Winter Flint's Arc

Chapter 15 of 18

The council moved fast once Durgan said plant. Winter climbed back up through the tunnel with the relics in his arms. Above ground, the sky was already dimming. Esmerelda met him at the storehouse with a bundle of cuttings. "Heartwood shoots," she said. "All I had. Forty." Winter looked at the dying trees along the ridge and knew forty would not be enough. Liri flew low along the root paths, marking where the rot had eaten through. She landed on his shoulder. "The west line is gone. The south will go by dawn." She said it the way she said all hard things. Flat. True. "We cannot plant everywhere. Pick." Thyrsus arrived with a dozen of his revel-folk carrying spades and bark-bound saplings. "Tell us where," he said. No flourish. He had heard the shape of the night. Winter spread Esmerelda's map on the stone slab. The rot showed as black ink. The seal's cage showed as green. Between them ran the heart tree's roots. Madrigal's ghost stood beside him. She looked at the map a long moment. "The oak holds the center," she said. "If the center holds, the rest can be rebuilt. If it goes, nothing else matters." Her voice did not change. But Winter knew what she was offering. The outer groves. The eastern slope. Her own old grove on the south ridge. All of it, traded for the one tree. Winter looked at Esmerelda. At Liri. At the bound figure of Morgatha watching from the wall. "We plant the ring around the heart tree," he said. "Only the ring. We let the rest burn." Esmerelda's jaw tightened. She nodded once. Liri lifted off without a word. Morgatha gave a small, dry sound, not a laugh this time. Something closer to recognition. They worked through the night. Forty shoots in a tight circle around the oldest oak, roots laced into the old cage lines. By the time the sky turned gray, the south ridge was black and the eastern slope was steaming. But the ring held. Winter sat down in the dirt beside the heart tree and felt it pull, slow and steady, against the thing below. He had saved one tree and lost a forest. The council was still standing. For now, that had to be enough.