“I never knew my father.”
“I thought you said his eyes were like the stone.”
“I only remember them from when I was a baby.”
Lily stood from the stool and backed away. “I will tell you again—I sense the earth in you.”
“What does that mean?”
“In the earth there is light. I see trees and light in you.” Her breath caught in her throat as she squeezed her eyes shut. “Let this light fill you, Issina. One day your pain will die—if you allow it. One day your eyes might resemble his.”
Her basket thumped against her legs. She looked down at the eel slithering free from the rolled paper, its eyes black and filled with an eerie glow. Its mottled skin was dark but luminous, just like the tiger’s eye. Its long, thick body reminded her of the sheep intestines.
One day your eyes might resemble his.
She screamed and sat up in the cellar once again. The eel had not actually come to life in her basket. She had walked away from Lily that day, confused, but relieved she had a basket of meat to take home.
When her vision adjusted to the darkness, she realized it hadn’t adjusted at all. There was light in the room. She looked up and covered her mouth with a trembling hand. Pushed through the ceiling above her, as well as the second floor and roof of the house, was a tree. Stars glittered through its branches. Cool night air swirled through the room, raising goose bumps across her body.
A tree?
She looked at its base, right where she had buried Cassia’s entrails. Thick roots protruded from the soil all around the room, and the tree seemed to still grow, stretching taller and taller. The house groaned and shifted. A crash sounded above her, and she scrambled to her feet. The ceiling above remained intact, but her racing heart warned her that it might not last.
She rushed forward and wrapped her arms around the tree. It was thick, with peeling bark and knots for footholds. Any other time she might have been surprised by this, but after meeting Oken, nothing about trees seemed odd. She climbed.
Her clothes were still damp from the night before, and she shivered in the night air when she reached the first floor of the house. The floor of the sitting room had fallen away close to the tree, but not far enough to keep her from hoisting herself into the room. Wiping her hands on her dress, she carefully stepped around pieces of the ceiling and made her way to the stairs. Did she dare climb them? At the very least, she needed warm clothes.
The house groaned again, a giant beast stretching before it fell to pieces. Carefully, she ascended the stairs up to her room. Her throat constricted at the thought of the destroyed house—and the fact that it was her fault. Why hadn’t Oken told her to bury the intestines outside of the house? She didn’t know they were going to sprout into a gigantic tree! Her room was still intact and the floor felt solid when she stepped through the doorway. At least the night was clear.
When she had changed into warmer clothing and her only pair of boots, she snatched one of Sybil’s fur-lined cloaks and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she made her way back down the stairs and stood in the hallway just outside the sitting room. The center of the floor was demolished by the tree. Its rapid growth had slammed through the floorboards, splintering them in every direction. The entire situation made her shudder. If the tree ripped open any more of the house, the structure would surely collapse. The furniture, books, trinkets, everything her mother and sisters treasured, would be demolished. Odele’s wrath would be excruciating.
She let out a long, limp breath. Across the room, sitting on the undisturbed windowsill, stood a potted plant of purple flowers. It was the same pot of flowers she had thought turned a deeper shade of purple when Sybil touched them. She carefully stepped into the sitting room. The floor still seemed stable. When she reached the purple flowers, she touched them. She said the magical phrase she had uttered so many times before. Nothing happened, of course. She straightened her shoulders and thought back to the morning she had wilted the plants in the garden. What had been different then? Why had her touch done the opposite of Sybil and Edryn’s magic? Maybe it was the roots. She had eaten so many the night before.
She picked a flower from the plant and held it lovingly in her hand, bringing it to her nose to breathe in its scent. In the pale moonlight, the purple bloom might have deepened color. What else had she done in the garden? Why had she gone into the garden in the first place?
“I was upset with them,” she said aloud, staring at the purple flower. “I picked their flowers because I knew they meant so much to them.”
“Someone like you should be careful with their emotions,” a voice said behind her. It was Oken.
She spun around, her heart thudding. The bloom fell from her fingers.
“Oken,” she said slowly as anger she didn’t understand twisted inside her. “Why didn’t you tell me what would happen when I buried Cassia’s entrails? Look at my mother’s house! She’s going to kill me, or at least make me wish I were dead. We have nowhere to live now.” The damage certainly wasn’t anything Thomas could help fix. Her voice cracked in her throat as heat swelled through her body. She was surprised at the anger she felt for Oken, but how could he have been so careless?
“I wasn’t sure where you would bury the entrails,” he said. “I certainly didn’t think you would bury them under the house.” He stepped into the sitting room and peered up at the tree reaching for the sky. “What’s done is done. The tree isn’t finished.”
“Isn’t finished!” She gaped at the tree. “How much larger can it possibly grow?”
“It won’t grow larger.”
“Then what?” She stomped around the tree and stood in front of Oken. A part of her was delighted to see him again, but the glow of his skin had not returned, and a small seed of worry planted itself inside her mixed fury and delight. “I need answers. I need to know why my touch killed the plants in the garden. I need to know if I’m immortal.” She gestured wildly to the tree. “And I need to know what that is about.”
