Briar Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 9

For three months Briar Willowshade had watched the moss groves of Quietmoss lose their color, and for weeks she had knelt in the dead roots, clawing at them alone. She knew every inch of these groves. She had learned to tend them by watching, season after season, with no one to teach her. Now the green had drained from the moss, and she still didn't know why. Beneath the roots lay a buried heart-spring. If she could wake it, the groves would live. So would she. She refused to think about the other ending. Today she reached the spring itself. Her fingers tore the last roots away, and she pressed both hands to the cold stone basin. She pushed. She whispered. She sang the way she sang to new moss. Nothing stirred. The water below stayed dark and still. Briar sat back in the dirt. Her hands were raw. All these weeks she had believed the only problem was the roots. Now the roots were gone, and the spring slept on. She had no idea how to wake it. She had never even heard how such a thing was done. A shape stepped from the tree line. He was young, dressed all in black, with a thin scar over his lip. His topaz eyes moved over the dead moss, then to her hands, then to the black water. Briar rose fast. She did not know this stranger, and she did not like how quietly he had come. "You're pushing," he said. "A heart-spring doesn't wake from force." "Who are you?" "Oberon Nightshade." He gave the name like a door closing. "King of the Court of Dusk." Briar had heard of that court, far off and cold. She had never expected its king in her ruined grove. "Then you know how to wake it." He knelt at the basin without asking. He didn't push. He didn't sing. He drew a small cut across his own palm and let one drop of blood fall into the water. "A heart-spring wakes for a heart," he said. "Something living, freely given. Not effort. A cost." The water shivered. A single thread of green light rose through it and touched the nearest moss. That patch turned bright again, alive. Briar's breath caught. For the first time in three months, something had changed. "Show me. Teach me how." Oberon stood. He pressed his cut hand shut and looked at the moon behind the trees. "I don't have time to teach." He paused. "But I need something that grows in soil like this. Wake your spring for me, and I'll tell you how." He walked back toward the trees before she could answer. Briar looked at the one living patch of moss, then at the sleeping water that had swallowed his blood. She had her answer at last. It came with his price attached.