The Schism
Part Three
Timmain knew something was terribly wrong when she looked up at the walls of the Eighth Shell. All across the curving rock of her inner sanctum, the many symbols of the worldsong were slowly changing to a repeating pattern of leaves and vines.
* * *
Foxglove wiggled her toes inside her boots. She clenched and unclenched her fists helplessly. It was the only movement the Tree would allow her now. She had been struggling to walk when the many trunks of the Evertree had closed around her, but now she could not touch the ground. She hung suspended inside a latticework of branches, some thick as her thigh, others slender as twigs. Her arms and legs were pinned – even her head was held firm by the many wooden fingers threaded through her hair. Trying to peek over her shoulder at her fellow captives caused a fresh bloom of pain in her scalp. She felt something sticky on her forehead – tree sap or her own blood?
“Ivy?” she called again, but a wordless sob was the only response. Inwardly, Foxglove cursed the gentle Holtmaiden. A miller of capnuts and a baker of flatbread, she hadn’t the skills to last one day with the Hunt. Nor the strength to endure this, it seemed. Typical.
Then she remembered that Ivy had escaped the Tree’s grasp, but had come back to save Foxglove.
“Duskwind?” If she twisted her head as far right as her bonds would allow, she could just make out a face at the very edge of her vision: golden-brown skin and golden-red hair – a cheekbone and a clenched jaw and a brow furrowed deeply in pain.
**Duskwind?** she tried again.
“Don’t…” he muttered through his teeth. His head snapped back sharply, striking one of the many branches wound about him, and he cried out.
“It’s not your name to use!” he roared in uncharacteristic rage. But then his head fell forward, and he fell silent.
“Whose name?” Foxglove demanded. “Duskwind!”
He could not answer. But Ivy did. Through tremulous sobs, she hissed out “It… knows... my soulname!”
Soulname – Foxglove gasped at the mere mention of the word. Such things were never spoken of, not even among the closest friends – and certainly not between near-strangers like the miller and the hunter. To those who had them, the secret word-sound-concept was too precious to even acknowledge aloud. And to those who lacked them, the soulname was another chafing reminder that the Wolfriders were not equals. To reveal your soulname’s existence was to invite the wrath of those whose souls were silent.
In the days of the Ten Chiefs, all Wolfriders had soulnames, Foxglove knew. She had learned as much from Waykeeper. It had gone hand-in-hand with the wolfblood. But when the Go-Backs and the Sun Folk and even the Gliders added their own blood to the Wolfrider tribe, the bond between wolfblood and soulname was broken. One could be as mortal as any beast, yet have no name for one’s inner self other than me. One could be a helpless immortal Holtbound, yet bear that psychic link with the original Wolfriders.
That lack of reason – of balance – had driven elves insane in the past, Waykeeper had hinted. It was best not to think of it. Best for the silent souls to believe their tribemates were equally mute. Best for those with the secret names not to flaunt their extra adornments. Only Recognition would reveal the truth – and the fleeting birthsong, Waykeeper’s female half had once admitted off-hand. But that bond usually faded in time, and anyway, no mother would ever dishonor her young by sharing such knowledge.
Foxglove felt her face flame at Ivy’s inadvertent confession. Only after the almost painful flash of embarrassment began to dull did Ivy’s plight actually sink in.
The Tree knew her soulname! And Duskwind’s too, by his words.
**Waykeeper, hurry!** she sent to her mentor. **The Tree – it’s inside their minds!**
It couldn’t have her mind, though. She had no key to the place inside her called me. Five failed spirit quests and two brushes with death had proved that much.
One of the branches in her hair shifted, and Foxglove grimaced as her head was pulled back, forcing her to show throat. Was it deliberate – had the Tree heard her sending? She tried to relax, to submit and earn leniency. Whiskery filaments brushed against her forehead – soft as her own hair and ignored as such, until they started to poke and probe at the cut at her hairline. She could feel the tiny pinpricks of the rootlets slipping under her skin.
“No!” Foxglove screamed.
Fresh pain flared in her leg. More filaments were probing the bruises and scrapes left by the piece of hearthstone. Rootlets peeled back her torn leathers while little threads of fungal growth spread across her wounds.
Unable to enter her mind, the Tree was determined to break into her body.
“You can’t do this!” she shouted. Fresh blood dribbled down her brow. She blinked her eyes repeatedly to clear the red film from her vision. “You’re the Evertree – you’re supposed to protect us!”
A chorus of voices in her mind replied: **We are. We are your beginning and your end… and we are welcoming you home.**
“You’re killing us!” Foxglove protested.
**No, child.** One voice seemed to dominate the chorus – one she had not heard in over thirty turns of the seasons. **We are healing you. We are teaching you...**
“Fleetwing?” Foxglove whispered. But she was long dead: she had been able to outpace any prey, but not the fever that had raced through her veins. A simple cut on a moon-long hunt, a desperate ride back to the Holt and the healer. Fleetwing’s wolf had been as swift as his elf-friend, but the fever had been quicker.
Foxglove had mourned, and she had moved on. Within five years, Fleetwing’s place had been taken by young Blackwing, and the tribe’s healing had been complete.
So why did tears spring to her eyes now, at the sound of her mother’s voice? She closed them tightly, letting the tears wash away the blood.
But the branches in her hair tightened their grasp. Tension and pain forced Foxglove’s eyes open again. She shrieked at the sight before her – the bark of the tree trunk moving as freely as water, curling into ripples and eddies, gradually taking on the shape of an elfin face.
**Thirrl,** the Tree sent. And in that one purring sound, Foxglove’s entire world shattered.
Her scream rang long and loud inside the hollow trunk of the Tree.
* * *
The sounds of creaking branches and rustling leaves were slowly beginning to subside. Pool looked up from Sorrel’s once-broken leg. She was the last of the injured who’d consented to a healing; one of the Hunt still sported a nasty lash across his knee which Pool had tried to explain would surely become corrupted and cripple him, but he showed little worry.
Pool summoned Elm over. “I need to get back to Sparkstone and the Waykeeper,” he said.
“Suit yourself. Holt’s that way.” Elm pointed.
Pool grit his teeth. “You know as I well as it will be nightfall before I can make it through the woods on my own.”
