33.2 Consequences of Being Stubborn

General Summary

Day 497

I take my place amongst the Grove trees with three heart song accompanists - my childhood self, the vision of myself just after having chosen a name, and the person  Iwas as I waged war against the Collective.   The song takes hold and I feel a connection to the trees but it jars and warps beyond what I expect. It takes hold of me and tries to tear at my own connection to the Empress, urging me to sever that bond. I black out from the strength of my resistance, coming to in the antechamber with Liliales cradling my head.   Quietly he tells me he hasn't fetched the others because he was too afraid to leave me. After I collapsed a tree reached out to snatch me and he cut me out of its branches. He looks horrified to have done it, but admits that even if the trees contained songs he probably would have done the same thing...he would still choose me even if it meant hurting a tree. They feel hostile and dangerous now, he says.   I sit up and we break down what happened - the structure of my song worked but they felt so starved that they wanted to grab me. The song stones themselves feel too weak and edited for us to be able to structure the same way and offer them to the trees. Liliales tells me that when a fae sings their final song to a tree it is impossible to hide or leave things out. The stones, however, tell only the story the singer wanted to tell. Saelas sang the song of his wasted life in service to fae of seasons but there is no joy in it. It is inconceivable that he lived a life devoid of joy, particularly in the decade of each century that he did spend in Drifting Songs, but that did not make it into his song. It might not even be a good idea to offer the trees such edited songs. Liliales suggests that perhaps a fae of seasons would be able to help - maybe Jaeril's mother?   I rest my own aching head in my hands as I admit that I am pushing where we need not push. When Uncle and Magdalena return they are sure to know what to do with these trees. This does not need to be my task, much as I want to make headway against it. We rest quietly together while waiting for the others and my delicate son asks if I might teach him to fight so that he doesn't feel as helpless against things that aren't fooled by his illusions.   When Trillium, Jaeril, and Kaide return it seems they have fared no better than we did. Jaeril is bloodied, Trillium has shed her armour to access more of her tattoos, and Kaide looks distinctly grumpy. They had come across a fountain that spouted a liquid other than water from which all the wildlife drinks. Approaching within a hundred paces of it made all the surrounding creatures hostile and all of them were intensely infused with magic. An enormous bear creature with curled horns, wind, and earth magic; birds with fire magic; swarms of squirrels using sounds and illusions. Jaeril felt a strong connection to the fountain and Trillium was determined to collect a sample from it. A sample certainly wouldn't be a bad idea, but not worth the risk for us right now. Perhaps Magdalena will know what the magic that resonates with Jaeril is - something cyclical and powerful no doubt. Too powerful for us.   Dinner is hearty but quiet. Liliales steps up to prepare the food and serves us up portions fit for when I was a sprout. We eat surrounded by illusions of Dreamfall. That night I feel closer to Lyssa and Mistress than I usually do, but I am too exhausted to reach out and see if I can commune with them.

Day 498

When I wake Liliales is missing and Jaeril tells me he has gone to make a map, promising to hide himself well as he explores. I suspect I am the only mortal to ever look at a Treeborn little sister as though she's a dunce and then storm off to go find my son-of-another-race. I follow the little flame of his presence deeper into the caverns and tuck myself up near the roof of the cave when I find him, just to keep an eye as he moves about.   He is not invisible or hidden, as he had promised Jaeril, but is moving slowly and quietly through the space sketching out the pathways and buildings. Eventually he turns and floats up to me, surely following my own presence flame as well.   It hurts to have to reprimand him so firmly, especially as he so earnestly insists that he was being careful to not go inside any buildings and that he was checking for anything breathing or moving in the area. It is always so hard to articulate the depths of what we do not know: I do not want to learn about the presence of invisible beasts that don't breathe by finding my son's still body with no sign of what killed him. I point out that even I am not wandering off alone here no matter how much I want to, because the catastrophe of one person alone meeting something new and unexpected is not worth the feeling of solitude and independence that we sometimes want. He quiets again and promises not to sneak off, though he asks what I was like when I was approximately his age.   I was certainly headstrong and mischievous when I was young but more importantly, I travelled with four very powerful adults and was incomparably devoted to my teacher. I have always been clever enough to find a loophole in rules if I wished to disobey without breaking the letter of an instruction, but in my day being a good apprentice and student meant keeping a tiny version of Mistress in my head at all times and consulting that simulacrum before attempting anything questionable. More often than not she told me to go ahead and take risks if I truly thought it would pay off...a detail I simply do not mention to Liliales.   Breakfast with Jaeril and Trillium is a little lacklustre as we try to figure out what to do with the day. Kaide is still exhausted and resting so she is unable to help translate any of the ancient dwarvish runes Liliales copied down. The interior of the caverns is all residential and commercial - no centres of power or money to be seen. It could mean that those structures all existed outside in the valley and have worn away over time.   Our conclusion is simply that we will spend some time exploring as a group, and Trillium asks if I know any patterns to call ancestors who might be able to help. Fortunately there is a scholarly ancestor that Mistress used to call quite often when she had to think her way out of a problem instead of fighting, particularly when I asked a very good question about theory. As I teach Trillium how to call with pigments and paints, the ancestor manifests in her and Trillium is surprised to find that she is conversing with the ancestor rather than just existing together.  

