The Awakening (7 page)

“I’ll think about it,” Jaax finally growled. “But if we are to ride this barge then perhaps we should see the Tree tomorrow.”

Jahrra froze, halfway between taking a sip of her cider. A cold tingle slid down her spine and her stomach began to churn with nervousness.
The Oak Tree
.

“Yes of course, tomorrow morning then. We shall make our trek to the goddess’s most divine creation.”

That night, Jahrra found it very hard to fall asleep. She wished to see the Tree more than anything. After all, it was where she was found abandoned and new to the world all those years ago. But for that same reason she also dreaded it.

-
Chapter Five
-

The Oak of Ethoes

In the morning, Jahrra wasn’t surprised to find her stomach tied in knots. She had barely managed to fall asleep the night before as she tossed and turned, her mind turbulent with anxiety, nervousness, fear and even a little excitement. She was going to see the Oak of Ethoes today, the starting point of her tumultuous life. The dawn was gray, a color she had grown accustomed to in the early hours of this place, but it was much darker than usual for the sun had not yet risen.

Stretching and yawning she rolled over in her blanket only to find Jaax watching her from across the small campsite.

A heartbeat or two passed before he spoke, quietly, “Are you well?”

His question could have had many meanings but she knew what he was asking. She nodded, then sighed, then looked back up at him, hoping he read the truth in her eyes. The slight ducking of his head told her that he did.

He looked away, beyond the trees standing in front of their secluded niche. “It is natural to be nervous but I promise you it’s not nearly as bad as you think.”

Jahrra lifted herself up on one elbow. “So you’ve returned to the place of your, uh, hatching, after living a lie for most of your life?”

She tried not to sound sarcastic but she feared it came out that way. Jaax turned back towards her and she could barely make out the corners of a grin on his face.

“Not quite, but let’s just say I’ve had experience in such things.”

Jahrra blinked and dropped her head again. Another one of Jaax’s mysteries. But she didn’t have the energy to argue him into an explanation. Not that she could if she wanted to. They reclined in silence until the sound of the first risers in the village greeted their ears.

“Come,” Jaax said, rising and stretching his massive wings. “I’m sure there will be a great breakfast feast this morning and I wouldn’t be surprised if half the village joins us on our visit.”

Grumbling, Jahrra crawled out of her warm blankets and made herself ready for the day.

***

Swallowing her anxiety, Jahrra followed Aydehn and several of the other Resai who had opted to join them as they started out from the village’s center. Most of the women chose to stay behind to prepare the great feast for the evening, for it was to be Jahrra’s and Jaax’s last night in Crie, but all of Jahrra’s young friends insisted on going with them. Not surprisingly this helped ease Jahrra’s jitters substantially.

By midday, Jahrra, Jaax and their small retinue were traipsing up the rocky, oak-strewn hillside. Just as Jahrra’s legs began to burn and she was tempted to call for a break, the elves and their kin slowed to a halt. She’d been too busy staring at the ground as she climbed the steep incline that she hadn’t even bothered looking up for the past several minutes. At that moment, she happened to be leaning over, her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. She could sense Jaax just behind her, quiet and not even remotely winded. She resented that a little and mentally told herself that months of travel on the road wasn’t the same as keeping in shape with Yaraa and Viornen.

Finally, once she felt more restored, Jahrra straightened up, then gasped. She remembered the awe she felt towards the Apple Tree in Ehnnit Canyon but that was nothing compared to seeing the grand Tree that now stood before her. It was enormous, easily five times larger than the Apple. The trunk curved from the ground, spreading into a thousand limbs and a hundred thousand branches, the bright, new leaves of spring standing out against the older, darker ones beneath. The sunlight pouring through its canopy seemed gilded in magic and the great rent that tore up its center glared like a huge, black eye. Her nervousness, which had clung to her like a stubborn tick the entire morning, disappeared like a puff of smoke.