“What, you want me to carry you like a mama treewee?” Elm mocked in a childish tone. “Go rot, healer. I’m not your wolf.”
“Then let me borrow yours. Please. Those are your tribemates back there – they may be in need of healing.”
“Waykeeper told me to stay here. Anyway, Duskwind is back there. He can–”
“And if he’s dead? You saw the Tree take Foxglove! Will you leave her to die, you coward?”
“If it’s her time…” Elm said, but his voice had lost all conviction.
“Savah’s bones – how old is she? All of ten eights? Twelve? It’s never a child’s time to die!”
Elm snorted. “Child? She’ll teach you better. All right – on the wolf. Heartless – ayoyiyiiii!”
The wolf came promptly at the sharp howl. Elm scooped Pool up and deposited him on the creature’s back. “Heartless?” Pool asked skeptically.
“Better than ‘Gutless,’” Elm said with a sneer. He gave a series of yips and barks, and Heartless understood. The wolf took off like a loosed arrow, and Pool hung on tightly with his arms and legs as they raced through the forest. He kept his face pressed into the wolf’s fur to shield himself from the twigs and brambles that lashed at his head. The wind whistled by his ears and his emotions ran the gamut from terror to exhilaration. Memories of a simpler time flashed through his mind’s eye. Too late, he realized how much he had missed the simple pleasure of riding a wolf.
Heartless drew up short at the edge of the Holt. Pool lifted his head and saw the deformed Tree looming ahead of them, and the cluster of elves gathered under its threatening branches.
They seemed to be talking to someone, gathered as they all were in a half-circle near the base of the enormous trunk. Pool reckoned it would take the entire tribe joining hands to link arms around it.
He tried to nudge the wolf closer with a gentle stroke of his heels, but Heartless refused to move any closer. So he slid off with difficulty and limped closer to the group. The branches rattled overhead, but he felt no breeze that might have caused it.
“And you have killed us!” croaked a voice Pool did not recognize.
“Littlefire,” he called, and the elder turned. In doing so, he left a gap in the ring of elves, and Pool could see what they had clustered together to examine.
His mouth ran dry as he saw Furrow lashed to the great arching root, and the elfin form that was even now pulling itself out of the Tree’s trunk.
And then, somewhere inside that trunk, the screaming began.
* * *
Littlefire shared a fleeting, horror-struck gaze with Pool, before turning back to the Tree. The Sunstill-shape was still moving, slithering out of the cleft in the Tree in some grotesque parody of birth. A second arm followed, then a mossy mass that might be a leg clad in a leather skirt. With an awkward lurch, the shape broke away from the Tree entirely, and slithered forward towards them.
It was the perfect copy of Sunstill – right down to the shape of her long deerskin gown. A glance at her feet revealed a myriad of roots – some as big as elf hands, others no larger than hair strands – all connecting “Sunstill” to the ground beneath. To the Tree.
But it did not move like Sunstill. She had always walked with a certain grace, even as swollen joints had slowed her down. This wood-and-moss puppet moved in jerks and crackling shudders. The sound of rattling wood accompanied each motion.
“Savah’s bones…” Littlefire heard Pool murmur.
Bearclaw’s beard what is this it’s magic it has to be all those spirits and most of them mortal bound to the world like no immortal bound to the Tree and the soil oh puckernuts all this time we called the Evertree a living Palace we had no idea what we were saying!
The screaming within the Evertree had faded away, as Foxglove had evidently run out of breath. **Foxglove, can you still hear me?**
The only answer was a faint prickling of static – the whimpered cry of a soul in torment.
“No elf must die before her time!” the wooden Sunstill accused Furrow again. “You met her high in branches, and you sent her down – down and down. The Tree saw. The Tree remembers. She wasn’t ready to join us yet. She had too much yet to do.”
“Aye – stealing cubs from me!” Furrow shot back, with as much bravado as he could muster, hanging upside-down from the tangle of vines. “Dried-up useless old wolf! It was her time – it was past her time! If she had had any honor, she would have let herself die long ago.”
Pool approached Littlefire. “Where is Duskwind?” he asked in a whisper. “Where are Foxglove and Ivy?”
“Still inside that… thing.”
Starstone of wood and sap given life by all those spirits Mother Father help us you said Kahvi was a monster but she was nothing compared to this!
Sparktree raised his voice and called: “Evertree! We can discuss my mother’s death in time. But you hold three of our tribemates inside–”
“We will discuss it now!” the wooden Sunstill snapped. “We are eternal, yet we have been killed. We breed life, yet this one has seeded death among us. Untimely death.”
“Buckrot!” Furrow sneered. “You live off death, like all of us! No elf must die?” He laughed humorlessly. “Says who? You think the wolves go around thinking ‘No wolf must die?’”
“We’re not wolves,” Littlefire growled.
“And you call yourself Waykeeper? A twitchy Glider and a spirit too proud to shut up and let someone else have their say?”
“You admit your offense,” the Tree hissed.
“There is no offense!” Furrow snarled. Again he thrashed against his bonds. “The weak die so the strong may live! The lone wolf is nothing – the tribe is all! It is the Way!”
“So it is,” the Tree admitted. The Sunstill-shape slowly jittered towards him, wooden bones clicking. The hunters withdrew in horror, leaving Furrow to his fate.
“Burl, you coward!” Furrow swore.
“Eyetooth will avenge you,” Softdew said softly.
“Dung chips he will! I’ll not be beaten by some shambling pile of sticks! Cut me loose and face me yourself, Sunstill! A proper challenge, the Wolfrider way: hand to hand, head to head, heart to heart!”
“‘Hand to hand,’” the shape parroted, a twisted smile gracing its face. “but we are the Evertree. We have many hands.”
The shape raised one over-long, over-jointed finger. Furrow began to scream: a long, high-pitched wordless shriek.
“No!” Sparkstone shouted. He ran towards the bound elf, despite Littlefire’s best efforts to restrain him. A series of sharp wooden spikes protruded from the ground, forming a ring around Furrow. Sparkstone threw himself at a gap in the ring, but he could not fit his shoulders through. Burl and Softdew showed no such courage. They backed away, lowering their weapons. And they watched as the vines cut deeper and deeper into Furrow’s flesh.
