Season of Sacrifice

by Mindy Klasky

  Taking a deep breath, Alana pushed herself deeper, to the threshold where she had left Parina Woodsinger the day before. The weight of the Tree hulked above her, the burden of greenwood and bark and heavy, leafy branches. Alana fought for another breath, pushing against all that weight, all that ancient history. Now, she could scarcely make out the whisper of the other woodsingers, far above her, closer to air and water, earth and fire, to the Guardians and the People.

  Alana hovered for another dozen heartbeats, afraid to take the next step, afraid to wait, near the Tree’s very core. Then, envisioning the extraordinary words she had seen scrawled across the ancient parchment page, she caught her breath and pushed across the border, across the ring of ancient bark that had long since been compressed around the Tree heartwood.

  “Fairsister!” Parina Woodsinger exclaimed. “Well met!”

  Alana reeled at the force of the greeting, amazed at the strength of Parina Woodsinger’s voice in her own peaceful home. “Fairsister,” she managed to whisper, and her own words sounded as if they were drenched in honey, made heavy by centuries of sap and wood.

  Parina laughed, a throaty sound that made the space around Alana tremble. “And are ye ready to thought-grasp, fairsister?”

  Alana managed to say a single word. “Yes.”

  “Then let me show ye about the heartwood. Let me guidelight ye to the thoughtgrasp path.” Parina stepped toward Alana and extended one long-fingered, impossibly ancient hand. Alana grasped it tightly and caught her breath, watching as Parina showed her the last step she needed to take, the last step into the core of the Tree’s ancient heart.

  Even with Parina beside her, Alana was panicked by the changes in her body as she gave herself up to the heartwood. Her own heart slowed its beating, matched its pumping to the impossibly slow convulsions as the Tree sucked water and sustenance from the earth. Her breath sighed away, spread thin as the Tree gathered precious air from its leaves, from the new morning sunlight.

  Before Alana could panic, though, before she could step back from Parina’s “thoughtgrasp path,” she saw what the ancient woodsinger had discovered. She saw a different bond between the Tree and its bavins, a different thread spun out across time and space. The line was brilliant white and so fine that, even from the heart of the Tree, Alana could only see it if she cocked her head at a particular angle. Standing in the core, though, Alana understood how she could tug on that impossibly fine thread, how she could twist the fibers of earth and air, the balance of fire and water. She saw how she could touch the woodstar at the end of the filament, how she could nudge it to return her action. She could make the holder of that bavin move. She could find Maddock and manipulate him through his own bond to his woodstar, through his own incredibly thin-spun thread of white light.

  Now that Alana had made her discovery, though, she could hardly recall why she’d been searching. It took all her thought to remember to expand her lungs, to let her heart beat deep within her chest. She needed all her concentration to remember life and living. It was too hard to think here, too hard to remember the world, the People. Too hard to think of anything other than the Tree, the Tree with its golden sap, its green-leafed light, its heavy, comforting bark.

  Alana barely managed to think a question at Parina.

  “Yes,” the ancient woodsinger answered, a puzzled smile in her voice. “Ye can thoughtgrasp from the surface. Now that ye mindknow the whitelight, ye can heartfind it whenever ye must. But why would ye ever want to leave the heartwood?”

  Alana tried to think an answer, tried to explain why she could not stay in the old world, in the ancient times, back at the beginning of the Age. She tried to explain, but she found she had no words left inside her mind, inside her heart. She fought to remember Maddock. Maddock and Landon and Jobina. Reade and Maida. All the People. They depended on her.

  Alana fought for words, for thoughts, for explanations, but she was reduced to vague pictures, blurred images, distorted by the weight of time and distance and heavy, oaken wood. There was a man who wore a bavin, a man whose woodstar had gone missing. A man who must be found, who must be helped….

  Even as Alana struggled to remember the name of that man, even as she tried to remember why she needed to reach across the land, she felt Parina sigh. The ancient woodsinger shook her head, and her laughter was sad. “Go, then, fairsister,” she said, or maybe it was the Tree that spoke, or maybe Alana only said the words to herself.

