by Sara Wolf
He doesn’t know what to do. I see it in his eyes—no one walks right at their opponent. Lunging, stabbing, angling. All those things. But not walking. I want to show him, though. What it means to ask for me. What it means to face who I am.
I grab for him, his shoulder, his wrist, whatever I can get, but he flicks his blade at me, trying to make space between us. It’s a light effort from him. But a light effort from him still hits hard. I know that, but I won’t block it with my sword. That’s not what he wants.
That’s not what I am.
I put my palm up at the last second, the blade tip catching in the meat of my hand. Bones crunching easily, the fragile ones, and a searing pain cutting canyons up my spine. But there’s still enough flesh there to stop the momentum. Malachite’s eyes widen, the widest I’ve ever seen them, and he quickly pulls the blade out. The cheering of the sailors dulls, and I let it carry my feet forward, into the beneather. Into Lucien’s bodyguard, his friend. My friend.
My hand hangs, half split, the salt wind stinging at it, the blood drawing a splattered line on the deck as I near. The closer I get, the harder Malachite’s face sets, and the lower his eyelids get again. He crystallizes, ruby irises glittering in the sun. Maybe he understands. He has to. That’s why, I think, when I near him and reach out to take his broadsword forcefully from his hand, he lets me with a gentle ease.
I hold both swords and look up at him. Just at him, and he stares back. He’s so tall, so different from anyone I’ve ever met. And to him, so am I. I can see that, see the difference reflected in his dark pupils—see me reflected there. His strength is being strong. Stronger than a human, faster than a human. He can hear better, smell better. Fireproof. Those are his strengths. And mine?
Well, he says mine for me.
“You’re real good”—he croaks, finally, a smile on his lips—“at getting hurt, aren’t you?”
I smile back up at him. “Kind of.”
This is who I am.
This is how I’m strong.
“Oy!” The captain’s shout echoes, fracturing the ring of sailors around us. They scatter, and she marches up to the two of us, finger in my face and a cigar in her mouth. “What did I say? No fightin’!” She glances down—looking past my cleaved hand uncaringly. “And you bled all over my deck!”
“I’ll swab it right away, Cap’n!” I blurt, making my posture straight and respectful, my half-healing hand already saluting at my forehead.
“We’ll swab it, Cap’n!” Malachite echoes me, saluting too. “Together!”
Her dark eyes cut over to me, to him, and then she scoffs around her cigar.
“Damn right you will. And when you’re done, you’ll be showing me that little backhand move of yours again.”
Swabbing the entire deck as punishment leaves me sweatier than I’d like—which is any. I stayed in Nightsinger’s forest because I had no physical choice, yes, but also because it was cold and wonderfully dry in terms of body moisture. Sweat is the enemy. But sweets? Sweets are the ally. Gods, I hope a polymath quotes me on that one day.
When the last bucket of mop water is exhausted and the last inch of ancient wood scrubbed clean, we collapse on a pile of salt-stained ropes, panting. Malachite offers me his waterskin, and I pour a bit on my face and rub it around.
“Think she noticed you healed up right away?” he asks, jerking his head to the captain at the helm. It’s a pointless question. Of course she did. The whole crew did.
“Impossible,” I drawl. “Otherwise I’d be getting burned alive right now.”
“Bet she’s used to seeing all types, Heartless notwithstanding.”
“Well, that. And the rumors of a horde of valkerax coming back are probably far scarier than a lone Heartless and her witch.”
He nods, taking a swig as I pass him his waterskin back. There’s a long quiet, the lapping ocean and the screeching gulls conversing with one another.
“So,” he says finally. “You gonna shake some horseshit up, huh? In the world.”
I shrug. “Depends.”
“Depends nothing. From the moment I heard you talk at the Spring Welcoming, I knew you were gonna do that. So. Go and do it already.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Are you gonna be okay with it?”
“Yeah. So long as you don’t hurt Luc, I’ll be fine.”
The prince is nowhere to be seen—he and Fione long gone belowdeck to try to parse the book. They didn’t even come up curiously at the racket the duel made, which means they’re direly serious. But I look at the shadows of the stairwell anyway.