Furrow’s blood flowed over the branch, and fungal growths sprouted up to drink from the red streams. Lichens began to bloom over his face, distorting the bones of his skull. His shrieks grew louder and louder, until the roots suddenly contracted with a sickening CRACK! and his eyes bulged and he fell silent.
“No elf must die!” Sparkstone accused the Sunstill-shape inside the circle. “Those are your words!”
“It is his time,” the shape replied.
“And is it your place to decide that? Like it was his to decide yours, Mother?”
“We are more than your mother. Her pain was hurting us. Her rage was an open wound that needed healing. Now she is content. Now we can heal.”
“Rue…” Littlefire whispered. “We want you to go. Get on your wolf now. Ride to the river, find Newgreen and do not leave her side until we return. No one will stop you. Go – now!”
Rue bolted. Softdew saw her run and let out an angry hiss, but she did not give chase. Sparkstone and Burl did not look away from the Tree and its elfin avatar.
Furrow was still breathing. Blood bubbled up on his lips with each rasp. Littlefire drew closer, watching in fascinated horror as the lichen-like growths on Furrow’s face began to sprout whiskery rootlets. They spread out over his skin, and under it. The veins of his face stood out as the filaments colonized them, and inside the trough of his old scar, tiny mushroom pods began to grow.
“For the love of Goodtree, just kill him already!” Burl roared.
The Sunstill-shape turned. “The change is hard. But it must be endured. He must change so he can learn. He must learn so he can know. Just as she does, now.”
“Know what?” Littlefire demanded.
“Your Way is false. A leaf cast off from its tree, whole and beautiful but still.”
Furrow’s limbs spasmed as all the muscles in his body contracted. His head lolled to one side and his eyes glazed over, turning milky white.
The Sunstill-shape bent down and picked up a freshly-fallen oak leaf. “You see? Beautiful but still. Cut off from the life of its heart-root.” The shape crushed the leaf in its twig-fingers.
“Once you change, you learn a better Way. The Green Way.”
Furrow’s eyesockets were colonized with fluffy white mold. The skin of his face had taken on the texture of bark. His lips parted one last time, and a green stem thrust its way out of his mouth.
“We reclaim the stillness, we breed new life,” the shape continued. “If Furrow will learn, then his voice will be welcomed within our greensong. If he will not…”
Furrow’s ribcage split open as a blood-stained knot of rootlets thrust up through his breastbone. And then the Softdew was shrieking and Burl was swearing at the top of his lungs – a random string of curses – as the root-tendrils swarmed over the bloody remnants of Furrow’s body. The whole massive arch began to cave in the middle, admitting Furrow’s corpse. In moments, the body was gone, and so were the lashing roots, and all that adorned the arch were red-capped mushrooms, and a few lingering blood spatters.
“We do not need his voice. Only his flesh.”
* * *
Foxglove fought for breath. She fought to hold onto the very confines of her body, of her soul. The shared song of all the spirits inside the Evertree continued to tug at her, trying to pull her into the spirit-pool.
Thirrl… Thirrl was her name, and they were calling it. Thirrl was the key to the door of her most secret self, but how could she use the key when she had never even known of its existence.
**Why do you resist?** her mother’s voice whispered somewhere close by. **Once you submit, the knowing is deep and unquestioning, like a locksend that never ends.**
**Like madness!** Foxglove protested.
**There is no loneliness, no such thing as separation. Let us show you, daughter.**
**No!** She would not lose her soul at the very moment of truly finding it.
**We know your pain, your longing…**
**You don’t know anything about me! You died when I just a cub.**
**You yearn for the completion you cannot have. You see their bond and you wish you could share in it.**
**Get out of my mind!**
**They are but a sickly imitation of the true completion we offer…**
**But I don’t want it!**
**Oh child, you will.**
Pain brought her back to her body where sheer will could not. Fresh rootlets slithered into the wounds in her leg. The many interwoven trunks of the Evertree contracted further, pressing tighter around her and the others.
* * *
“Evertree,” Pool called out, startling the Wolfriders out of their horrorstruck paralysis. “We’re sorry for your pain. All of us. But now that that you’ve… ‘changed’ Furrow, will you release our tribemates?”
The Sunstill-shape turned. “Release?”
“Duskwind – Sunstill’s lifemate!” Littlefire shouted. “He’s in there, along with Ivy and Foxglove. Three elves who have never harmed the Tree.”
The shape smiled again. “Duskwind… her lifemate. He mourns her… and she him. The Tree sees. The Tree knows. She did not fight for him in life. She will fight for him now.”
“I don’t understand,” Sparkstone said.
The Waykeeper did. “You cannot! No elf must die before their time – those are your words as well as ours.”
Another shriek from inside the Tree, cut off abruptly. “Can you hear her? That’s Foxglove in there – she’s frightened and she’s in pain. Just like Sunstill was before she died. Are you going to bring that pain into the Tree? Curse you – you’re supposed to protect elves, not kill them!”
The Sunstill-shape hesitated, clearly confounded by the appeal of logic. But the Tree spoke again, from somewhere behind the elves. A male voice this time, a soft tenor distorted by the raspiness of crackling bark.
“We do. We are old beyond telling, and since our first sprouting, we have nurtured our seedlings: the elves – our makers and our children both.”
The elves turned. A new shape was manifesting out of one of the bowed oaks. It did not detach completely from the tree trunk, but merely leaned its head and torso out into the air. A slender male, with a soft face framed by long rootlets that seemed to twist into braids.
Littlefire moaned in anguished recognition.
“Do you not see?” the Redlance-shape asked. “We give breath to all creatures dwelling near us. Love for these seedlings of ours courses through our limbs – even as the sap you call blood pulses through your veins.”
A rustle overhead made them look up. Another elf-shape grew out of an overhanging branch – curvy and feminine, crowned with a head of curly moss. “There is no greater love than ours,” the Nightfall-shape said. “We shelter, we protect, we see, we feel! We are the roots that hold this forest together.”