She knows this place...the whole valley used to be filled with buildings that are now fallen. Elves and dwarves both gathered here around the magic that flowed forth. But no one belongs here anymore. It is the forest that shouldn't be.

  And then the spirit is gone, and Kaide has appeared looking bedraggled and exhausted - asking why there are still more ghosts. It is reason enough for me to usher us all back into the antechamber and set us to studying instead of exploring. I spend the time trying to compose one more song for the trees as the other three bicker over Liliales' map and the runes that Trillium can half-read with her modern dwarvish.   As dusk falls and Kaide manifests again with more strength she points out that the characters they are studying are a street sign - Subjugated King Boulevard. She has realized that this place must be a vassal state that was never meant to hold any places of power. In her time Mec Ales was marked as a former vassal state and ruin on any maps she had seen. Perhaps it is a place where dwarves wanted the power of the fountain but could not hold it alone, and so invited elves to help them hold it.   My mind is already so abuzz with history from my writing that I don't have much to say to this - the history of the dwarven state that used to be here is beyond my ken. Instead I usher us back down to the trees for my final song before I set the dream of leaf and vine aside for the time being. I position myself again, this time as a conductor directing the song out of my new heartsong accompanists: A tiny sprout of a tree of leaf and vine, a burned but surviving cutting of the same tree, then the Kindred, the Watcher in his clay form, and my own Imperial shadow.  

This is a song of leaves and vines. I sing it as the first fae born of elven blood, as the Hand of the Empress and the winged daughter of the Reaper who sheltered these trees. I have brought no people to sleep beneath your branches, just their story in the hopes that I can explain.

  I sing them the story of a seedling race in their mountain home, then the ashes and fire that made sprouting near impossible. I lay out the branches from which sprouts could grow: The elves who severed their connection to trees but remained in Drifting Songs to tend to them, the elves who settled with dragons and became Kindred, and the elves who gave blood in exchange for shade. This is the only branch I can continue, and I tell the trees how we have grown into a people that require shade and cannot be broken away from it any more than you would expose a snowdrop to the dry sunlight.   Again I feel the trees grow in their hostility for my song and they lash out, this time at Trillium. Kaide manifests between them and the trees retreat, but all of us are already sweeping out of the cavern. As the others pack up the Watcher appears before me one last time,  

Do not return.

  And I agree, of course. I have nothing more I can do for this place. But I will send the Reaper and her brother in the future, and perhaps they will be able to help. It is hard to keep the frustration and bitterness from my voice, especially as this expressionless Watcher tells me that it seems even my tears cannot break the curse the Empress laid on this place so that no elves could connect to the trees once she had bound us.   These trees were planted and watered with the blood of fae but still they could not hear our songs. They had never been hostile until the Empress cursed them, and from that point anyone who tried to reach out to them was consumed.   But it is too late for me to sink my awareness into this fragment of information that he should have shared before I ever interacted with those trees. The blood magic in their roots might be more than just the sacrificial blood that nurtured them...perhaps the Empress worked a specific magic that I could untangle, or that Kaide could understand! I turn from him in silence and lead my family out of the canyon under the darkness of night.   Our camp is sombre in a way I am not ready to let go of. I wouldn't force Kaide to stay there any longer even if it meant I could learn what I need. In time I will be able to ask Uncle, Magdalena, and the Empress herself. All their secrets will come to light eventually.