  Then Alana felt herself pushed away, shoved through the heartwood’s thin and ancient barrier. The shock of life outside the Tree’s core hit her like an icy wave, and she was too stunned to move, too startled to swim back toward the bark-covered surface. She marveled at her fingers and her toes, her heart and her lungs. She felt her body like a miraculous invention of the Great Mother, the shaping of all the Guardians.

  “Farewell, fairsister!” Parina cried, and the words brought back more thoughts to Alana’s mind. “Good luck!”

  She remembered that she had a mission. She had a goal. She was supposed to find a thread, one single, white thread in all the world…. She began the long swim through the Tree’s rings, but not before she twisted back, twisted around to gasp at Parina, “Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome, fairsister.” Parina’s laughter rolled through the Tree’s rings, bubbling to the surface, helping Alana float past the other woodsingers, back to her village, back to the People.

  Alana came to her senses in her cottage, as stunned and disoriented as if she had been far beneath the sea. Her heart pounded inside her chest, thundered with a regular rhythm that was almost painful. She felt a new awareness of her body, of her trunk and her limbs, and of the fine muscle and bone of her fingers.

  And beneath it all, around it all, through it all, she felt the shimmering white thread that the Tree had spun to its bavin, the thread that she could pull and weave, the thread that stretched from the Headland to Maddock’s woodstar. She felt it like a physical force, a knotted thread that pulled her across the land.

  Alana needed to anchor herself, though, before she ventured along that shimmering path. She needed to secure herself to the Headland so that she did not get lost across the distance. With bark beneath her fingers, with wood beneath her hands, she would remember the long road back to the People. She would remember why she reached out to Maddock, to his bavin, why she reached out to guide his actions and lead him in his attempts to rescue the children.

  Alana scarcely remembered to extinguish her smoldering reed lamp before she tore off to the Headland and the Tree.

  Gasping at the force of her newfound knowledge, the woodsinger collapsed across the giant oak’s roots. She ignored the earth that stained her patchwork cloak, and forced herself, instead, to focus on the power Parina had shown her, on the fine white line that linked the ancient oak to its farflung bavin. Closing her eyes to cut out distractions, Alana stretched her thoughts across the land, across the powers of the Guardians of Air, the Guardians of Earth. She sensed the strength of her new weaving, the force of her recent discovery. She was ready to pull Maddock’s woodstar, to haul the man to safety.

  But she could not thoughtgrasp Maddock’s bavin.

  She could not find the woodstar, not with the shining white filament. She could not bridge the distance with that narrowest of threads. The line stretched from the Tree across the land, but then it frayed to nothingness, to emptiness. Alana retraced her steps and tried again, then a third time. No matter how carefully she followed the thread, though, how carefully she stretched the white light toward the trackers, she could not reach the distant woodstar.

  This was not fair! She had journeyed deep and studied hard; she had read through the night and trusted herself to the heart of the ancient Tree. She had learned to see the white thread of thoughtgrasping, but all to no avail. The tracker was as lost as if she had spent the previous day laughing and sleeping and flirting with the village boys.

  Maddock was lost. The rescuers were gone.


  Alana fought to swallow a cry of disbelief. Her incredulity was chased by a wave of fury. The old words were useless. Hopeless. As ridiculous as sending a trio of fisherfolk to do battle against all the arrayed might of Smithcourt.

  Even as Alana raged against the injustice of the world, though, she heard her own furious thoughts. The People had sent a trio. They had sent Landon and Jobina, along with Maddock. Even if Alana could not reach Maddock’s bavin, she did not know that Landon and Jobina were lost. They might have survived the attack on the barn. They might have survived the flung knives, and the fire, and the fury of the village folk. Jobina might have lived to sing the Song of the Dead for Maddock; she might have led the warrior’s soul to rest with the Guardians. Landon might have dug a grave for Maddock.