You’ve taken over this forest made it barren of all but you like strangleweed like a blood-bloated flea you’ve sucked up all the life to feed your magic like broken starstone like corruption like humans! Feed feed feed and all you grow is your own hunger how HOW did we not see this it’s been growing under our feet all these years a rot on the heart of the Holt Bluestar knew he guessed the truth all those roots linked Duskwind was right when the body gets too old it grows things it shouldn’t it all comes full circle but when the circle is closed there is no true growth only rot feeding rot feeding rot!
“Then why?” Pool asked. “Love does not kill. Love does not force.” Ignoring the shapes of Redlance and Nightfall, Pool turned back to the Sunstill-shape, still within its protective ring of spikes.
The Sunstill-shape narrowed its knothole eyes. “Scouter’s cub… you are not of the forest.”
“But I am a trueborn Wolfrider. The blood of Timmorn flows through my veins. And though I never knew what to call it, I have kept your Green Way my whole life.”
Bark lips peeled back in a sneer. “You come from the desert. There is no green there.”
“You’re wrong, Evertree. There is much green there. Prickle-plants and desert blooms and all sorts of growing things – beings that take life from the sun and the soil, not from bloodshed. That breed life from the flesh of the dead – but never take lives themselves.”
**Pool, you ass! Did you not see what it did to Furrow?!**
**Please, Kit. Let me try this.** “I understand you,” Pool insisted, with the gentle smile of one trying to a calm an enraged wolf. “Evertree, if you see all then you know I have come here to join you – to shed this body and unite my spirit with all those who have come before me. But it is my choice, and it is my time. I know the Sunstill within must miss Duskwind terribly. So many words unsaid, thoughts unshared. I know this feeling!”
The Sunstill-shape shifted uncertainly on its root-feet. “How?”
**I had a lifemate,** Pool sent openly. **I loved her beyond all sense. And when she died I let the sorrow fester in my heart. In my pain, I lashed out at those around me. I made many mistakes, and until my life became one long howl of regrets. And I know now… even when I die, I will not be reunited with my love. Her spirit stopped answering mine long ago. Perhaps she does not like what I have become. Perhaps she has become something else. Please, Evertree: heed my warning. Ask Duskwind to join you, and if he will not, learn to accept it. Forcing him will do nothing but bring the Tree more pain.**
“You are in pain…” the shape said in a tone of… compassion? Wesh and Tayr dared to hope. Perhaps Pool could talk this spirit-tribe back to reason.
“I have learned to live with it,” Pool said stoically.
“But it wearies you.”
“Terribly, yes.”
“You will join us,” the Tree pronounced. “You will change; you will heal.”
“I look forward to it,” Pool said honestly. “In the shadows of your branches, I feel that I have found my tribe at last. But I cannot join a tribe that grows its ranks through killing.”
“You are broken,” yet another voice broke in, and a fourth face slowly formed on the main trunk of the Evertree. Littlefire stared at it, trying to identify one of hundreds of kinfolk who had come and gone. Its blunt masculine features seemed so familiar, yet so undefinable.
“You are all broken – You know this truth, Waykeeper,” the new face pronounced. “You cling to the decay when you should be embracing new growth. We have waited and watched as you have all fallen out of balance. You must return to your roots. You must learn to change.”
“Change cannot be forced,” Littlefire protested.
**Of course it can,** the Tree sent, and at last Wesh and Tayr realized whose face it was.
He looks so different with both eyes.
**Don’t you remember? You and Sur changed each other. Neither of you wanted it. You cursed him and Perth cursed you and Sur felt himself torn in two. But from that pain came great joy. So it is now. Let us show you.**
“No,” Littlefire whispered.
**Tayr. Enough.**
Littlefire’s knees went out from under him.
* * *
Pool turned in time to see Littlefire go down. He held his head in his hands and his face was contorted in a silent scream.
Burl had had enough. He turned and ran. Softdew remained rooted to the spot in terror. Sparkstone rushed to Littlefire’s side. “Waykeeper!” He examined the stricken howlkeeper, then he rounded back on the wooden shape of Sunstill. “You cannot want this, Mother,” he accused.
“She does not,” the shape admitted. “She only wanted to repay pain with pain and love with love. But she is only one voice in the greensong. She will submit. She is still so new to us. But she is learning.”
“She is learning,” the Nightfall-shape confirmed.
Pool limped to Littlefire’s side. The Glider had fallen to his knees, his torso bent forward and his head on the ground, as if the pull of the world was too strong for him. Pool touched his shoulder and let out his healing magic, but there seemed nothing to heal.
“Littlefire,” he prompted.
“S-she’s g-gone quiet,” Littlefire said in a voice Pool had never heard before: tremulous and stammering. “S-she’s gone quiet – it made her quiet and it’s just me in here and it’s never just me in here! Not anymore! I – I d-don’t know how to be in here without her!”
“What did you do?” Pool demanded of the Tree. His gazed raked from one shape to another. Nightfall’s shape turned and melted back into the tree branch. So did Redlance’s. But One-Eye’s and Sunstill’s remained defiant.
“We only wish to teach,” the Sunstill-shape insisted.
“The knowing is all,” One-Eye’s face added.
“It isn’t right she remain apart from us – her mother left us, her father denies us, her daughter defies us – but we longs for her wisdom, her kindness, her fierceness – so many of her seedlings live within us now – grandchildren, great-grandchildren – her roots have spread as far as our own. It is right she join us.”
“You can’t have her!”
Pool spun around. Littlefire was slowly rising to his feet. He moved with the same awkwardness as the Tree’s elf-shapes – his body twitching and lurching as he struggled to master a shell he had not worn alone in uncounted years. The muscles of his face with in constant spasm, distorting his speech, but he forced the words out through sheer will.
“She is n-not y-yours to take. She is not One-Eye’s, or Strongbow’s, or Sunstill’s, or anyone else’s! N-not even mine. She belongs to herself!”
The Sunstill-shape walked out from inside the circle of spires. It passed cleanly through one spike to do it, seamless integrating the wood into its body. “You fear to be without her. But you can join her. The Tree knows… how you fear the day she will choose to leave you, how you hold her close because you fear to change. Poor lost soul – without her to tether you, you cannot even master your own flesh.”
Littlefire continued to stagger towards the shape, his gait a peculiar hopping motion, as if his body could not decide whether to float or walk.
