Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

At first light Aldric folded the cloth map and pushed himself up on his cracked cane. Ephrat carried the pack. They walked the line marked on the weave, past the ring of stones, along a stream Aldric did not remember crossing. By midday the map led them to a wall of gray rock covered in moss. An arch opened in the stone. Water ran out of it in a thin channel. "This is it," Aldric said. He held the cloth against the arch. The leaf mark sat just past the opening. Ephrat looked in. "Pines. A river." "Inside a cave?" "Look." Aldric bent under the arch. The cave was not a cave. It opened into a valley full of tall pines and sky. The river ran between the trees toward something Aldric could not see yet. He stepped through. The air changed. It smelled of sap and wet stone. His ribs did not hurt as much. They followed the water. The pines thinned. In a clearing at the center stood the tree. Aldric stopped. He had carried the picture of this tree in his head for forty years and had gotten it wrong. The trunk was wider than a house. The roots ran out across the ground like the fingers of a hand pressed flat. Marks he could not read wound up the bark. Small lights moved in the leaves. He walked to the roots and lowered himself between two of them. Ephrat stayed back at the edge of the clearing, the slingshot loose in his hand. Aldric set the cracked cane across his knees. He put one hand flat on the bark. He spoke his wife's name, and then the words he had sworn on her grave. He said them out loud for the first time in forty years. His voice held. When he was done he pressed his forehead to the root and rested there. He waited for the blessing to leave him. That was the shape of the oath. He would give the last of what she had asked him to carry, and the tree would take it. Nothing left him. He lifted his head. The bark was warm under his palm. The small lights in the leaves had gathered lower, above him, watching. He understood then that he had come to the wrong end of the exchange. He had walked three days and forty years to give, and the tree was here to give back. His hand shook on the bark. "I don't know what to do with it," he said. Ephrat stepped closer. "With what?" Aldric could not answer yet. Whatever the tree meant to hand him was larger than the oath. He could feel the shape of it waiting against his palm, and he did not know if he had the days left to carry it out. He kept his hand on the bark. "Sit down," he told the boy. "We're not done."