Jahrra swallowed hard and reached for her left wrist. Her bracelet was tingling again but she’d been too stunned to notice before now. She blinked several times and examined the great exposed roots that tumbled and pushed their way down and into the rocky hillside. Jahrra imagined these roots reached all the way to the core of the earth. Feeling an overwhelming sense of compulsion, she moved forward, climbing the few more steps up the trail to bring herself onto the small flattened area in front of the Oak.

“Young Drisihn,” Aydehn began sternly, her formal name slipping out of his mouth without a second thought. They had explained to her before they set off that morning that the Tree was infallibly sacred and that only those who had gone through the proper ceremonies were allowed within touching range of its precious bark. But he stopped his argument when Jaax shot him a fierce look.

“This is her birth right, Aydehn,” he growled. “If anyone has a right to approach the Tree, it is her.”

Jahrra hardly heard them for she was so fixated on entering the enchanted air surrounding this Tree that she had blocked out all other senses. It was as if the Oak was calling out to her, drawing her in.

Eventually, Jahrra found herself inside the hollow center of the great Tree. The crystal clear chiming of faint magic she knew only she could hear danced around her, imploring, encouraging her into the very center of the hollow Oak.

Swallowing hard and trying to ignore the increased tingle up her left arm, Jahrra closed her eyes and stepped forward. She stopped, feeling somehow that she had placed her feet where they needed to be, and looked up. The vast space rose for thirty or forty feet, reaching far up into the core of the Oak until it ended in several gaps burned out to let in light.

Jahrra felt a rush of earth magic so strong it nearly swept her off her feet. Yes, this was like her encounter with the Apple Tree, but it was so much more as well. Time passed, not the time she was in, but the time from the beginning, up until the very present. She saw in her mind’s eye the building of the earth and all the races upon it, the plants, the animals, the mountains and forests. It was so overwhelming that Jahrra thought she might lose her ability to breathe.

Jahrraneh Drisihn . . .

Jahrra was gasping but she couldn’t pull her mind away.

Jahrraneh Drisihn . . . he needs your help. They all do . . .

A scene of intense violence and fear joined the whirlwind of images that suddenly swirled around in her mind like a flock of birds tossed in a thunderstorm. A great black and red demon, the same one from her nightmares of her childhood, loomed above a plain. Scattered about the great expanse of land were soldiers, fighting and dying, as they tried to destroy the monsters that attacked them. The images pricked her brain, leaving behind an intense reminder of the memories that had somehow infiltrated her nightmares from several weeks before.

Somehow, Jahrra felt her knees buckle and the faint awareness of her body crumpling into a heap in the center of the Tree hollow. She could hear the screams and cries of anguish; the laments of those who knew they were doomed. The scene changed; the men were still there but one stood out and came closer into view. He rode a great horse, its flanks sweating and bloody from the violence.

Suddenly his face was visible and Jahrra gasped. She knew who this was, the same person she’d wondered about since learning this story years ago. He was the prince of the Tanaan. Jahrra ignored all the other sounds and sights of horror that flew by and focused on the prince’s face. It blurred in and out of vision but from what she could catch she studied with intense concentration. His hair looked fair, like hers, but there was too much blood and grime to know for sure. His face might have been striking but a combination of the ambiguity of the memory and his own anger and fear contorted it. She tried so very hard to see his eyes; to maybe capture the anguish of his spirit and take some of that suffering upon herself but the blurring and swirling of the image refused to give her a clear view. A piercing scream ripped through the air and as the scene rushed from her mind, like an intense headache transforming into wind, Jahrra caught a glimpse of dragon shape.

It was only after the dull colors of the present flooded back into her mind that Jahrra’s senses became her own once again. The scream, she realized in horror, had come from her. At least some of it had.

“Jahrra!”

She suddenly felt the solid ground beneath her as she shook and cradling her left arm. She felt a cold sweat coating her entire body and a fierce pain pounding through her head. Her breathing was harsh and she knew her eyes stared forward, blank and full of pain. She could taste dust in her mouth and coughed when she also felt it lining her throat.

“Jahrra! Aydehn, send for aid! Jahrra!”

