Mirella Blackthorn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Mirella took three steps past the weeping stones before the garden noticed her. The air tightened. The willows above her stopped drifting and hung still. She felt the ground read her boots and know whose weight it carried. She did not stop. She had left the mirror behind and the black knot in her chest was quiet for once, held under the boundary stones like a held breath. Laurel stood ahead through the trees, hands clamped over her stone face. Mirella walked toward her. The first vine came out of the grass and touched her ankle. Deep blue, wet-looking, thin as a finger. Another followed, then a dozen. They wove up out of the dark grass in a knot that spread as fast as spilled water. She looked past the tangle and saw where it fed from: a dark hall of grey figures set with glowing cracks, its walls sleeved in the same blue vine. The garden was pulling its defense from that building. She raised her hands, palms open, and kept walking. She would not burn it. She had done enough burning. "I'm not here to hurt her," Mirella said. The vines heard her and did not care. One looped her boot and pulled. She stumbled, caught herself, tore her foot free. Cracked stones near the path bled brighter indigo down their sides, feeding the growth at her feet. She stepped over the wet knot and pressed on. She kept her hands loose. Every time the dark magic stirred behind her ribs she pushed it back down toward the boundary stones behind her. Work with it, she told herself. Do not fight it. She was ten paces from Laurel when the ground broke open. A mass of gnarled roots and blue vine shot up in front of her, thick as a tree trunk, folded on itself like a fist. It slammed into her chest before she could turn. She went down hard on her back. The wind left her. The tangled growth bent over her and lowered, ropes of vine spreading across her arms, her legs, her throat. She could not lift her head. She could see Laurel through a gap in the vines, stone hands still locked over stone eyes. Mirella stopped fighting. She let her arms go slack under the vines. She spoke up into the leaves, quiet, so only the garden would hear. "I put her there. I came to take it back." The vine at her throat paused. It did not loosen, but it did not tighten either. Somewhere above, a willow shifted its branches. The garden was listening now. It had her pinned, and it had heard her, and those were two different things. She lay still under its weight and waited for it to decide.