Demeter pressed her green-scaled hands against the sick maple and poured her healing into its roots. The gray rot retreated. New leaves pushed out. Then, three breaths later, the blight crept back over the bark, darker than before. She sank to her knees in the leaf litter. Her arms shook. All through the Mystic Maple Woods, the ancient trees were dying, and she had come to wake their sleeping spirit and save them. But she could not heal one tree without burning through all she had. She counted the trees around her. Forty, maybe fifty, all streaked with rot. She had enough strength left for two, if she was lucky. The blight spread faster than her hands could mend. One healer against a whole dying wood was no match at all. She needed more power, or every tree she touched would rot again the moment she walked away. She remembered her grandmother's lesson. A single flame burns out. Feed it, and it holds. Demeter needed to feed her power. She searched the wood until dark. Under the moon, a pale flower unfolded on a slender stem. Its petals glowed with a soft silver light, cool against the sick dark of the trees. She had read of this bloom. It drank moonlight and held it. She cut one stem and carried it back to her pack. She worked by the light of the glowing flower. She crushed its petals into a cup. She added sunflower heads for steady warmth, woodland herbs for root and stem, and bright maple leaves gathered from the healthy trees. She ground them together until the mix turned to paste, then poured in spring water. The liquid caught a faint light and held it, glowing from inside the cup like trapped moonlight. Demeter drank. The glow spread through her chest and down her arms. She felt steady, full, like a river instead of a cup. She turned back to the maple she had failed. She laid her hands on the bark and pushed her power through it. This time the healing did not fade. The rot pulled back and stayed back. Green climbed the trunk and held. She moved to the next tree, and the next. Her strength did not drain away. The elixir fed it. By dawn she had healed a whole stand of maples, and they stood green and whole. She had found her stronger source. But her hands trembled now with a new fear. She looked at the wood stretching past the stand, hill after hill of rotting trees, more than she could ever reach on foot. The blight was spreading toward the oldest maples, the ones that held the sleeping spirit she had come to wake. She could heal faster now. She still could not travel fast enough. If she walked, the spirit would die before she reached it.

Demeter stood at the edge of the healed stand and looked at the hills beyond. Rot climbed every slope. Somewhere past them slept the spirit she had come to wake, and the blight crawled toward it faster than her feet could carry her. She tightened the strap of her pack. The glowing potion bumped against her hip. Enough power to heal. No way to reach the trees in time. She started walking anyway, because standing still would help no one. A shadow slid across the leaves. She looked up. A huge beast dropped through a gap in the canopy and landed hard between two maples. It had the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. Its feathers were white and brown, fluffed at the neck. It fixed her with a sharp yellow stare and screeched. Demeter froze. The sound rattled her teeth. The beast lowered its head and stepped toward her, talons raking the dirt. Then she saw its leg. A black vein of rot ran up one foreleg, and the limb trembled under its weight. The griffon screeched again, but the cry broke into a whine. It was not hunting her. It was hurting. "Easy," Demeter said. She held out her green-scaled hands, palms open. "I can help that. Let me close." The griffon snapped its beak near her face. She did not step back. She knelt instead, slow, and set her hands on the sick leg. The beast went still. She uncorked the potion and drank a swallow. The glow spread through her arms. She pushed her power into the rotting limb. The black vein shrank. New feathers pushed through where the skin had gone gray. The griffon shuddered, then let out a low sound, almost a purr. It bent its front legs and lowered its back toward her. The meaning was plain. Demeter stared. "You want me to ride?" She climbed onto its back and gripped the thick feathers at its neck. The griffon spread its wings and beat them once, twice. The ground dropped away. Wind tore at her dress. Below, the dying wood unrolled in every direction, hill after hill of gray trees. The griffon banked toward the oldest maples at the far edge, and the distance that would have taken days shrank to a single flight. Demeter laughed from fright and joy at once. She had her speed now. She pressed the potion to her chest so it would not fall. But as the griffon carried her over the ruined hills, she saw how far the rot had already spread. Gray reached the oldest trees ahead, the ones that held the spirit. She could fly to them now. The question was whether she still had time to heal what she found there.