by Greg Weisman
Makasa called out again, “One step at a time, Aram!”
He started forward with a new determination to get to the other side and onto dry land—where he could safely check the acorn—as soon as possible. And pretty much instantly, he slipped.
His right foot found no traction and was swept up by the current, the toe of his boot almost clearing the water. He fell backward. Hackle was right there and tried to grab Aram, but buoyed up by his clothes and with no purchase at all on the river-bed, Aram was quickly washed downstream out of Hackle’s reach.
The water was cold, but he’d been in colder. The stream was flowing fast, but he’d fought stronger currents. His head disappeared beneath the waterline a couple of times, but never for very long, and he was always able to surface quickly and grab a breath.
He’d been so afraid of this exact thing that when it wasn’t quite as bad as he’d imagined, he actually gained confidence. The river (or stream) was deeper here: he could no longer touch the bottom with his feet. But he felt certain he’d eventually be able to make it ashore without drowning, so he tried to swim.
He looked back and saw Hackle swimming after him, only ten yards or so behind. He looked toward shore and could see Makasa running alongside, ready to dive in. He couldn’t see Murky at all, and then suddenly, Murky emerged from beneath him. The murloc wrapped one thin but surprisingly strong arm around Aram’s chest and kicked with both webbed feet to propel them toward Makasa.
Within seconds they were stumbling up onto the sand. Hackle followed. Aram coughed a couple of times but mostly just felt embarrassed. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. Then he thanked Murky and apologized again to all three of his companions.
Murky seemed truly glad to have helped Aram and thanked him—“Mmrgl, mmrgl!”—for providing the opportunity to be of use. Makasa actually patted the little murloc on his head: high praise indeed! She didn’t even wipe his slime off her hand until after his attention had shifted back to Aram.
Hackle shook himself from head to haunch, spraying water everywhere, including all over his three compatriots. It reminded Aram of his dog, Soot, after a swim in the Lakeshire quarry, and brought a smile to his face.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Makasa asked.
“I’m fine, I swear,” he said, while confirming that the compass was still around his neck. Then his thoughts returned to the Seed. He moved farther from the stream (or river) and reached for the soaking-wet pouch, still firmly tied to his belt. “I just want to make sure the acorn didn’t get wet.”
“Stop,” she said. “Your hands are wet.”
He tried to dry them on his breeches, but, of course, they were soaked through.
She grumbled something unintelligible and then turned around and removed the shield from her back. “Use the back of my tunic,” she said with enough distaste for him to notice.
He rubbed his palms and fingers on the dry material, then carefully, cautiously, untied the leather pouch. The crystal shard was there. And the oilskin-wrapped acorn. The oilskin seemed to have done its job. Water beaded on it and slid off as he lifted it up. Carefully, cautiously, he unwrapped the acorn. It was dry. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. All four of them exchanged a smile. Everything’s fine, Aram thought. I didn’t drown. The acorn didn’t get wet. This is just a minor inconvenience. That’s all.
He began to rewrap the Seed in its oilskin. Then somehow—somehow—it started to slip. He bobbled it, trying to hold on. Makasa, Hackle, and Murky all gasped. All four lunged to grab it, but all four missed. And the acorn fell … right toward a large puddle forming at the feet of the dripping-wet Aramar Thorne.
It landed in the shallow water with a visible and audible SPLASH!
Aram stood there, frozen, staring down at the acorn in the puddle. They all did. Then, a good three seconds later, they all simultaneously bent to pick it up, knocking their heads together like players in a traveling comedy.
Thus, a chorus of “ows” was the first sound to greet the hatchling of the Seed of Thalyss. (Or perhaps the correct term might be “blossomling.”) In any case, the acorn cracked and then practically turned itself inside out, like a kernel of corn dropped in a firepit. A flower of lavender and cyan emerged from the inverted shell and rapidly grew on a stem of royal purple.
But the stem began to take on form and substance. It widened and lengthened, grew hair and skin to form over bone and muscle. Soon, two big green eyes were staring into Aramar Thorne’s brown eyes. In fact, their eyes locked in on each other with such intensity that by the time this new entity blinked (allowing Aram to finally shake off the contact), he had missed much of the process of her growing.