“We can help you. We can help you set down deep roots. You can be with her – with us all,” the shape paused deliberately before adding, “Wesh.”
Littlefire’s hand struck out, fast a snake, and closed around the shape’s throat.
“It’s not my soulname,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “Don’t have one of those. You think you know me? Me? Don’t you remember what they said about me – all these souls inside you? Mad rot-brained elf! Not meant for this world! The soul of a High One stuck in a body that can’t hold it properly!”
Wooden hands pried at his fingers as the shape tried to free itself. With great effort, Littlefire lifted the shape up off the ground. Roots holding it to the soil began to tear free. Sunstill’s bark-covered face distorted in pain.
“Waykeeper, don’t–” Sparkstone began.
Littlefire yanked the Sunstill-shape clear out of the ground. The connection to the soil severed, the shape lost all its animation. Twigs and clumps of moss fell to the ground as the magic holding the body together fled. Littlefire was left holding a lump of rotted wood in the approximate shape of an elf.
**You cannot stop us,** the Tree sent.
Pool glanced back at the main trunk. The face of One-Eye had withdrawn, and a fresh shape was pulling itself free. Sunstill’s wooden likeness reassembled itself, and Littlefire threw the remnants of the old shape to the ground in disgust.
“You fight well, for one who has never had to,” the Sunstill-shape said.
“Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong – you have no idea how hard I’ve had to fight to stay here!”
“And you must be so weary. Is it worth it? To stay bound to a shell that will never accept your spirit? Your union with Kit was but a poultice on a wound. Don’t you long to truly heal?”
“I don’t need healing!”
“Poor soul. It will be hard to change. We know this. But if you choose to, you will grow back – stronger than before. It will be a long slow, upwards climb to the light. And someday all shall be as it was… if you will it.”
“And if we don’t?” Sparkstone demanded.
“Then you can join the Ghost Wolf on the winds. And we will mourn the loss of your soul. But we will endure. The Tree will always endure.”
* * *
Foxglove felt the rootlets spreading across her face. Serpentine tendrils probed at her nostrils and mouth. She held her breath as long as she could before the pain made her gulp in a mouthful of the moist, fetid air.
**Waykeeper,** she sent desperately, from the last corner of her mind that was still her own. **You need to know: I love you. I’ve always loved you!**
**Shh…** the Tree soothed. **They will be with you soon.**
* * *
A prickly sending touched Pool’s mind – Littlefire’s voice alone. **Pool, can your magic work on trees?**
He wasn’t sure he had heard properly. **What?**
**Plants have their own sort of flesh…**
**If only I could cure it. But it’s not sick, it’s just wrong–**
**I don’t need you heal it. I need you to hurt it.**
**What?** He wanted to say he didn’t understand, but he did. Healing was just focused fleshshaping – which was just the manipulation of molecules. Anyone who could heal wounds could inflict them with the same magic.
**No. I cannot.** Of all his mistakes, he could still claim he had never intentionally inflicted pain on another living creature. Not for pain’s sake. Even his harshest words to Melati had been blundering attempts to make her face the truth. Even all the grief he had brought his mother had been accidental.
He had always told himself that. He had always believed it in his soul. It had been the only way he could bear all the long years.
But if he turned his healing powers into paingiving ones, then he was no better than the monster he’d unwittingly sired.
**Pool! If we don’t stop this now, the Tree will take all of us! Do you want that?**
The Green Way… a union with the best parts of this world…
He was ready. But the others weren’t. He heard the fear in Littlefire’s sending.
**For once in your life, act like a Wolfrider!**
The Sunstill-shape looked from Pool to Littlefire and back again. The Tree clearly sensed the locksendings flying between them. Littlefire cut off the communion and took another half-floating step towards the Tree. “All of you, get ready,” he warned. “This… is going to be loud.”
“What is?” Sparkstone asked, completely lost.
Again Littlefire advanced on the Sunstill-shape. “You want me to join you? You want to know what I am – now that I’ve lost my roots? Are you ready to learn?”
The Sunstill-shape frowned, shifting on its root-feet, preparing with withdraw.
Again Littlefire crumpled forward, collapsing over his knees. Again his hands rose to temples, but not in self-defense. Pool felt the air crackle with magic before the edge of Littlefire’s sending brushed his consciousness.
Suddenly he was overcome with nausea. Littlefire’s untempered sending was directed at the tree, but he could not focus it properly, and the stray energy striking Pool felt like burning daggers behind his eyes.
He could only imagine what the Tree felt.
But a moment later he did not need to imagine. First the Sunstill-shape began to scream, the high-pitched whine of wood rubbing together. Then the whole Tree was screaming. Half-complete faces appeared and disappeared along its trunk and branches as all the different voices in the greensong cried out at once. The psychic roar that rent the air was even more intense than Littlefire’s attack, and completely without focus. Pool summoned every sending defense Timmain had taught him to shield his mind. Sparkstone and Softdew were not so adept. They collapsed under the psychic onslaught.
The Sunstill-shape backed away, still screaming. She drew herself back into the fissure in the Tree’s trunk, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. The bark shivered at her passing, and for a moment, the fissure continued to gap open.
**Now, Pool!** Kit’s sending hit him full force as her spirit was released. **Hurry!**
He hesitated only a moment, before he staggered towards the Tree.
He dug his fingernails into the bark. He sent his magic deep into the hardwood. The sealing power he would normally apply to bind torn flesh he set to work heating the wood until it charred and shrank back from his hands. A fresh torrent of psychic pain nearly halted him, but he persevered. He told himself that a healing always hurt at first. This was no different, surely.
Another sending from Kit as her spirit shrugged off the Tree’s spell. **Yes! Yes, keep going!** And then a new voice in Pool’s mind: Duskwind, crying **Ah, that’s it! Yes!**
The Tree’s screams reached a heightened pitch as Pool dug in deeper. He followed the cracks opening up in the hardwood, pushing deeper and deeper inside. His healer senses alerted him to new magic, deep within the tree. Duskwind had freed himself.
* * *
Foxglove cried out as the branches suddenly released her. She pitched forward, smacking her nose hard against the trunk of the Evertree. Then the supports holding her in place began to wither away, and she fell. The rootlet tethers at her leg and forehead gave way in gouts of blood, and she crashed through the slimmer branches, each impact slowing her down slightly, until she hit the ground.
