Ice Burns (28 page)

“Edvard,” Matta said. He ignored her and continued his book circuit. She raised her voice a bit on her second attempt.

His head snapped up as if she had slapped him. He scowled at her for a moment as if trying to puzzle out who she was before waving a hand at her as if swatting her away.

“Food, Edvard. We need to eat,” Matta said in a half snarl that belied her impatience. Edvard made an odd grunting noise before pointing across the room at a blank expanse of wall. Matta sighed but went where he had indicated. She ran her hand across the surface of the wall, and it seemed to burst like a bubble to reveal an area of live plants and shelves with dry goods.

Matta smiled and ran a hand along the tall form of what appeared to be an apple tree. The tree shook as if a breeze had rustled it, though Chandra felt no wind. A moment later, two apples dropped and Matta caught them deftly. She turned to smile at Chandra and hand her one.

“How do you do that?” Chandra asked. She had seen Matta work with plants that were almost dead and coax them to fruit. It was unusual to see a mage get a plant to do anything other than grow and that took a strong connection between the mage and the lifespan of the plant.

“What, child?”

“How do you make the plants respond like that? It is almost as if they know you,” Chandra wasn't sure of a better way to describe it but continued. “With that tree, and before in the forest with that ancient oak, you touched them and they seem to respond.”

“I suppose they do,” Matta's face took on a gentle smile just before she bit into the apple.

Chandra frowned at the old woman, some faint memory tugging at her, wanting to be remembered. Something she had learned about at Master Dreys’ estate. It was something about myths and magical creatures...

“Don't think too hard, child," Matta cut in with a low chuckle, "you look as though you might cause permanent damage."

Chandra stuck out her tongue and the woman laughed harder as she turned to whisper to various drooping plants that grew stronger under her attention. Matta gave them water, but it seemed as though the plants gained more from her contact than from anything in the pitcher she poured from.

"I have faith you can trigger a memory to explain so many oddities,” Matta's rasping voice took on a sing-song quality that Chandra had never heard.

Chandra remembered the tomes she had spent so much time with, alone in her solitude. They had been stacked around her in the quarters Master Dreys had placed her like a wall against the outside world that held her in the past by others' words. There had been books on magical history, books on famous magical families and books on the source of magic. She closed her eyes and saw page after page flip through her mind; each unique in content and form. She remembered the information about creatures of the past that had been a source of magic in themselves, linked with the core of the world as if the pages were in front of her. Creatures that no longer existed in the world but whom had been a force of their own, powerful and more in tune to the magic of the world than humans ever could be. There had been sprites, gryphons, wraiths and...

“Dryads,” Matta spoke softly. “I am the only one of my kind as far as I know. When the forest changed me, it told me I was to be its one avatar, protector and child.”

Chandra remembered the word, but there had not been a lot about them and Master Dreys called the books nothing more that superstitious rubbish created by the uneducated to help them understand that which they could not explain.

“The world has a way of shifting things to make them work in harmony,” Matta told Chandra. “I was once a young woman who was too important for her position in life and who fled her home when others sought to teach me a lesson for my impertinence.

“Before I was lost to the forest and winter, I lost my sight. I fell into a world that I cannot describe to you, battered and near death. Being blind and lost, I fell captive to some unsavory mages in hiding. They found some untapped magic inside me and sought to take it or change it, I'm not sure which. They tried to pull it from my very veins. Something went wrong and I got free.

“I had no idea where I was going but felt compelled to follow an odd sound that seemed familiar. I ended up in a tiny grove, and my sightless eyes showed me a bright, green light. I didn’t understand how I could see it, but I knew instinctively that whatever it was, I should not cross it. Fear, ego, I don’t know what drove me, but I stepped forward despite the screamed warnings in my head. I paid the price for my idiocy. Roots rose from the ground to hold my feet. I dropped to my knees and begged for my life.

“A voice like nothing I had ever heard before, I'm not even sure you could call it a voice or the sound it made, words, responded. It was a mix of the thundering rush of a great river and the creaking of old trees in a gale. It asked me to repent. The words formed in my head and the noise tried to mimic the sounds as I saw them imprint on my mind.

“‘Throw off your dark skins and ask for nature to forgive you. Ask that you be free of the torment that awaits you, and you may be accepted into a new life of servitude and solitude with us. Choose well, life or freedom because you cannot have both.’

“I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that but knew death was the only thing that waited for me if I were to return or be found, so I agreed. I begged for forgiveness and said I would do whatever was asked of me so long as I didn't have to go back.

“Thorny vines rose from the ground and wrapped around my arms and legs, making my blood flow into the soil at my feet. I’m sure I cried, screamed, and begged for the torment to end, but it didn't stop. My pathetic pleas meant nothing to this force.

“‘Forgiveness is painful.’
That was the only response it gave me and I can still see the lightning words as they appeared in my brain.”

Matta stroked the wide leaf of one of Edvard's plants and it regained the green color of health. Her spine was stiff and she didn't turn but said softly, "I don’t know how long it lasted.”

Chandra stepped forward and reached out place a hand on the old woman's arm. She didn’t think there was anything she could say but knew Matta appreciated the gesture.

“I woke up and was able to see though not in the way I had before. I saw everything in a cascade of colors. I could see the magic of life flowing through the trees, fading from leaves on the ground and rising up into the trees that have so many times since offered me their limbs to connect myself. I could even hear the thoughts of the creatures of the forest.

“They reassured me, you know,” Matta said, looking in Chandra’s eyes. “They told me they would assist me if ever I needed it, and I swore never to touch meat again. How could I ever eat something that spoke to me or gave so freely in helping me?”

