Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son (15 page)

I was surprised, though, when we rounded a low hill and saw a cottage set into the other side of it. Someone had made themselves a home here, on what was probably the only dry land for twenty miles in any direction. I looked around skeptically at the hanging moss and buzzing insects. Aside from the obvious lack of other humans, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live here.

Whoever’s place this was wasn’t just living, though. They were hiding.
 

We approached the door, and I crouched low on the panther’s back, suddenly worried about who might be inside. I wasn’t ready to be around people yet, and my break from the reality of these worlds had seemed painfully short.
 

But the ride was over. He stopped at the threshold to the tiny house and turned his head back to look at me. I stayed put, for a moment reasoning that maybe if I just refused to get off, he’d take me with him to wherever he was headed next. But his feet stayed stubbornly planted, and I relented, sliding from his back.

I knew he was going.
 

“I don’t want you to,” I said, as though he had actually spoken his goodbye.
 

He nuzzled me again, this time taking greater care not to knock me backward. The glow coming off his fur lit up the entire clearing as if he had harnessed the moon, still peeking through the brightening morning, and pulled it down from the sky. I wrapped both arms around his giant head and put my face down between his ears. His long, slow breathing seemed to permeate through my skin, and my own slowed.

When he finally turned and walked out of from under the canopy, I wanted to wail in agony at his departure. But while I felt sorrow at being left alone so soon after my rescue, a tiny bead of hope swirled in my chest. I would see him again. Or, if not him, another of the Guard. It wasn’t goodbye forever. For the first time, I understood that.

Finally, when all glow that didn’t come from the rising sun had faded away, and the distant sounds of his splashing as he retreated had finally silenced, I turned to the door.
 

The wood was porous, soft to the touch, covered in a sheath of moss. The house was tiny, and hanging from almost every surface was some sort of plant. Vines wove a blanket over the roof, twirling into braids as they met again with the swampy ground. I raised my fist and knocked.

Nobody came.
 

The safety I felt from the closeness of Pahana was slowly seeping out of me. Insects sang loudly in the undergrowth, and one buzzed by my ear. I swatted at it, alarmed, sending a new wave of throbbing through my skull. I gripped the sides of my head and found that the bleeding had stopped, replaced now by a long, jagged scab where the blood had trickled down. The insect buzzed again, and my thoughts quickly turning to stingers and wings. Backing up, I ran into a bush heavy with flowers the size of basketballs. They gave off a sickly sweet scent that made my mouth water. I peered into one, hoping that there might be a sweet drink of nectar waiting for me. Using both hands, I gently opened the delicate petals. But when they pushed back against my effort, refusing to be opened, I yelped and stumbled backward, hitting the ground hard in my surprise.
 

Suddenly, the world around me seemed at once threatening and fascinating. Everything in the Triaden felt, and was, more alive than on Earth. But here, where the branches hung low, draping their foliage in wide sheets, and flowers of enormous size defended against attack, here the plants pulsed with energy. The heartbeat of this world seemed to bubble up through the marsh, spreading its power and its own strange awareness from its core to the leaf.
 

I couldn’t decide whether or not to be terrified. I pushed my body backwards, away from the little house, and onto a small patch of dry land, panting.
 

I sat.
 

And I watched.

And once I was still, the place began to awaken in earnest. The trees and plants and bugs forgot my presence gradually. First, the giant flowers on the bush beside the house began to relax, their petals unclenching and then slowly reaching out, as a human might stretch after sitting for a long time. Then came the trees. Each twig, each leaf slowly began pulsing, shy curls of light coming to life along the branches. The moss lengthened until it touched the ground, the tendrils slithering like tiny snakes as they sought water. The insects came out in full force, no longer afraid and, I was relieved to find, not interested in stinging. The sun, now fully up, snuck into the dark places through the canopy overhead, sending its soft shafts of light through to the swamp floor, cascading down to the ground from above like a slowly flowing waterfall.
 

My breathing calmed, and I relaxed just as the swamp did. I could see why this person, whoever he was, would want to live here. Because, though I had been frightened at first, now that I had calmed down I felt as protected as a child in his mother’s arms. I was hidden from everything here, every person that wanted me dead, or to use me, or to simply get me out of the way.
 

Owyn had made the mistake of pursuing the Corentin, of trying to help even though the stakes were so high and his chances so low. And then he had been used like a puppet, fooling everyone into believing his intentions were still good, even after the Corentin had taken over his mind.
 

I looked down at the staff. I had held it once before, felt coursing through me the power that radiated from the wood. And yet even with such a weapon, Owyn had fallen easily into Jade’s trap. I had taken the staff from Owyn with almost no effort. It seemed that the tool had no allegiance to him, or if it once did, the bond had been broken. It hadn’t been enough to allow him to resist the grip of evil that had come for him.

It lay now, lifeless on the ground, cut from its roots long ago, no longer able to pull power from the soil on its own, not even here. I stretched my fingers towards it and, as they hovered an inch over the base, could feel it calling out to me. Like a song sung in a language so ancient that none could ever translate it to human speech. It rang with truth, desire. And power.
 

I grasped it into my open fist and immediately felt its warmth rush up my arm and into my chest. I stood up, the movement nearly effortless with the staff in my grip. Was this what it felt like to have power? I looked down at my arms, surprised when they didn’t visibly glow. A surge of strength, thrilling and breathtaking, bloomed over every inch of my body. I could understand how a person could get lost in this. Owyn. Jade. And long ago, Jared.
 

I was suddenly frightened, and I dropped the staff back to the ground. It clung to my open palm for a moment, sticking to it as if glued, and then fell to the ground.
 

