Rachel straightened slowly, brushing aside stray locks of hair. She knew that feeling.
Fairy folk were near.
With eyes honed by hours of wandering through the forests of Gryphon Park and over the Dartmoor, she surveyed her surroundings. Signs of the fey abounded. A ring of toadstools grew just beyond the glade. A faint scent of hyacinth filled the air, despite being out of season. Beside a mossy stone, acorns and thorns rested where wee folk had left their helmets and lances. A tree knot had a hole in it. The Unwary thought such cavities in trees developed by some natural process. Rachel knew better. If a tree contained a hollow, some elfin creature dwelt in it.
Rachel peered into the knot. The hole was filled with water. Three tiny she-pixies with glittery dragonfly wings bathed within, kicking up a spray with their shapely legs. They squealed when they saw a giantess peering at them and scrambled backward in terror. But they flashed bright smiles when Rachel put her finger to her lips and backed up, winking.
She crept farther into the woods. She could feel the Folk of the Forest watching her. Between the knobby roots of a huge oak, she spotted a foot-high cavity splitting the trunk. The edges of the hollow area were thickly rounded where the bark was attempting to grow over the break. Squatting down, Rachel peered inside. Bits of twisted bark littered the sawdust-covered floor, and tell-tale traces of thistledown floated in the cavity. This was the home of a wood sprite. Pressing her lips together to keep herself from making a sound, she took a toffee from her pocket and left it inside the tree for the wee one.
Ahead, a large outcropping of rock jutted up among the trunks. Beside them, a birch grew sideways for three feet before rising skyward. Rachel looked left and right. No one was watching. She crept closer and laid her hand on the smooth bark.
“Are you a riding tree?” she whispered.
The trunk shivered beneath her hand.
Rachel climbed onto it, a feat easier to accomplish here, where she wore sweatpants under her robes, than at home, where she wore skirts. She leaned her cheek against the bark and put her arms around the tree. But it did not move again.
Not that she expected it to. Riding trees only pulled up their roots and ran through the forest at the cusp of twilight, those few precious moments before nightfall or daybreak when it was too dim to see clearly. To anyone lucky enough to be granted a ride, the trees became transparent, and the dryads became visible within, waving their branch-like fingers.
Slipping down, she gave the trunk one last pat. Then, she stopped. Speaking of trees, where was it—the great Tree the Lion had shown her? Slowly, she turned around, looking upward. When she had come full circle, she closed her eyes and recalled what she had just seen—expecting to suddenly recall a large trunk towering up above its fellows.
But there was nothing.
No obscuration.
No huge tree.
Had she been wrong?
She walked on, but the magic had gone out of the forest for her. Disappointment weighed so heavily that she could no longer feel the presence of the little folk.
She walked until she reached the waist-high stone wall. Pale green moss and paler lichen grew upon the rocks. Beside it was a patch of honeymint. Kneeling, she donned her work gloves and diligently gathered herbs, striving to dispel her growing fear that the gardener had brought them to the wrong place. As she worked, she imagined Gaius kneeling beside her, their fingers accidentally brushing as they reached to pick honeymint. It pained her that the princess did not like him. She so wished the people she cared about would all get along.
And what was she to do about Peter? She so hated fighting with her brother.
Rachel sighed.
• • •
“Hey!” Joy’s voice called from where she was hiding in Nastasia’s open bag. “Weren’t you all supposed to stay on the other side of that stone wall?”
Rachel raised her head and around. She, Siggy, and the princess stood in a little glade of clover and tiny purple flowers. The stone wall was behind them.
“Wait.” Rachel stared at the lichen-covered stones ten feet away. She felt strangely disoriented, as if she were in a dream. The tassel of her hat hung in her eyes. Brushing it aside, she walked to the wall and peeked over it, hoping to discover that she had gotten turned around. But no. On the far side lay her patch of honeymint. “Wh-when did this happen?”
“Don’t remember.” Siggy shrugged.
