Season of Sacrifice

by Mindy Klasky

  6

  Alana Woodsinger gasped for breath, struggling back to consciousness like a near-drowned fisherman. “Maddock!” she cried, and then she hurled her thoughts back toward his bavin, down the confusing paths of the Guardians of Earth and Air, toward the startling tangle of fire that threatened her grasp on his distant woodstar.

  Even as an ache blossomed behind Alana’s eyes, she struggled to teach herself how to harness the Guardians of Fire. Water, she knew. Earth and Air, she had learned over the past fortnight. Fire, though, remained alien, threatening, terrifying in its destructive force. She caught a glimpse of how the element worked, how it danced above Air and Earth, how it set itself opposite Water, but she was unable to gather together the strains of that knowledge, unable to focus past her fear for Maddock’s life.

  Frantically, she shoved her awareness back toward the Tree, past her woodsinger sisters to the smooth rings of oaken knowledge. She chased her thoughts around several circles, scrambling for a grip, trying to pry up an answer, to learn about the fourth element.

  There was nothing there, though, nothing that would help her in this crisis. Rather, she found the burden of potential, the weighty knowledge that the Tree could come to know the Guardians of Fire, might yield up all its strength to those flaming beings. Could…Might…What good was that to Alana now? What good was that, as Maddock was threatened in a burning barn, halfway across the land?

  She heard the hovering swarm of former woodsingers inside her mind, sensed their agitation at the edges of her consciousness. She shut them out, though, excluding them so that she could better concentrate on the horror at hand. What had happened to Maddock? To Landon and Jobina? Had all three of them been cut down? Were they, even now, engulfed in flame? Were they already dead?

  Silence. Darkness. Nothingness.

  Alana tried to remember how the bavin had felt inside her mind, how the woodstar’s power had spun its web across the land. Closing her eyes, however, and reaching for that pattern left her empty-handed, empty-minded. Each breath daggered through the pain that now pulsed beneath her skull. She could barely make out swirling clouds where the bavin should have been, like ocean water tainted by a squid’s desperate ink.

  Against the darkness, she could see the flash of fire on iron, see the threat of the villager’s thrown knife. Panic overwhelmed her, and she hurled her body against the Tree, pressing against its rough bark with her hands, her cheek, as if she would crawl inside the trunk, as if she would become one with the ancient oak.

  “Great Mother!” she gasped in despair. “Great Mother!” She tried to force her consciousness through the Tree, through the bavin to the trio of rescuers.

  Children called on the Great Mother. Not grown women. Not woodsingers schooled to recognize the power of all the Guardians, of the complex world around them. Children, who were desperate and frightened and alone in the night.

  “Great Mother!” Alana sobbed, and the sound brought back the last time she had called on the ancient goddess, when she had knelt on a sodden beach beside a bloated corpse that could not be her father, that had to be her father. The image made Alana retch, and she fell to her knees, trying to forget the stench, to forget the frozen finger of certainty that had walked down her spine as she identified the body from its carefully knotted rope belt.

  She had lost so much. She had forgotten so much. She had failed to learn so much. She was so alone.

  And now, to have lost Maddock and Landon and Jobina, as well….

  “Great Mother,” she moaned again.

  As if in response to her plea, the woodsingers’ voices stirred again in her mind, shifting beneath her throbbing pain. She let them speak to her now, now that there was no longer any way for her to reach across the land for Maddock’s bavin.

  “The Great Mother won’t help, you know.”

  “She can’t help you.”

  “This is all beyond her. The Great Mother only planted the Tree. She watered it, and she spoke to it, but she never knew it. Not the way that we do.”

  Alana interrupted the swirl of voices. “Leave me alone! If you don’t have anything useful to tell me, leave me alone!”

  “Prithee, sistren,” said one of the woodsingers, her tone folded softly around ancient words. The voice was tight and small, as if it were encapsulated in one of the rings closest to the Tree’s oaken heart. The words were wrapped in long-lost sounds, guttural vowels and harsh consonants that scraped the back of the speaker’s throat. “Puir bairn such a strangething desireth, finding the spiritforce of a lost bavin. Such a strangething, but a strangething can be done. With the heartpower of the Tree. With the bonestrength of the fairsister.”