Now, however, he could take her all in—take her in, in all her splendor. She smelled simultaneously of his mother’s flower bed in spring and fresh-cut grass. But what truly struck him first were the colors, all the fine shades she brought forth, like an entire hothouse of orchids displayed together in a single petite form. (For she was, in fact, an inch or so shorter than he.) She had purple-rose skin and burgundy hair, which faded to mauve, then to violet, indigo, and light blue, the farther it grew from her scalp. She had pointed elf ears the color of a ripe peach, turning to cherry-blossom pink at the tips. She had those big green eyes, but her features were otherwise subtle, and the overall effect of her face was quite pretty.
The original flower—which by this time had a blood-red (or perhaps magenta) center, surrounded by white petals tinged with pale yellow and pink—now appeared to decorate her long locks, though in point of fact, it was a part of her. There were more flowers, too: baby-yellow blooms and light-pink posies around her neck, and cherry blossoms with yellow centers discreetly covering her small chest. Mauve leaves, which covered her midriff, flared out into a leafy belt of deep ocean blue around her waist, dividing her upper body from her lower half.
As if that delineation were necessary—as if the split between her top and bottom halves might go unnoticed otherwise—since from the waist down, she was something akin to a four-legged centaur. And yet she was nothing at all like the centaur Aram had seen in Flayers’ Point. Those beast-men and beast-women were huge, massive and misshapen. She was small, delicate, and elegant, and her lower body had less in common with a horse’s bulk than with the lithe shape of a fawn, painted with short, dark-purple fur hinting at rusts and more burgundies. She had tiny black hooves shaded with more dark purple, and a tail that matched her hair color with curly tendrils of teal at the back. Despite these unusual qualities, this … girl (for in appearance, she seemed to be about twelve years old, that is to say, roughly the same age as Aram himself) fascinated our young hero, which in part explains why he stood there, staring into her eyes once again, with his mouth hanging open.
To be fair, he wasn’t the only one staring rather foolishly at the newcomer. Makasa Flintwill, her mouth also hanging open, stood behind this strange child of nature. Hackle and Murky stood to either side. Their mouths hung open, too.
The newly blossomed youngling opened her mouth to speak in a voice that was almost musical in its tone, timbre, and clarity. (Aram would later decide she sounded much like the wind chimes Robb Glade made to sell at market on slow days at the forge.) She said, “Spring has come!”
Aram managed to squeak out three words: “You can talk!”
“Yes,” she said, “and so can you!” She sounded quite impressed with them both.
He nodded stupidly, as if he were also impressed with his own (currently meager) ability to form words. Actually, he was struggling to remember exactly what she had said. Failing, he rather cleverly asked, “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said you can talk, too.”
“No, before that.”
She thought about this for a moment. “Hmmm. Oh yes! I said, ‘Spring has come!’”
“Actually, it’s summer. Late summer, even.”
She shook her head as if he were being quite silly. “Summer is coming.”
It didn’t seem to be
a point worth arguing. Instead, he asked, “Sorry. Um. What are you?”
She said, “I am a dryad.”
And still Aram nodded stupidly. He’d never heard the word before but guessed that was her species.
Perhaps sensing his ignorance, she added, “A daughter of Cenarius.”
Again, he nodded. He vaguely recalled Thalyss mentioning something called the Cenarion Circle and assumed it had something to do with this dryad’s father, but that was all he could glean.
She smiled again, as if she were taking benign pity upon him, and said, “My name is Taryndrella. But for beings such as yourselves, perhaps that is too long for regular usage. So, you may call me Drella.”
“Durula,” Murky said.
“Drella,” she corrected.
“Durula,” he attempted again.
“No, DREL-la.”
“DRH-la. Drhla.”
“Close enough,” she said cheerfully. She looked about at her new companions, even turning around on four delicate hooves to take in Makasa.
“You are all so beautiful,” the dryad said. “And all so different.”
“Uh … thank you,” Makasa muttered.
