[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of March 21st.]

Previous: Chapter 35

The disparate pieces from Yiskah’s mind scan had finally turned into a picture she could understand. Far from complete, but good enough. And telepathy allowed her to settle a public misunderstanding privately and very quickly, if everyone involved was willing and fast on the uptake.

Sylvi was. And now that she was outside of the Tree, Yiskah could tell she’d been listening in out of concern.

“I apologize, for what it’s worth,” sent Yiskah. “I overreacted because I’m worried about Flicker. This is a good place for healing, but ‘disconnected’, 'fuzzy’, and 'tired’ are all warning signs. If she thinks Osk can’t help, there may be more damage than we see. I can’t tell–that damned necklace blocks me.”

“Apology accepted,” sent Sylvi, still smiling faintly. “Reflexes can be a bitch. I’ve been keeping watch since she sent Osk away. That seemed odd.”

“It was. Her judgement is impaired, so if I annoy her enough, she might run off and hide from me. She’s been badly hurt before, but she’s always avoided sleep until she was sufficiently healed. I think she’s counting on the pain from her hand to keep her awake. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure about the physical effects, but I know the mental ones will be bad.”

“I wasn’t going to intrude,” said Sylvi, “but I know a few things that might keep her eyes open. May not be what she wants to hear, though. And I’m not gentle.”

“That’s fine. Curiosity will win.”

*****

Yiskah and Sylvi looked at each other silently for a moment, then Yiskah switched off her knives, leaving them briefly in darkness before she turned on a battery powered lantern. The white light made it easier to see Sylvi. Her hair was the color of fresh leaves, her skin and dress two different shades of bark. Flicker stared for a while before she realized they still hadn’t said anything aloud.

Having a friend with telepathy was cool–until you were the one left out.

“Um, are you talking? Because I’d like to hear.”

“Just straightening out a few things,” said Yiskah. "I couldn’t include you because of the Skystone. We can talk out loud.“

"Okay,” said Flicker. "Sylvi? If you speak for the Tree, I have a lot of questions about power flows, because the ones here all seem to come from or go through the Tree, and about a bunch of other stuff, a lot of which you probably don’t know, but might, and any clue is better than none, and it’s urgent because Journeyman almost died and it might be because I was pushing the wrong way, but I’m fried and hurt and not thinking straight and I can’t speed up to think properly because I have to fix my hand and I’ll lose focus if I do. And I’m sorry we had to meet this way, but can we still talk when I’m recovered? Please?“

Sylvi looked back calmly. "Doubt there was ever going to be a good time for us to meet, but at least there’s no crowd. Crowds and humans bring back old habits and memories. That’s why I don’t come out much. But it is best we talk, now that you know I’m here.” She lifted her arm to point. "If you want to use mud for your healing, that glop next to the warmer spring is a good bet.“

"Um. Thanks. My mother taught me after last time.” The radioactivity in her hand was finally low enough, so Flicker paused to coat it in mud. "I’m sorry, but all the questions I keep thinking of now are really personal and intrusive, because I hate incomplete stories, and I’ve only heard one side of yours, and not from you. Can I ask how you got here?“

"From where? I’ve been a few places, and I don’t know what story he spun about me.”

“Chernobyl. Journeyman showed me the hole where your tree used to be.”

“That poor damned thing.” Sylvi shook her head. "Understand–that was not 'my’ tree. I didn’t pick it, it didn’t suit me, and it rooted me somewhere I didn’t want to be. But none of that was its fault, so I could never quite bring myself to kill it.“

"Sorry,” said Flicker. "Would that have let you go somewhere else?“

Sylvi smiled. "It would have killed me.”

“Oh.”

“And one fine rainy day, I was staring at my chainsaw, and–”

“Why did you have a chainsaw?”

“It was a way to cope. I could look at it and think about being free, even though I knew, deep down, that I wouldn’t use it unless the tree was already dying.”

“Sorry, I should have realized. I do know… that feeling. But I didn’t want to think about it. I’m claustrophobic, so–”

“Girl, you don’t have to keep apologizing. I don’t like to think about it, and I was there.” Sylvi glanced at Yiskah, then back to Flicker. "You still want to hear this?“

"Yeah.”

“Well, I heard a voice say 'If you’re not set on that, it’s easier to bring back someone who isn’t dead.’ I looked up and there was this flying woman with a spear looking down at me. She said there was a tree she’d planted that needed me, if I wanted to move.”

Sylvi looked out into the darkness. "We talked about it a bit. I told her I couldn’t leave the tree I had to die. I hated it–but I couldn’t leave it there. And she said she’d take it along. She already had a place ready for it, with a whole stand of other trees. And it could live there as long as Siberian Elms ever do, if the world didn’t end first.“

"So I agreed, and we went.” Sylvi waved her hand. "And I moved into the Tree. Suits me so much better. I still check on the old one. I don’t think it’ll ever be a happy tree, but it’s healthy and still growing, which is all I could ask for.“

"Oh. That’s good.” Flicker wiped her face with her free hand, embarrassed at her tears of relief for a tree she’d never met. "Why– What did the Tree need you for?“

Sylvi smiled. "It needed me because your mother is one smart, sneaky bitch. I admire that. She knew how to fool the Norns.”

Flicker’s hand hurt as she healed it, but there was no way around that. The pain helped tell her where and what she needed to heal. The tiredness and the itching from her high speed nervous system told her there was something else wrong, too, but she couldn’t do anything about that until her hand was a hand again, instead of formerly radioactive organic mush.