  Alana was not certain that she could make out the individual words, the specific meaning of all those ancient sounds, but the overall sense was clear. There was a way for her to reach Maddock. There was a way to snare the distant bavin.

  As if drowned in Alana’s shock, the swirl of woodsingers quieted. Alana, fighting to hear her own thoughts above her pounding heart, dared to speak to the one voice, to the most ancient woman she had ever heard in her woodsinger thoughts. “Thank you, sister,” she said gratefully.

  “Thank not this puir vocet, fairsister woodsinger. Ye should not timewaste with fairsister thanks. Ye should trace the seekerswordsman. Thoughtgrasp his bavin.”

  The ache behind Alana’s eyes as she focused on the slippery words was so sharp that she was certain she would retch again. She struggled, though, to pull meaning from the strange sounds, to twist the soft voice into a guiding rope. “I—I don’t know how to fight, how to, to thoughtgrasp. I can’t reach him. I can’t find Maddock. And even if I could, I don’t know how to help him.” Alana’s fear and frustration broke her voice, breaching the wall that had held back her tears. “I knew it was wrong for him to slaughter the lamb, but I couldn’t reach out to change what he was doing. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t help!” Her entire body began to shudder as she sobbed, quivering in reaction to the pain that lanced behind her eyes, to her exhaustion, to her surrendering hope.

  “Fairsister, ye have the puissance to changefate the woodstar.” The voice was slightly scornful, as if the ancient woodsinger could not believe Alana was so ignorant. “Vocet ye can be, like any fairsister. Thoughtwords can landbridge. Ye can thoughtspeak to the seekerswordsman. Make him bodyact. Make him bodysave himself.”

  “How?” Alana was so surprised, she blurted the one syllable aloud.

  “Thoughtgrasp the woodstar.”

  “I don’t know what that means!”

  “Mindcloak the woodstar. Spiritsend your thoughts.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying!” Alana wailed. The ancient woodsinger used words as if they were the People’s tongue, but the words made no sense. Alana could babble, too. She could throw together phrases and pretend that they were words. She could pretend that she had the powers of all the Guardians. She could pretend that she knew what she was doing, play-acting as the People’s woodsinger.

  “Become a vocet, fairsister. Become a vocet for the Tree.”

  Alana sensed that the other woodsinger was frustrated as well.

  “What in the name of all the Guardians is a vocet?”

  “A vocet,” the ancient woman repeated, as if by stressing the word all would be made clear.

  Alana’s frustration leaked out as a wail. The other woodsinger visibly shrugged, and began to move away, back to the core of the Tree that had been her only home for time out of mind. Alana stumbled to her feet, reaching out a trembling hand as if she could stop a living, breathing woman from walking away. “Wait!” she cried. “I want to understand you! I want to learn!”

  The other woodsinger lingered, floating just above the dark core that was the very center of the Tree’s essence. Alana went on desperately. “What is your name, fairsister? Let me read your journals, try to understand you that way!”

  “Parina,” the voice whispered at last. “Parina Woodsinger.” The words faded away,
sinking back into the unknowable depths of the Tree’s inner knowledge.

  Alana stumbled down the path, rushing to her cottage. She built up her fire, almost smothering the banked coals as she piled on too much wood. Looking down, she saw that her hands were scratched, that her arms were bleeding. As if in a dream, she remembered surrendering to the Tree, pushing against its bark as if the pain would let her break through to Maddock and his fellows.

  What did it matter, though, a little blood on her hands? She lit a reed lamp and threw herself at the wall of ancient journals, peering at their leather-bound covers. She did not need to study the newer volumes, the smooth, supple leather of Sarira Woodsinger’s life, or Sarira’s teacher, or that woman’s teacher. No. Alana needed the very oldest of the tomes, the most ancient, the most faded.

  Alana shifted the heavy books, stretching to reach the back of the top-most shelf. At last, she found the one she wanted, small and cracked, and so dry that she thought the parchment pages would crumble to dust before she could carry it to the fireside. Nevertheless, she was able to make out scrawling words on the first page: Parina Woodsinger.

