Fladrif's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

The forest woke faster than Fladrif could follow. New roots pushed out in every direction under the stone. He knelt where he had given his heartbeat and listened. The sound was everywhere now, a tangle of young growth reaching blind. Somewhere beneath it lay the last patch of soil still sleeping. He could not find it. The waking roots drowned out the quiet ground he needed to reach next. His forest inside him ran thin, and he could not spend more. Kjell crouched beside him again, palm flat to the dust. "Too much noise down there," he said. "You can't hear the dead soil under the live roots." He stood. "I can't help with this one. It's yours." He said no more. Two other ents came out of the young trees. Fladrif knew them at once. The first walked heavy and slow, his bark seamed like a face that had wept for years. Elmwood. He had lost his own grove long ago and never planted again. The second moved fast, too fast, his eyes burning red. Bregalad, called the hasty one. His eyes had turned that color the day axes came for a tree he could not save. "You woke it wrong," Bregalad said. "Too wide. Too wide." He pushed his hand into the soil and pulled it back. "The roots run everywhere. They won't stop. They'll pass the sleeping ground and leave it dead." Fladrif felt the truth of it. The young forest reached past the last dormant patch without touching it. "I gave it my beat," he said. "Now I cannot steer where it grows." Elmwood knelt and pressed both hands down. "I left a tree once," he said, quiet. "Told myself I'd come back. I never did." He looked at Fladrif. "Don't leave this one to grow blind. Give it a place to reach for." Fladrif understood then. He had shared a heartbeat. He had not given the forest a direction. He drove his fingers deep and searched for the one silent spot the roots ignored. There. Faint, cold, still asleep, off to one side. He could not force his own failing grove to point that way. But he could ask. He took Bregalad's hand and Elmwood's, and pressed them flat to the soil beside his own. "Feel for the cold ground," he said. "The place the roots leave alone. Pull the growth toward it. Three of us, not one." The two ents leaned in. Fladrif felt their grief and their strength move down through the dust. The blind roots slowed. They turned. Slowly, they bent toward the last sleeping soil and pushed in. The cold ground stirred. A single shoot broke through it. Fladrif drew back his hand. The sleeping patch was found and fed. But the forest was vast now, and three tired ents could not tend it all. He looked at the young trees spreading past sight. Something new moved beneath them, deeper than roots, and it was not asleep.