She could create a warm envelope for herself and light to help find her way. Her hedge witch wand was more than sufficient for these tasks. But she sensed the Garlan tree would not grant a branch to one not strong enough to retrieve it without using magic.
She struggled on. Cold and fatigue created visions before her of a warm hearth and comfortable chair.
What was she doing here?
No, that was the wrong question. Immediately, she regretted the mental lapse that permitted it. Would the Garlan tree know? Of course, it would. The Garlan tree knew everything.
The Garlan tree was older than legend. It lived here thousands of years before humans entered the forest. Tales were told of champions selected to receive a branch, but it had not happened in living memory. If legends were correct, it took two things for the Garlan tree to bestow a branch; a time of great turmoil and a worthy hero.
Crack!
Leena jumped as ice snapped a branch from a nearby tree. The vibration of its contact with deep snow shuddered in her chest. Blind without moonlight, she felt a shower of frozen powder settle over her. As best she could, she dusted it from her face and shawl.
Impossibly, the forest around her grew darker.
She sensed the draw of the Garlan tree. She was close.
Carefully, she resettled the scratchy shawl around her head, face and shoulders. Without clearing a space, she sat quietly in the snow. Closing her eyes, she opened her mind. It was time to remain calm. What would happen would happen. Her job now was to be ready.
In the silence, her mind drifted back to last summer when she found the Garlan tree.
The Garlan tree had been a legend as long as anyone remembered. No one had seen it. Not even the oldest knew where it was. The tree was more ancient than time and possessed magic beyond imagination. According to legend, the Garlan tree enabled humans to settle in this forest.
In days long ago, the forest was ruled by goblins and orcs who cared little for nature. The Garlan tree sensed humans, a hunted and dying breed, and summoned them to the forest. Then, using knowledge gained over thousands of years, it spread fear of man throughout goblins and orcs.
Over the next few decades, without knowing why, goblins migrated south to the wasted lands and orcs wandered southwest to mountain caves. Only twice in the fifteen hundred years since, had they united to reclaim the forest and both times the Garlan tree selected a hero to defeat them.
From her earliest memories, Leena dreamed of being a hero. She knew there was little chance. She was a girl, and the youngest daughter of a modest hedge witch. Her mother was training her and her sister, Riana, in the healing and nurturing of people, animals, and crops in preparation for one day assuming the duties of hedge witches. Riana was destined to share their mother’s village and eventually take her mother’s place. While she, when she turned eighteen in less than two years, would have to go in search of a place in need of a witch. Then she would settle into a life of caring for her village with little chance of ever performing heroic deeds.
Leena knew all of this, but still she dreamed. Sometimes, alone in the forest looking for herbs, she pretended her wand was a cutlass. Using this fearsome weapon, she dueled bloody pirates or huge fearsome monsters.
It was during one of these mighty battles she discovered the Garlan tree. She had just taken a powerful blow from the staff of an imaginary giant and was falling back when she struck an invisible force behind her. It not only stopped her fall, but repelled her through the air to land in an awkward tumble of skirts and shrieks.
What had she hit? She could see nothing.
Unsteadily, she gathered herself and slashed hands at her skirt to clear it of twigs and dirt. Cautiously, she approached the area with a hand held out.
Her fingers encountered a force so gentle it could shift the path of any creature so tenderly it would not know it had been guided. When she pushed it resisted. This was a magical shield, but for what? She saw nothing beyond except an open space in the forest.
It did not feel right. Something was wrong in the clearing.
She had it.
Where there should have been sunlight streaming into the open space, the ground was covered with dappled shadow like the forest around her.
Something, something invisible, was in the space.
She raised her wand and cast a discerning spell. She felt a moment of resistance, as though some force did not wish to be revealed, followed by the appearance of the Garlan tree.
There could be no question this was the Garlan tree. Once revealed, its majesty and strength were undeniable. A sense of countless age rippled around it. The warmth of the protective barrier pressed against her palms and flattened her nose as she leaned against it, trying to get a better look.
The Garlan tree existed. It was more than legend and she had found it. What did it mean? Was she destined to be a hero or was this just the passing hand of fortune? How did one get a branch from the tree when it could not be approached? A thousand thoughts and questions flooded through Leena’s mind.
She searched the ground nearby for a branch that could be from the Garlan tree. The ground was covered with leaves and small twigs but nothing that could serve as a wand. Carefully, keeping one hand on the protective barrier, she made a circuit of the tree.
Nothing. The barrier was so far from the tree no branch could fall beyond it.
Frustration and confusion were dimming her intellect. She had to slow her mind and think the problem through. If legends were true, two others had secured a branch from the Garlan tree. If they could do it, so could she.
With a pout of annoyance, Leena thumped to a sitting position on the forest floor. Her movements were sharp and jerky as she straightened her skirt and settled in a comfortable position.
Why did everything have to be so complicated?
Her eyes closed as she slowed her breathing to clear her mind. In, out, in, out. Her hands formed cups in her lap, ready to receive whatever knowledge might come. The silence within began to match the quiet of the forest around her.