It was Jaax who kept calling her name, crying out to her as if she were lost. But she couldn’t respond to him; she felt numb both physically and mentally. Finally, she managed to blink.

“Jahrra, answer me! Curse all things to Ciarrohn’s keep!”

Jahrra would have laughed if she could. Jaax sounded angry. Not just angry, terrified. She had never heard that particular degree of emotion in his voice, ever. Well, perhaps once, the morning Hroombra had . . .

Swallowing and pushing that memory away, Jahrra drew a breath and tried to speak.

“Fine,” she murmured, barely audible above Jaax’s ranting and the nervous murmuring of the Resai elves who had accompanied them.

At some point, she heard Nerrid’s nervous shouts and Little Phaea’s sobbing among the worried sounds of her other friends. Jaax cursed again.

“I’m fine,” Jahrra managed to make some sound this time, and thank all things living, Jaax heard her.

He lowered his head so that it was at the same level with hers, which was resting ungracefully against the ground. How had he entered the Tree without suffering the same effects as her?

“Thank the benevolent gods,” he breathed, closing his eyes and opening them quickly.

They burned with a fierceness that made Jahrra quail but of course, she couldn’t so much as flinch if she wanted to.

“What on Ethoes happened?” he demanded once the villagers had managed to carry her out into the open.

Leaning against one of the Oak’s roots but feeling comfortable despite her episode, Jahrra shrugged. She was thinking about her reaction to the Apple and although similar, it hadn’t been nearly as violent. Also, she hadn’t even touched the Oak. Yet, she didn’t feel as if the Oak had meant her harm, more likely it was the memories that harmed her. She looked up into the Tree’s canopy, the golden light pouring through it warming her soul.

“Jahrra,” Jaax growled, “tell me what that was about.”

Jahrra grimaced and reached for the bracelet wrapped around her left wrist, the tingling subsiding but still there.

Jaax saw the action. “I know it has something to do with that bracelet Yaraa and Viornen gave you.”

Sighing, Jahrra relented. She knew he would pester her in his overbearing manner until she told him so she might as well get it out of the way.

“It tingles when I touch trees. Or when I’m around them,” she amended, thinking of this most recent episode.

“Does it make you fall into fits and seizures?” he demanded.

Jahrra winced. Is that what had happened to her? Is that what had happened with the Apple Tree? Is that why Gieaun and Scede had looked so concerned?

“Not all the time,” she finally answered.

She wasn’t about to elaborate and tell Jaax about her little escapade up Ehnnit Canyon and what she’d discovered there. Unfortunately, the Tanaan dragon was far more adept at reading her than she wished.

“Not all the time? Please, do continue with your little story, Jahrra. When else have you had this reaction to a tree?”

It was Jahrra’s turn to curse but she turned it mostly upon herself. Why was he always able to dig information out of her when the last thing she wanted to do was share it? Jahrra sighed deeply.
Oh, why not
, she told herself.
It happened so long ago it’s not as if he can punish me for it.

Taking a deep breath, Jahrra told him about her trip to Ehnnit Canyon (leaving out her reason for going of course) and what had happened when she had placed her hand on the bark of the Apple Tree.

Jaax swore again, a sudden habit he had picked up in the last hour. He swiveled his head around and noted the curious and strangely quiet villagers standing around them.

“Thank you for your accompaniment here. We can find our way back; Jahrra just needs to rest a while longer. If you see Aydehn on the way back to the village, please inform him help is no longer needed.”

Jahrra imagined, from the eager looks on the villagers’ faces, that if she had been speaking those words they would not have heeded her. When Jaax spoke to them, however, especially with that tone of voice, people were inclined to obey, even the children, who looked as if they didn’t want to leave Jahrra’s side.

As the villagers shuffled away and started their trek back down the hill, Jaax turned his head and blasted the full force of his gaze upon Jahrra. This time she did flinch.

“What else did you find in Ehnnit Canyon?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

Jahrra swallowed, suddenly afraid of what the consequence of her words might bring her.

“R-runes,” she stammered, “inside the tunnel leading into the canyon.”

“And?” Jaax demanded.