“The tree,” he said with a gentle sigh, “is an opportunity for you.”
She almost stomped her foot, but decided against it. Even with her mother and sister’s constant abuse, she had never experienced such fervor in her blood except when she had slapped Sybil in the chicken yard. The emotion had been addicting then too. She let it mount higher. The tree was simply something unfixable. Her future was more grim than she could have ever imagined.
“Why do you have to be so unclear? It’s maddening!”
A pained look crossed his face. “I’m not trying to be unclear. I only want to help you, Issina. I don’t know much more about the tree than you do. I know its leaves will wax silver. It will bloom soon and then bear fruit.”
She had no idea what to say to him. He seemed pulled to the earth somehow, his expression wilted. He took her hands in his and squeezed them. “I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry about your home, but Odele doesn’t have to know it was your doing.”
“She’ll know. The tree grew from the storage cellar where she left me locked up. She saw the dead plants in the garden. She knows you’ve been feeding me in the forest. She’ll know.”
“She knows about me?”
“Sybil read my corra in the forest. She saw you in my thoughts.”
He let go of her hands. “How much did she see?”
“She can’t possibly know you’re an elf. I didn’t even know you were an elf at the time.” She tilted her head. “Would it matter if everyone knew about you? Why do all of you stay hidden? We aren’t frightened of magic.”
“We gave humans magic,” he said quietly. He turned and walked to the far wall where the oval mirror hung. He touched the glass. “When your kind settled in this land hundreds of years ago, we gave you a small portion of our powers so you could survive. You seemed so determined to settle—something about a war and being driven out of other lands. These are things that shouldn’t concern us, but we’ve learned they affect us more than we
’d like.”
He kept looking at the mirror, but his attention was on her reflection. “We allowed you to use the power of the earth to keep things growing despite the icy storms every night. We allowed some of our kind— like Genevieve—to live among you in order to guide you. When this happened, it was only natural these high growers, as you call them, teach other things like singing and dancing above your natural abilities. These gifts have progressed into their own forms beyond some of our own abilities. Your sisters, for example, see what they call corra. We don’t see anything like that.”
“But they can’t read my corra, or each other’s, as far as I know. Why?” She twisted her fingers together as the night air grew cooler. She already imagined Odele yelling obscenities as soon as she saw the tree.
“I thought you said Sybil read your corra.”
“She can only read it when she sings to me.”
“That’s interesting.” He turned around. “You want to ask about your own abilities, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Her heart beat fast. Finally, someone could tell her what she had longed to hear her entire life. She stood taller, excitement flowing through her veins.
But Oken’s expression was stiff. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have any magic—not like you’re wanting.”
She blinked. She heard music in the distance—soft drumbeats and strings and voices. She imagined her sisters on a stage, their figures bathed in moonlight, their skin so luminous they looked like angels. She turned away from Oken and saw the purple bloom she had dropped earlier. It was brown and wilted. The very sight of it made her gasp. Again, she had caused unusual destruction to a plant.
“You’re wrong,” she said to Oken, nearly choking on her tears. “I do have magic, and I’ll find it, somehow.” She took one last look at the dying flower and ran out the front door. The air was peaceful and wonderfully dry. She took a deep breath and walked toward the music. She didn’t look back.
5
Trees
Her stomach ached for nourishment. She felt earthy, as if she could plant her feet into the ground and grow tall like the tree now in the middle of her home. She had magic. No ordinary human could touch plants and make them shrivel into dry threads.
She kept her focus on the music. She didn’t know what she would do when she reached the festival, but she had longed to see it for years. Odele had never allowed her to leave the house for past festivals, and she had never had the courage to sneak away on the only clear night of the year.
Wrapping Sybil’s cloak around her body, she finally looked behind her shoulder. No sign of Oken. He had to be wrong. She hated the trouble he had brought upon her, how hard his expression had been when he told her she had no magic. It wasn’t fair. Her sisters had everything. Even if they lost all their possessions, they had their magic. They would become growers and they would move to the castle, and where would that leave her? She would never be worth anything more than a handful of dead plants.
When she neared the festival grounds, the smell of roasting apples and meat filled the air. As she expected, every person in the land was there, huge groups of them dressed in their finest clothes as they milled through mazes of tents. They laughed and sang and drank and ate. Her stomach longed for real food. She passed by fires where people danced. Dresses twirled like flames.
Then she stopped.
In a large clearing stood a stage, a raised platform with vines threaded around the edge. Everyone surrounding it was silent, including the king and queen and a panel of judges who sat near the front. This was where she would see her sisters.
She stood in the crowd, her heart beating fast as more and more people gathered around her, even their whispers dissolving to nothing. Genevieve walked onto the stage, her white dress rippling behind her. Although it was unnecessary, she raised her arms for silence and then turned to the king and queen.
“Your Majesties, I am proud to present this year’s entrants,” she said in a carefully weighted voice. Her eyes searched the crowd and seemed to land directly on Issina. “I have no doubt our growers will be exceptional this year. Let the contest begin.”
