Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 29

The water ran clear into her channels now. Two green patches drank their fill. But past them the ground lay dead and wide, all rock and dust. Sage needed soil to fill it. She had asked Terros to wake more stone, and he had crouched by the edge of the plot with his arms crossed. "I have woken enough," Terros said. His voice was low and hard. "You want a garden that swallows the whole ridge. I will not keep breaking my ground for you." The silver buck stood at his side, ears flat. "Prove you can feed dead earth yourself. Then I will believe you deserve the rest. Fail, and your garden stays this small." Sage held his stare. He was stubborn, and she knew arguing would only harden him. So she went to her shed instead. From a high shelf she took down her old spell book. Its leather cover was worn soft, its edges marked with painted leaves. She carried it to the barren plot and knelt in the dust. She turned the pages slowly. She had read them for years, but never for this. Near the back she found a spell she had always skipped. It asked the caster to give life from her own hands to feed the soil. The book warned it would drain her. Sage pressed both palms flat against the cold rock. She read the words aloud. Her glow, the light she carried as goddess of herbs, dimmed at her fingers. Warmth left her arms and sank into the ground. The dead earth drank it. She felt her strength pour out like water down her channels. The stone under her hands darkened. Dust turned to damp brown soil. It spread from her fingers in a slow circle. Sage kept reading, though her voice shook and her vision blurred. The patch widened. When she finally stopped, a broad ring of rich earth lay beneath her, soft and living. She swayed. Terros stepped forward and caught her arm before she fell. He looked at the new soil, then at her pale face. The buck lowered its head and sniffed the fresh ground. "You did it," Terros said. His stern voice had gone quiet. "You fed the earth with your own life. I did not think you would." "I told you I would earn it," Sage said. She could barely lift her head. Terros helped her sit. "Then I will wake the rest," he said. "You have shown me enough." He pressed his hand to the plot, and stone shifted and softened far past her small ring. Sage looked at the wide new soil, more than she had ever had. But her hands trembled, and her glow stayed dim. The spell had cost her. She had the earth now, and the water. Yet she was too weak to plant a single seed, and her body would need to heal before her garden could grow.