Ambrosia

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  The palm tree shuddered in disgust. It can’t be! In all my seasons…your aura…you are an alchemist, how could you do that? You have betrayed the forest!

  “Oh, shut up,” she wheezed, waving her hand and putting the tree to sleep.

  It took a while for Philiastra to catch her breath. This place was so quiet. She managed to sit up, but beyond the lagoon there was nothing but endless ocean in every direction.

  “Where am I?”

  Sunrise was fast approaching, but she could still make out the North Star just above the horizon. She held out her hand to take a rudimentary measurement. “About three degrees, that puts me just north of the equator…”

  Flattening out the sand, she drew an alchemic timer. When the circle energized, it gave a reading of half past four.

  “Okay, so if sunrise on Ápinso takes place at six-thirty this time of year, but it’s four-thirty there right now, that puts me at about 30 degrees eastward of the prime meridian…”

  She flopped down onto her back. “…which is somewhere in the middle of the Vermillion ocean, about 200 leagues from land in every direction.”

  She covered her eyes with her elbow. “I’m such a twig, how could I be so stupid?”

  A distant rumble drew her attention. She turned her head and found the skies to the west were dark and broiling. “And I do not like the look of those storm clouds…”

  She felt herself beginning to panic. Storms this time of year were known to be exceptionally fierce. As bone-weary as she was, there was no way she’d be able to merge with the trees again before the storm hit her.

  “Okay, calm down girl, calm down…arrrrrrgh, I’m such an idiot!”

  She kicked the sand with her foot, breaking the alchemic timer. The channels in the sand flickered away as she fell on her back.

  “Maybe this is justice…”

  She closed her green eyes. “No, I can’t think like that. I am the last female forest nymph. If I die, my race dies…”

  She sat up and looked at the silent palm tree. “Okay, let’s give this a shot.”

  She waved her hand and released the old palm from its magical slumber.

  …how dare you! You defile my flesh, you desecrate my island, and then you bind me into slumber? You are a fiend, you are a hellion …

  Philiastra clucked her tongue. “Uh, huh.”

  …in all my seasons I’ve never heard of a forest nymph behaving so shamefully. Why, it fills my bark with revulsion just to look at you…

  “Go ahead, get it all out of your system.”

  …don’t you realize that you are a traitor? Practicing degenerate crafts upon the sands of my roots, why the powers of the world should strike you where you stand. You are a blasphemer, a desecrator…

  “Are you done yet?”

  The tree remained silent for a moment.

  …unclean, polluted, foul, depredator without honor, perverter of the natural ways, profaner of that which is holy, ravage and spoilate…

  “Knock it off or I’ll put you back to sleep again!”

  The tree begrudgingly held its tongue.

  “Now look, I’m in a pickle and it’s all my fault, but I need your help. I was supposed to wait for Wei to come and get me, but when Storgen began to wake up, I panicked. I didn’t want to have to look him in the face after what I had done to him, so I left. I had never fused with the forests without help before, and I messed up bad. I bounced around everywhere, I couldn’t reform myself. Finally out of luck or just sheer exhaustion I ended up here.”

  I didn’t understand any of that…traitor.

  “You don’t have to. The point is, I’m a coward and I’m a moron, and now I need your help. Wei once told me that there is a way to replenish my mana from an awakened tree.”

  And you expect me to teach you?

  “Well, it’s not like there are any other trees around!”

  She pulled herself up to her knees. “Please, I’m not asking this for me, I’m asking for the future of the forest.”

  The old palm tree was silent for some time.

  You think you are the last, don’t you?

  “No, there’s one other, my friend Wei.”

  The tree gave off a creaking groan. Whatever. Fine, I’ll help you.

  “You will?”

  But you are going to do something for me in return.

  “Anything.”

  There used to be two other trees here, but they withered long ago.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Don’t be. I couldn’t stand them. They talked all the time. Yak, yak, yak, yak. They wouldn’t shut up. I was so glad when they finally died.