The crowd erupted into a cheer. Issina stayed silent. She watched as entrant after entrant came to the stage and performed. Some sang, some danced, and all performed a plant charm. Most only enlarged a leaf or a stem, nothing especially spectacular. When Sybil entered the stage, Issina held her breath. The crowd murmured about her three beautiful eyes.
... her magic must be exquisite.
... heard the rumors... they came from the north... father was a healer.
Issina shifted her feet. How had the village known about her father when she hadn’t? It couldn’t have been widely known since Braeden had seemed ignorant of the fact—unless he had recently spread the rumor.
... look at that flower!
She lifted her eyes and gasped. She had never seen her sister look so lovely. Her hair was brighter than flames, her smile silvery and sweet as she lifted a flower bud the size of an apple. On her command, it bloomed like a miniature sun, doubling its size—yellow and orange and white. The crowd fluttered with excitement. Still holding the flower, Sybil spun in a circle, so light on her feet she seemed to float. Her deep blue gown whirled around her ankles, and she opened her mouth to sing.
... her voice... it’s like an angel’s.
Issina breathed faster as her thoughts twirled around and around, spinning so quickly they seemed to lift into the air, away from her body, a swirl of light filled with leaves and roots and a house split in two. She gasped and clutched at her chest, finally comprehending the silence around her. Sybil had stopped singing. Issina looked up to see the bloom drop from her sister’s fingers, and she realized what had happened. Sybil knew she was there. She had read her corra as soon as she started to sing.
Panicked, she turned and ran. She fought her way through the crowd, jabbing and jostling with her elbows until she slammed into a tall, handsome figure. Braeden.
“Issina?” Confusion spread across his face. “Are you all right? What’s the matter with your sister? She stopped singing.”
Sybil was leaving the stage now, and the crowd moved toward her, murmuring in confusion.
“I-I don’t know.” She felt torn between continuing her escape and inching closer to Braeden. His familiar scent washed over her, and he said her name again, this time with such intensity the world around her fell away. His hand closed around her arm.
“Yes?” she whispered.
He leaned forward, searching her face. She guessed he was thinking about what Edryn had told him about her immortality and killing her father.
“I wonder what would have happened if I had met you first.” His grip on her tightened, but it was tender and urgent.
She froze, dumbfounded. “What did you say?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but the crowd had grown too loud and excited for him to continue.
“A tragedy at the Grenefeld home! A tree! A giant tree!”
The crowd moved away from the stage toward the road, and she caught sight of Sybil in Odele’s arms, her eyes wet with tears. Edryn stood beside them with a confused expression.
“I need to leave,” she finally said, and tried to pull away from Braeden. “You should be with Edryn.”
He followed her gaze to his fiancée. His hand weakened. “Yes, but I have a feeling they want to see you. Come with me.”
His grip tightening once again, he pulled her through the crowd toward Odele and her sisters. She didn’t resist. There was no way out.
“What did you do?” Odele hissed. She pushed Sybil into Edryn’s arms and marched toward Issina. The crowd was already heading up the road in a large mass. Odele snatched her from Braeden’s gentle grasp.
“Sybil is talking nonsense. She says she saw a tree growing through the house and you were the cause. She’s rambling on and on!” Odele’s voice screeched higher as tiny flecks of moisture popped out of her mouth. “Of course people heard, and now lo
ok at them!” She waved at the exiting crowd. “What are they going to find? How did you get out of the cellar?”
Wincing at the fingernails digging into her arm, Issina chewed on her bottom lip. “The tree grew. I climbed it. I don’t know how it happened.”
The lie felt hot on her tongue as tears stung her eyes. She should never have come to the festival to see her sisters, but the temptation had been too great, and her frustration with Oken needed space. “Don’t whip me,” she whimpered. “Please.”
“Whip her?”
Braeden folded his arms. “Madame, you wouldn’t harm her, would you?”
Her grip slackened as she gave Braeden a quick glance. “Of course not,” she said, and like a scolded cat, slunk away from Issina. “She is troublesome, as you can see. If this tree-talk is true, we have no home left, but I can’t see how that’s possible.”
“It’s true,” Sybil cried.
“How can you know about any of this?” Braeden asked, adjusting his purple cloak. His feathered hat sat perfectly on his head.
“I see things sometimes,” Sybil blurted. “It’s nothing—a side effect of singing.”
“See things?”
“It’s a part of our gifts,” Edryn said, and everyone turned to her. It was the first time she had spoken, and it seemed she was reading Braeden’s corra as her forehead wrinkled into tiny folds. Tears formed in the corners of her eye.
“You’re on the council,” she said slowly to Braeden. “You told me yourself we are gifted, that you’ve seen this from our blood entries. You must know we’re capable of such things.”
“The council never saw such a thing from your blood. Visions are a trait of healers, not growers.”
Sybil straightened and blinked her third eye faster than the others. “Do we look like normal growers?”
Issina doubted either of them would openly admit they could read thoughts. She briefly thought of telling Braeden herself, but decided that would get her nowhere. As far as she knew, Sybil and Edryn had never used their mind-reading skills to harm anyone—except her. Even then, they seemed more curious than anything else.
Bonded: Three Fairy Tales, One Bond Page 20
