Sylvara Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sylvara Nightshade knelt in the dead soil and pushed her fingers past the crust. The dirt came up gray. A year ago this grove glowed under the moon, and the fairies danced between mushroom rings that pulsed like small blue lanterns. Then the rings rotted. The fairies left. Now Sylvara was the only one still trying to bring the grove back, and she had one seed left in her pouch. Her red-skinned hands shook as she pressed the seed into the hole. She was an elf raised on this grove's magic. Without it, her people had no reason to return from the far keep where they had scattered. She patted the soil closed and waited. The seed sprouted in seconds. A pale green shoot rose, uncurled two leaves, then blackened at the tip. The rot crawled down the stem. In under a minute the shoot was ash. Sylvara sat back on her heels. Above her, a bat with red butterfly-patterned wings dropped from a branch and circled her head. He landed on her shoulder and chittered at the dead sprout. She had raised him from a pup. He knew the sound of her failing. "The soil is sick," she told him. "Planting won't work. Not until I clean it." She stood. She had been trying the wrong thing for weeks. Seeds could not fight the blight. She needed something older than seeds. At the grove's edge stood one tree the rot had not touched. Its leaves were pale blue and green, dusted with a fine shimmer, and dark vines wound up its trunk. Her grandmother had called it the last honest tree in the grove. Sylvara had never dared cut it. She drew her knife and walked to it. The bat clung to her shoulder. She chose a low branch wrapped in vine and sawed until sap ran clear. The sap smelled like cold water. She carried the branch back to the dead patch and stripped its leaves into her palm. She crushed them with the sap and worked the paste into the gray dirt with both hands. The soil hissed. Steam rose. Where her hands passed, the gray darkened to brown. She pulled her last spare seed from a fold in her belt and planted it in the treated patch. It sprouted. It kept its color. Two leaves opened and stayed green. Sylvara breathed out. The bat launched from her shoulder and swung a wide circle over the patch. Then she looked at the rest of the grove. The treated patch was the size of a dinner plate. The blight covered acres. She had stripped a quarter of the shimmering tree to clean that plate. She counted the branches left and did the math twice. There was not enough tree to save the grove. To get more, she would have to leave the grove and go to the keep where her people had fled.