftly swelled beneath her wonder and will, and the green was vanquished in exchange for paled pearlescent silvers. Within moments, the buds were lengthening, unfurling like long calla lily coils. Before they’d even uncoiled, they’d grown ivory against her skin. Within moments overall, eight white leaves, long, thin and individually like knifing sharp feathers had grown before her delighted brown gaze and her heart was uplifted.
A smile, bright and joyous came to her features, and she giggled of her delight. Her heart burst of happiness in her newfound gift, and within little time she cupped a tight little cluster, a wildly unkempt blossom of pale luminance. To the wonder of those who bore witness, the White Leaves had regrown beneath the bidding of the Firea’csweise, a mere humyn girl, and they gasped in awe and disbelief. Dunesil stepped back as if terror stricken, but Shannon’s delight would not let her notice. Against all probability, Shannon had won.
Chapter 21
So overcome with happiness, she began to pull back, releasing the twigs and the life they now bloomed.
However, before she could even let go and survey the miracle she’d created, the dainty limb snapped beneath her touch and the Great Tree swiftly recoiled from her. Addl'laen left her with the White Leaves in hand.
Disbelief and overwhelming loss swarmed over her.
“No!” She gasped.
She’d ruined her attempt. She’d failed.
Shannon held not the wisdom of the Elvine which set Dunesil aghast, muttering oaths and mild curses of his wonderment. Deh Leccend, though, was of a different mind.
Here was the single greatest marvel he’d ever seen in his ancient lifetime.
Shannon Hunter, the Firea’csweise, was indeed more than the herald of change. Just as she’d presumed upon deciding to return to Addl’laen in the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, she now knew she was the catalyst. However, the Elvine Lord’s voice spoke more than this.
“By the glory of Addl’laen?” He gasped breathlessly.
“A human is the White Leaves?!” He couldn’t bring himself to understand. This wrought spite more deeply within him, and it came out in his voice. However, Dunesil Llaerth was helpless to watch. It was forbidden to do anything more than watch what shouldn’t have been possible.
Before their eyes, Shannon Hunter slumped there, stricken by her failure. She wept, and was lost to the world. But, for all her internal suffering, sorrow was not the sort of payment left to her for what she’d taken. Even as she held the leaves low within her hands, and knew that she’d failed, she couldn’t help wondering why.
She just shook her head, crying out her frustration.
As her vanished hope left her bereft, the stem sprouted roots with a swiftness and hunger she couldn’t have anticipated. A wild, almost sinister living thing -it reached for her palm like an octopus taking its kill.
Before she so much as realized what was happening, the roots of the White Leaves dug into her flesh. It sought to embed itself within her palm, and it succeeded. Nothing she could have done would have prevented it. It simply happened too swiftly.
It was the pain that made her react, a searing dangerous invasion. It burned in her skin like burrowing worms sheathed in shards of glass. She cried out painfully, a startled shriek. Far too late.
Her whimpering could not help her. In a burned reaction she fastened her free hand upon the stalk, balling it into a fist, and began pulling vehemently. She struggled and strained, stretching the roots and stressing her flesh. But it would not be removed.
She ground her teeth to dust, and she redoubled her efforts. Her muscles shook beneath the agony and effort, and then slowly she gained ground. She was pulling it free of her hand, and it gave her hope until the thing dug deeper.
Shannon panicked. She hadn’t wanted this. Her blood was leaking out. It should have streaked her arm by now, but even as it sought to spill, the roots consumed it -eager and hungering for her flesh.
She growled as best she could, and pulled with all she could muster -a last ditch effort.
Success! She could've cried.
With this terrible sting and a ruinous scarring of her slim hand, the roots finally let go. With a snap, the little tree that had become of the large, long White Leaves’ limb released her palm. She did cry out, and jerked her head aside as her fist came back at her. But, she hadn’t the control to respond in any other way.
Struck a blow to the side of her dome, Shannon whimpered again. She’d punched herself upside her own head with the sudden release, and though she felt foolish, it hurt too much to concern herself with embarrassment. It really smarted, causing her another slower whimper as she recovered. However, even as she sought to bring her fist away, she found herself unable.
