Sylvania Greenwhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sylvania Greenwhisper had healed a hundred wounded animals, but she could not heal a burned forest. She knelt over a scorched map of Ravensnarl, pressing her palm to the black edges where loggers had cut deep. Her fingers left green smudges on the bark-paper. Only the spirit-court could grant the forest permanent sanctuary. She needed a pact with them. But she did not know how to call them, and every day the axes came closer. Her fox pressed against her knee. He was a sleek, shadow-furred creature with small horns and pale glowing eyes. He whined and nosed the map. Sylvania scratched his ears without thinking. "I've tried everything," she told him. "Old songs. Offerings of blooms. Nothing answers." She had even begged the flower-shaped fairy plants near her tree, whose petal-winged forms swayed but never spoke. The spirit-court stayed silent. Without a way to reach them, her plan died before it started. A voice cut through the branches below. "You're singing the summoning wrong." Sylvania stiffened. A gray wolf stood at the base of her oak, a small lute slung across his chest and a purple feather in his cap. Aldric Songweaver. Wolves rarely climbed this deep into the forest, and bards never did. She had heard his songs traded at the forest's edge. Some claimed he remembered rites older than the trees. "You've been listening," she said. "For an hour." He grinned and climbed the rope ladder without asking. His boots knocked against the boards. "Your pitch is fine. Your intent is wrong. The spirit-court doesn't come for pretty songs. They come for a name spoken in their own tongue." Sylvania's chest tightened. "You know the name." "I know the rite." Aldric unslung his lute. "But it isn't free, witch. Nothing a wolf gives is free." She studied him. He wanted something. Everyone did. But the axes wanted more, and they were louder. "Teach me," she said. "I'll pay your price when the forest still stands to pay it with." He laughed, then his ears flattened, serious. "Bring me a token of living wood and blood." He nodded at her fox. "A drop from something bound to you. The court answers pacts, not prayers." Sylvania pricked her own thumb with a thorn. She let the blood fall onto a fresh oak leaf. Then Aldric began to play, low and strange, and taught her three words she had never heard. She repeated them. The air grew cold. The fairy plants outside went still. Something answered. A sound rose beneath the floorboards, deep as roots grinding stone. The fox bristled. The three words hung in the air, and the forest itself seemed to lean toward her tree, waiting. "They heard you," Aldric whispered. His grin was gone. "Now they're coming. And the court does not come gently to those who call without knowing what they've asked."