Briar Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

The green in the moss was already fading. Briar knelt over the one bright patch Oberon's blood had woken. When he cut his palm, the color had flared. Now it dimmed again, sliding back toward gray. She pressed her fingers to it. Cold. She had hours, maybe less, before the last living moss died with the rest. She ran to the small farm at the edge of the grove. Its beds held everything she had coaxed from this soil. She tore through them. A cluster of fungi with wide caps. A shrub thick with blossoms. She had grown all of it by giving it care, day after day. Care wasn't enough now. Oberon had been clear. The spring wanted a cost. Something living, freely given. A branch cracked behind her. Oberon stepped from the trees again. He had not gone far. His topaz eyes moved from her raw hands to the fading patch. "It's dying," she said. "You revived it and it's dying anyway." "One drop wakes one patch. For a moment." He looked at the black water. "The whole spring needs more." "Then cut deeper. Give more." "No." The word landed flat. "My blood isn't free. It's owed elsewhere." He shut the topic like a door. Briar looked at her farm, then at her own hands. She understood. He had shown her the rule. He would not pay it for her. This was hers to answer. She walked back to the basin. She knelt. The bright patch was nearly gray now. She thought of the roots she had clawed for weeks, believing effort would be enough. Effort had never been the price. She drew a shard of stone across her palm. It bit. Blood welled dark. She held her hand over the water and did not push, did not sing. She let it fall. One drop. Two. She gave it because she wanted the groves to live more than she feared what it took. The water shivered. Then it moved on its own. Green light climbed through it, wider than before, and spread across the dead moss in a slow tide. Color returned to the patch under her knees, then past it, up the roots of the grove. Not all of it. But more than a moment's worth. The tide held. Briar sat back, cradling her cut hand. The spring had answered her, not just Oberon. She had woken it herself. Oberon watched the green spread. Something crossed his face and vanished. "It took your blood freely," he said. "That means it's yours now. And it will keep asking." The light dimmed to a steady glow, not dead, not full. Briar felt the pull under her ribs, faint and certain. The spring was awake. It had tasted her. And it was not finished.