“Which of you is Thalyss Greyoak?”
Four sets of eyes fell under her inquiring gaze. Then three of those sets turned toward Aram. So she turned as well.
His mouth was dry. He swallowed and said, “We’re sorry. But Thalyss … died.”
“Oh,” she said.
“It’ll be all right.” He thought of reaching out a hand to comfort her but wasn’t sure if that was, well, allowed.
She shrugged. “All things die.”
He bristled a bit at her coldness. And yet, there was nothing particularly cold in her demeanor. Quite the opposite.
She said, “Still, I will miss our little talks.”
Makasa said, “You talked to Thalyss? When?”
“Well, I suppose I did not talk. Not in a way you four would understand. But at night—every night—he would whisper to me. To my acorn, that is. And in many different tongues. That is how I know how to speak to all of you.” She turned to Murky and asked, “Drhla mrrrgl mmmm nurglsh? Mmmurlok mrrrgle?”
“Mrgle, mrgle,” Murky said, nodding happily. “Murky, Murky,” he continued, pointing at himself. Then, in turn, he pointed out, “Urum, Mrksa n Ukle.”
Aram quickly reintroduced himself and the others as “Aram, Makasa, and Hackle.”
“It is lovely to meet each and every one of you. Thalyss mentioned you, Aram. And you, Makasa. And Murky. He was quite fond of you three.” She turned her smile on Hackle and said, “You never came up.”
Hackle looked a bit dejected, but Aram spoke up, reminding him—while informing her—that “Thalyss died shortly after meeting Hackle. He probably didn’t have the opportunity to mention him. But I promise you, he liked Hackle a lot.”
Hackle seemed pleased by this, and Drella seemed satisfied, or at least unperturbed.
Aram was still having trouble swallowing. He croaked out, “Thalyss asked us to bring you to Gadgetzan, to a druid tender there named Faeyrine Springsong.”
She nodded. “Thalyss mentioned her, too. Considerably more often than he mentioned any of you. He was very fond of Faeyrine. It was almost embarrassing.”
“Uh huh. Yeah. I got that sense. A little. Maybe.”
They were all silent for a while.
Eventually, Aram said, “So, um, we’ll bring you to see Faeyrine, okay?”
“If you like,” the dryad replied.
They all stood there for a while.
Finally, Drella said, “Do we go now?”
“Yes!” Makasa said, eager to be moving on. “This way!” She led them into the trees beyond the stream (or river), remembering her desire to keep them out of sight of the Grimtotem.
Drella’s eyes scanned everything with intense curiosity. “I just love these trees! And that bush! And those wildflowers!” She scampered from one wonder to the next with Aram chasing after her.
When the party stopped briefly to consult Aram’s map, the original foursome looked up to find their new fifth gone. Makasa ordered, “Find her!” simultaneously to Aram calling out, “We have to find her!”
They split up, heading in four different directions. Aram found her within a few minutes, conversing pleasantly with a hive of bees. Keeping his distance, Aram said, “There you are.”
She maintained focus on the bees but answered, “I am always where I am.”
“Uh, right, but … you shouldn’t wander off like that.”
“Why?” she asked, coming to him and away from the bees (to his immeasurable relief).
“Well, there might be tauren patrols in the area, and—”
“Oh, I have never seen a tauren. Let us go find one!”
“No, see, they’re not friendly.”
“Why? Thalyss said very nice things about tauren.”
“Actually, all the tauren I’ve met have been pretty nice.”
“Well, then?”
Aram was flummoxed. How had he come to be arguing against his own earlier arguments? There was still a part of him that very much wanted to walk up to the Grimtotem and convince them that all this fighting and sieging were completely unnecessary. But the greater part of him now felt he couldn’t risk Taryndrella. I have to protect her! So, instead of answering, he called out (rather desperately) to Makasa—all while Drella smiled at him charmingly, and he nevertheless wished he could stuff her back in that acorn until they reached Gadgetzan.
Makasa, Hackle, and Murky soon rejoined them, and their hike continued.
