Ambrosia

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  He ran his fingers through her leafy hair, and noticed one of her pigtails was slightly shorter than the other.

  “Did you…defoliate, er, I mean, cut your hair?”

  She sniffled loudly and grabbed her pigtail, hiding it with embarrassment. “Oh, I needed a trim anyway. This one was always getting in my face.”

  He looked over and saw several of her leaves sitting in an alchemic solution. They were jet black from the fragments of the curse they had absorbed.

  “Oh no, Phili,” he said, devastated. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  “But they won’t grow back.”

  “I KNOW THAT!”

  The volume of her voice startled him.

  Tears ran down her cheeks. “I know,” she said softly. “Odelia said it was a bad idea too. But I couldn’t just sit here and watch you die.” She rubbed the arm bracelet she wore, the moon sprite glowing a little dimmer than before.

  Storgen felt like his heart would break. “Oh, Phili.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and embraced her tightly, ignoring the pain from his fractured bones.

  He could feel her little body tremble as she tried not to cry.

  Storgen rubbed his face, his own eyes growing moist. He could see where her leaves had been removed, and it made him feel guilty beyond measure.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Please tell me.”

  She sniffed again, louder than before.

  “A little.”

  He held her even tighter. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I am so, very very sorry.”

  “Why?”

  He closed his eyes tight shut. “Because I’m not worth what you gave up.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s my best friend you’re talking about, and you know how protective I am about my treasures.”

  He laughed through his tears. “Yeah, that’s true.”

  She placed her delicate fingers against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. Even through the thin material of his shirt, she could feel all the scars beneath. “That monster Skotádi, he would have killed me. But you stopped him, you stepped in the way of his beam. That’s twice now you’ve saved my life. And I still haven’t thanked you. I wasn’t going to let you slip away before I got the chance.”

  She sat up and blew her nose into a tissue. Just looking at her made him feel overwhelmed with despair.

  “Hey, don’t get all weepy on me, okay?” she sniffed. “You’re supposed to be the man here.”

  He wiped his cheek. “Hey, guys cry too, you know.”

  “All right then, we’ll cry together.”

  She grabbed her blanket and wrapped it tighter around herself, shivering. “Besides, it’s all right. I’ll still live a really long time, just not quite as long as before.”

  He closed his eyes, heartsick from the reality of what had happened.

  She took out a tissue again and blew into it embarrassingly loudly.

  “Sorry. I have a cold.”

  “I thought forest nymphs normally couldn’t get colds.”

  “Yeah, well we aren’t normally frozen in a block of ice, so there you go.”

  She tried to smile, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “How long?” he asked.

  She looked away. “I don’t want you to know that.”

  “How long?”

  “It won’t change anything.”

  He placed his hand over hers. It felt so cold.

  “Please, Phili, I have to know. How many years did you lose?”

  She lowered her head, unwilling to answer.

  “Just tell me.”

  Her quivering lips parted. “About forty.”

  Storgen felt his heart scream inside his chest.

  “Forty years?! Phili, that’s a lifetime!”

  She reached out and covered his mouth with her hand. “Hey! This is my decision, all right?”

  He was surprised at how strong she was.

  “This is my life,” she said sternly. “And I choose how to live it.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “That’s how you live your life, isn’t it?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “That’s the deal you make with the cosmos each day. You fight and you risk everything, and in return you win the right to fight again tomorrow. Well, why can’t I do that too? Aren’t I allowed to be as stupid as you are sometimes? Huh? Why do I always have to be the sensible one?”

  His face became red. “Mmmhhhhmm!”

  “Oh, sorry!”

  She pulled away her hand, and he inhaled sharply, gasping for breath.

  “Sorry, I forgot you have trouble breathing through your nose.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said, putting his hand on his chest painfully.

  She furrowed her brow. “It’s not?”

  He looked up furtively, trying not to hurt her feelings. “You’ve been dumpster diving again.”

  Her eyes went wide and she held up her hands. They looked clean, but when she gave them a sniff the smell nearly knocked her out.

  “Cripes, I’ve washed them three times already!”

  Wearing her blanket like a shawl, she walked over to the sink and began scrubbing her hands thoroughly.

  He looked at her with new eyes. She was cold, shivering, snotty, and pale, yet she seemed so special to him. No one had ever done something so meaningful, given up so much, and asking so little in return. He had never had many friends, so he didn’t have much experience to compare with. Only now did he begin to realize just how extraordinary she really was. She knew everything about him, more even then he had shared with Pops, yet she had stayed by his side. She accepted him, not some idealized version of him, but the real him, the scarred, broken, flawed him. She was his port in the storm, his safe place in a hostile world. She wasn’t just a friend to him, she was a part of him, a part of his soul, and he realized for the first time how much he would miss her if she were gone. He wondered if it was normal to feel that way about a friend, or if it meant she might be more than just a friend to him. Perhaps she could be something much much more.

  “Hey dummy, what are you staring at?” she asked, drying her hands.