  Jobina and Landon might, even now, be riding after Reade and Maida, more intent on rescuing the children than ever before. Exhausted, possibly wounded, strangers to the land beneath their horses’ hooves…And if that was the case, then the rescuers would need all the help that the Guardians could give them, all the assistance that Alana could manage.

  Alana might not be able to reach Maddock’s bavin, but she could try to touch her first-sung woodstar. She could stretch across the land to Reade. And if she could harness Parina’s tricks with the boy’s bavin…If she could make Reade understand that he was being followed, that he would be saved….

  Alana dashed her tears from her cheeks. Very well, then. Even if Maddock were lost, even if the rescuers’ first battle had been a rout, the war was not yet decided. Alana could fight with other weapons. Gritting her teeth, the woodsinger muttered to the Tree and any of her ancient sisters who might be listening, “Fine, then. I’ll reach for Reade.”

  She found the new white thread and stretched across the land.

  7

  “Here’s your food, Maida.” Reade caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he balanced the tin plate that he carried to his sister. When he reached Maida’s side without spilling, he glanced at Duke Coren, hoping that the nobleman would notice Reade being polite to his twin. He was trying to remember that he must act like the Sun-lord. He was trying to be good. It was just so hard, with so many different things, so many strange places and people and things to do as they journeyed farther and farther from the Headland.

  And Maida didn’t help. Even now, she screwed up her face into an awful frown. “I don’t like this bread.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the bread, Maida.” Reade reached out and tugged a bite from the hunk that balanced on the plate. He put it in his mouth and chewed hard, bobbing his head as he swallowed. “See? It’s fine. It’s just made with salt. That’s the way they make it here. That’s all the lady had at the inn, when we left this morning.”

  Maida shook her head and pushed the plate away. “Mum makes good bread, not like this.”

  Thinking of Mum made Reade uncomfortable. That morning, when he’d woken up, he had tried to remember the exact shape of her face. No matter how hard he tried, though, he could only see the woman who ran the inn. Oh, he could still remember how Mum yelled at him when he did something wrong, and he remembered that she always made him do his chores. But she was fading away, becoming part of his life from before Duke Coren came, from before Reade became the Sun-lord and Maida became the Sun-lady.

  He tried to tell himself that he didn’t need Mum here, anyway. He was a big boy. He had been the huer in the spring harvest. He didn’t need his mum at his side, as if he were a little baby. He didn’t need his mum to protect him.

  Even as Reade lined up his arguments, though, even as he made his thoughts as neat as knots in a net, his lower lip begin to tremble. Maida must have seen him, because she leaned forward and grabbed his arm through his golden robe. “Let’s run away, Reade. Let’s go back home.”

  A strange light glowed in Maida’s eyes. She looked like old Goodman Jendo, after the horse kicked him in his head. Jendo had sat up in bed, screaming at Guardians who weren’t even there. Reade wasn’t supposed to have seen Jendo; he had promised Mum that he would not go near the cottage on the edge of the village. The older boys had dared him, though. They told him he wasn’t brave enough to creep up to the hut and look between the chinks in the wall. He couldn’t refuse the big boys, not without Winder calling him a coward.

  He knew he was lucky he hadn’t been there when Jendo actually died. The Guardians might have carried Reade away if he had been, dragging him back to their home, along with Jendo. Even without watching the Guardians take the old man’s soul, Reade had been afraid that Jendo’s spirit would haunt him. Winder had said that it would; he said that the Guardians would punish Reade for looking through the holes in the cottage’s wall. Sometimes Reade still had dreams that Jendo had come for him, come to take him to live beneath the sea with the Guardians and other dead fishermen.

  Maida tugged at Reade’s arm, breaking into his thoughts. “Reade. Listen to me.” She looked about to make sure that Duke Coren’s soldiers weren’t listening. When she whispered, Reade had to lean close so that he could hear her. “Do you remember Mum?”

