She was gone. What still lived of her in the tree was deep and strange and slow. The tree had found these memories, these moments, so she could show me a way out—her way out—but that was all that she could do. It was the only way she’d found for herself and all her people.
I swallowed and stepped back. I dropped my hand from her arm. She looked at me a moment longer, and then she drank. Standing there at the edge of the pool she began to take root; the dark roots unfurling and silver branches spreading, rising, going up and up, as high as that depthless lake inside her. She rose and grew and grew, flowers blooming in white ropes; the trunk furrowing lightly beneath ash-silver bark.
I was alone in the grove again. But now the voices of the birds were falling silent. Through the trees I saw a few deer bounding away, frightened, a flash of white tails and gone. Leaves were drifting down from the trees, dry and brown, and underfoot they crackled with their edges bitten by frost. The sun was going down. I put my arms around myself, cold and afraid, my breath coming in white cloudy bursts, my bare feet wincing away from the frozen ground. The Wood was closing in around me. And there was no way out.
But a light dawned behind me, sharp and brilliant and familiar: the Summoning-light. I turned in sudden hope, into a grove now drifted with snow: time had moved on again. The silent trees were bare and stark. The Summoning-light poured down like a single shaft of moonbeam. The pool shone molten silver, and someone was coming out of it.
It was the Wood-queen. She dragged herself up the bank, leaving a black gash of exposed earth through the snow behind her, and collapsed on the shore still in her sodden white mourning-dress. She lay huddled on her side to catch her breath, and then she opened her eyes. She slowly pushed up on trembling arms and looked around the grove, at all the new heart-trees standing, and her face widened into horror. She struggled to her feet. Her dress was muddy and freezing to her skin. She stood on the mound looking out at the grove, and slowly she turned to look up and up at the great heart-tree above her.
She took a few halting steps up the mound through the snow, and put her hands on the heart-tree’s wide silver trunk. She stood there a moment trembling. Then she leaned in and slowly rested her cheek against the bark. She didn’t weep. Her eyes were open and empty, seeing nothing.
I didn’t know how Sarkan had managed to cast the Summoning alone, or what I was seeing, but I stood waiting and tense, hoping for the vision to show me a way out. Snow was coming down around us, brilliant in the crisp light. It didn’t touch my skin, but it drifted swiftly over her tracks, covering the ground with white again. The Wood-queen didn’t move.
The heart-tree rustled its branches softly, and one low branch dipped gently towards her. A flower was budding on the branch, despite winter. It bloomed, and petals fell away, and a small green fruit swelled and ripened gold. It hung off the bough towards her, a gentle invitation.
The Wood-queen took the fruit. She stood with it cupped in her hands, and in the silence of the grove a hard familiar thunk came down the river: an axe biting into wood.
The Wood-queen halted, the fruit nearly to her lips. We both stood, caught, listening. The thunk came again. Her hands dropped. The fruit fell to the ground, disappearing into the snow. She caught up her tangled skirts away from her feet and ran back down the mound and into the river.
I ran after her, my heart beating in time with the regular axe-thumps. They led us on to the end of the grove. The sapling had grown into a sturdy tall tree now, its branches spreading wide. One of the carved boats was tied up to the shore, and two men were cutting down the other heart-tree. They were working cheerfully together, taking turns with their heavy axes, each one biting deep into the wood. Silver-grey chips flew into the air.
The Wood-queen gave a cry of horror that howled through the trees. The woodcutters halted, shocked, clutching their axes and looking around; then she was on them. She caught them up by