Liora Glittering's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Liora stopped at the edge of the field. Gray smoke rolled toward her feet. She held her breath and stepped in. The smoke touched her bare arms at once. Her skin stung and blistered. She stumbled back out, coughing. Two steps had been enough to buy fresh pain. She could not search like this. She would fall long before she found the tree. "You always jump in first and think never," a voice said behind her. Liora turned. Aurora stood there, unbothered by the smoke that curled around her ankles. Rainbow hair spilled down her sparkling dress. She was Liora's oldest friend, and the one person Liora's messes never seemed to touch. The smoke slid off Aurora's skin like water off glass. Liora felt both glad and small. Aurora had warned her about the fire days ago. Liora had lit it anyway. "The smoke burns me," Liora said. "I can't go in." Aurora walked past her into the gray haze. She pointed. "Then use what's already in there." Two trees stood in the field. One had broad green leaves on slender branches. The other had a twisted trunk shaped almost like a body, its bark carved with a watching face. Its dark leaves hid small green fruit. "The stinging one," Aurora said, nodding at the broad-leafed tree. "Its poison fights the smoke. But its leaves burn worse than the smoke does." Liora's stomach dropped. Trading one pain for another. "How does that help me?" "It doesn't." Aurora pointed at the twisted tree. "That one does. Its sap coats skin. Nothing gets through it. Not smoke. Not stings." The twisted tree turned its carved face toward them. Its branches tensed. It did not want to be touched. Liora swallowed. She had made every wrong choice today. She could make one right one. She walked to the twisted tree, hands open, palms up. "I burned your field," she said. "I'm sorry. I need your sap to fix it." The tree stared. Its roots shifted in the dirt. Then, slowly, it lowered one branch. A drop of thick sap welled from a crack in its bark. Liora caught the sap in her cupped hands. It was cool and gray-green. She rubbed it over her arms, her legs, her blistered feet. Her skin tingled, then went numb to the smoke. She stepped fully into the field. The gray haze curled against her and slid away. No new burns came. Aurora smiled. "See? You can listen when you try." Liora stood in the poison field, safe at last, and looked at the stinging tree. Its leaves held the cure the town needed. But to gather them, she would have to break its burning branches with her own coated hands. The tree's leaves shivered, as if it knew what she meant to do.