  The question was so close to his own thoughts, to his own fears, that he forced himself to laugh out loud. Ha! he made himself think. This was like Maida telling a joke. She was making up a story about some boy who was too stupid to remember his own mum. “I’m not a baby, Maida. Of course, I remember her.”

  “I dreamed about her last night. I dreamed about how she prayed with us every night before we went to bed. I held my Great Mother, and Mum put her hands on top of mine.”

  Unconsciously, Reade reached for the metal charm that hung about his neck, his own Great Mother. His hand brushed against the woodstar that Duke Coren had given him. Of course, the woodstar was powerful, more important than any gift he had ever received. His Great Mother, though, was special for a different reason. He couldn’t remember a time that he had not had the iron charm strung about his neck.

  He had asked Mum about it once. She said that she’d given him his Great Mother the day that he was born. He and Maida both—they had the iron charms to watch over them, even when they were so little that they shared the same cradle.

  If Maida had dreamed about her Great Mother, then she must be afraid. Again. It seemed like she was always holding on to her charm. She acted like she was on Da’s boat, tossing on the sea, and the Great Mother was her anchor.

  Reade was a little scared when he thought of Maida’s dream. It reminded him of how far they were from home, of how frightening this whole journey was. He covered up those bad feelings by making himself laugh again, like Winder, back home. “That must have been a pretty stupid dream,” he said.

  “It was a good dream!”

  “Only babies dream about the Great Mother.”

  “I am not a baby!” Maida shrilled, and a number of the soldiers looked over at them. Reade shushed his sister, afraid that Duke Coren would get angry.

  “All right, Maida, you’re not a baby. By all the Guardians, stop squealing like a stuck pig.”

  “I’m going to tell Mum that you swore!”

  “You’re never going to see Mum again for the rest of your life!” Reade said the words before he could even think if they were true. Maida burst into tears, so suddenly that even Reade was surprised. Her wail was cut short as Reade clapped a hand over her mouth. “What are you trying to do? Duke Coren will kill us if you screech like that!”

  She tossed her head free from his hand, but at least she remembered to whisper. “You’re bad, Reade! You’re breaking all the rules. You use bad words, and you don’t pray to the Great Mother, or the Guardians, or anything.”

  “No one’s here to make me!”

  “That’s not it, and you know it! You’re bad because you’re afraid. You’re afraid of what Duke Coren would do if he caught you praying to the Great Mother!”

  “I am not afraid!”

  “You are, too! You’re as scared as a lamb. You’re a coward!”

  “I am not
a coward! I was the huer, Maida. The huer has to stand on the very edge of the cliff. I couldn’t have been the huer if I was afraid!”

  “Who cares about being the huer, Reade? There aren’t any cliffs here. There aren’t any boats, and the duke doesn’t need a huer. No one cares about a stupid huer.”

  There. That was it. Maida was still jealous of him. When Sartain Fisherman had made Reade the huer, Maida had cried for an entire day. She’d still been sulking the day after Reade had been chosen, even when Mum had let her stir the porridge, and add an extra portion of honey. Maida was such a baby.

  Before Reade could tell her that, though, she got a strange look in her eyes, like Winder when he was planning something mean. “If you’re so brave, Reade, if you’re so important, then why don’t you just get rid of your Great Mother? Why don’t you just leave it on this rock?”

  Without thinking, Reade raised his hand to the metal charm. “I’m not going to do that.”

  “See! It’s true! You’re a lamb! Coward!”

  “I am not! It’s just that—”

  “What? It’s just what?”

  Reade couldn’t think of a good ending to the sentence. He wasn’t afraid. Not exactly. But he didn’t want to give up his Great Mother. Not when Mum had given him the charm. Not when he had no idea when he would see Mum again. But he would never be able to make Maida understand. He sighed and looked up at her miserably. “It’s just that you don’t have to be very brave to leave a Great Mother on a stone.” She snorted, and he said, “I’ll get rid of it! But you have to promise you’ll never call me a coward after I do.”