Faelith Nymwren's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The pillar's warmth faded behind them, and Faelith stopped at the edge of the clearing. She pressed her palm to a healed trunk. Whole, still whole. But three steps past the moss, the black rot began again. "It only reaches this far," she said. The harmony lived in the stone, not in her hands. The heart-tree waited days ahead. She had no way to carry this healing there. "Then we learn to carry it ourselves," Caelan said. He held out his hand. "Ask and give at once. You said it. We practice until it holds without the pillar." They walked and worked as they went. Faelith would coax green up a trunk. Caelan would press his palm beside hers and give his strength instead of forcing his order. The first tree cracked black by noon. The tenth held through the afternoon. By dusk their two magics moved as one, and the healing stayed. Then the ground turned wrong. The path dropped to a pond gone black as tar. No lilies. No shine. The water bubbled thick and slow. Above it hovered a tiny pixie, her leaf clothes shadowed near to black, her wings torn and threaded with red veins. Her one open eye was a pit. She hissed and darted at Faelith's face. "She's sick," Faelith said, ducking. "Not evil. The rot has her." She raised both hands. "Caelan. Together. Now." They knelt at the edge. Faelith asked the water to remember what it was. Caelan poured his strength beneath her asking, holding the healing in place so the rot could not creep back. The black fought them. It swallowed the green. Faelith gasped and pushed on. Hour after hour they held, hands touching, magic braided into one. The pixie shrieked and thrashed above them. Faelith did not stop. She reached the same asking toward the small twisted figure. "Come back," she whispered. "You're safe now." The sun sank. Faelith's arms shook. Her chest burned empty. She had nothing left, and she gave it anyway. The black drained out of the pond in one long pull. Water flushed clear. Lilies unfurled pink and open. The pixie dropped from the air, her wings whole and glowing soft green, and landed light on a lily pad. She blinked both clear eyes and dipped her head. "It stayed," Caelan breathed. "Without the stone. We did it without the stone." Something rose from the pond floor. A staff, blue crystal at its crown, humming toward Caelan. He waded in and closed his hand around it. It flared bright at his touch. The pixie flew to Faelith and set a small pendant in her palm. A weathered leaf, green light waking inside it. It pulsed in time with Faelith's own magic. Faelith closed her fingers around the warm leaf. They no longer needed the pillar. They could carry the healing themselves now, all the way to the heart-tree.