  The old palm let off a creaking sigh. But now I’d give anything to hear them talk again. Once you have renewed your forest, come back here, and grow some new palm trees. It’s a terrible thing, being alone.

  Philiastra thought about Storgen. “Yes, it is.”

  Now, the first thing I want you to do is match your aura to mine. I assume you can do at least that much.

  Ignoring the slight, Philiastra centered herself and matched her own aura in color and rhythm until it became lost amid the tree’s mighty presence.

  Good, now expand your presence.

  “I’m not sure how to do that.”

  Push beyond the limits of your skin. Dig down into the earth, grow tall into the sun.

  “But I…”

  Remain calm. This isn’t something you have to learn. Your spirit knows how to do this, just trust it to do what it was born to do.

  With a little push from the old palm, Philiastra felt herself floating. Her arms grew skyward, her fingers expanding out into wide lush branches. Her feet plunged into the sand, her toes reached out into a network of roots. She felt her spirit rise up, drawing in power from the sun, energy from the earth, and force from the air. It was almost overwhelming. There was life everywhere, all around her, of every color and description, and her body soaked it in effortlessly and readily, as if that was what it was born to do.

  She felt her form swelling with magic, so much so that she feared to topple over. She towered above the tiny island, barely a footstool at her feet as she rose up over the ocean.

  She opened her eyes in fright, but found her body had remained unchanged. Instead, her aura had drawn in massive amounts of mana, and she felt her vitality restored.

  “I…I get it. My spirit, it’s the same as a tree’s.”

  That is why you may become one. Now, when you fuse with the forest this time, your destination must not be a place, but a soul. You must turn your gaze to a specific mind to guide your journey, or else you will become lost like you did last time.

  Lightning flashed as the storm drew closer.

  Philiastra turned with gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you.”

  Just remember your promise to me.

  “I will.”

  Philiastra dusted herself off and jumped into the trunk, her body becoming one with the wood once more.

  She was amazed at how different it felt this time. Without Wei to guide her the experience had been frightening and erratic, tossed to and fro in a storm of emotion and feelings. Now she felt focused, confident. She searched through the woods of the world, a bodiless soul looking out through living trees, each one like a reflection on a shard of glass. Millions of shards swirled around her as she existed calmly in the eye of the storm of glass. Every forest was a piece of her mind, every tree was a prism of her sight. She was everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing.

  In the space of a heartbeat she searched the entire planet for Wei, yet the more she looked the more she found blind spots in her vision. Holes in the forests, small patches of sightlessness, hidden from her before, but now readily apparent.

  Voices whispered at the edge of her consciousness. Startled realizations and hushed communications. Frightened and huddling, trying to remain hidden.

  She is looking this way.

  Is she looking for us?

  Who is she?
>
  Is she another of the lost?

  We must remain hidden.

  Do not let her see you.

  She realized she was hearing not the voices of trees, but other voices that existed within the forest. The same spirit but different bodies. They moved erratically, disappearing from one place, then reappearing in another, as if able to leap great distances in no time at all.

  “Wait? Are you forest nymphs like me? Are there more survivors of the massacre?”

  Don’t answer her.

  Hide.

  Stay safe.

  “You are, aren’t you? I can feel your presence.”

  Push her away.

  Suddenly, Philiastra found herself kicked from the eye of the storm, her soul whirling and swirling as powerful forces buffeted her from all sides. The shards scattered before her, and she caught glimpses of dirty and frightened forest nymphs hiding in the hollows of trees, in underground burrows, and camouflaged beneath bushes. Still mourning the loss of their Dasikí Chará, they were scattered, afraid, and leaderless.

  One shard began to grow larger and larger, and she saw within it Wei walking past a tree. He held out his hand, and the shard went dark.

  “There he is!”

  Philiastra reached out and funneled her essence, forcing herself to become smaller and smaller as her soul separated itself from the great forest.