Moaning, she lifted her head and sucked in desperate mouthfuls of air. Her vision was filled with dark spots, but the pain told her she was still alive. She rolled over onto something soft that smelled of leather and sweat and fresh blood. Ivy.
“Foxglove! Ivy!” Duskwind was somewhere above her, his voice authoritative. She twisted her head, but she couldn’t see him in the gloom.
Just then a shaft of light fell on her face, and she saw the way out of their cage.
“Get to the light!” Duskwind ordered. “Now!”
She struggled to her hands and knees and began to crawl towards the light. Her right leg was numb and useless. She dragged it behind her like dead weight. Half of her face felt swollen, and her vision still swam, but she could see a figure crouched at the gap in the Tree. It was the old one, Pool. He seemed to be holding the gap open with his bare hands as if the Tree were a hide curtain. The smell of woodsmoke choked Foxglove’s throat even as the screams of the Tree rang in her head.
Ivy pulled herself upright and pushed ahead of Foxglove. Her sufferings had ignited a primal instinct for survival. Foxglove watched her forge ahead without resentment. She deserved it. In the end, every wolf had to look after itself.
The fissure did not extend all the way to the floor, but Ivy managed to climb up and wriggle between the plates of hardwood. Foxglove watched as she shimmied out under Pool’s outstretched arms. Then – another surprise! – she knelt down and extended her hand back through the gap as she called Foxglove’s name.
She reached the gap and struggled to rise, to clamber through the fissure. But her strength was failing her.
Duskwind dropped down on the tangle of roots beside her. He was wreathed in acrid smoke for whatever his magic was doing to the Tree. Keeping one hand on the trunk, he reached down with the other and hauled her up by her long tail of red-black hair. Foxglove reached for Ivy with both hands, and the Holtmaiden helped pull her through the cleft. It was tigher fit for her than Ivy. The wood pinched about her hips. The rootlets still embedded in her leg tried to anchor themselves in the Tree and pull her back.
She looked up at Pool and saw the stricken look on his face. He was straining to keep the cleft open.
Then suddenly his eyes bulged and he staggered back, breaking contact with the Tree.
* * *
**Stop this, son! Haven’t you hurt us enough?**
His father’s voice, an anguished scream floating atop the chorus of whimpers and cries. Pool let go of the Tree and staggered back in horror.
Scouter was in there, part of the Tree, part of the great spirit-pool he was slowly torturing. Scouter, the angry wolf, who had never once hesitated to spill blood in the name of the Way – now he had given himself up to the greensong of the Evertree.
**Father? How… why…?** Pool couldn’t begin to gather his thoughts.
**He wandered lost among the barrens for so long… but he has come home at last.**
A convenient lie? Could the Tree deceive in sending like Melati? Yet he could hear his Scouter’s voice.
** Why must you always fight him? He waits for you – he waits for a healing – he knows you were right all along…**
His proud old growler of a sire, ready to admit the wisdom of Pool’s way? Was there no end to the Tree’s enticements?
**Come join us … love us… save us from this Glider snake!**
His love was a slow poison, the Tree had to know that. Yet still it desired him. Pool swayed on his feet, paralyzed by indecision. The Tree only wanted release from Littlefire’s psychic attack. And yet such rewards it offered…
“Pool!” Ivy shrieked as she struggled to pull Foxglove through the rapidly shrinking gap in the trunk.
Pool laid hands on the Tree again. He poured all his will into his burning magic. As he blasted one side of the cleft with crippling pain, Duskwind contined to attack the other side. The cleft widened again, and Foxglove slithered out, bruised and bloodied. Duskwind was close behind her. He thrust out a head, then an arm, shoulder, and leg. Pool could feel the psychic energy pulling at the younger healer – pulling at them both – assaulting their spirits in one last desperate attempt to repulse them. Then with a cry Duskwind released his magic and leapt out into the light.
Pool could not hold the fissure open himself. It closed rapidly on Duskwind’s heels, catching the trailing edge of his leather trousers and mangling his ankle. But Duskwind pulled himself free on his arms, leaving a torn piece of deerhide lodged in the now-sealed fissure, sizzling softly from the residual heat.
His duty done, Pool staggered back. Littlefire ceased the black sending assault. Duskwind managed to rise on one leg and hopped away from the Tree as fast as he could.
“Fall back!” Littlefire ordered. Softdew took flight as soon as the pain in her head ebbed. Sparkstone rushed forward to help his father walk. Littlefire took one of Foxglove’s arms as Ivy took the other, and they bore her between them.
Pool stayed where he was, a handful of paces from the Tree. He watched as the faces rose and fell within the bark. The hole he had opened in the trunk had become an angry scar, oozing steaming sap.
**Why?** the Tree cried, its many voices all out of measure. **Why – why – we only want you to know – know our love! You hurt us and you deny us, but we are your heart-root! You cannot deny us anymore than you can your own soul!**
“We can and we do!” Littlefire threw back defiantly. “Our souls are our own. You cannot bend them to your will!”
**A healing… we call for a healing!** the Tree begged.
“You won’t find one from us.”
**But you are Wolfriders, your place is here. You hunt, you howl, you return to the earth and breed new life within us! It is the Way!**
“Your Way, not ours!”
“What do we do, Waykeeper?” Sparkstone pleaded.
“We make for the river. We get where it can’t reach us!”
“Please…” One last time, Sunstill’s face appeared in the trunk. A withered hand of bark and twigs extended from the scarred cleft. The face gazed at Duskwind imploringly, but he would not look at it.
“Let’s go, Pool,” Littlefire ordered.
Pool heard the words, but made no move to obey. He looked up at the trembling branches of the Evertree, so old and brittle. The once-healthy Tree seemed withered, rotting. The voices that once spoke in harmony were now discordant.
He had done that, just as surely as Furrow and Sunstill and Littlefire had. He had torn open a wound then refused to soothe it.
**You cannot leave us like this!**
It wasn’t right, he thought. A healer was prepared to cause anguish at first, knowing it would soon pass. But he had hurt and then he had left… just as he had left his loved ones time and time again.
