24.4 Righteous Anger

General Summary

Day 402

We bed down in three separate rooms (with three separate locks, to which Yneir gives us the keys and assures us she does not have copies).   I've been sitting cross-legged on the bed, lost in thought, when a shadow in the corner of the room deepens and an elf steps out. At first I think it must be Alder, because to step directly into someone's bedroom is so forward that I can't imagine anyone but family doing it (especially to me) but instead the woman kneels and greets me.   When she removes her mask I almost laugh aloud - it's Stella, who I now recognize as Renelli. I helped her with transmutation magic in her thesis back at the Academy - she was ahead of me by about 20 years. Seeing her here is surreal, especially as I realize that the Frontier stew she cooked was likely something I introduced her to on one of our many long nights working through magical theory together. Her own illusion magic is so strong I can see that she must be responsible for much of the work that keeps this place hidden.   She settles down beside me to tell me her story: She's been on this side of the Barrier for thirty years and here in the village for fifteen. For a while she masqueraded as human while travelling (something I've not dared - my illusions aren't that effective) before arriving here. By and large the people here are bitter - humans are so short-lived that they fall prey to minor tragedies that consume the rest of their lives. She's done her best to help any young elves heal and move on from here.  

I assume you're here for Dal?

  Of course she knows about him. He is in a lower level of the Witch Queen's tower and every few week she slips in to talk. He used to laugh and joke more in the beginning; now he is more thoughtful and bleak, though he's seemed more hopeful in the last year and now she can see why. The wards surrounding his cell are too strong for her to break but they're not complicated. Between Tira and me we should be able to unravel them.   I ask for her opinion on Yneir and the Witch Queen (whose name is "Wen" she tells me) as well. Yneir seems genuinely well-intentioned at least. Where the Witch Queen seems to want to give people the power to exact revenge, both Yneir and Renelli want those wounded people to have the strength to survive their vengeance.  

I would not strip them of their righteous anger, but they must be able to survive their vengeance.

  She is uncertain how much Yneir cares for the Witch Queen. It's clear that she is attached and loyal to a degree, perhaps she sees their destinies entangled. She would almost certainly obey a command even if she thinks it unwise.   As for Wen, she found this place despite it being hidden by some ancient magic, then modified the magic to allow it to be found by those who need it. In the last years she has become increasingly more desperate for the magic to the North of the village (the Grove proper, I know) and is viewed with more and more fear and reverence by the witches. Renelli shows me a vial that I instantly recognize as Grove sap and explains that people consume it and gain power from it - those who have never known magic before become accomplished wizards overnight or seasoned duellists equally fast. Those people tend to develop nightmares and a sense of loss that they can only quench by wandering to higher and higher places. Some simply go mad. This seems like a fair consequence for consuming the heartsblood of a slain sacred tree, in my opinion.   She promises to try to lead most of the witches away from the village tomorrow so that I will be able to engage with the Witch Queen at full force if need be. More and more I am convinced that she will simply need to be slain and I appreciate the promise of fewer people to get caught in the crossfire.  