  The woman had lived a long and productive life; she had filled page after parchment page with a scrawl that made spider webs look coarse. Parina was not the very first woodsinger, but she was the first to have written down her observations about the Tree. Parina had tended the oak when it was scarcely more than a sapling; the woodsinger had just been able to encircle the Tree with her arms when she began to serve it.

  Hours passed, and still Alana read, trying to find the answer, searching desperately for some way to save Maddock. Three times, she returned to her shelves, stretching for other buried volumes, for more of Parina’s journals that had been pushed aside through the centuries.

  After the first few hours, the woodsingers inside Alana’s mind slumbered, apparently exhausted by her passion. More than once, she thought that she would take a moment to sleep herself, or sneak a few breaths to splash cold water across her aching eyes. She would just take a brief break, chew on a few dried apples, stretch her aching back….

  But every time she started to step away from the fireside, she was overwhelmed by the sense of loss that had capsized her at the Tree. For the first time, she realized what a hole a lost bavin created. It was one thing for a woodstar to lose its power gradually, to fade away as it aged outside the Tree. Alana was already accustomed to the light tug of decades-old bavins, to the whispery mental impression left by the dried-out husk of a completely faded woodstar.

  The gap inside her thoughts now, though, was completely different. Maddock’s missing woodstar ached, like a rotten tooth. It dragged her back to the journals, over and over again, even as she longed to pull away.

  Was this the pain a bavin left when it was lost at sea? Was this what Sarira Woodsinger had fought against as she stood on the Headland, trying to sing home Alana’s father, and the twins’ da, and the two other fisherman? Was this why Sarira had given her life, because she wanted to stop the ache inside her head, inside her heart?

  For the first time, Alana began to understand how a woodsinger would risk almost anything to avoid the aching emptiness that spread through her now. A woodsinger would abandon food, abandon drink, abandon the health of her own fragile body, if she could keep from feeling this break with the Tree. Sarira had. Or at least she had tried.

  Since donning her woodsinger’s cloak, Alana had avoided Sarira Woodsinger, avoided the woman who had let her father die at sea. In her heart, Alana knew that she was being unfair, that she was punishing the older woman for failing at an impossible task. Still, it had seemed that Alana had no choice. She could be angry with the woman who had failed to sing her father home, or she could be angry with her father, for venturing out too far, for staying out after a storm came up, for failing to find a way back to the Headland.

  Flinching from the ache of Maddock’s lost bavin once again, Alana started to search her mind for Sarira Woodsinger, started to pull together a thought of peace. Before she could complete the action, though, she was ambushed by a memory of standing on the beach, breathing in the stink of her father’s bloated corpse. She remembered her growing anger as she counted the knots on his belt, her rage at being left alone, left behind.

  Little Reade still felt that anger. Reade, who was even now selling his small soul to Coren. Reade, who needed to be rescued.

  If Sarira Woodsinger had done her job properly, if she had sung home the four fishermen, Reade would be a different child, Alana’s da and Reade’s da and the other two men. Reade would not be so desperate for Coren’s approval. He would not seek out a father in a kidnapper, in an evil man. He might even have been brave enough to escape, to wrangle his way free from his captors.

  And Alana? Her life would be different as well. If Sarira Woodsinger had not died on the Headland, Alana would be free. She might have found a husband. She might even now be sitting with him beside her hearth, heavy with their unborn child.

  No, Alana was not yet ready to make her peace with Sarira Woodsinger.

  Instead, she harnessed her anger and turned back to Parina Woodsinger’s journals. She forced her way through endless accounts of the Tree’s size, of its watering, of its progression through the seasons. Parina’s words were strange, odd combinations of familiar words and phrases, and Alana often had to stop to puzzle out their meaning. Some of the words were entirely new—“vocet” and “fairsister” and other, stranger words that Parina had not spoken inside Alana’s mind.

  Twice, Alana dove back inside her thoughts, stretching toward the shadows where Parina had disappeared. She wanted the ancient woodsinger’s assistance, wanted to know where she should look in the ancient parchment volumes. The ghostly presence remained still, though, buried deep beneath the centuries and the circles of the Tree’s growth. Alana did not know if she had offended her sister woodsinger, or if Parina had merely exhausted herself by swimming to the surface of Alana’s thoughts, by pressing communication for as long as she had.