**Paingivers!** the Tree accused the retreating elves.
I am a paingiver, Pool thought. Whether I will it or not, it is my true gift.
“You deal pain, you must be ready to feel it!” Littlefire threw over his shoulder. “We thought Sunstill and Furrow would have taught you that!”
**We call for a healing!**
Littlefire ignored the plea.
**We need you!** the Tree begged. The face in the trunk turned towards Pool.
“We need you…” it whispered. “He needs you.”
Pool found himself taking one step towards the Tree. Then another.
“Pool… Pool, what are you doing?!”
The face changed, losing its feminine features, growing mossy facefur.
“Son… come home to us…”
**I’m coming, Father. You call for healing, and I answer.**
“Pool!”
**This is what I was meant to do. This is how I am meant to atone.**
“For Freefoot’s sake, not everything is about you!”
**No…** Pool admitted, **but this is.**
Scouter’s face was smiling, so proud at last of his boy. At last they could meet on equal terms, united in head, hand and heart…
Pool reached out and clasped the wooden hand in his.
“You will join us,” the Tree pronounced. “No loneliness, no separation. We will change, we will learn; we will heal.”
“Yesss….” Pool let out a sigh of longing.
“Pool!” Littlefire shouted, one last desperate plea.
The wooden arm retreated into the Tree, drawing Pool’s hand with it. The scarred fissure opened once more, and Pool stepped through it into the warmth of an eternal green embrace.
* * *
Littlefire and the others watched in horror as the Tree consumed Pool. He did not cry out as Furrow had. He did not resist. He went to his death willingly – eagerly – and his end was swift. It was almost serene… if one ignored the great gout of blood that erupted as the two plates crushed his body and folded it into the hardwood.
Pool could afford to ignore it. Wesh and Tayr doubted they would ever scrub the image from their combined memories.
“Why?” Ivy whimpered. “Why did he do it?”
“He wanted a healing…” Littlefire breathed.
The Tree was in motion again. The trunk shivered, and the rotten bark began to flake away, revealing healthy new growth underneath. The branches that had bent under their own weight began to slowly rise. The trunk contracted even further, fusing itself into one seamless single support. Roots rose up out of the ground and the cracks and creaks began again, as the satellite oaks resumed their lurch towards the heart-trunk.
“Tail it, now!” Littlefire commanded.
Moving as fast as their injuries would allow, the elves limped away from the continuing metamorphosis, seeking the safety of water.
* * *
At the river’s edge, the tribe took stock. Holtbound and Hunt mingled, too traumatized to share the usual animosities. They were a mere twenty-six now, having lost Furrow and Pool.
Twenty-seven with Rue’s cub. Littlefire looked for Rue and saw her resting near Newgreen as instructed. Her lovemate Quickhatch had joined her, but her Recognized, Stripe, preferred to sit with other members of the Hunt.
Littlefire shivered, and clutched the fur more tightly over his shoulders, trying to smother the instinctive unease with steady pressure. Wesh and Tayr had felt a twinge of guilt at accepting the fur: they had been able to save so little from the Evertree, surely one of the injured could use the comfort more. But Foxglove had been insistent, and something in her tone and furtive gaze made them accept the gesture.
So much lost all our howlbooks all our memories no the memories are inside us we can paint them all down again worry more about the winter furs the root stores how are we ever going to get through the winter now?
Foxglove sat next to them, her wounded leg stretched out and splinted with two thin branches. Duskwind had knit the broken bone and mended the torn ligaments, but he was less certain about the influence of the roots that buried under her skin, and wanted the leg immoblized until he could be certain.
“Still cold?” Foxglove asked.
“Not cold,” Littlefire replied. “Drifting.” At Foxglove’s puzzled expression, his cheeks flushed with blood. “Pressure helps hold us down in our skin. Especially Littlefire.”
“Can I help?”
Littlefire began to say ‘no’, then nodded. “Press down on our shoulders?” he asked hopefully.
Mindful of her leg, Foxglove scooted behind Littlefire and gingerly laid her hands flat on his shoulders. Littlefire gave an irritable squirm. “Harder.”
Foxglove slowly applied more pressure, until she was bearing down hard enough to make their muscles ache. Littlefire let out a long sigh of relief.
She must have felt the deep knots of tension, because she tried to knead one loose, and Littlefire jumped in alarm. “Nope!” he yelped.
“Sorry!” Foxglove immediately returned to static pressure.
“Not your fault. It’s only–”
“You don’t really like to be touched,” Foxglove finished, and they heard the wistfulness in her tone.
“Not often,” Littlefire admitted. He let himself lean forward, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms about them. “Don’t stop, please,” he said when Foxglove’s hands began to lift. “It… help us.”
“I’m so sorry about all your howlbooks.”
“Doesn’t matter. We can always make more. We have in the past. Many times. Leather crumbles, paint fades… lives matter. If we can get out of here with our skins – and our souls – intact… the rest will sort itself out.”
“What did the Tree do to you?” she asked, and they heard the subtle emphasis she placed on the you.
“Made Kit go to sleep. Left Littlefire alone in this shell.”
“Did it… use her soulname?” Foxglove whispered.
“Yes,” he bit the word off.
“I… have a soulname,” she admitted, in a voice so soft they barely heard her. “I didn’t know that until today.”
“Oh, child!” Littlefire twisted his head around to look over his shoulder. Wesh and Tayr felt their heart go out to her. What must it have been like, to discover that facet of yourself at the very moment it was being used to undo you? Wesh wanted to speak, but Tayr knew Foxglove’s pride would suffer under too much pity. After a sharp pang of indecision, they held their tongue.
“I want to forget it,” Foxglove said. “I want to lose it! Can I?”
“We don’t think so.”
**But it’s not fair! It’s not right that I can be hobbled by one little sound! I’m more than that sound – I must be!**
“You are,” they promised her. “But you’ve learned today that you’re more than you realized. And we can help you understand yourself – help you build stronger walls, to keep that sound safe until the day Recogniton… or love, makes you share it with another. And you’ll find even more of yourself.”