Day 403

The next morning I find Yneir, Camellia, and Tira all seated at the breakfast table talking about absolutely nothing. Much like Bran, this seems to be a skill of hers. We set off for a full tour of the village, which I estimate is large enough to hold 600-700 people. The buildings are warded and magic is casually used here and there for utility and protection in sensible ways. While I appreciate the practicality I am unsettled once again to find an abundance of Grovewood tools and fae magic clearly cast by non-fae.   The last stop on our tour is an enormous eldritch tree that has been hollowed out to contain a library. Books in all common tongues line the interior of the trunk. Yneir tells us that many of them hold records of oral traditions from the people who live here - many people have stories that span hundreds of years and deserve to be recorded here for posterity, along with recipes, magic, and simpler stories. The books are made from eldritch tree pulp, for which I am grateful. My own journal pages are made from Grove leaves from the tree that fell in my Grove and while I'm honoured to carry such a work of art, it is not a book I would be eager to duplicate.   The contents of the books themselves are equally disturbing - songs and stories that no human, dwarf, or elf should know. Clearly these are the broken wisps of songs inherited by people who have no hope of understanding them. It feels wrong to see them transcribed - no rhythm or melody, just words on a page. I turn away before I have to read more songs with no music - it's time to finally visit the Witch Queen.   Her home is also in an eldritch tree just on the edge of the village. It is the nearest home to the Grove itself and both Camellia and I can hear the pained songs on the wind as we approach. Again I reach for her hand and steady my own wings.   Inside the tree is a tactless and tasteless throne room, tall and arched and ever-so-human in its design. Her Majesty sits on the throne clad in a tall pointed hat encircled with a silver band and a deep purple mask with fae runes of protection. She stands to greet us and ask my name.   For this, again, I am grateful. Yneir presumed my name when we met us and it was not something I felt strongly enough to protest. For the woman before me I feel quite strongly that there is only one name that can be allowed in her mouth and it is not the one I spent years crafting out of love for my people and the idea of family.   Wen asks if the people I bring with me are guards and then asks if she and I can speak alone. Of this I feel strongly as well - they are my companions and extensions of my will. They stay with me as my Hand and my Knight. Wen nods at this and immediately tells Yneir to leave.   Alone, she sheds her mask and cloak and reveals herself: Painful fae markings that seem like they have been carved into her flesh. Her wings are tattered membranes draped on a malformed frame. She is both summer and winter at once, her grey hair streaked with faded bleeding out colour.  

If you can help me, whatever you ask is yours.

  Without agreeing, I demand to hear her story.   I was dying when I came here. My husband had cursed me. I had thought we would conquer the world together but as I grew older and my beauty faded he stayed unchanging, un-aging. His eyes moved to younger women and he was done with me. We fought, I lost, and fled with what was left of my life. I didn't know where I was going; I felt like I was half-mad. I heard voices and it felt like some sort of destiny was calling. I found an ancient magical barrier and slipped through a crack in it to get here. I discovered these beautiful twinkling magical trees whispering to me. When I took some bark from a tree and made myself tea, it was like consuming dreams. I had flashes of insight and inspiration - I could almost grasp memories not my own. I wanted to understand what these things were. I spent quite some time alone here seeking out the mysteries of these trees. I came to understand that they were once property of the fae but they seemed long abandoned and forgotten. The trees felt lonely and I wanted to be company for them for a time. Eventually I learned how to draw some of their magic out. I experimented with myself as the only available test subject. I made mistakes; I didn't understand the uses of the different pieces, didn't understand how to extract it yet. Bark is different from leaves is different from sap is different from branches. Shavings of the trunk is different from shavings from the canopy. Each part has a different purpose. I consumed a bit more than I should have, perhaps. I found that they possessed transformative powers and sought to use them as restorative powers. I should have died as an old woman more than a decade ago but I lived longer, became younger, older. I thought I could make myself beautiful again.   I entertained dreams of returning to my bastard husband for a time, showing him the beauty that he'd lost. Taking his life away from him and leaving him bitter with regret for ever discarding me. But death is too sweet a release for that man. For a while I thought that given his strength I would need a small army. I went looking for people like me who had been abused and were bitter, who needed power and vengeance. I'd learned enough about the trees by then. I can produce an extract of sap and understand its flavour enough to understand the power it can bestow. I could give these things to people who were helpless and powerless, make them safe from a world that had abused them. I thought I would be a good queen, a good witch, to give them justice. My experiments took their toll. I'm incomplete - I've been trying to understand how to be what you seem to be. It seems you succeeded where I failed. Now I'm left with nothing but nightmares when I sleep. I've been trying to find my way into dreams to escape the chains. I'm going a little mad. Holding it together for now but it's hard with you in front of me. I want whatever it is that you have that lets your eyes not have that pain.   I have to sleep there two days out of every moon or I'll lose what little control I have. That forest won't let go of me. The trees sing to me of pain and grief and loss. They sing sad songs. Lovers parted, children dying before their parents. They haunt me. They make me feel it and remember it. I don't want anyone in my village to know that pain. They've all known pain like it before - they come here hurt and wounded like that. I want them to have the strength to escape it but the trees don't let me forget what it's like to feel that pain. They remind me and it hardens my resolve. I won't ever let anyone hurt my witches like that again.   The growing rage at each incorrect assumption and statement threatens to boil over and I cannot still my own trembling, perfect wings. The clinical, academic way she talks about stripping the bark, leaves, and sap from my people to make herself young and beautiful again. I want to carve more patterns into her skin with my own knife. That she might ever 'succeed' the way I did at a task she doesn't even understand - that she took her knife to the trees before offering them any of herself at all...my jaw aches from the force with which I clench my teeth.   Instead of striking her down I invite her to walk with me into the Grove. Tira nods - the songs don't hurt her. Camellia nods as well - she will walk with me too.   Together the three of us approach the ancient ward dividing the eldritch forest from the Grove. It parts before Wen (gesturing with a Grovewood staff) and we enter. Immediately I can feel the torment in the air as I see several felled trees oozing tears and loss. Only a few trees have been destroyed but their roots travel far and mingle with all the other trees of the Grove; there is not a single tree here that is not in pain as though it was cut down.   We wind up in a small clearing and I sit down, laying my staff and cloak down and gesturing for her to do the same. How much do you know about the relationship the fae have with the trees, I ask.   She seems to think the Grove simply gives powers, talking about how the fae visit the trees and emerge stronger and more powerful. Once she tried to go North where she'd heard stories of another Grove but she was chased off by knights who called her an abomination. Looking at her skeletal form and lifeless eyes I can't imagine the horror those guards would have felt upon seeing her.   But this is important to me. Thin excuse that it is, it matters to me that she committed atrocities without knowing. It means she has the opportunity to reckon with her actions now.   As I am about to take up my instrument and weave the song that will entangle her in what she has done, she cuts me off. Again, I feel the rage burning in my throat.  

