Serena Hollow's Arc

Chapter 13 of 5

The tree woke behind Serena. Silver veins in the bark flared bright. Roots shifted in the soil like waking hands, and the spring at the trunk's base rippled without wind. The white blossoms around the clearing opened wider. Serena felt heat pour from her pendant. She turned from the carved letters and faced the great trunk. Silas grabbed her arm. "Don't move," he said. His voice was flat, but his hand shook. "When it wakes, it feeds. That's what your mother learned." Serena looked at him. In all the running, she had never seen him afraid. Now the fear sat plain on his face. He had carried this map sixteen years to keep anyone from standing here. She understood why. But the tree was not reaching for her throat. It was reaching for her hands. The branches bent low. A shape leaned out of the bark, part stag, part shadow, woven from blackwood and drifting mist. Cold silver eyes found her. It was the same shape as the hunter at the tree line, but calm, unhurried. The creature lowered its antlered head and bowed to her. "Serena." Silas pulled harder. "It's choosing you. The next guardian. Your mother ran from this. Run with me." "She didn't run from the tree," Serena said. "She ran from the choice. She didn't want me trapped here." The pendant burned against her skin, warm the way it went when it answered something near. It had been answering this tree all along. "But I'm already here. And it isn't a trap if I say yes." "You don't know what yes costs." "Neither did she. That's why she left." Serena stepped free of his grip. The spectral creature held its bow, waiting. She crossed the mossy stones to the spring. Her reflection wavered on the calm water. Behind it, the tree's silver light steadied, no longer flaring, as if it had asked and now waited on her word. She pressed her palm flat against the trunk. The bark was warm. The letters her mother carved ran under her fingers. "I accept," she said. The light did not burn her. It ran up her arm and settled into the markings on her skin. The creature straightened. The blossoms around the whole clearing brightened at once, and at the tree line the hunter screamed and drew back, driven off by the flare. Serena felt the clearing shift under her. She was part of it now. She could feel every root, every stone, the water in the spring. She could feel the boundary that held the hunter out, and she knew it would hold as long as she tended it. Silas stared at her. "You can't leave now." "I know." She looked at the spring, then at him. Her mother had stood here and chosen to walk away. Serena had chosen to stay. "But I'm still alive. And the tree remembers her. It can tell me what she never got to."