Sleepiness and pain. She’d always fought both with her hunger for learning, for resolving mysteries and puzzles, for finding out new things. So she could heal as she listened. She was grateful to Sylvi for that.

“The Norns lived right here,” said Sylvi. "And all their thread work went through the Tree, so I could sense it. Didn’t always understand it, but they argued a lot, so I could pick up what they were doing from that.“

"Didn’t they know you were listening?” asked Flicker.

“Oh, they knew. And they knew I didn’t like them–but I didn’t much like anybody, then. They thought it didn’t matter. And it didn’t–to them. It was a matter of perspective.”

Sylvi smiled. "They hated to admit they didn’t know something, and they would never admit they were wrong about anything. They couldn’t be, because they were the Norns, right? That was their big weakness. So they always spun things to hide what they didn’t See, and give them an out if their prophecy missed the target.“

"But what did my mother do to fool them?”

“You know the Tree can make it easier to travel between worlds? And real easy between here and Kyrjaheim, because that trunk grew from a root sprout of this one?”

“Journeyman said it was risky.”

“Heh. For humans it is. And if the Tree has a keeper, they can stop it–or send you somewhere else instead. It had one until about a century ago, but they left. Pretty sure they were unhappy with what the Wanderer was doing, but it’s hard for me to tell. I’m still a sapling here on my own, and Tree memories aren’t like people memories.

"Your mother planned an invasion. The Norns picked up on it and told the Wanderer he could fight it off–but not without hurting the Tree. Because the Thunderer was an idiot who couldn’t control where his lightning went, and they needed him to win. And the Tree would heal–but the Wanderer wouldn’t be able to draw as much power through it in the meantime. He didn’t like that at all.”

Sylvi smiled again. "So the Norns told him a way to prevent it–get someone inside the Tree who hated everybody, and would stop anything that might hurt it.“

"Like you,” said Flicker.

“Like me. What the Norns didn’t See was that your mother never cared about the invasion. She just wanted me inside the Tree. Freed her up to do a lot of things because she no longer had to worry about protecting the trunk on her end, but that was minor. An excuse for the Norns to see, for your mother not to fight the change with the back and forth thread pulling she was doing all the time. The Trickster might have suspected something, but he was already dead.”

Flicker frowned. Something wasn’t adding up. Was it just because her mind was fuzzy? "Then what was her real reason? Do you know?“

"Oh, I do. Did you ever wonder, during the two days you were hunting him, why the Wanderer didn’t wander? Why he didn’t just take off?”

“Of course I did! That was what I was most afraid of! That’s why I destroyed the Hall, so he couldn’t come back to it if he got away and I had to leave. I’ve always assumed my mother was ready to get him if he left without enough power, the Norns warned him, and that’s why he didn’t try.”

“Did she ever say that?”

“Well, no. But she hardly ever gave me a straight answer to anything.”

“Heh. The Wanderer drew an awful lot of power through the Tree after the first keeper left, and I knew all about how that can root you. He was careful enough that he was safe from just the Tree. But not careful enough to be safe from me. Your mother talked to the trunk in her world. Said I’d know what to do, and when. And I listened.

"The Norns warned him what might happen–but not when or why. And just before you came, he tried to world-wander–and I stopped him. That’s when he knew his end was coming. So he hid, in the one spot he thought might let him get revenge.”

Sylvi laughed–a rich, satisfied, scary sound.

“As a tree. For two days in the same spot.” Sylvi looked at Yiskah. "And then he was so surprised when you came, he broke cover, and he couldn’t move a single step.“

Yiskah’s eyes widened. "You’re right. He was very fast–but he never moved his feet.”

“Because I had time to completely root him. Until the new Thunderer took his pride, you took his eye, and Skybreaker took his head and life.”

Sylvi smiled, then turned back to Flicker. "I should tell you something else. Heard you were a bit angry that you couldn’t cool off while you were hunting. That was my doing, because making sure the Wanderer couldn’t slip away wasn’t easy. Had to block off everything pulling power through the ground to be sure, and that got you too.“

"Oh. That’s okay,” said Flicker. "It was a pain, but I was mostly mad because I thought it was something the Wanderer had done. It stopped when he died, so it didn’t…“ She trailed off. "Was that why my search pattern messed things up so bad? I kept trying to connect the whole time.”

Sylvi nodded slowly. "I’m sure it didn’t help. My block got tangled up with your path weaving, so parts of it stayed when I stopped. Didn’t know at first because I went to sleep for quite a while after you killed the Wanderer. Keeping him trapped for so long was tiring, and it was winter. I started untangling things when I found out, but it would have taken me a long time to finish. I was still working on forests when you came back, and your dance was much quicker.“

Flicker smiled, then frowned again as a thought finally broke through her fuzziness. "Wait a minute. Why would my mother plan an invasion, then go get someone who would prevent it? That makes no sense, and you said the Norns could See what was happening. Why weren’t they suspicious?”

“Because it wasn’t your mother that found me, that rainy day.”

“But she said a tree she planted needed your help–and my mother planted the tree in Kyrjaheim. Was she lying?”

“No.” Sylvi smiled again, more gently this time. "The woman who helped me move planted this tree. The Tree. Ages ago, when the Nine Worlds were just a little garden, she planted the Tree to hold the world together, while still letting it grow. She’s changed a lot since, and she didn’t have the same name then, if she had a name at all, but the Tree remembers. I’m sure she had a fair idea of what I would do, but she didn’t care much for the Wanderer either. And she can be very, very patient.“

"Who was it?”

“Greta.”



Next: Chapter 37

