Fladrif's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

The door was shut. Half the new roots stood on the far side, cut off from the ones here. Fladrif knelt at the fallen ash trunk and pressed his palms to the soil. He listened for the old ironwood's pulse. It came slow and thin. He had spent too much driving the beast through. The roots on this side would stall soon if he could not force the passage open again. He tried once. He reached for the deep pulse and pushed. Nothing rose. His arms shook and dropped. "You have nothing left," Elmwood said. He crouched beside Fladrif and set one hand on the cold trunk. Last winter men cut his sapling while he slept. He knew the cost of waking too tired to move. "Rest, or the roots die here." "There is no rest," Fladrif said. "If I stop, the ground goes quiet. Everything we woke sleeps again." Bregalad stood over them both. His red eyes fixed on the sealed trunk. He had warned his own kind of the axes and no one listened. He never waited now. "Then do not push," he said. "Do not push. Pull." Fladrif looked up. "Pull." "The far roots are strong," Bregalad said. "You broke yourself feeding them. Let them feed you. Let them feed you back." Fladrif understood. He had poured himself into the ground beyond the door. Now that ground was full and green. If he stopped forcing and instead opened, the strength might flow back through the old ironwood's buried line, under the closed door, to him. "They are connected still," Fladrif said. "Under the trunk. Root to root. The door shut the light. It did not cut the roots below." "Then reach down," Elmwood said. "Not up." They joined hands. Fladrif stopped pushing. He let his weight sink into the deep line and held it open. For a moment nothing moved. Then he felt the far forest touch him. Water and pulse came back along the old roots, under the sealed door, into the tired ground on this side. His arms warmed. The thin pulse grew. The roots on this side did not stall. They drank from the far side and steadied. The two grounds fed each other now through the buried line, one closed door between them. Fladrif opened his eyes. The soil under his hands was firm and awake. "It holds," he said. "Both sides live." But he felt the pull go the other way too. Something on the far side drank harder than the roots did. The beast stood on that ground. It had drunk its fill of water. Now it drank the pulse. The line that saved him ran straight to it, and the beast had found the taste.