I will do anything, trade anything, return anything to be whole again. But I will not give my life. I need to live for someone I captured...and he captured me back. Questions and probing - he made me realize things I'd been denying. Because of him I no longer need the vengeance. I've been trying to figure out his magic so that I can tell him how I feel. He'd never look at me with fondness while I'm like this...but maybe if I'm healed...

  Revulsion rises in my throat to mingle with the anger. Again, an easy half-truth: I'm not going to kill you with my instrument. Don't interrupt again. And then I must stroke down the anger and revulsion to make way for the gentler feelings that must fuel the first act of this song.   With light fingers on my eldritch instrument I begin the very first fae song I will sing to a Grove. It is much longer, both less and more detailed than any song I think I will sing in the decades to come. I string together the story of the fae as though it were one life: Treeborn emerging from the first trees, the early fae races and the wars they waged, fae of leaf and vine withering as their Groves perished. One continuous life as the fae of seasons grew as a race and became friends with the elves and trolls, the pain of parting between fae and elves when time came, the war that raged across the continent as Groves were threatened, sacrificed, and hidden.   As I weave together strands of memories I feel the magic of the Grove envelope me.    

Thank you. Help us. Finally. Give her to us.

    And then I am conscious again and threading the verse of the song - Of a single unbroken line from the Heart of Song to the last Northern Grove and the first Tree of Day and Night in thousands of years and then: The abrupt and jarring end as tree after tree was skinned, shaved, mutilated and beheaded to fuel whatever academic curiosity this Witch Queen had.   When I open my eyes she is crying.  

I have done to them what he did to me. Worse. Plundered them for my own gain even when I was doing it to help others. I didn't think they could feel it. I didn't think they knew.

  Her awareness is better than any dagger's pain. I tell her that she owes the Grove her own song - the story of her life. Camellia joins me as well and I see the strength of a glorious knight in her as she points out that Wen does owe her life. She must sing her song and give herself to the Grove. It may claim her and that would be justice, or it might release her but that is not for any of us to decide. For what she has done to this Grove she owes a blood debt.   I see my own fury reflected in Wen's eyes as she looks more and more selfish and petulant while Camellia speaks. Still, she agrees to do it on the condition that we look after her witches if she doesn't return.  

Your song was happy for a while. The trees should hear that too. Don't leave anything out.

  And as we turn to leave her alone with her song, I can hear the beginnings of an old fae song from her. The trees will recognize it. They can stand in judgment of her.