  He shook his head. “Uh, nothing. I was just thinking, I want to do something for you. Something nice. Something really special.”

  “You could cure my cold, for starters,” she sniffled.

  He reached into his pocket and his face brightened up. “I’ve got it.”

  He tried to wiggle out of bed, but found his limbs still lacking their strength.

  “Hey, take it easy,” she bade. “You maniac, you’re going to make yourself worse.”

  “Ah, I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” he soothed.

  But he wasn’t fine. Not even close. His skin burned, the cracks from the curse were healing, but he could still feel them, like an open wound exposed to air.

  “I’m going to help you reconnect with your roots, Phili.”

  She looked at him humorlessly.

  “No, not those kind of roots, Phili. Your heritage. Now that you have that crack-tonas-the-cherry…”

  “Kratóntas ta chéria.”

  “Right, that’s what I said. Now that you have that, you can practice your real magic, you can really link with the trees and become buddies or whatever.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  She say down sadly at the foot of his bed. “The forest hates me.”

  “I can certainly understand what that feels like.”

  “No, you can’t. I’m supposed to be a part of the forest. But I’m not. I’m an outcast, a foul perversion of what a forest nymph is supposed to be. Growing up around humans, learning alchemy, I guess I can’t really blame them. I mean, why would they want me around?”

  Storgen looked over and noticed her alchemy books sitting in the wastebin.

  “I had no ide
a what I was doing is evil,” she said quietly. “I thought I was helping people, I thought I was making the world a better place.”

  Her lip began to tremble. “And now I find out everything I was taught about alchemy was a lie. The trees, they hated me so much. I could feel it, I could actually feel their anger, as if it were my own. Can you imagine what that is like? To hate yourself so completely you wanted to wring your own neck? I can still feel it, even now. It sits inside me, like a red-hot coal, burning me. It hurt so bad.”

  She covered her mouth, her eyes shaking. “I’m…I’m a traitor. That’s the worst thing a nymph can be. When I was a kid, I thought I would grow up to be a good person, an important person. I never thought I would become someone so wicked. I mean, I committed the worst sin a nymph can commit. How can that not make me evil?”

  She closed her eyes, a tear rolling down her green cheek.

  “I hate myself,” she whispered.

  Storgen wrapped his arm around her and leaned her against him. He was so warm, his muscles so hard and strong. She pressed her cheek against his chest as she sobbed. It made her feel safe.

  He reached up and stroked her hair. It was so comforting, her tears slowly faded away.

  “You’re not evil, Phili,” he said sincerely. “In fact, you are probably the most decent person I’ve ever met.”

  “I don’t feel that way about myself.”

  “To be honest, I don’t really believe in good and evil.”

  “That’s a pretty monstrous thing to say.”

  “Well, what I mean is, I don’t think there is a way to objectively look at something someone does and declare it as good or evil. Not really. Not reliably. I mean, think about it; it’s like taking a knife and cutting someone, is that good or bad? Well, it depends, when an apothecary cuts into the body, he is doing so to save, when a sadist does it, it is for selfish satisfaction. The act of cutting itself is actually neutral, it’s the motivation behind it that makes them different. It’s all contextual; it’s all based on what is in the heart of the person when they do it.”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose, listening to his heartbeat. “And you can’t measure what’s in a person’s heart.”

  “Exactly. I mean, you can guess what’s in a person’s heart, but that’s not very accurate.”

  She thought back to Skotádi. “With some people it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Oh, yeah, obviously, but with most people it’s pretty difficult.”

  He ran his fingers through her leafy hair. His hands were so soothing she felt like she might drift off to sleep.

  “I guess what I am trying to say, Phili, is that using alchemy is neither good nor bad. It may draw from negative emotions, but it’s not like you had to hurt people to make it work. Your intentions were good, your goals were good, so what you did was a good thing.”

  She sniffed again. It was so nice to hear what Storgen really thought. Usually he was so guarded, but not today. His sincerity was so refreshing. She felt so close to him. It wasn’t like linking with the forest had been, they weren’t sharing thoughts and memories, but it was definitely a connection, and it felt no less special to her. She wished they could talk like this more often. Forever, even.

  Her eyes shot open. Forever? Why would I think that? It’s not like I like him like that.

  The thought made her feel a little scared, so she cast it aside.

  She looked over at the discarded grimoire. “I don’t want to do alchemy ever again. I feel…like I’m drifting. Like I don’t know what’s real anymore. Finding out the truth about alchemy kind of left me in shock. If that was a lie, then what else was a lie? How can I believe in anything when I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not?”

  Storgen patted her on the head. “Yes, you do.”

  She felt a warm glow in her chest, replacing the chill. “Yes, I do.”

  She reached up with her hand and held his arm. His biceps were so big, she loved holding them. The strong muscles tensed beneath her touch.