Her daylight summer mind was drawn to a nighttime forest where expanding ice snapped tree branches. The Garlan tree stands strong in the winter cold, impervious to the forces biting at the woods around it. Suddenly, with a snap that shatters the frozen calm, a branch is flung from the upper reaches of the Garlan tree to land quietly on the snow outside its protective barrier. In the vision, a wind-chaffed, cold-reddened hand reached to secure it.
Leena pulled herself from her reverie to find her hand reaching. The barest hint of dawn outlined a black crooked line embedded in white snow.
CHAPTER 2
Leena hesitated.
There would be a high price to pay for this gift. Once accepted, her life would cease to be hers. The forces that required the Garlan tree to give up its branch would govern her destiny. Did she want this? Was she worthy of accepting it?
Her hand flexed over the branch as though controlled by someone else. Did she want to pick it up? Would it be better to walk away now and spend her life trying to forget the Garlan tree existed?
Leena retracted her hand, closed her eyes, and huffed warm air into cupped palms. She rubbed them rapidly together to produce heat. Suddenly, without thinking, faster than she would have thought possible, her right hand flew out and grasped the branch.
She had done it.
Her body and mind jolted as cold flew from her like rust flakes from an iron bar dropped on hard stone. Knowledge of previously unsuspected levels of power flowed through her. This was not the wand of a hedge witch. This was the power of a wizard or possibly the Great Wizard himself.
An angry bull of doubt crashed through her mind. How dare she assume she had the right to touch a branch from the Garlan tree? She was not worthy. She was a sixteen-year-old girl who daydreamed of fame and glory. She was only a hedge witch in training. In accepting this gift, she had overstepped her bounds and there would be a high price to pay for the audacity. What would
her mother and sister say if, no when, they found out? She would never be able to keep this secret from them. What had she done?
A lump rose in her throat and tears of shame and fear fought to surface. Perhaps she could give it back. Her hand opened to release its hold on the branch.
The branch stayed, stuck fast to her palm even when she turned it toward the ground.
Was this a curse? Could she never again release this wand?
Jumping up, she whipped her arm forward over her head, trying to cast the branch as far as she could. It stayed solidly attached to her hand as a lance of ice blue flame shot from its tip. With a crack that shattered the delicate silence, the blue bolt ignited a leafless tree a hundred feet distant. Dancing orange flames, crackling like an angry fire demon, flared against the pale pink of coming dawn. Hastily, Leena cast an extinguishing spell before the flames could spread. The new wand leaped to her command with far more ease than the worn, secondhand wand in her belt.
In welcome silence, she watched a finger of gray smoke rise from the blackened tree into rose-tinted dawn air.
Leena realized impulse was a luxury she could not afford while she possessed the Garlan branch. As her mother was fond of saying, "With great power comes great responsibility".
For the first time in her life, Leena felt she truly understood what her mother meant. With an inner chuckle, she realized it was also the first time she understood one of her mother’s weird sayings. Maybe she was growing up.
The wand trembled in her hand as a vibration of warning flowed within it. Quickly, she scanned about. Something was coming, something that threatened her and the wand. The feeling was too strong, too sure, to doubt.
She had to hide, but where?
No shrubs were visible in the white blanket around her. Nearby trees were winter blackened and leafless. She did not even know from which direction danger approached.
But she did know it was coming quickly.
The Garlan tree was again cloaked and invisible in its protective barrier. She, however, stood in open forest. She had to think of something, but what?
Time was fleeing. Her brain felt as slow as winter tree sap.
Move, her mind screamed.
Where?
Her eyes caught a flicker of motion high and to her right. Without stopping to consider, she flung herself headfirst, hands up to protect her face, into a high mound of snow. Fortunately, it was a windblown drift and not a snow covered bush. She remained still as the mound collapsed quietly, resettling itself around and over her.
Within, all was calm and quiet.
Cautiously, so as not to disturb the protective snow barrier, she used her new wand to poke a view hole. Moving ever so carefully, she removed the wand and peered through the opening. Her vision was limited. She could see the charred tree with its tendril of gossamer smoke. It painted a peaceful tableau, quiet and calm.
A rush of dread flooded through her as a coal-dark raven, larger than a dray horse, flew in ghostly silence over her hiding place toward the smoking tree. With a wingspan broader than a barn, it glided in graceful circles above the smoking ember like a vulture preparing to dine on carrion. Its head swiveled constantly as its eyes scanned the frozen landscape.
The dark wraith was looking for something.
It was looking for her.
A voice inside, as real as the forest around her, told Leena she was the object of this horrid shadow’s hunt. Someone sent this dark seeker to locate her, to destroy her, and it knew she was near.
She shivered with dread. It would be useless to run. The demon bird was twice her height. She could see the wicked curve of a beak modified to tear flesh and long, sharp talons made to dig deeply into body tissue and hold prey immobile as it feasted. She could almost feel patches of skin and muscle torn from her back and hear the burning rend of sinew in her inner ear as she screamed helplessly, trying to protect her head.
In the open, she would have no chance of survival. She dared not even breathe lest it sense her whereabouts.