The roots had tangled with the clumps of her hair and ornaments. The little tree had already dug in, binding itself to the side of her head. The pain of her self-inflicted punch was replaced by the burning of the invasion immediately, and she turned to wildly jerking at the White Leaves, utterly desperate and encompassed by confusion. But there was no denying the roots now. Her efforts epitomized futility, and slowly, inexorably, her resistance melted. Her figure slumped, then collapsed in an awkward heap as the stem of the White Leaves came to be worn like a feather at the side of her dome, joining the clusters of various beads in her hair.
She laid there trembling, beneath the invasion, taken over by the gift she’d been given. She disappeared from time and place, and was swept upon the river of unexplained consciousness within the White Leaves. She was shown nothing, yet when it was done, Shannon had become the lady, White Leaves. As such she was given privy to many things and much knowledge she wasn’t consciously aware of. But in it was a seed, a wellspring of drive that she’d never known before. It spoke to her in no certain terms, like instinct warns a deer on a breeze. She had a
job to do.
That knowledge drew her up shortly from what appeared to be unconsciousness, and her eyes snapped open. Dazed, she drew herself up to sitting once and she glanced about. Deh Leccend was the first to come to see her for what she was, and in touching her shoulder, he gasped. Her eyes had found him at his contact, but no longer were they dark, warm brown tones. They were silver and white, rods and cones wrought of crystalline shards only a hair of a cooler shade than the whites of her eyes, leaving her dark pupils like wells of obsidian.
“Milady Firea’csweise?!” He checked to ensure she was well, but his voice was wrought more of excitement and wonder than worry. Shannon shook her head. She was no longer Firea’csweise. She knew it, seeing her own visage in his opalescent eyes.
“Lady White Leaves!” He gasped, knowing the truth even as she denied her former name, and Deh Leccend hugged onto her joyously. He was abruptly all smiles and light laughter. He dragged her up to her feet, body close and reveling in the feel of her slender little frame. Shannon smiled in his happiness, deciding she liked Deh Leccend much more when he was jubilant than dark and foreboding, though that had its own level of appeal. She wondered on whether or not she liked him more than she thought, but her happiness melted instantly a Deh turned about. For there she spotted Dunesil Llaerth, standing slack of figure and jaw, features contorted in disbelief. He diminished further beneath her glittering eyes, shrinking from her like a hound beneath its master’s reprimanding tongue.
“You have done great and terrible things by bidding the Great Tree to shed its White Leaves and unlock the charms of the Powers with their keys.” She reprimanded him, eyes intense and tones full of knowledge she should not have the right or ability to know. But Shannon did know.
What should have been and what were, were now two different things entirely. What had come to pass was now what was meant to be. What had become of Firea’csweise as the Elves had called her was her fate. Addl’laen’s intuitive power of knowledge had become her own, and she was now resolved. Her fate was to be the Lady White Leaves. That was why she’d not had a leaf of her own, for as one lady, she was many. Enlightened, Shannon had become powerful in her own right, though in a way that was uncertain.
“You should have let the Black Leaves do their duties, but your fury in wake of your son has brought sin upon you.” She was certain and true, but Dunesil was wise and powerful. He promptly denied her.
“He was the first Elvine to die in thousands of years! You certainly would not understand my choice!” He shot back. “He was my son, Firea’csweise!”
“White Leaves.” She corrected him with a snap.
“Your son’s fury was the cause of his end. It was not his to bear. The Great Tree has seen this. The Elvine was a limb never meant to suffer the whimsy of hate or rage or sorrow. Yours is a kin of peace and purity, and the emotions of love and happiness! You have brought them disgrace and dark thoughts and feelings.
That is why the Black Leaves were born! They were to suffer the drags your kind was not meant to be fettered beneath! But you stole away their purpose for your own when you forged the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge! You added to your theft when you slew the White Leaves! They were felled by your vengeance and spite alone!
The only good you’ve done has freed the Black Leaves of your oppression once again! They now feel all emotions, equal as mankind and Faer kin, and Elvine once again. And you will ever only know fury and rage, hate and sorrow, dismal feelings of the dismal souls you’ve created of your kin.” Shannon’s voice and words were powerful and certain against him.
Dunesil was simply aghast. His jaw gaped as he saw the truth, the undeniable truth. It was now known, the purpose of the Black Leaves which had never been known. It was now known the treacherous folly of his once-thought ingenious creation.
“Dunesil! You have ruined the Elvine! You have let one of many infect your own heart, and only because he was your son! Now, all of your creations shall suffer as you will suffer!” Shannon didn’t really know what she was saying. It had all just come to her in a crystalline moment of perfect clarity.