Pulling an apple from his pocket, he took a huge bite. Bits of it fell to the ground. Juice dribbled down his chin. He threw the rest into the air. Before it could hit the ground, Lucky darted over and swallowed it whole.
A rumble of thunder shook the forest. Rachel straightened her scholar’s cap and replayed her memory of the last ten minutes. She was picking honeymint along the stone wall. Then, she…
Then she…
Then she…
“I-I can’t remember!” Rachel’s voice came out as a shriek. She took a stumbling step backward and grabbed her head. “I can’t remember how we crossed the stone wall!”
“I can’t either.” Nastasia clambered over the stones, back to safety. “I guess we didn’t notice. But we must hurry back now.”
Rachel spun around, holding her head in confusion. “No…I can’t remember. I…I never can’t remember! I…” Then her voice cut off.
Ahead of her, rising above the forest, was an enormously wide tree truck that went up…
And up…
And up…
It towered above the forest, above the hills, above Stony Tor. It was gigantic, colossal. Twenty men standing with outstretched arms touching fingertip to fingertip could not have surrounded it. Rachel’s lips parted in awe.
She had not realized the Tree would be that big.
Taking a few steps back, she turned her head this way and that in an attempt to glimpse the whole thing. High above, the trunk divided into seven great branches, each bearing a different type of leaf: oak, beech, birch, ash, elm, hickory, and maple.
A jolt of recognition shook her from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. The Roanoke Tree—the seven-branched tree pictured on the Roanoke coat-of-arms, each branch of which represented one of the Seven Arts of Sorcery…it was real.
Or was it? Her heart beat faster. Maybe this was an obscuration, and the true tree was smaller. Rachel closed her eyes, remembering. In her memory,…
That could not be right!
Her eyes flew open. Amazed, she closed them a second time, recalling what she had just seen a second time. In her mind’s eye, the tree blazed with a glorious light that curled, flame-like, around the great branches. It was as if the sun had come down to roost like a hawk in the crook of the trunk. Just perceiving this radiance lifted her spirits. It filled her with a kind of sacred joy that she had no words to describe. As if drawn by a string, she walked toward it.
“Rachel, stop!” Nastasia put both her hands atop the wall and leaned over it. “We must not cross this. You must come back.”
“But this is the Tree! Don’t you see? The one the Lion showed us in our visions. It’s the Roanoke Tree!” Rachel breathed in awe. Her limbs still felt weak from the horror of not remembering, but fear was muted by awe. Eagerly, she waved her friends forward. “Come on!”
“No!” The princess cried fiercely. “We were strictly instructed not to cross the wall!”
“That’s some tree. A tree that big…maybe there’s treasure hidden among its roots!” Siggy’s eyes glittered the way Lucky’s did when the dragon talked about gold.
“Mr. Smith. If you are my knight, you must stay here.”
Reluctantly, Sigfried backed up and joined Nastasia. He sat down on the stone wall, crossing his arms and scowling. Rachel saw him make a slight gesture with his head. Lucky the Dragon snaked forward, rapidly disappearing among the lesser trunks.
“You should come back, too, Rachel,” said the princess.
“But the Lion…” Rachel murmured, distracted. The spot in her memory that wo
uld not yield its secrets troubled her. Her mind kept poking at it. It felt strange, unfamiliar.
“We cannot disobey a direct order because of Kitten’s familiar.” The princess frowned severely. “Beside, I am not yet certain what side that creature is on.”
Rachel’s eyes returned to the Tree, her gaze resting on the seven great branches. She recalled the feeling of peace that had come from the tiny Lion—as if she were standing in a meadow surrounded by sweet-smelling wild flowers, and all the troubles of the world had blown far, far away—the same Lion who had later, impossibly, seemed larger than the universe.
Breathing a ragged breath, Rachel replied very softly, “Whatever side the Lion’s on, that’s the side I want to be with.”
She walked toward the tree.
“Come back, Rachel!” the princess called, anguished. “Mr. Smith, I fear she has been affected by a spell. You saw how strangely she acted just now.”
