Briar Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

The shrub had held for three days. On the fourth, Briar knelt at the spring and saw the blossoms had gone brown. The roots under the black water had shrunk to threads. She pressed her palm to her old scar. It ached, warm, a pull she knew too well. The spring was looking for her again. She stood and ran to her beds. The winged cat trotted at her heels, and behind it came the fairy hound, gray and quick, its butterfly wings folding as it ran. Both animals had stayed close since the binding first drained her. She reached the strongest plants she owned, five of them, thick-stemmed, their leaves marked with faint runes. Their roots gripped the soil like fists. Living. Hers. Strong enough, maybe, to hold what a shrub could not. She dug the first one free. The pull under her ribs sharpened. Blood beaded at her scar. She had minutes now, not hours. A shadow fell across the bed. Oberon stood on the shimmering stones that led into the grove, his black clothes still, his topaz eyes on her bleeding hand. He had taught her the bargain and warned her the shrub would fail. Now he watched her scramble. "That won't hold either," he said. "It has to." She lifted the plant toward the basin. "Roots aren't enough." He crossed the stones. From his cloak he drew a cluster of fruit, round and glowing, each one veined with light. "The spring wants life. Not just a body. These carry more life than a whole bed of yours." Briar stared at the fruit. "Why give me those?" "Because I need your soil working, not you dead in it." He held them out. "Feed one to the plant. Root the fruit with it. Then offer both." She did not have time to weigh it. She split a fruit and pressed the halves against the plant's roots. The glow sank into the stem. The runes on the leaves flared bright. She carried the whole thing, fruit and root and soil, to the spring and tipped it in. The black water pulled it down. The plant's roots spread fast, drinking the fruit's light, swelling thicker than the shrub had ever grown. The glow spread through the basin. The pull under Briar's ribs snapped loose. Her scar cooled. The blood stopped. She fell back on the moss, breathing hard. The cat pressed to her side. The hound lay across her legs. The spring glowed steady, fed now by something that would not wither in days. Oberon looked at the four fruits left in his hand, then closed his fingers over them. "That will hold longer," he said. "Weeks, not days." He turned toward the stones. "But it's still borrowed life. When the fruit burns out, the plant dies with it. And the spring comes back to you." He walked into the grove. "Find something that lives on its own."