Page 43 of Thistle Thorns

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Meadow!” Grandmother shouted after me.

The wind rushing against my ears kept me deaf to her shouts, as did the adrenaline of dodging what seemed like a hundred roots and tentacles that erupted from the pond. In a frantic voice, I repeated the spell, gulping as I tried to manage the burst of speed. I hadn’t gained any mastery over the Rabbit Step Spell since fleeing the manor, but once again, my erratic behavior made me difficult to catch.

Until I wanted to get caught.

Above, the sluagh blackbirds circled, waiting to strike, and the hounds and specters cornered my father and uncle, herding them towards the water if they didn’t want to endure their icy touch. The mastermind of this ambush wanted us all in one place for the final attack.

When I was as close to the center of the pond as I was going to get, I released the spell.

My feet immediately dropped below the surface of the dark water, but I didn’t sink.

The roots of the silver mallaithe tree encased me in darkness, twisting tight and blocking out the sunlight. I had a momentary flashback to the time Marten had imprisoned me in a tree, but this tree would not be so merciful as the last one had been.

Ivy-green light bloomed from my hands and golden-green light from the runes when I reactivated my cuffs. The pink granules in my fist glowed with an eye-blinding fluorescent light, and I slammed the supercharged Seeking Spell against my prison wall. In my mind’s eye, pink lightning tore a path through every root, tracing the magic of this creature back to its very heart. For that’s what fae were: magic embodied.

I didn’t hear the silver mallaithe tree screech, but the effect of the Seeking Spell finding its source was so profound that that roots surrounding me flared apart in pain. They twisted, writhed, and shuddered in jerky movements as if the mallaithe tree were having a seizure. No longer entrapped, I plunged neck-deep into the water. But I wasn’t going to swim away, not just yet.

Clinging to a shuddering root to keep my head above the rising water, I cast a Scouting Spell like my very life depended on it. Maybe it did.

As the silver mallaithe tree was semi-sentient, its signature lit up in my mind’s eye, but it wasn’t the signature I was looking for. The Scouting Spell rippled out, igniting six other sources. Six glowing dots that had formed a ring around my family in the pond.

The magic hunters.

But there was one glowing more brightly than the rest—the spellmaster directing this infernal ambush. Antler Tattoo.

Seven screams punctuated the air as my magical ping blinded the magic hunters’ sight, one a high-pitched screech of the silver mallaithe tree.

The blackbirds circling above us burst into wisps of black vapor, and the smoky hounds and specters vanished as the magic hunters’ control shattered from the pain of my Scouting Spell.

My family, released from the threat of the sluagh and the roots of the seizing mallaithe tree, burst into action. They were seasoned witches, all, and had felt the brush of my Scouting Spell and seized the ping before it could destroy their inner sight. I caught snatches of their movement through the churning water and thrashing roots as they blurred across the banks of the pond in the directions of the screams.

Something hit me hard around the middle, and before I could blast whatever it was with battle magic, I was reeled across the water. It was a vine of rippling green magic around my waist, and a moment later I was deposited on the mound. The water was only knee-deep here, and Grandmother gave me a curt, “Get up” before she flashed to the nearest bank on the power of the Rabbit Step Spell.

Though I got my feet under me and stood, I didn’t leave.

The Hawthorne witches had gone after the magic hunters, not the silver mallaithe tree. If it recovered before they reached our attackers, it could send its roots out through the ground in pursuit so long as its trunk remained in the water. Once seeded, one part of it, roots or trunk, had to be in contact with water at all times.

Well, I could certainly do something about that.

Wiggling my feet, I dug my boots into the squelching mud of the pond bottom to anchor myself. To ground myself. Taking a deep breath, I deactivated my battle magic and let the oak tree of my power within me flourish. What I was about to do called upon the Life aspect of Nature, not Death.

Emerald green light flecked with gold sparks burst from my chest, wreathing down my arms and legs and extending past my fingers and toes. The brown, churning, leaf-riddled water around me lightened to a ruddy gold as my magic reached its full strength, and I plunged my hands into the soft mud at my feet.

Up, I commanded the earth. Rise up.

The ground beneath my feet trembled. And obeyed.

This wasn’t a raised bed I was calling to expand my vegetable garden, nor a mound of earth to keep us out of the water. This wasn’t a little hill to playfully launch Sawyer into the air as we raced through the orchard, nor a compact pillar of dirt to bash a motorcycle aside.

The entire valley floor rose at my command, trembling and quaking, the bedrock far below surging upward like a rocky glacier and shoving all the soil and decomposing forest bones skyward.

Up, I urged, pouring my heart into this magic. Not just to save my family, but the future victims of this fae hunting tree if it should ever get free. The river was right behind us, and if the silver mallaithe tree deemed that its dinner wasn’t worth fighting for, it would escape to find more suitable hunting grounds. And grow. And seed.

The valley floor was now even with the makeshift banks of the pond, and I used my magic to cut drainage furrows on either side to let the water escape. But not the mallaithe tree. No, I kept half my attention on that creature, which, for the moment, was busy doing exactly what I thought it would do. Its roots plunged through the forest and tried to trip up and ensnare my family as they raced after our attackers.

Though semi-sentient, it wasn’t smart enough to realize the water level was shrinking until half its trunk was exposed.