  Philiastra came tumbling out from the side of a tree, her body again taking physical form as bark became skin and wood became flesh and bone.

  Her breath came out as an icy mist as she sat up, finding herself at the edge of a strange wood she had never seen before. The trees here were gnarled and dark. Their festering anger now rolling to a full boil as they shouted in their silent tongue.

  Traitor!

  Murderer!

  You have defiled the natural ways!

  Philiastra sighed, “Nice to meet you too.”

  She stood up and felt the chill of this place. But it wasn’t the snow on the ground or the icicles on the branches. It was something else. Something she had felt only once before.

  The human village beyond was unnaturally quiet. As she approached, she could feel the cold seeping into her bones.

  Monster! the trees shouted.

  Heretic, they called again.

  Their disgust was positively palpable, but it wasn’t directed at her. It was directed at something within the village.

  Philiastra rounded a cottage and nearly cried out in fright. Rows of fresh graves, dug shallow in the frozen earth. Already the stench of death was rising up like a revolting fog. Many of the graves were disturbed from within, stiff pallid fingers poking up through the rock and soil, in frozen pictorial of the last moments of ghastly, throttled life.

  When she saw a row of small graves, she nearly broke into tears.

  “Philiastra, what are you doing here?” came a familiar voice.

  She spun round, finding Wei standing behind her. In his hands, he held a root that he had grown into the shape of a shovel. “I told you to wait for me to come and get you once you had the stone.”

  She backed away. “It was you. You were the one who killed Pop’s family. You were the one that murdered all those villages.”

  Wei closed his green eyes in disappointment. “I was hoping you wouldn’t have to see this. I was trying to spare you.”

  “Spare me? How can you even say that? You lied to me. You used me.”

  “I didn’t use you, I did this for you.”

  “For me?”

  He reached out and placed his hand on her belly. “Your womb, is the most precious thing to our species. Without it, we are no more.”

  “Get your hand off me!” she screamed, stepping away. “Everything you’ve told me was a lie. Why didn’t you tell me there were others? Why didn’t you tell me there were clusters of forest nymphs in hiding?”

  Wei looked at her sadly. “Because I wanted at least one forest nymph who didn’t look at me the way you are looking at me now. Like I’m a monster or something.”

  She stumbled backwards over a fresh grave. “You ARE a monster.”

  “You would waste your tears over humans? You’ve forgotten what I’ve seen, Philiastra. Those filthy humans that I thought were so fascinating. I watched them, Philiastra. I watched them as they ripped off the leaves of the forest nymphs.”

  His eyes filled with tears. “My friends and family, the people who had given those humans sanctuary, they cut off their leaves, one by one. Carefully, methodically, making sure not to waste anything. Can you imagine what it sounded like? The horrible sounds of those shears. Ripping and snipping, ripping and snipping. And the whole time, they were screaming as they died. Pleading for mercy, reaching out with bloody fingers, crying out with fading eyes. Reaching out to me. To me!”

  He reached up and unfurled his hair, the turban unfolding to reveal the leaves missing on the side of his head.

  “And then my turn came, Philiastra. And the humans cut into my flesh.”

  He touched the scabby stumps, tears running down his quivering cheeks. “You’d think it would hurt, but it didn’t. I was too numb by then. I couldn’t feel anything. All I could hear was the screams. All I could see was the piles of corpses. I watched my own blood patter on the ground like rain, and it didn’t even bother me. There was nothing but the sounds. But even after the humans left me for dead, the cries didn’t stop. I could hear them, every night and day, every hour, every minute, I could hear their screams, I could hear the cutting, the tearing, the cutting! Can you imagine what that felt like? And while my family lay rotting in a cellar, those humans enjoyed their new lives, cured of the plague, laughing and celebrating their good fortune.”

