the body of her home, connected by threads of fire, deep beneath the sea. But above, the paths of the stars arc from east to west, trailing magic from horizon to horizon. Those roads connect the lands, too. Those are the bonds she can snap, tear free, and take for herself.
The wizard grasps the magic, the ache of the star roads, and flies along them back home, back to the rolling hills of Aremoria, the great forests of pillar-strong trees, valleys and living rivers. She listens, and laughs. Hot tears fall down her cheeks where her body sprawls against the island cliff top. The trees shiver and lean together, birds sing in dreadful expectation, and the winds laugh, echoing her laugh.
Creatures peer at her around roots, opening eyes like cherry stones and eyes like seashells. What is she doing?
She hears but only smiles angrily.
Magic spreads everywhere, between both island and home, in the rocks, roots, and waters, in the air, in the words of the people as they kiss and yell and dream.
Lear braids those roads of power together, tangling them into intricate, unbreakable knots. The trees ask her why, and the wind gusts with curiosity. The world trusts the wizard Lear, and she promises it will be over soon.
She is no longer crying when she takes all that magic into her fists and tears.
Aremoria screams: the wizard does, too.
Her scream makes the island tremble.
Her strength and the winding tensile power pull to the center: her center.
It bursts her heart and shatters her bones. Lear is nothing but power, nothing but the magic. She keeps pulling, keeps dragging it here, toward the setting sun, into the bowl of the crescent moon, along the efforts of the tide: here to the heart of this island.
A cradle of knotted magic, a navel of pain.
Lear’s final breath is fire, and with it she severs the threads binding the star roads. They snap back at her, whipping raw sparks, and she opens her arms for them all.
The magic sinks as she sinks, bones into rock, blood into rootwaters, spirit into wind. Here is the home of magic, infused into every pulse and groan and spring blossom.
INNIS LEAR NAMES itself.
AREMORIA CANNOT REMEMBER.
It has no memories of its own. But the earth saints do: they remember the loss of the stars, the closed doorways, the fury of grief.
For a thousand years they have schemed to take it back, especially the one with eyes of cherry stones. They play their tricks, send their shadow-man, lay points of hope in the fall of a leaf, in the death of a king, in the heart of a golden oak tree.
HERE IS HOW a wizard is made:
Ninety-four years ago a lost soldier, a ruinous young man, thrusts his iron sword into a golden Aremore oak, marrying the sword’s whispering power to that of the roots. For so long he battled this end, he pulled away from the promise in their words, but what is the point any longer? I accept your bargain, he says, falling to his knees.
Twenty-two years ago a woman thinks of another tree, the yew in her castle courtyard said to be a goblin tree, despite the peaceful shushing of its leaves in the summer breeze. She likes the yew because she relates to it. Both are strong and elegant; both belong there in the yard, under the blazing sun; both are trapped and unable to move, but only to grow where they are planted, pressing against the slabs of limestone holding down their roots. Her gaze lingers on its furrowed gray bark, on the flutter of thin leaves, and she feels a longing, a desire, even. One night, she slips out of bed in only her robe and wraps her arms around the tree. Her bare feet scrape the thickest roots; her cheek leans against cool bark. She kisses the tree and murmurs that she would like a child stronger than herself, stronger than all of them, able to break free of the stones, of the entire courtyard and castle, to be whatever she can be, and burn down any barrier.
Does the yew hum agreement? Does a warm hand find the small of her back? Caress her neck, and slide fingers along her hips? Does she meet an earth saint there, under the moonless sky, and do they dance and do they feast on flesh and tongues and tears?
The woman opens her eyes at dawn in her bed beside her husband, wild with her dream and