Chandra nodded at her. She believed she would feel much the same way.

“I don’t know that this body would accept anything of flesh, anyways.” Matta laughed. “No blood but sap. No skin but parchment and bark. No hair but silken strands of corn silk.”

Matta shook her head and the lines on her face drew up into rolls of laughter. “I don’t know when I became more plant than person, but there you go.”

“But your hands are warm to the touch,” Chandra said, her brow furrowed. It was hard for her to accept all of what Matta was telling her.

“So are the trees if you take the time to keep contact, and the rocks and the ground...” Matta said softly. “I understand your hesitancy to believe something so extraordinary, Chandra. Had it not happened to me, I am not sure I would believe it myself.”

“I have no reason not to believe you,” Chandra said.

“No reason and not believing are not necessarily sycophantic,” Matta said with a half-smile. Chandra smiled and nodded herself, understanding the silent agreement to accept with or without belief. She sat with Matta for a moment without speaking. Chandra knew Matta was seeing the events that made her what she was over and over in her mind, and she felt the best she could do was wait.

“Let us see what else we can find and then see about finding the door so your feathered companion can get out in the sky where he longs to be!” Though Matta’s eyes looked a bit shadowed and drawn, she smiled at Chandra.

“I think I need to find him a way out now. His unease is making it hard for me to think straight,” Chandra said, wanting to be outside the cave herself. She was not uncomfortable being there, but a sense of gloom lingered despite the well-lit exterior.

“Edvard?” Chandra said. Though she had spoken quietly, Edvard’s eyes shot up as if she had yelled in his ear. He gaped at her without speaking. Chandra stared back for a moment but decided to speak when he didn’t utter a sound.

“I need to find the passage outside,” she told him, trying not to be annoyed at his gaping. “My friend needs to hunt, and the air in here is stifling.”

Edvard still did not speak but stared at both women. Chandra narrowed her eyes at the rude man. She knew he was a little off but didn’t feel this was any excuse to stare as he was. The urge to slap him became so strong that her hand moved away from her side of its own accord. She was shocked at her reaction and pushed the hand back to rest impatiently at her side. She had never slapped anyone in her life and here she was about to slap a man she hardly knew?

Chandra leaned down to peer into Edvard’s foggy blue eyes and felt the heat in her glare.

“Outside,I need to go outside. Now.”

Chandra felt her voice drag across her throat as it created sound that rumbled unlike her normal voice as though she were growling through another person’s mouth. It was beast-like and enjoyed watching the old man’s eyes go wide so that there was more white than dull color in them.

Edvard jumped to his feet and rushed to a bookcase where he waved his hand franticly as if signaling for help.

The bookcase disappeared and the forest outside appeared.

24

Chandra stepped forward to exit, and Edvard shuffled back until he was pressed as far into a wall away from her as possible. Chandra frowned but hurried through the doorway.

As soon as she had cleared the entry, Frostwhite flung himself off her shoulder and into the foggy sky. The world was not the bright blue and green Chandra had thought of when she pictured outside, but she supposed any amount of time locked indoors would make the remembered outside world seem ideal.

She filled her lungs with fresh air. It smelled of leaf rot and late-season flowers; nutty but sweet. She closed her eyes and let herself be lost in the dense and complex world of the forest around her, wondering what Matta heard in moments like this. As if summoned, she heard Matta come out of the cave behind her.

“Not so bright today but beautiful just the same,” Matta said softly. “What exactly did you say to Edvard, by the way? Did you threaten to set his books on fire? I’m not complaining, really, I wanted out as well, but you scared the spit out of him.”

“I told him I needed outside,” Chandra said. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t what she should have admitted to. Her mind reasoned that she didn’t really understand what had happened and therefore couldn’t completely explain it.

“Hmm,” Matta said but asked nothing else. They stood in silence and enjoyed the fresh air and smells invading their senses.

“You didn’t seem in a rush to be outside,” Chandra surmised. “Weren’t you going a little crazy, being what you are?”

“Being what I am does not mean I have to be outdoors at all times,” Matta explained. “I could live in a cave myself though I don’t care for being enclosed as a personal preference. The only thing I absolutely require is that I remain somehow connected to nature. The rock that makes up that cave is a part of nature as much as soil, trees, plants, water...”

The old dryad lifted the branch that had broken off from the tree and she had been using as a sort of walking staff. She shook it in the air and smiled at Chandra.

“My clearing is important to me, cottage or no. The tree gave me a way to stay connected when I asked for it.”

“May I ask what happens if you lose contact with nature?” Chandra said, trying to sound a bit more respectful. She hadn't missed the woman's emphasis reminding Chandra that she wasn't a thing.

“You may, but I won’t answer you.”

Chandra looked and saw Matta was smiling. She knew it was not because Matta didn’t trust her but more that she simply didn't want to talk about it.

“I will say that it is supposed to be different for each dryad, though,” Matta told her. “What happens to me or affects me may not be the same as one who was born a dryad or specific types of dryads. I would suggest you research the matter if you want to know more.”

Chandra thought about this for a few minutes.

"You may want to ask Edvard to see some of his books," Matta's lips quirked up, "He has an extensive collection.”

“Thank you,” Chandra said, and Matta walked away into the trees. Chandra’s stomach rumbled a bit, but she ignored it. She sat down on the grass and closed her eyes. If her mind was like that of a dryad, how would the world change?

She pictured the clearing in which she sat, envisioning each tree, rock and blade of grass. In her mind, she noticed everything was such a vibrant color, like each object around her had a light shining directly on it. She could see minute details, the ridges on a blade of glass or the tiny hole made by some little creature in a boulder.