“You like him a lot, huh?” I ask.
It’s Malachite’s turn to shrug. “Like, dislike, doesn’t matter. He’s home. My home. And you won’t hurt him. Or I’ll get you.”
It’s not a threat. Not anymore. There’s an unspoken understanding—I could be valkerax. I could be susceptible to the Bone Tree. But even if I am, and I’m controlled by Varia to do something, Malachite will be here to stop me, like he stopped me on the peak of the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains that awful day. Him saying he’ll stop me isn’t a threat anymore; it’s an assurance. A promise between friends. A promise to carry my burdens equally. And I breathe easier because of it.
No matter what, no matter what I am, Malachite has my back.
The ideas are too heavy to say, too heavy for the sun-soaked sky, wet with amber and lavender dusk. Malachite’s profile against it is like marble-washed peach, delicate and refined. And then, suddenly, “If you have kids, I get to name the first one,” he says.
“Shut up,” I drone.
He tries to look deep and thoughtful. “I’m thinking…Vachiayis.”
“Shut up!”
“Big Stinky Vachiayis the Third.”
“Hold on.” I stand up. “Let me go get permission to kill you.”
His laughter follows me as I walk down the stairwell, my smirk affixed as I peer into rooms, storage nooks, behind pillars and boxes looking for Fione and Lucien. I find them bent over a rough-hewn table in the mess, both of them intently absorbed in the green-backed book. So intently that they completely ignore me as I bounce up.
“Lucien, quick question: Can I kill Mal? He’s being annoying.”
No response. Fione stutters her eyes up from the book’s pages, to me, and back down to a stock-still Lucien. A Lucien whose proud hawk profile is frozen, not a blink or twitch in sight. All stone.
I slide into the table beside him. “What’s wrong?” When he doesn’t answer, I glance down at the page he’s looking at. All Old Vetrisian symbols I can’t read, clumped close and dizzying. I look up at Fione. “What’s going on?”
She opens her mouth, closes it. Thinks. The unease in the pit of my stomach yawns bigger. And bigger. Until—
“We’ve translated some of it,” she says, slowly. One important word at a time.
“And?” I lean in. “What did you find?”
The swallow of her pale throat is her only movement. “The Bone Tree…and the Glass Tree.”
“What about them?” I press frantically. “Fione, c’mon—”
“They’re the same thing.”
Beside me, Lucien’s eyelashes twitch in a half blink, like a deer frozen in the woods—watching, fearful, and yet still plagued by flies. I suck in a breath made of daggers, razors, cut obsidian.
“What are you talking about?” I nervously laugh. “The Old Vetrisians made the Bone Tree, and the witches made the Glass Tree—”
“It used to be one tree,” Fione interrupts me smoothly. Too smoothly. “They didn’t make it, Zera. They split it. They split it and used the halves to create their new Trees.”
My unheart falls into my stomach. “But—how—”
“The source of all magic,” Lucien’s hoarse voice finally breaks, his eyes locked ahead on a steady white mercury light on the wall, white reflecting
in his black. “The tree I saw in my dream. The one that gave me magic. The one that gives every witch on Arathess their magic.”
He looks up at me—calm above, and terrified below.
“They split the Tree of Souls.”
17
THE TREE
OF SOULS
At this point, I’m willing to believe anything. Even things I’ve never heard of before.
I’ve seen the Bone Tree’s power firsthand. I’ve seen how it melded with Varia, embedded itself into her very skin. I’ve seen myself heal from dire things—beheadings, fires, guttings. I’ve seen Windonhigh, like an impossible myth sprung from an old bard legend—a literal island in the sky. I’ve seen massive, heavy valkerax fly—I’ve seen them overcome the Bone Tree’s brute power by Weeping.
I’ve Wept. I’ve done what I thought three years ago would never be possible.
All that to say at this point, I’d be a fool to dismiss even the wildest idea.