  “I still miss it, though. Even though my magical connection with the forest was only temporary, there’s a huge part of me that still wants it. That misses it now that it’s gone. It’s like wearing a blindfold all your life, then having it removed for a few moments, only to have it put back on again. Even though the trees despise me, I still want to be a part of them. It’s my natural state, but they don’t want me around. I suppose it makes sense. We don’t have anything in common. If I were them, I wouldn’t want a weirdo like me around either.”

  Storgen patted her on the shoulder. “No, see you’ve got it all wrong. You’re not weird, you’re a limited edition.”

  “You’ve been hanging around Pops too much.”

  “Yes, I have, but you get the point.”

  She looked up at him kindly. “Thank you for helping me feel better, but there really isn’t anything you can say that will fix this. A forest nymph is supposed to be part of the woods. If I am not part of the woods, then what am I?”

  Storgen scooted before her, and looked at her with his deep eyes. He was so close it made her heart skip a beat.

  “You’re a rescuer. You rescue the discarded and you save them. Other people see them as trash, but you think of them as treasures, because you have special eyes.”

  “Special eyes?”

  “Other people only see the outside. You see the potential inside. You see not what something is, but what it came become. That’s something only you can do, something special that makes you who you are. You ask, ‘what am I,’ but the answer is completely obvious.”

  “It is?”

  “You are you. You are compassion. And you are amazing.”

  She could feel her cheeks getting warm, she could feel her pulse racing. He wasn’t really all that close, but he felt close. His presence was overwhelming, it felt like it was encircling around her, and she wanted nothing more than for it to hold her tightly.

  My gosh, I must be blushing so hard right now. Why am I blushing? We’re just friends.

  Without realizing what she was doing, she leaned in a little closer. “You know, if you keep saying nice things like that to me, I can’t be held responsible for what I might do.”

  Wha? Why did I say that? Am I flirting with him?

  Storgen began to lean in closer, his lips moving towards her. Her heart began to pound in her chest, her mind racing a mile a minute.

  Oh my gosh, is he really going to? No, we can’t, we’re just friends, that’s all. But, he’s so gorgeous. No! I should tell him to stop. But, do I want him to stop? What would it feel like? I bet it would feel incredible. Maybe I should just let it happen? No, that would give him the wrong idea…

  Storgen leaned in even closer, their faces nearly touching.

  Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh…

  She closed her eyes tight shut, and felt his lips give her a little peck on the forehead.

  “Come here, I have an idea, Phili.”

  She cracked open an eye, her heart beating out of control. What just happened?

  He pulled up a chair and sat before her, looking excited. “The trees don’t like you because of what you’ve done. But a new tree would be starting from scratch, it wouldn’t know anything about alchemy to judge you.”

  She stared at him dreamily, her mind and emotions swirling. “Uh, I mean, I guess so.”

  “So, I’m going to help you start a new forest. A little one. One that you can link with without judgement, it’ll be like a fresh start.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not making any sense. Where would we find a forest like that?”

  “We’re not going to find it, we’re going to make it.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sailing seed.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked.

  “I picked it up when we were on the island. This is a seed of your homeland, is it not?”

  He handed it to her. She cradled it in her palm gently. “Yes, it is.”
<
br />   “So, let’s grow it. I’ll help you. You can have your own forest to belong to.”

  She held it close, overcome by emotion. “You would do that for me?”

  “Of course I would.”

  She felt her cheeks grow wet. “I…I can’t tell you what that would mean to me. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Say thank you.”

  She looked at him lovingly. “Thank you.”

  It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

  “It’ll be great. You can practice your magic all the time, from the first tree we can grow more.”

  “But I thought you hated magic.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t hate magic.”

  She gave him a scolding look. “Yes, you do.”

  He relented. “All right, it’s true, I don’t like magic.”

  “But why?”

  He looked away, preparing some flippant comment. She reached forward and grabbed his hand. “Hey, don’t pull back, okay? I like it when you just say what you feel.”

  He looked back at her beautiful jade eyes.

  “All right,” he acquiesced. “I’ve always hated magic. Ever since I was little. I’d see people using it and I’d think, ‘that’s so neat, I want to try that too.’ But I couldn’t. Magic has never worked for me, not once. I was always left out. I’d hear people talking about how much the gods loved them, and I’d think, “well, what’s wrong with me, then? Magic is this powerful and useful thing that makes a person special. Except when you’re not. Then all it does is remind you that the gods give out their love to everyone except you.”

  He balled his fists. “And, do you know what the worst part is? I don’t even know why. There’s no explanation, no reason given. The gods despise me, and it’s completely arbitrary. Like I was dealt a bad hand and now it’s like, ‘hey, sucks to be you, deal with it, kid.’ So, I decided, a long time ago, that if the gods wouldn’t love me, then I would just look for someone who would. But, even now, I just wish they’d tell me why.”

  “I thought that didn’t bother you?”

  “Of course it bothers me. How could it not? All your life you hear about the love that everyone else gets, the gifts that make them beautiful, then you look down at your own empty plate and you ask, “Well, what’s wrong with me? Why am I not deserving of love?”