The dark wraith circled wider, searching the ground for anything unusual. The scorching light of its eyes passed over her mound. For the briefest instant, their eyes met. Inwardly, she withered. Never had she sensed so much concentrated evil. She felt small and helpless, captured and immobile in its glare. Her stomach felt drum tight. Her bowels threatened to release.
The eye passed on and continued its scan. Her gaze was freed as the specter silently glided past. She felt no relief.
A tear, emerging from a bottomless well of fear, dripped along her cheek as the bird passed from her field of view. She felt like an infant abandoned by her mother, alone and defenseless. Tension gritted her teeth, aching her jaws. She longed to burst from her snow cocoon and run screaming, to race home into the protective arms of her mother and never leave their safety again.
Silence.
Nothing moved but the gentle rise of the smoke banner. Seconds, feeling as long as hours, crawled past. How long would she have to remain hidden? How would she know when it was safe to leave?
Snow swirled in her limited field of vision, hiding the smoking tree, blinding her. The monster had landed behind her mound. Tears of fear rushed quietly down her cheeks. Her throat felt as though an apple were caught in it. Her chest ached from her loudly pounding heart. She wanted to sniff back the salty flow dribbling from her nostrils, but she dared not.
The thing was here.
It had found her.
Spirit, please make this a dream. But she knew it was not. This time the adventure was real and she did not feel like a hero. She felt small and frightened and helpless.
Maybe, just maybe, if I plug the hole it will not be able to look in and see me. Maybe it won’t know I’m here. Maybe it just landed here to start looking around.
Her mind took on a life of its own, darting about, seeking futilely for wisdom or answers or some solution to this situation. She no longer had control of it.
Without thinking, she eased the wand back into the eyehole she created. She heard the beast's footsteps crunching on snow, circling her haven, looking for an entrance. She did not want to see her doom when it stepped in front of her.
Suddenly, snow was blowing all around her, reducing the mound, leaving her exposed.
There it stood, directly before her, towering as it refolded its wings against the horrible body. A reek of rotting flesh drifted over her and her stomach rolled.
Its malevolent, golden eyes stared at her unblinking. A look of pitiless triumph destroyed any hope Leena harbored. She knew she was going to die and it would be a slow and painful death.
Still, a little voice in the back of her mind spoke, when hope is gone there is nothing left to lose. If she had to die, she would do it with style.
Without hesitation, Leena rose to her full height, a dwarf challenging the leviathan before her. Perhaps, for just an instant, she could raise some doubt, maybe a bit of confusion in the beast, before she was overcome. As in her more carefree days, she used her wand cutlass to strike out at the terrifying monster.
"Haa!" she cried.
"Take that!" she yelled in her best hero voice.
For the merest fraction of a second, the massive raven looked lost and confused. It showed no fear, but it hesitated long enough for the wand to touch its feathered breast. As though charged with internal pressure too great to bear, the raven expanded then scattered with a pop in a flurry of feathers and chunks of red meat.
Amazed, Leena stared at a bloody mess on the snow in front of her. This was not her hedge witch wand, this was a branch from the Garlan tree. She stood immobilized by what she had done, her mind blank.
Her stomach could hold back no more. Quickly, frantically tearing the shawl from her face, she fell to hands and knees, spewing the ground with the vile acid of fear. From far off, she heard sobbing among the gut wrenching sounds of retching. Eventually, she recognized the sobs as hers. Rolling away from the jumble of viscera and vomit, she su
rrendered to the gasping relief of tears.
The openmouthed braying of her cries shattered the forest tranquility, but she could no more control them than she could change the season. Release flowed from her stomach, from the center of her being, to exit her lips in an invitation for the earth to comfort her. Mixed with hoarse bellows, she vaguely heard herself crying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" over and over. She used the one-word song as a chant to ward off residual fear.
In time, her cries faded to quiet moans then slowly to sniffling whimpers. Fear and relief were replaced by fatigue. She wanted, no needed, to sleep. The night had been long and, although barely dawn, this had been a hard day.
Leena looked toward the clearing where the Garlan tree stood. Raising the branch, she closed her eyes and sensed the spell that hid and protected the tree. Drawing on its power, she recreated the giant tree’s invisible shell to surround herself. Opening her eyes she looked around. All looked and felt normal. The vast power that protected her was undetectable. She felt secure. Her eyes closed before her head reached the ground.
Unseen, unsuspected by any save the Garlan tree, she slept.
CHAPTER 3
A hooting owl echoed through the late night alerting small rodents and dragging Leena back to a moonlit forest. A half-remembered dream tore at the tattered edges of awareness. She felt a sense of great importance to the dream and fought to recall it, to grasp and view it in her wakening state. Something big, something evil attacked her village and she was not there to protect them.
She shivered and let the dream float away.
Leena opened her eyes. In front of her face, a single black feather, caught by its quill end in a small mound of snow, waved like the mittened hand of a departing friend. She remembered the events of this morning as she sat up and looked around. A new dusting of snow sparkled as a mild breeze lifted tiny particles in the moonlight. Slowly they resettled, covering all evidence of the earlier carnage.