At the sick look on Lucien’s face, I called Malachite belowdeck and gathered four mugs of cold barley ale from the tap room, spreading them among our somber table. The ship creaks in our silence.
Malachite’s the first to admit confusion. “So what if they were the same tree? What does that even mean?”
Fione traces the book’s page thoughtfully. “I’ll need more time to truly turn it over. And the Black Archives’ resources will help clarify things. But for now, the best I can do is guess. I’ve heard of the term ‘Tree of Souls’ from only one place.” She looks up at me, mousy curls bobbing. “The Old God’s supporters, their rosaries—they call that the Tree of Souls.”
My mind flashes back to Y’shennria, to her wood-carved, naked tree rosary she kept with her at all times, stroking it in times of distress or difficulty. She’s an Old God worshipper—that’s why she’s been admitted into the relative safety of Windonhigh at all. She adored that rosary—leaned on it like a true friend and confidant.
“What does it actually mean, though?” Mal presses.
“It means,” Lucien says, “if we were to interfere with the Bone Tree, we could be interfering with the flow of all magic. Forever.”
I go still. “Do—did the High Witches know about this?”
“Presumably,” he says. “Which is no doubt the major reason they decided not to help us interfere with the Bone Tree. If we did, we’d be interfering with half of the Tree of Souls.”
“And if we were to destroy both trees,” Fione says, looking over at me pointedly, “theoretically, we would be wiping all magic from Arathess. Forever.”
“Wait,” I start. “So Gavik was wrong? The Glass Tree wasn’t made from a piece of the Bone Tree?”
“Correct.” Fione nods. “He was so scared by the Bone Tree, by Varia getting it, that he had his polymaths investigate as much as they could. And they came up with that hypothesis—that the Glass Tree was made from a splinter of the Bone Tree.”
“But it’s not.” I frown.
I see Fione’s hand shake, before she hides it quickly in her sleeve. “If this older text is to be believed, no.”
“So this Tree of Souls is important. And the Old Vetrisians split it? So how does it still give witches their magic?”
“It’s been physically split.” Lucien stares into his mug with glassy eyes. “But its magical imprint is still intact. The Tree of Souls still exists, but not on a physical level. That’s why it only ever comes to witches in dreams. Dreams are how it moves—how it communicates, and how it gives witches their magic.” He sucks in a sharp breath. “But the wound of being split like that—it must be hurting. Terribly, and for so long. For a thousand years now.”
pain like eternity, the hunger sneers at him.
“So, wait.” Malachite holds up one long-fingered hand. “You’re saying a thousand years ago, Old Vetris decided the only way to stop the valkerax was to split this super-important magic witch tree? And the witches just let them?”
“Let?” Lucien scoffs. “The Mist Continent was on the verge of ruin. They did what they thought was the right thing—they used the most powerful tool at their disposal.”
“And the most mysterious,” Fione agrees. “I didn’t…I didn’t even know it was real. All these trees, lost to time, to the crumbling of Old Vetris, and then consumed in the fires of war.” She inhales deeply. “No doubt the Old Vetrisians had little clue as to what would concretely happen if the Tree of Souls was split. But they decided the short-term benefit was worth the unknown consequences far down the road. And that ‘far down the road’ is our reality, right here and right now.”
Her periwinkle eyes dart over to me, and we share a silent moment. We talked earlier of consequences, too. About what would happen if we destroyed the trees. Both of them. That’s what I want above all. I want the valkerax and the Heartless to be free. But if it means I destroy all magic, too, I—
I don’t know if it’s worth that.
All magic. All magic, ever. Forever.
It would change the world. There wouldn’t be any more witches. The valkerax—who knows how they actually fly? Maybe that’s magic, too. Maybe the Wave that gave the celeon sentience… Would that go away? Would the celeon revert? Would Windonhigh come crashing to the ground? What would happen on the other three continents I can’t see? They have magic there, too. Everywhere. Different magic, everywhere. All gone.
Because of me. My decision.
There’s a stretched-thin silence, like old worn skin over an older drum. One too-hard beat, and it will break—gape open into darkness.
