Briar Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

The new moss had taken root at the cave's edge. But the spring's water ran low. Briar knelt at the cave mouth and watched the pool inside. Yesterday it had covered the stone. Today bare rock showed at the rim. The water she needed to spread the moss grove-wide was draining faster than she could use it. She dipped her hands and lifted what she could. Half of it slid through her fingers before she reached the dry soil outside. She tried a leaf, then a curl of bark. Both leaked. By the third trip her arms shook and the dry patches drank her handfuls without a trace. She sat back, wet to the elbows, and stared at the shrinking pool. She had no vessel. Nothing to carry water in. The moss would die dry while the spring emptied. "You're bailing a lake with your hands." Oberon stood at the cave mouth, black against the daylight. The fae king had taught her every hard rule of the spring, and never once softened one. He did not step in to help. He looked at the pool, then at her ruined sleeves. "The water isn't the problem. Your method is." "Then tell me," Briar said. "No." He crouched. "Look at the walls." She looked. Water threaded down the cracked stone in bright, glassy lines, gathering, spilling, gathering again. It did not pool and sit. It moved. It carried itself along the rock without a single hand to lift it. Briar understood. She had been fighting the water. She should follow it. She scraped a shallow channel in the wet soil from the cave mouth outward, toward the nearest dead patch. The winged cat padded beside her, tail flicking at the trickle that began to run. The first channel reached the dry soil and sank in too fast. The water vanished before it spread. She lined the next channel with the resilient moss she carried, the dense kind that held water in its body like a sponge. This time the water crept along the green, slow and held, and soaked out sideways into the dead ground on both banks. By dusk she had four channels running from the cave. Green threads followed each one. She had stopped carrying water and started guiding it, and it reached ground her hands never could. Oberon watched the last channel fill. "It works." "It works," Briar said. "For now." He stood. "You're spreading the moss faster. You're also spending the spring faster." He nodded at the pool, lower than when he'd come. "Every channel drinks. The more grove you cover, the sooner the water runs out. Before your moss can renew what you take." Briar looked at the four bright lines feeding the grove, then at the sinking pool that fed them. She had solved how to spread the moss. Now the spring itself was running dry beneath her.