Page 106 of Gift from the Tree

“I saw Willow as a little girl. She was carrying a piece of paper to the dinner table where her father was eating. When he asked what it was, Willow explained they were having a mommy and me day at school, and Willow wanted to know if she’d have a mommy to come with her. Her father took the piece of paper, balled it up, and threw it in the fireplace, telling her she didn’t have a mother anymore because her mother was useless and never could do what she was born to do. Willow cried herself to sleep that night.

“Then it showed a much older, teenage Willow. She was standing in a room looking out the window, tears pouring out of her eyes, watching a vehicle, I believe that’s what the nonmagical world named it, pull off. When it left the driveway, she grabbed a bag from her bed and sprinted out of her house. She traveled through the woods for what felt like hours before she finally emerged and began walking down a road. Another vehicle with sparks of light coming off it came rushing down the road toward her. She took off running as fast as she could, but a man got out of that contraption and tackled her to the ground. Dragged her to the vehicle by her hair and returning her home to where her father was waiting for her.

“Finally, it showed me and her training. She did something. The angle didn’t allow me to see what, but whatever it was had her excited. She was jumping up and down clapping, asking me if I saw. I told her I did and then she jumped on me and kissed me,” Tillman trails off, rubbing his pink-tinted face. Either telling us about the kiss embarrassed him or a little more happened and he’s not going to say it.

“It sounds like she tried to run away and was caught,” Gaster says thoughtfully.

“Caspian,” Corentin says to me expectedly.

“Mine started with someone handing a baby Willow over to her father. He asked what her mother named her, and the random man said Willow. Then her father said if she does not show potential for what we need, we will breed her and get rid of her like her useless mother, and he handed her off to a woman who I assume was house staff at the time.

“Then it showed me everything she's been through.

“Finally, it showed the four of us standing around her. Elementra spoke to me, and then it was over.” I finish quickly. I’m not telling them the details of what she’s been through. That’s between me and her. It’ll haunt my sleep for the remainder of my life, and I hope they overlook the Elementra thing. I don’t want to talk about that either.

“Don’t do that, Caspian. Don’t leave important things out like fucking Elementra herself speaking to you in your awakening,” Corentin growls, of course, being the one to never let a detail go unnoticed.

“She said, ‘she isn’t your demise, she is your salvation,’” I say quickly, not looking up at any of them.

They all know how I feel about women. It’s been the same since I was a teenager. I fuck them and leave them and that’s all. I don’t allow them to touch me, kiss me, even look at me very long. The knowledge of her being more is petrifying. Fuck, I struggle to even say her name out loud because it makes her a real person at that point, but that’s my issue, not hers.

“Oh, and she has an earth element as well as air.” I was waiting for the right moment to tell them, and now that they’re about to interrogate me about my awakening sounds like the perfect time.

“What?” all four of them shout at me at once.

I tell them everything from the moment she walked in the door till I came and joined the fight. I even tell Tillman he can look inside my head and rewatch it to see if he catches something I missed or if I’m mistaken. He watches but not because he thinks I missed something. He wants to see how her power flows.

“She’s a natural. She commanded someone else’s element that had you trapped and then manipulated her own. She grew a whole tree for you, just for some shade,” he says with so much pride.

“Have you ever seen or heard of anyone having more than one element, Gaster?” I ask. He’d be the only person I’d know who possibly could know.

“I’ll need to look through some of my notes and the archives. I couldn’t help but notice that both of your awakenings had something to do with her mother. Her father mentioned her mother in Draken’s awakening as well,” he says out loud, but he has a dazed look in his eyes, like he’s stuck searching for something deep in his mind.

“You think her mother has something to do with everything going on with her?” Corentin asks.

“Possibly. How Willow was able to stay in the nonmagical realm with powers has always been a conundrum we couldn’t figure out. I’ve assumed someone with the ability to move through the realms like me, may have hidden her there, but based on your awakenings, that can’t be true. She was truly born and raised there.”

We all sit in silence, stewing on that. The mystery of why she was in the nonmagical realm has crossed my mind countless times, but I’ve never given it much thought that her parents would have something more to do with it. After a few moments, Draken becomes restless, hopping up to his feet.

“How do we make this right?” he asks.

Fuck if I know, dragon.

Twenty-Three

Willow

“Here, drink this,” Oakly demands.

“What is it?” I sniffle, wiping away the damn snot and tears that won’t stop falling.

“A calming tea with lots of liquor, so happy juice,” she says, bubbly, making me chuckle.

The sound of my communicator going off again cuts my laugh off and my bottom lip trembles because I know it’s one of them. They gave me about thirty minutes from the time I left until both Oakly’s and my communicators started blowing up. Well, Gaster called within minutes, and I finally told Oakly she could talk to him, but I’m not talking to any of them. I didn’t even talk to her until that moment.

“Ignore it. I’m not talking to them tonight,” I tell Oakly as she reaches for the communicator for me.

“Perfect, we need a girls’ night anyway, so fuck them,” she declares, plopping down on the couch beside me with her own cup and a damn pitcher of the delicious fruity little concoction she made us.

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