“No spell,” Rachel called back over her shoulder. “I just want to see this Tree.”
“Shall I go after her?” Sigfried asked, starting to move forward.
“No!” Nastasia commanded. “I forbid you!”
A figure flying a racing broom shot over the trees and landed on the clover. It was the assistant dean, Mr. Gideon. The princess hurried along the stone wall until she was across from the true history tutor, but still on her side.
“Thank goodness you are here, Sir,” the princess called. “I told them we were not to cross the wall. They will not listen! I fear they are under a spell.”
Mr. Gideon wore the black and gold robes of the Scholars of Dee Hall. He was a rather good-looking man, slender and trim, with dark brown skin, a mustache, and gray at his temples. His voice was always tinged with wry amusement.
“Your highness,” he said, “you may cross the wall. That’s why I brought you here.”
“Wh-what?” The princess drew back, startled. “Mr. Burke instructed us not to cross.”
Mr. Gideon chuckled. “It did not occur to me that students who left the infirmary to go fight Dr. Mordeau, of their own will, would be cowed by a little warning of danger. I did not think to explain to him why you were really here.”
“We are here for detention, to make right our transgression,” the princess insisted primly.
He shook his head kindly. “That was merely an excuse to allow you off campus. A friend of mine wishes to speak to the three of you.”
“You mean, this detention was a trick?” The princess looked horrified.
“Not a trick, Miss Romanov. I thought you understood.”
“I understood,” Rachel murmured. It felt so nice to know that, for once, she had been right about something. “It was to see the Tree.”
“You did not make your intentions clear,” Nastasia spoke with stiff formality. Her regal expression broke. “I thought…that we saw eye to eye, you and I.”
The princess looked so woebegone that Mr. Gideon had not assigned detention because he shared her strict honor code. Rachel’s heart went out to her.
Mr. Gideon bowed toward the princess. “I am sorry, your highness. I did not realize that you were strict beyond your years. The woods are safe here. It is to protect what is on this side that our staff has been instructed never to go farther than the stone wall.”
The princess, her voice tight from the sting of betrayal, continued to argue with Mr. Gideon, but Rachel did not stay. She hopped on her steeplechaser and zoomed forward.
• • •
The Tree rose, a vast gray-black and knobbly wall of bark. Rachel eagerly breathed in a sweet smell. The air was filled with a perfume like wild flowers mingled with the most aromatic of spices. The scent was glorious.
Then she felt it again, only ten times stronger. The hush; the anticipation; the undercurrent of rising excitement, like an electrical charge searing the air.
The Folk of the Forest were near.
Every nerve alert, Rachel slowly moved her bristleless forward. Her gaze flickered here and there, taking in everything. She replayed her memory constantly, to be sure her senses were not ensorcelled. The farther she went, the stronger grew the presence of fey. Never, even near the dryad who lived in the old oak behind Gryphon Park, had she felt anything like this.
Something amazing was near. Amazing or terrifying.
Huge roots stretched from the bottom of the tree, big snaking lengths of wood as high as her knee. Near where they met the trunk, they rose even higher than her head. Between these living fences grew herbs—though not in rows, like a human garden—meandering, wild.
Rachel’s hands tightened on the handlebars. She recognized the plant with the frosty pattern on its lacy, moon-pale leaves. It was manahrim. Only in the secret Compendium of Arcane Wisdom her grandfather had kept hidden, even in his private library, had she seen mention of it. She flew lower, peering at the herbs. There was mavričin koren, also called rainbow root, whose existence was debated, even among the most learned scholars, and…
Her brow furrowed as she looked at the plants. She did not know that one.
Or that one.
Or…
Floating over great wall-like roots, Rachel gazed across the gardens. Dozens of plants bloomed here that she had never seen—not in all the encyclopedias and botany books she had perused in the many libraries she had visited, not even in her grandfather’s secret compendiums.
What did this mean?
