of the fairy. Half of her small body was burned. What was left of her glorious red hair hung around her face in clumps, and she wheezed as if she could barely breathe.
I took the fairy, cupping her in my hands as the limb unwrapped itself from her waist. “What can I do?” I beseeched the tree. “How can I save her?”
The tree shuddered, and a large towering limb snapped completely off, splitting away from the trunk. I sensed it wouldn’t be long until she died as well. Leaves trembling on the barely mobile limb, the tree stretched toward it me and touched its tip to my temple.
A matronly voice said, “Take care of her. Please protect my precious Ashleigh.”
“I will,” I promised. No matter how long the little fairy lived, I would try to offer as much comfort as I was able.
With that, the mother tree quaked, and with a mighty crack, the trunk split into two, sparkling white smoke dissipating into the air before disappearing. The once magical fairy tree, the great mother tree and guardian of the Turquoise Forest in the netherworld died a second and very final death.
My shoulders trembled as I cried. Asten put his arm around me, trying to offer his support, but I was comfortless. Carefully cupping the horribly injured fairy, I managed to scrub my face against my shoulders, dashing away the tears that blurred my vision.
I looked down at my hands and gasped in alarm.
The little fairy was gone.
The disappearance of the fairy was soon to be the least of my concerns. My vision was spinning, the sounds of waves filling my mind. The weight of our situation was finally settling in, and all I could do was release a bloodcurdling scream.
Arms caught me and I heard a voice like rushing wind calling my name. “Lily? Lily!” it cried, but there was no way for me to answer. My mind disconnected with my body, and I felt like I was falling down, down, down. And then nothing.
I faintly became aware of the voices. A crackling fire burned nearby, and shadows encompassed it. All at once, panic filled me. I tried to scramble away from the flames, only stopping when I hit something…no, someone, and that someone wrapped their arms around me and steadied me.
“Calm down, little lioness,” the man holding me said.
“Where? Where are we? What happened?” I asked.
“You fainted at the base of the tree. We don’t know why.”
Ahmose knelt in front of me. Awkwardly, I sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. I shivered despite the heat of the fire and rocked back and forth, tears filling my eyes. A small, almost indecipherable keening hummed in the back of my throat.
“I’m sorry we lost the mother tree,” Ahmose said quietly. “There was nothing we could do. We were too late. The Turquoise Forest is gone.”
The keening grew louder. “And the…the fairy?” I asked. I felt like I was leaking from every possible part of my face.
Shaking his head sadly, Ahmose said, “We weren’t able to locate her body. We carried you here and, seeing it was a safe place, thought you might need the rest.”
“How long?” I asked numbly.
Ahmose frowned. “How long what?”
“How long was I unconscious?”
“Nearly twelve hours,” Asten answered soberly. “You didn’t dream either.” He added quickly, “I was…was monitoring you, but you never appeared in your dreamscape. That means you were knocked completely out.”
I blinked and cocked my head quizzically. “But weren’t you too weak to carry me?”
“We levitated and took turns,” he explained. Asten reached out a hand like he wanted to touch my shoulder but then stopped before he made contact.
Turning away, too wrapped up in my own despair, I took in our surroundings. The landscape looked hilly and rocky again, like the Painted Desert. The only trees visible were stubby and filled with blinking eyes that watched our every move. “We’re in the Devourer’s territory,” I said.
“Are we?” Ahmose asked as he looked around. “We got lucky, then. Without you sensing Amon’s heart, there was no way to tell if we were going in the right direction. I just sought the easiest path away from the fire.”
I looked up at the grayish, muted version of the sky and wished there were stars. It felt wrong that they weren’t there, but I shook off that notion quickly. We wouldn’t see the stars again until we saved Amon. I shifted, uncomfortable on the sand, and Ahmose handed me a skewer of cooked meat