“We need more information,” Fione says first. “We could be jumping to illogical conclusions without all the facts. Or even the majority of facts. Once we’re at the Black Archives I can translate more—we should wait to decide until then.”
“Sure, whatever.” Malachite puts his hands behind his head. “I’m leaving the thinking to the rest of you, honestly. Just keep in mind I’m team ‘don’t-let-the-valkerax-out.’”
I look over at Lucien, his face drawn tight. I can see the wheels of his brain working, quietly, swiftly. What would it mean to get rid of magic? What would it mean for Cavanos, for his kingdom?
What’s left of his kingdom?
Thankfully, the tedium of dinner and cleaning dishes and waxing the seals in the hull takes over. But it’s still not enough exertion to exhaust my brain—not in the slightest. When curfew falls I stay awake, staring up at the ceiling-floor of the ship, all our hammocks swayed gently by the ocean’s lull. Most of the sailors snore, a few of them draped over their hammocks in impossible positions. I jolt out of my skin when one of them sits bolt upright and starts punching the air, except the air happens to be the sagging weight of the sailor’s arse above him. The above neighbor is too drunk to wake. I suppress a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, grateful for the reprieve.
Lucien’s hammock is next to mine, Fione’s above me, and Malachite’s above his. I can see his dark silhouette breathing gently into the stale, sweaty air. I know he’s not asleep. How can he be? This changes everything. Even if Fione warned us not to jump to conclusions, the questions still ring clear as bells in our heads.
If stopping Varia means destroying all magic, is that a worthy cost?
She’ll be consumed by the Bone Tree in a few months. She acknowledged that herself. She’ll die. We could let her rampage until she perished, but she wouldn’t be the only one. People would die by her hand, her power. Untold numbers of people.
But how many people would die without magic?
The witches of Cavanos would be defenseless, truly and totally. Witches all over the world would have to learn how to piece reality together again after a total destruction of their way of life. And that’s not even taking into consideration “far down the road.” Anything could happen down the road. Future generations would have to grapple with the decisions we made here a
nd now. And their battles might be far worse than ours. A chain never-ending.
It’s too big to dwell on. It feels like if I give it more thought than the bare minimum, it’ll bend my mind into itself until there’s nothing left but fear.
great fear, and great hate, the hunger whispers.
I’m scared of falling asleep. Of seeing Varia in my dream again, connecting to her. I’m scared of the dream I had in Vetris—those two naked tree rosaries I felt I had to bring together. I know now what the thing that felt lonely is called. That feeling of wrongness that’s plagued me ever since then. The Tree of Souls.
Is that what the hunger is? That “wound” from the splitting? The Glass Tree’s hunger is in my head, and the Bone Tree’s hunger is in Varia. Is the hunger punishment for bisecting the Tree of Souls? I know it’s what’s been calling to me this whole time. Not the Glass Tree. Not the Bone Tree. But both of them. The thing they both are—the thing they both used to be. It’s been dreaming, reaching out to me through my dreams.
The tree of bone and the tree of glass will sit together as family at last.
I roll over again, chasing the Hymn of the Forest out of my head only to see Lucien’s sleeping outline is gone. His hammock is empty. Did he go abovedeck for some air? It’s not a bad idea, and I swing my legs over and stick my feet in my boots to follow him. He might need me. And even if he doesn’t, I need him.
We need each other, if we’re going to make it through this.
The salt air is crisper at night, gilded sharp by the full light of the Blue Giant, its cool incandescence completely unfettered by any mountains or hills or forests. There’s only the sea to soak it up, and the wood of our comparatively little ship. Lucien’s at the bow, watching the ship’s prow carve the water white. The helmsman nods to me, and I to him, the deck guard walking lazy circles and smoking a pipe, the smell of vanilla tobacco lingering on me as I lean on the rail beside the prince.
“It’s hard not to feel small,” I say. “In the middle of all this. Especially with a moon that big.”
The Blue Giant wordlessly looms on the horizon, dwarfing the ship, our sails, and casting a long shadow of us on the choppy water—a ship, and two people at its jutting prow.