Everything was so lush, so alive. As Rachel breathed in again, exhilaration rushed through her trembling limbs. She felt wide awake and, yet, as if she were dreaming. Walking through the dreamlands with Zoë Forrest had felt a bit like this. Happiness burst within her like a fountain. What manner of wonderland had they stumbled upon?
Then she froze.
In the Tree was a hollow.
Not a little crack, like the den where she had left the toffee, this crevice sank deep into the Tree. It was nine feet tall, its edges rounded with thick bark. Rachel hooked her feet onto the brass footholds on the back of her steeplechaser, and darted back a good ten feet.
If all tree hollows were home to the fey, what lived in this one?
“Siggy! Nastasia! Come quickly!” she shouted in great excitement.
“Coming!” Sigfried’s voice echoed in the distance.
Out from the giant hollow stepped a being. Its face was turned away, but the shell-like ears that poked through the long fern-green hair ended in delicate points.
An elf.
But not any earthly elf.
Chapter Twenty:
The Exiled Daughter of Idunn
The elf stood seven feet tall, more glamorous and voluptuous than any mortal. Her skin was a luminous gray, like the smooth bark of a beech. Her eyes glowed warm as polished wood, and starlight shone where mortals had pupils. Her features were upswept, high cheek bones, slanted eyes, and fern-green brows. Long, fern-green hair floated about her like a leafy mantle.
Rachel had seen earthly elves. Once, she had accompanied her parents to a Moth wedding. The Moth family kept in contact with their supernatural kin. During the ceremony, doors had opened in the hillside, and the fey branch of the family had glided forth to join the festivities. Somber and gracious, yet filled with spiteful glee, members both tiny and tall had danced with the guests and given blessings to the happy couple. The next day, the cows throughout the county produced purple milk.
But Lord Moth’s kin, as amazing as they were, had not been like this woman. They had not had hair the color of ferns. They had not glowed, as if standing in moonlight. They had not had stars instead of pupils.
“Greetings, children, come forward.” Her voice was as sweet as the sound of bells. When she moved, her iridescent gown, which looked as if it had been woven from light reflected off of the sea, rustled like aspen leaves. Turning, Rachel saw Nastasia standing uneasily on the far side of the nearest root-wall. Siggy sat atop the same bark-covered wall, one knee bent, his foot resting on the bark. Lucky’s head and whiskers peeked ov
er the edge beside him.
“Can…we help you?” Rachel asked haltingly. She slipped from her broom and took a step or two forward.
“No, but I can help you.” She smiled. “The three of you.”
“Four!” Joy’s face peered out of the princess’s bag.
“What have we here? A stowaway?” The elf smiled, but a terrible sorrow haunted her eyes.
As if in a dream, Rachel recalled the last time she had seen such sorrow. It had been on the face of her grandmother, Amelia Abney-Hastings Griffin, the time the deer ate the roses she had brought with her when she became the Duchess of Devon. It was the only time Rachel had seen her stern grandmother cry.
Rachel’s heart constricted. Roses were the holy flower of the vestal virgins. Those rosebushes must have come from the Atrium Vestae in Rome, a memento of the life her grandmother abandoned when she wedded Blaise Griffin. Rachel could see them so clearly, smell their sweet, sun-soaked, rosy scent.
The roses grew until they were as tall as men, as tall as houses. Distant towers, that were actually trees, loomed majestically above ice-capped mountains. Oddly, these trees grew atop other trees, one forest perched on the canopy of another.
Rachel shook her head, and this strange vision popped like a soap bubble.
Free of the grip of roses, tree-towers and sorrow, Rachel struggled to remember why she was standing in a glade of herbs in front of an enormous tree hollow. It was like trying to recalling a dream. If she deliberately thought about her dreams upon waking, she recalled them thereafter. If not, they vanished with the day, her memory never having made a record of them. That feeling of waking, of something ephemeral slipping through her fingers, was how she felt now. She was again reminded of the feeling of seeing Zoë Forrest step out of nowhere.
“Who are you?” the princess inquired politely of the elven woman.
The elf’s voice rang like chimes. “I am one who wishes to help.”
The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) Page 23
