Briar Thorne's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

The last blossoms opened in a pink ring around the stone. But Celestine lay against it like a candle guttering out. Her red dress had gone gray. Briar could see the whole garden through her now. The spirit's lips moved, but no sound came. Briar pressed her cold hands to the center stone. "Hold on," she said. "The goddess is coming. You only have to wait." But Celestine was not waiting. She was leaving. Her outline thinned with each breath Briar did not need to take. The unicorn strand bound at the stone was the only thread still holding her, and even that light had dimmed. The fox kit crept from the far buds and curled against the fading spirit. It pressed its warm body where her heart would be. Celestine did not stir. Briar looked toward the dark tree at the garden's edge. Its brambles hung heavy with snow. Beyond it, the ice cave waited, and the goddess within. There was no time to fetch her. Briar did the only thing left. She lifted the fox kit, the goddess's own fire, and held it high. "She wants you," Briar called into the cold. "Your love is dying. Come now, or you lose her too." The garden went silent. Then the air shifted, thick with the smell of frost and starlight. A figure stepped between the blossoms. She was tall, her hair long and pale as moonlight, a crown of small moons resting on her brow. The moon-and-ice goddess had come. Her eyes found Celestine at once, and her proud face broke. "You waited too long," she said. The words were not for Briar. The goddess knelt in the snow beside the spirit. She did not look at the flowers Briar had fought to save. She looked only at the gray figure fading into the stone. "I froze this place because you asked me," she said. "I thought I was keeping you. I was killing you instead." She lifted her hand over the ring of blooms. "Now I let it go." Warmth rolled out from her palm. Not fire that fought the cold, but a release, like a held breath finally let out. The clear ice over the garden cracked and ran to water. The frozen flowers beneath woke all at once, red and pink, lifting their heads from a sleep of many winters. The supernatural cold lifted from the dead soil. Briar felt it leave the ground beneath her feet. The spell was broken. But Celestine was nearly gone. The goddess gathered the fading spirit into her arms. "Don't hold me here," Celestine whispered, finding her voice at last. "I only stayed to guard the garden. It is saved now. Let me rest." The goddess bowed her head. She touched her lips to the spirit's pale brow. The unicorn strand at the stone flared once, bright as sunlight on snow, then went dark. Celestine's outline scattered like petals in wind and was gone. Briar stood very still. The goddess remained kneeling in the thawed soil, her hands empty. For a long moment neither spoke. The fox kit padded to the goddess and pressed against her knee. She laid one hand on its silver-flame fur. "She is not lost," the goddess said quietly. "Her garden lives. Every bloom carries a little of her now." She looked up at Briar for the first time. "You kept your word. You woke them before the cold season ended." Briar looked across the garden. The frozen stone planters now overflowed with living flowers, red and pink and full. Ice moss greened the cracks. Pale hellebore nodded between the frost-flowers. The soil, barren for so long, was dark and ready. Seeds would take root here again. "I didn't do it to break the spell," Briar said. "I only wanted the flowers to bloom." The goddess rose. "You did both." The goddess walked to the thawing stone and brushed her fingers across the pink blossoms, as if feeling for the spirit she had lost. Then she turned toward the ice cave and the dark glade below, and was gone between one breath and the next. The fox kit stayed. It wound around Briar's ankles and looked up at her, the moons on its fur glowing soft. Briar knelt in the warm soil and gathered the fox kit into her arms. The garden she had found half-buried and dead now breathed around her, alive with color on the high slope. The blooming season would end when the cold did, as it always had. But the soil was free now, and the flowers would return each year without a sleeping spell to steal them. Briar was not alone anymore. She had the garden, and the small warm creature in her arms, and a friend remembered in every bloom. She stayed until the moon rose, and then she began to tend them.