Page 146 of First Light
For now I will comply.
Carys turned and walked into the forest, weaving between trees that reached up to the sky, oaks and ash and beech that whispered in the wind, their bare branches crisscrossing the blue-and-purple sky.
Forests had always been Carys’s refuge even when she was a child. She’d run through the redwoods and pines, touching their trunks like other children greeted friends. She delighted in the blossoming of the dogwood, the smell of cedar in the fog, the soft ferns that carpeted the forests around Baywood.
As she turned a corner in the path, the dome of a giant oak rose in front of her, its bare branches layered and twisting across the stormy sky. Its roots were blanketed in verdant moss, and a party of black-and-white-crested songbirds jumped among the raised roots, searching for food.
Carys walked slowly toward the massive oak, drawn to the life she felt from its center.
“Hello.” She realized she’d been neglecting these trees becausethey felt foreign, and it weighed on her mind. “I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you before.”
Birdsong chorused around her, and the crackle of wind in the winter branches grew louder.
“My mother would have loved to meet you. She told stories for the trees.” Carys walked over to touch the trunk of a regal grey oak. “When she painted in the forest, she would tell stories about elves and fae and dragons and great wild boar. She sang to them.”
The bark felt warm beneath her fingers, and its energy touched the surface of her skin. Despite its age—maybe because of it—this forest felt very alive.
“You’re beautiful.” She looked up at the gnarled, bare branches of the oak. “And you make a home for so many creatures.”
Carys could feel joy rustling in the trees around her. The forest was proud of the birds that nested in it, the moles and creatures that dug underneath. The badger’s den and the trotting lynx. They all made their home in the ancient trees.
She was welcome.
Carys smiled as she walked around the oak tree, running her fingers along the bumpy bark. On the other side, the trees opened up and she saw a path bordered by red-berried rowan trees twisting through the forest.
Rowan tree and red thread keep the witches from their speed.
It was an old saying her mother had whispered as she planted the mountain ash trees around the border of their house in Baywood.
The rowan will protect you. It’s good luck.
“Is this for me?” Carys took a step toward the path. It appeared to go off in the same direction as the more familiar one, but she was hesitant to take an unfamiliar path in the forest when she knew where the other one led.
“I give my gratitude to the forest.” She pressed her fingers to the oak trunk. “But I should take the way I know.” Carys walked back around the tree, but the old path had disappeared. “Or… not.”
A harsh caw sounded from the branch above her, and Carys lookedup to see a crow sitting on a low-hanging branch. It angled his head toward her before he flew around the trunk of the oak and swooped down the rowan path.
“Cadell.”
Yes, Nêrys.
“I’m taking a new path to the fae fort.”
I do not advise this.
“Doesn’t matter.” She carefully stepped over the oak roots and walked toward the rowan path. “The trees showed me this path, and the other one is gone.”
Nêrys, stay where you are. I’m coming.
She was tempted to say yes, but when she looked up, the branches that had crisscrossed happily across the blue sky seemed to draw closer, blocking the light.
“I don’t think the trees want you here right now.”
The branches eased back.
“Yeah, they don’t want a dragon here.”
This is dangerous.