Aria Snowstripe's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Aria left Jasper at the false panel and took her mother's coat into the deep woods. The pockets held scraps of paper in her mother's hand: a sketch of a hazel thicket, a note about a spring, a chestnut grove circled twice. She found the hazel by noon and stripped it in an hour. The spring gave her watercress enough for one meal. By the third day she understood the truth. Her mother had known ten places. Aria would empty all ten before the week was out. She walked farther than the notes went. The ground got older under her paws. The trees leaned in. She smelled fruit where no fruit should be. The greenhouse sat in a clearing behind a curtain of vines. Its stained glass was cracked in every panel, green and red and violet, and the frames leaned like a drunk. Twisted trees grew inside and through it, branches shoving out the broken panes. Aria pushed the door. It gave. Inside, a peach tree held pale fruit and pink blooms at the same time. A row of lettuce heads turned toward her, and each head had a small face. Berries in a corner shimmered blue and purple like they had swallowed a sky. A squirrel watched her from a branch, its outline smoking at the edges. "Touch nothing," said a voice behind her. Aria turned. An old opossum stood in the doorway in a patched purple robe, pouches hanging from her belt. White hair stuck out under a bent hat. Her yellow eyes did not blink. "Who are you?" Aria said. "Grizzle. Who's asking?" "Aria Snowstripe. The forest is starving. I need food." Grizzle looked at the coat. She looked at the stripes on Aria's arms. She stepped past her and plucked a peach. She held it out. "Eat it and you'll see your dead," Grizzle said. "Eat the lettuce and you'll speak truth for a day. The berries show you the year to come. None of it kills you. All of it changes you." "Cursed," Aria said. "Fed by cursed ground. Same thing." Aria looked at the peaches. Enough fruit here to feed the palace steps for a month. "Can it be lifted?" Grizzle's mouth twitched. "My grandmother thought so. She died trying. There's a mushroom that fruits one week a year in the old grove. Moonpetal. Grind it into the soil at the roots. Might break the ground. Might not." "When does it fruit?" "Soon. Not yet." Aria took the peach. She put it in her mother's pocket. "I'll take what I can carry now. I'll come back for the mushroom." "You'll come back alone," Grizzle said. "And you'll tell them what they're eating." "No," Aria said. "I won't." She filled the coat with peaches and berries and walked out. The forest would eat tonight. Tomorrow, the forest would start to change.