  His eyes shook as if they would burst out of his skull. His nose dripped from crying as he screamed. He pointed his shovel at a row of graves, his limbs trembling. “And so I decided to end the screams. I decided that I would answer the call for help. There was no one left to avenge their deaths, and so it fell upon me. They would have done the same for me. I’ve been killing them, Philiastra. I’ve been pruning them like the weeds they are. Hunting down every human who fled from Dasikí Chará. I am not a monster, I am an instrument of justice. While the other survivors hide and cower in fear, I have been destroying our enemies. You think I lied to you? I never lied to you. I told you we are the last, and we are. We are the last two true forest nymphs. A forest nymph who does not punish the wicked is not a forest nymph at all. It’s up to us to rebuild our people as they should be.”

  “As they should be? Do you even hear yourself? There are children in these graves!”

  “Every human who was healed by the blood of our people, I’ve ended their lives. And not just the lives of the refugees, their neighbors and friends as well. Their entire village.”

  Wei walked over to the central grave and reached into the dirt, pulling out a stiff, lifeless hand. “This man here, he was from Dasikí Chará, and I made him watch, just like they made me watch. I made him watch as I buried his kin alive like the trash they are.”

  “You killed an entire village just to get revenge on one person?!”

  “What would you prefer? That I leave his new family and friends alive to avenge themselves upon the woods? To return with their fire and their axes? To break and hack and burn the trees in revenge? You know as well as I, you can’t just lop the top off of a weed, you have to pull it out, leaf, stem, and root. No, if I killed him and left the rest, the result would only escalate into a danger for the trees. But here, there is no one left to tell the tale. No one to place the blame. The humans will find this place abandoned and blithely assume it was the amazons, just as they have every other time.”

  Wei tilted his head back in ecstasy. “I have brought justice to this place. Can you see it, Philiastra? Can you see the forest cheering for me?”

  “That’s why you always silenced the trees. Because you couldn’t handle hearing them condemn you.”

  Wei brought his hands up and tugged at
his cheeks, his fingernails drawing green blood. “Condemn me? They should be thanking me. But, no matter how many I kill, the screams just won’t go away. I’ve killed and I’ve slaughtered and I’ve murdered, and every time I wait for the silence to come, but it never does. Those voices still won’t go away!”

  She began to cry. “This is wrong. You have to stop.”

  He planted the shovel in the grave. “Stop? How can I stop? I’m so close now. Close to ending the screams. There’s only three left, Philiastra, only three fugitives of Dasikí Chará remain to be punished. I’ve been saving them for last. And after they are gone, the screams will finally stop. The sounds in my head will finally be silenced.”

  He ran up and grabbed her shoulders. She froze in fright. “I’ll be free, Philiastra. Free from the sounds of cutting and tearing! Free to start a new forest with you, a new generation of forest nymphs!”

  “You don’t mean…”

  He shook her excitedly. “Yes, Gaetan and Phyllis Thavma. Your ‘parents’ who took you in. And last of all, Gasper Thavma himself. I’ll make him watch as I murder his family, just as he murdered mine.”

  “No! You can’t.”

  “I had hoped to spare you of all of this. You were polluted by years of contact with the Thavmas, I have done much to purify you of it, but I knew it would still be too much for you to face what needs to be done. Once they are gone, you will finally be free of humans forever.”

  Philiastra stepped back, her arms erupting with blue fire. “Gaetan and Phyllis are good people. You can’t do this.”

  “I must. The forest wills it.”

  “YOU will it. The forest protects itself from active threats. It doesn’t send out assassins to enact revenge on children who mean it no harm.”

  He looked at her fondly. “I love how pure you are. Too naïve to see the need for this. I even envy it a little. That is why the forest chose you to be at my side. You preserve the best of what our tribe used to be.”

  “You’re perverting our ways.”

  “Our ways were insufficient! Our people were wiped out, Philiastra. And if we do not change, it is only a matter of time before we are wiped out again! If a crop is wiped out by a plague, you don’t just replant it, first you develop a strain that is resistant, then you replant. We can’t just come back, that would accomplish nothing in the long run. We gave to come back stronger than before, we have to become proactive against our enemies.”