“You should have known while blood is thicker than water, not only blood is worthy of allegiance. Your kin ought not to receive your graces and love, nor even fair treatment, if they are not also deserving of such in other ways! Family is not enough to bind souls together! Ideas, minds, and actions are what make a soul what it is!” She was snapping off the words like a vengeful goddess herself, and yet Shannon did not feel the emotions behind her voice. Instead, she felt only the insistence of the truth and the need to speak it vehemently.
“Now, The Powers are waking. Micquael, the starfire shard, blade of the sun, is coming, and in his wake, I pray not that Enfaeri is freed. But, if he is, then now have you doomed not only mankind to annihilation, but also all of the Elvine of Addl’laen and the Great Tree as well.” Shannon’s voice prompted the great tree to move.It reached down at mention, and once more came to touch Shannon’s shoulder with a single, mostly barren, darkened limb. It bore only twenty one serrated, three-tipped leaves of blackness.
Shannon reached up absently, staring heatedly upon Dunesil, and she touched it gently, fingers finding lightly only the leaf at its very end. She stroked it distantly between her delicate fingers, closing her heated eyes away from the Lord of the Elvine. Beneath her touch, the Black Leaf, Deh Leccend melted as if a swoon. As if she tickled his sensitive stately ears with her very tongue in some inappropriate seductive game, the last black leaf almost buckled at the knees. His heart cracked, and beneath its break, all emotions of hate and fury and dark thoughts left him. He felt a great trade had taken place.
Just as the Lady White Leaves had said, the Elvine would now suffer the dismal existence of the Black Leaves, and only then with the foul feelings left to them. The Black Leaves would become happy, kind, dedicated and caring souls.
“In wake of your foolish sin, Dunesil Llaerth, the Black Leaves will perish, and so will all of the Addl’laen if I fail. However, even with as few as they are, I pray I can stop the dawn of the Powers at the descending of Micquael.” She informed him of the result of the trade that had occurred at his own actions. She then voicelessly assured him through her eyes alone, that what had come to pass was not of her own doing. Shannon had nothing to do with what the Addl’laen had decreed must be. She was only the messenger, the bearer of the undoing of what had been for so long, and what had been brought to pass beneath the Elvine Lord’s actions.
“Your time has ended of your own accord.” She said, divining it truly, and she reached up to the base of the stem of the last of the Black Leaves. She then began pulling all the Black Leaves together in a cluster. She pulled them towards the end of their limb, and slowly but surely she plucked them. Their numbers dwindled, but in being plucked, none didst fall. Rather, they were blended into one another, and another, and so on. They descended into themselves until she was left with but one leaf on the twig, a single black leaf, called Deh Leccend, the one called, The Last.
“I don’t want you to die, I told you once, Deh.” She said, eyes not able to leave the Elvine Lord. “And I meant it.”
“I don’t want to die, my Firea’csweise, milady White Leaves.” Deh Leccend responded, bowing his blackened ash eyes, knowing nothing more to say. But, is gaze would not linger relinquished of her glorious presence. Rather, he would be drawn up again by her voice.
“Thus, I pluck not the Black Leaves, to leave you alone. Thus, I pluck not the last Black Leaf to slay you. Rather, I pull them all into one, and leave you twenty-one strong; strong enough to fool the celestial blade and help me overcome his kin.” She said, finally releasing the tip of the last Black Leaf as it hung taut beneath her touch. It sprang away from her release, and so it was. Deh Leccend was remade, forged over again, in spirit and mind. He was become the last Black Leaf, comprised of many, as the White Leaves were once said to be. Comprised of many, she was one. Comprised of even more, he was one. He would be her tool, the last f
ree and caring elf.
The others would be left to watch the returning of ancient events from their bitter stance within Addl’laen, and when it was over, the Great Tree would possibly shed all of their leaves and very likely die.
“Deh.” She said.
“Yes, milady White Leaves.” He asked expectantly, voice hurried and eager to serve her slightest request.
“Take me to where Micqael will descend.” She instructed, and he bowed inadvertently, awe-inspired by her looks and the utter feeling of her spirit.
Shannon Hunter was long gone. The young woman, and all of her once-held ambitions and desires in life were also departed. In her stead was left a lady of real purpose, having come into her own. Firea’csweise was past as well, for her purpose was served in turn, and in wake of both, the White Leaves was born and remained.
E.L.F. - White Leaves Page 29