AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nodded.
“Was there one here?”
He shrugged.
I began to wonder if he’d lost his voice. It occurred to me to ask if he was okay, but that seemed foolish, because what could I do? And I thought about asking if the cat got his tongue, but I wasn’t feeling flip enough. Maybe his nerves were less steely than I thought.
At a loss, I paced over to the tree, across the carpet of shredded leaves. The soft toe of my shoe clunked against something and I looked down to see one end of the gray-handled knife poking out, still lying where I left it. But when I picked it up, I saw that the blade had warped, the sharp edge running in rivulets like tears. Not a promising sign. I tossed it away again. I’d get Larch another.
A deep hole split the middle of the tree and I tried to peer in. Sharp splinters arrayed the edges, but deep shadows pooled inside. I thought I could make out something pale.
I stretched an arm down and hissed as a splinter dug into my triceps. Standing on tiptoes, I tried again but couldn’t reach. I looked around for Rogue, who still sat, facing mostly away, as if in a trance.
“Rogue!”
He didn’t move. I walked over to him, laid a hand on his shoulder. He seemed to warm a bit to my touch and slowly tilted his head to look up at me.
“Lord Rogue,” I said gently, “would you help me?”
I held my hand down to him, acutely aware of the role reversal. He raised one eyebrow, an arc of wry comment in the fanged lines around it, and stood in one uncoiling movement. I snatched my hand back and tucked it behind my back, like a child startled by the sudden springing of a jack-in-the-box.
His full lips curled at one corner, but the smile lacked his usual insouciant curve. He slipped past me and strode to the tree, reached in with one long arm and withdrew a pale, fleshy mass that just overflowed the one hand he held it in. Rogue turned back to me and, for a moment, I thought he might toss it to me and I panicked a bit in my heart.
“Now what, my powerful lady sorceress?” he asked.
The silky disdain gave me pause, but I eased up to him to peer at what he held. Up close I couldn’t make any more sense of it than I had from ten feet away. It was flesh-like, a healthy-seeming pink color. But featureless, kind of ovoid.
“I’m out of my depth here.”
“Oh,” he drawled, “do you really think so?”
I sighed. “I apologize for the lightning. I won’t even mention that you drove me to it. So to speak,” I had to add.
He tilted his head to the side like a raptor changing sight lines to get better depth perception.
“I may have erred,” he said softly, “in not killing you after the bird incident.”
“You mean, not letting me die,” I corrected.
Rogue didn’t comment—he simply held out the object to me, clearly intending me to take it. Well, yes, I’d asked him to get it. So I took it with the ginger care I would an infant, wrapping it in the tattered remains of my robe and gown. A little bigger than a football, it seemed to be living flesh but undifferentiated.
“This…is the dryad?”
“What remains.”
“Does she—it—live?”
“If the tree lives, she lives. And the reverse. Heal the tree, you heal her.”
I turned to face the tree, holding my bundle of grief against my bosom. “I can do that.”
“Can you?”
I glanced at Rogue, who’d folded his arms. His face was remote, still.
“Yes, I can fix a tree—especially when it’s just putting it back together.”
He waved a gracious hand at the tree, inviting me to proceed. I focused my thoughts, imagined the xylem and phloem running with sap, the tree whole and mighty as it had been, connected it to my desire to see it right again, and…nothing.