As the dryad turned her attention to rubbing the various black spots amid Hackle’s yellow fur—causing him to shake his left leg vigorously with every other step—Aram caught up to Makasa and whispered anxiously, “She thinks she knows everything but really knows nothing!” This was hitting him hard, creating a burden considerably more stifling, more onerous, more intimidating than safeguarding compasses, crystal shards, and fist-size acorns.
Makasa looked down on him and snorted out a short chuckle.
He whispered, “We need to get to Gadgetzan and the tender fast!”
“Oh, I agree.”
“I mean this was why Thalyss was so insistent. He wasn’t giving us an acorn. He was giving us a person!”
“Yes, I’m aware of what we both witnessed.”
“Then why are you smiling?!”
“You found a baby,” she said. “Now you have to bring baby to momma. That’s a lot to take on.”
“Exactly!”
“And she’s worthy of protection, but at the same time, you hate that you are responsible for this child.”
“Yes!”
“Welcome to my world.”
Steering clear of New Thalanaar, their troop—for so Makasa had begun to perceive it (much to her endless chagrin)—had stopped for the night at the edge of the forest, with the waters of Thousand Needles shimmering under Azeroth’s moons just beyond the trees. All but Taryndrella consumed the last of the bear steak they had rationed. She asked each in turn for seeds. None of them had seeds. She found a small, stunted berry bush and held her hands over it. The bush slowly began to grow before their eyes, and a few berries blossomed. But the effort seemed to exhaust her. She said, “This was much easier when I was an acorn.”
“Maybe because Thalyss was helping?” Aram offered.
She shrugged.
He had his sketchbook out and had just finished adding the dryad to it. He regretted more than ever that all he had was a charcoal pencil and that he couldn’t capture all of her brilliant colors on the page. But as Robb used to say, “It is what it is.” Aram turned the leaves back until he found his portrait of Thalyss—in both the shapeshifter’s kaldorei and stag forms. He showed the sketch to Drella.
She asked, “Who is this?”
“It’s Thalyss,” he said, a little confused, as he had clearly written Thalyss’s name on the page. “They’re both Thalyss.”
> “Oh, so that is what Thalyss looked like. He was so beautiful, was he not? I especially like him as a beast.”
“You can’t read, can you?”
“I never had eyes before,” she said cheerfully. “Would you teach me to read? I like learning new things.”
He nodded, though he wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it.
“Hackle no read,” Hackle said. “Aram teach Hackle, too, and Hackle learn.”
“Nk Murky fllm,” said the murloc. “Murky mrgggll.”
Makasa said, “You’ll be opening a schoolhouse next.”
“Do you want to teach them?” Aram asked, knowing the answer full well.
“No.”
Aram looked at the other three and said, “Let me think about how to teach you for a bit, and then we’ll start.”
They all seemed satisfied. Drella ate her few berries.
Makasa, as usual, took the first watch.
Aram fell asleep easily, dreaming, as he often did these days, of the Light.
The Voice of the Light called to him, “Aram, Aram, you must not let the traitor stop you. You must find your way around him, through him …”
“Traitor?” Aram asked. “Who’s a traitor?”
“I am no traitor,” declaimed Malus, who now stood, silhouetted, between Aram and the bright, bright Light. “Only death lives in that Light.”
“But to be a traitor …” Aram mused quietly, before raising his voice with an epiphany, “… Malus must have once been on your side.”
“Yes,” the Light said.
Malus growled, “It’s easy to be a fool when you’re young, boy.”
“Boy, wake up.” Aram jolted awake and then froze. There was a knife at his throat. “Slowly, boy,” growled a voice behind him.
Aram sat up slowly, looking around. It was still dark, but the White Lady’s light illuminated enough of his surroundings for him to see that their makeshift camp was now in the possession of a half dozen night elves. He glanced back over his shoulder. A male kaldorei was kneeling behind him, holding a long curved blade to his throat. Two more had Hackle and Murky in similar predicaments. Makasa stood free of such things, with her cutlass held out in front of her, aimed at a female night elf with short blue-green hair, extremely long pointed ears, and a wavy scimitar, likewise pointed at Flintwill.
