Demeter's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Demeter pressed her green-scaled hands against the sick maple and poured her healing into its roots. The gray rot retreated. New leaves pushed out. Then, three breaths later, the blight crept back over the bark, darker than before. She sank to her knees in the leaf litter. Her arms shook. All through the Mystic Maple Woods, the ancient trees were dying, and she had come to wake their sleeping spirit and save them. But she could not heal one tree without burning through all she had. She counted the trees around her. Forty, maybe fifty, all streaked with rot. She had enough strength left for two, if she was lucky. The blight spread faster than her hands could mend. One healer against a whole dying wood was no match at all. She needed more power, or every tree she touched would rot again the moment she walked away. She remembered her grandmother's lesson. A single flame burns out. Feed it, and it holds. Demeter needed to feed her power. She searched the wood until dark. Under the moon, a pale flower unfolded on a slender stem. Its petals glowed with a soft silver light, cool against the sick dark of the trees. She had read of this bloom. It drank moonlight and held it. She cut one stem and carried it back to her pack. She worked by the light of the glowing flower. She crushed its petals into a cup. She added sunflower heads for steady warmth, woodland herbs for root and stem, and bright maple leaves gathered from the healthy trees. She ground them together until the mix turned to paste, then poured in spring water. The liquid caught a faint light and held it, glowing from inside the cup like trapped moonlight. Demeter drank. The glow spread through her chest and down her arms. She felt steady, full, like a river instead of a cup. She turned back to the maple she had failed. She laid her hands on the bark and pushed her power through it. This time the healing did not fade. The rot pulled back and stayed back. Green climbed the trunk and held. She moved to the next tree, and the next. Her strength did not drain away. The elixir fed it. By dawn she had healed a whole stand of maples, and they stood green and whole. She had found her stronger source. But her hands trembled now with a new fear. She looked at the wood stretching past the stand, hill after hill of rotting trees, more than she could ever reach on foot. The blight was spreading toward the oldest maples, the ones that held the sleeping spirit she had come to wake. She could heal faster now. She still could not travel fast enough. If she walked, the spirit would die before she reached it.