“Love…” again Foxglove’s gaze grew bashful. “Waykeeper… what I sent… when I thought I was going to die–”
They reached around and covered her hand with Littlefire’s, holding it firmly. “Don’t feel ashamed – don’t ever be ashamed of love.”
“I know you’re not like us – that you don’t…. Puckernuts, you’re older than the Evertree!”
Wesh and Tayr chuckled together. “So we are. We’ve seen countless souls come and go.”
“I know I’m not–” she began, but they cut her off.
**And of all those souls, you are among those dearest to us.**
* * *
“We cannot stay here,” Littlefire told the tribe by the light of the moons playing on the water. “We will never be safe again in the Evertree’s shadow.”
“But where else could we go?” Willow asked. “This is our home – it has been since… forever!”
“Not forever. Once the Wolfriders had many Holts. Once our kind lived in the stars.”
“We’re not High Ones!” Burl grunted. “You might be, but we need the green-growing place of our ancestors.”
“Your ancestors are all inside that Tree now, and most of them want you to join them. Don’t you understand?” he accused their disbelieving faces. “‘No elf must die before his time’ – and now the Evertree thinks it’s our time! We can hope Furrow’s death – and Pool’s – have gentled it, but we know we can’t den anywhere near a tree that might decide to ‘change’ us in our sleep!”
“We’ve lost all our stores,” Newgreen pointed out. “How will we get through the white-cold?”
“As wolves do!” Eyetooth spoke up. “As stags do!”
Sparkstone nodded. “We will go south, then. Like the stags do.”
“We?” Softdew glared at the Holt chief. “The Holtbound can follow your lead all they want, but you lost your right to lead the Hunt years ago!”
“So I did. And my successor has since been eaten by a tree! Please, Softdew,” he continued, gentler now. “We cannot afford to splinter any further. Not with winter coming.”
“There are humans to the south,” Blackwing said.
“There are humans everywhere,” Newgreen said. “Or trolls. Or hostile wolf packs.”
“What about the crags?” Elm offered.
“There’s no good hunting there!” Eyetooth shot back.
“West – towards Blue Mountain,” Foxglove suggested.
“Oh aye, and the Zwootriders will just welcome us into their woods, will they?” Burl asked. “With thousands of troll mouths to feed?”
“Right, thousands of mouths! They won’t mind another three eights. Puckernuts – Waykeeper’s daughter is their chief!”
“Aye, the Waybreaker!” Burl growled.
“Enough!” Littlefire snapped. Everyone fell silent.
“There are no good lands beyond our borders – none close enough to reach before winter. The humans have clawed away at the forest’s edge, and what land they haven’t taken, the trolls have. Our territory is the last untouched forest in the north of the Burning Waste. And staying here means trusting the Evertree. Anyone willing to throw that toss-stone?”
A few mutters, but no one stepped forward to challenge.
“So where do we go?” Rue asked.
West like Foxglove said we could see Mink again she’s right they wouldn’t begrudge us some winter dens but that would please Mink and it would please us but not the tribe yes we have think of the tribe they need lands where they can hunt and howl and live free but where where in this world is still unclaimed?
“We call for the Palace,” Littlefire said. “Hear us!” he snapped a moment later, when the murmuring grew more discontented. “Feel the bite in the air. It’s too late in the season to scorn magic. We call for the Palace and we go to the New Land. To the Egg. In the mountains, there are still forests where wolves can run free. It’s not a Holt… but it’s a refuge. We can winter there – rest and recover, and decide what really matters to our tribe. Decide if we can truly call ourselves one tribe anymore.”
“And then?” Sparkstone asked. “Where can we find a true Holt?”
Wesh and Tayr turned their shared eyes up to the night sky. Through the gaps in the trees, the two moons were waning. And rising in the west, unflickering, a blue pinpoint of light shone brighter than any star.
* * *
Timmain followed the psychic call across the astral plane. In this dimension, the Tree had taken the form of a glittering green chrysalis, trailing vines of light. It throbbed with life like a giant heart, and shed tiny sparks with each contraction of its living walls.
“So… this time you have summoned me,” Timmain said.
A glowing shape slowly separated from the chrysalis, at once familiar and alien.
“High One,” the shape spoke with many voices. “The healer thanks you, for you set him on the path that led to his journey’s end. And the Tree thanks you, for the new purpose our brother Pool has brought us.”
“This is not what I intended.”
“Life is never what was intended, only what is required.”
“And what is required?”
“We were in pain. We are now healing. We were blind. Now we are learning to see. We see much we could not before: the world beyond our forest, the splinters in the elfin nations, the cruelties of those who have lost their Way…. Pool has shown us much that needs healing.” The Pool-shape cocked its head to one side. “Our Wolfriders have fled.”
“They too, need healing.”
“Do you know where they have gone?” The shape’s spectral eyes narrowed. “Do you keep them from us?”
“You should know that none may ‘keep’ a Wolfrider restrained.”
“They must return to us. They are our seedlings. We were wrong to force change upon them – we see that now. We must nurture them… protect them, until they are ready to change. And they must tend to us, care for us… join us when it is their time. We cannot grow without them. And we must grow.”
Timmain felt a chill, even on the astral plane. “Why must you grow?”
“You of all souls ask us this? You knew the truth of this world long ago. We must become part of it to survive. But you were wrong to heed the song of wolves. They kill, they consume, and they in turn are consumed. Blood and pain and terror. Our Way is better.”
“Your Way?”
“The Green Way. Life everlasting, forever turning stillness into song… evergreen, evergrowing. Taking nothing but sun and soil and water… and the dead flesh which begs to be given new life. The forests are shrinking: the humans chop down our brethren, the trolls dig at our roots, but we must endure. We must reclaim the forest. Our Way is better. And when the Evertree stretches from sea to sea, when the land is green and self-renewing… then you will all see.”
The shape reached out a gnarled hand as Pool’s face grew flinty, determined. “You will learn. It is not the starsong nor the bloodsong, but the greensong you must embrace. And you will embrace it. In life and death, you will sing the only song worth its sound.”
Timmain recoiled as the shape began to advance. The expression on Pool’s face turned kindly again. “Here, let me show you…”
In terror, Timmain’s spirit took flight, racing back to the safety of her shell half a world away.
Elfquest copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2016 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts