Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 29

Sage knelt over her one living patch. The magic can rested in the grass beside her. She had water now, but water alone could not wake stone. Terros had made his terms plain. He woke one patch and would not stir again until she proved she could nurture what he gave her. If she failed that patch, he would lose faith in her effort. So she poured, and she watched, and she waited. The glimmerseed sprout stood in the dark loam. Its curled leaves glowed faint gold. But the shoot leaned sideways. The tip browned. Water kept the roots wet, yet something in the young plant sagged. Sage pressed the soil, checked the light, moved the sprout out of the wind. Nothing helped. The leaves drooped lower by the hour. She sat back, out of ideas. Her fingers brushed the book at her hip. It was her old book of poems, worn soft at the corners. She had read to plants since she was young. She had forgotten it these last hard days. She opened the cover and began to read aloud. Her voice was quiet at first. She read of green hills and long rains. She read of roots that held through winter. The sprout did not move. She read on anyway, because it steadied her hands. By the second poem her glow warmed and spread down into the loam. The brown tip of the shoot lifted. One curled leaf opened flat. The sprout drank the water she poured and straightened toward her voice. It was not the can that saved it. It was her care, given whole. The ground rumbled. Terros rose from the earth at the edge of the patch. Soil clung to his beard and his green robe. His hard brown eyes went from the standing sprout to the open book in her lap. He said nothing for a long moment. "You fed it more than water," he said. His voice was rough as gravel. "I felt it move the soil." "It was dying," Sage said. "I gave it what I had." Terros crouched and touched the loam. A slow nod bent his head. "Stubborn work. Good work." He looked at her the way he looked at the buck that followed him, wary but softened. "You kept my gift alive. I will wake more." He pressed both palms flat to the barren stone. The rock groaned. Cracks ran outward, and the gray dust turned to dark earth in a wide new square beside her first. Then he stopped. He stood and brushed his hands. "This much," he said. "No more today. The rest waits on the rest of your care." He sank into the ground and was gone. Sage stared at the fresh soil. It was larger than she had hoped, and drier already at its center. She had two patches now, and one can that fed only one.