I didn’t want to be like any of them, a slave to my own power, making all the wrong decisions just so I could get more and more. I stepped away from the wood, which lay lifeless in the moss. It needed my touch, it seemed, to come alive.
 

But how was I supposed to win this war, or even help, if I didn’t have power?
 

Kiron had magic, passed down from generations, used for centuries by his family to create harmony and life. Did he feel the pull that I now felt? Because when I held the wood, I felt hungry in a way that I wasn’t sure anything could ever satisfy.
 

A scratching sound, unlike the natural humming of the marsh, caught my attention.
 

The door had opened. And over the threshold, the steward now stood.

I stepped back, nearly tumbling to the ground in my surprise. She looked at me, unflinching and unimpressed.
 

“Come in, child,” she said through long tendrils of hair braided like the vines that surrounded her house. “And we will see who the Blackburn has sent.”

She disappeared into the little dwelling. I stood still, unable to decide what to do next. Had she had been in there the whole time? Watching?

I slowly started to approach, and she slid her head back into the doorway.

“Bring the wood,” she said.

I looked down at the staff. I didn’t want to touch it again, didn’t want to feel the power coursing through me that made me feel so wild.
 

But another part of me wanted nothing more than to grasp it, right now, to feel the high of all that power penetrating every cell in my body.
 

My fear won out, and I left it there.

I walked up to the door and poked my head inside. The room was not what I had expected. The trees around the tiny space had grown together in such a way, woven their branches, interlaced their leaves, that a shelter had been formed. The floor was not a floor, but ground. The same ground as the swamp outside, but softer, spongy. My feet bounced slightly as I stepped onto the mossy carpet.

The woman, if you could call her that, sat at a small table. It might be called a kitchen table anywhere else. A low, woody bush made up the base, and atop it rested a rough slab of stone. The cushions set around the table were piles of ferns, all grown from within millimeters of one another, their fronds coming together at the top to provide a soft seat. Atop the table, two small cups sat waiting.

“Do sit down,” she gestured to the chair.

I hesitated, still gaping.
 

Everything moved. Everything breathed. Everything in this tiny, dark place
lived
.
 

“Oh,” she went on, “forgive me. I forget that the land dwellers are used to a little more light.”

She rose from the table and went to the window, a small deep hole around which the branches grew, as if someone had placed a square frame there once, preventing them from expanding into the space.
 

She turned back, raising her eyebrows.

“Drink,” she said. It wasn’t a command, but a suggestion, as if she were surprised I hadn’t already picked up my cup.

I looked down at it, half full of a clear liquid that looked like water. I wrapped my fingers around it and held it to my lips.
 

She turned away again, pursed her lips together and whistled. Almost immediately, a large, winged insect came to her outstretched hand, fluttering gracefully down until it perched there. She smiled at it, and I was relieved to see that there was no malice in her face.
 

I took a sip of the liquid in the cup and was instantly transported. It seemed that every wonderful thing I had ever tasted was contained within it. I felt simultaneously the warmth and comfort of hot chocolate in my mother’s room in the city and the strength and invigoration that had come from the abandoned stew in the forest. I quickly drained it, and found myself searching the bottom of the cup, wondering if its secret was contained beneath the leaves that wove together at the base. Gradually, the throbbing in my head abated.

The woman turned and brought the winged creature to the table, setting it carefully in the center of the stone. Then, blowing gently, she blanketed the animal with her breath and it came to life, slowly pulsating with soothing, orange light.
 

“Now then,” she said, her voice calm and dreamy. She stretched out her hand and ran the backs of her fingers down my cheek. “You are Aster.” Her eyes held mine, shining silver in the dim light.
 

I nodded. The fact that she knew my name didn’t surprise me, though I couldn’t figure out why.
 

She sat back and picked up her own cup, taking a delicate sip from the tip of the rim. For a flash I felt jealousy that she still had an entire cup full of the stuff. But then I realized that my stomach, which had felt hollow for days, now was comfortable and warm, as if I had just finished a satisfying meal.

“So he has brought you to me at long last,” she said, moving back to her side of the table.
 

“Who?” I asked.

“The White Brother,” she said, sitting. The branches beneath her creaked in the way that floorboards in an old house squeak. “You may know him as the Guard. Or the Great Cat. In some stories he is called Pahana.”

“So it
is
true,” I said.
 

“Some things are true,” she replied, tilting her head slightly. Behind her the wall was dotted with large, pink blossoms, their petals seemed to breathe in time with the glowing ember the insect had become.

“Who are you?” I asked. She seemed neither old nor young. Awful nor beautiful. Human nor alien. But she dazzled me.

“I am the Watcher,” she said, almost lazily.
 

“Oh,” I said. “What do you…watch?”

She smiled.
 

“I watch the worlds,” she said, “as they cycle around each other. I watch the men as they war. I keep the record. I hold the past. And I scout the path of the future.”

Her hair floated about her shoulders, almost as if she were underwater. Only the thin ringlet of vines perched on her head remained still.

“
You
are here to determine what will become of the next age.”

“The next age?” I asked.
 

“There is one whose efforts it is time to quell. One who disrupts the balance. Do you know of whom I speak?”

“The Corentin,” I said, sitting back against the ferns.

“Yes,” she breathed. “He was once a man. But as the imbalance grows, so too does his power. As you have seen, he uses it not for good, but instead for mayhem.” She stood from the table, gliding back over to the window, her long, sage robe billowing behind her. “There are some,” she went on, her gaze focusing on something in the distance, “who have the power to stop him. You are one. Your sister, another.”

“She’s not my sister,” I blurted.

“Not in blood, no,” she said. “But in soul, she is nothing other. Chance has a role in all that transpires in every corner of the universe. And by chance, you and Jade met and bonded.”

I stared at the table. She didn’t know then, didn’t understand.