  Exhaustion. Swimming. Alana longed to close her eyes, to rest her head across her arms. She sobbed as she read, recalling Maddock’s bravado, transmitted through his woodstar. He might be foolish; he might be rash. But he was so alive. Or he had been. Before his bavin winked out of existence.

  So alive…Alana kept returning to her shock when she first sensed the man’s attraction to Jobina. A blush had spread across her own cheeks as she felt the warmth of his speculation. And Maddock had thought of her as well, of Alana. He had criticized Landon for not acting quickly enough, for not securing Alana as a helpmeet and a bride. Did that mean that Maddock thought of her that way? Did that mean that the handsome fisherman desired her?

  The woodsinger shook her head, dragging her attention back to her search. Parina Woodsinger. The ancient journal. Thoughtgrasping, whatever that might be. Mindcloaking.

  The sun had arced across the sky when Alana finally found the passage she sought.

  “This morn, I spiritlearnt another power of the most puissant Tree, which left me fair astonished.” Parina’s writing was hurried, as if she had rushed to get all her words recorded before she could forget them, before the energy of her discovery could dissipate. “As I wrote before, I woodsang a bavin for Tarin Fisherman to guidelight him and his fleet in the nightdark spring storms. Tarin Fisherman, though, did not return the bavin for woodhoming when he came back to the People. Instead, he gave the woodstar to his bairn Merinda, as if it were a childguard, a gamepiece. I was most displeased at the affront to Our Tree, but I spirit-talked to my Tree-bound fairsisters, and I held my tongue because the woodstar’s heartpower was even then fading, in the lifeseep way of all woodstars.”

  Alana stumbled over the passage, forcing her way through Parina’s complex phrasing. The woodsinger had been tending the Tree in an ordinary fashion, bringing it water from the Sacred Grove, singing to it about the latest happenings among the People. She had been recounting a squabble between two of the village goodw
ives, when the oak had suddenly thrust into her mind, hurtling her attention toward Merinda’s bavin.

  Even as Parina reeled at the Tree’s initiative, even as she tried to shake off her startled dizziness from having her mind thrust in an unplanned direction, she glimpsed what was happening back in the village. Tarin’s daughter slept in her cradle, the bavin strung around her pudgy infant neck. Merinda slept in her cradle, but her breathing had stopped. Her heart still beat; her mind still sent child-thoughts along the woodstar’s thread. But her breathing had stopped.

  Parina realized that it was hopeless to run all the way from the Tree to the village. The distance was too great. The child would be long dead by the time the woodsinger could alert anyone. Even as the woodsinger cried out in anguish, though, an idea sparked deep inside her mind, an idea that seemed to come in equal parts from the Tree itself and from the scant handful of woodsingers who had lived before Parina.

  “And so,” Alana fought to make out the excited scrawl, “I thoughtgrasped the bavin. I called upon the most glorious, most puissant Tree, reaching into its core of cores, where the greenest heartwood runs deep. I harnessed the powers of all the Guardians, air and earth, fire and water, as they are woven together in the Tree’s green heartwood. I spun those powers into a thread of whitelight, of purest thoughtlight, and I cloaked those powers around the bavin. I drew the Power of the Tree into mine own thoughts, and I touched puir Merinda, thoughtgrasped the still-breathed bairn. Through the bavin, I acted on the child. I made her awaken and breathe. Blessed be the Tree and all its puissance.”

  “Great Mother,” Alana breathed. She had never made any attempt to touch the Tree’s heartwood. It was so distant, so deep, buried beneath so many lifetimes and generations of the People. Now, though, with Parina Woodsinger’s words sprawling like a map, Alana gathered her thoughts to try.

  Reaching toward the Tree on its promontory, she felt the hordes of awakening woodsingers like soft cobwebs strung across the path to the Headland. She sensed their concern about the trio of pursuers, about the mission Alana was attempting to guide. She sensed their goodwill, and their wishes that they could help. But she also sensed their lack of knowledge, their contentedness with the aspects of the Tree they had always known, had always loved. If any of them had ever known Parina’s thoughtgrasping, they had forgotten it lifetimes ago.