Page 44 of Thistle Thorns

It resembled a girl-child, just as the legends said, with smooth silver skin. Long hair of the same texture and hue hung straight down its back, fused to the nape and spine, and the sharply pointed leaves of its namesake lay in a flat crown around its head. Its square teeth, so much like a human’s, were the same silver color, as was the sleeveless dress that clung to its small breasts and narrow waist. Of course it wasn’t wearing clothes, nor did it have breasts, but that was part of its defense—it had to resemble a human child—or rather a fae child, given its pointy ears—as much as possible to prevent someone taking a torch to it.

But its eyes… They should have been silver too, without any distinction between iris and sclera, and yet these blazed blue with faelight.

If I hadn’t been convinced its presence here was part of a masterfully laid out trap before, I certainly was now.

That blue light flickered in its eyes when it realized the water was now exposing the hem of its dress, where the silver bark met the black of its roots. The instinct to survive battled with the compulsion of the faelight, and the mallaithe jerked back its monstrous roots. With a shrill cry, it plunged into the disappearing water and torpedoed for one of the drainage furrows.

A burst of green magic sealed that furrow with bedrock, the ground shuddering as the silver mallaithe collided into its impenetrable surface. The brown water churned into foam as the mallaithe tried the other furrow only to find that escape route blocked too. With a panicked keen, it began to circle in the shrinking pool. Then it dove for the remaining depths.

Black roots shot out at me like javelins, and I flung one hand free of the ground to lift a glittering green shield. While I’d never split my concentration between two spells before, I was a Hawthorne. Mom had done it. All the robed elders of the coven could do it. And what better way for me to learn than when my life depended on it.

Right?

I screamed as a root pierced through my shoulder. It yanked back, tugging me forward a step and taking my blood with it.

By the Green Mother, that hurt.

Gritting my teeth against the strange burning sensation in my flesh, I doubled down on my spells. Focus. Oh, I was focusing alright. I’d been panicked and desperate before. But now I was angry.

The ground continued to rise, though it wasn’t releasing any more of the trapped water, and the glittering shield I’d erected was now thick enough to be nearly translucent. My shield sparked and fizzed where the roots struck it, but nothing penetrated it again as I sank back down into my crouch. My fingers dug into the mud, and my command changed.

Drain.

The surface of the water jumped like a thousand bubbles had just been released below its surface. The ground shifted, creating little pockets and subterranean crevices, but it wasn’t draining fast enough. The mallaithe struck my shield again and again, frantic. It put the entirety of its will behind those attacks, and spider-web-like cracks fissured along the shimmering surface.

I didn’t have the words to direct my magic now, just my intent. Remove the water, suffocate the mallaithe. Or dehydrate it. I wasn’t sure of its anatomy.

My green magic soaked into every living thing. I commanded them to draw up the water through their roots. I ordered the ground to expunge the water, release it, eject it. With my magical core glowing a blinding golden-green, I demanded the water remove itself from the rest of the valley.

Brown murk rose into the air, the heavier soil particles and rotting leaves and decomposing twigs and all the forest debris sloughing back to the ground. Water, pure and clean and catching the rays of the sunlight in the most dazzling rainbow display swept higher towards the sky.

The silver mallaithe tree screamed, its thin silver arms stretching after the water as its black roots extended to their longest length, as if on tiptoe. But it didn’t jump. Its existence depended on contact with water and soil, and it’d already lost one of them.

Go, I told the water. Join the river.

The clear water flattened into an arcing wave high above my head, each droplet hurrying to obey my command. There was a different kind of roar as my wave joined the rushing river, but I didn’t turn to witness their merging. My gaze, my focus, was on the fae hunting tree.

It scuttled this way and that, roots and thin arms clawing at the leaf-covered ground, searching for hidden pockets of moisture. It shoved its roots deep but was met with only bedrock.

That shrill keen shot from its throat again, pinching off as its skin faded from its luminous silver to a dull gray. Its roots shriveled. The cheeks of its girl-child face sank, its eyes hollowing out. Baring its teeth, it struck one final time towards the single source of water remaining.

My blood.

I hadn’t stopped bleeding from where it’d pierced me earlier, and I’d diverted all of my magic to maintaining my two spells instead of healing myself. Now that the valley was level ground and the water gone, my magic had turned fully to the shield I’d erected. But I was weak from the blood loss, the kiwi-sized hole pumping blood over my clothes with the same gusto as a chocolate fountain, and my shield burst apart with that final strike.

The unexpectedness of fainting saved my life. I crumpled to the dry ground as the roots shot through the air where my head and chest had just been, and then there was a sickening crack.

My vision swam as something brown and hulking bit down on the joint between the mallaithe tree’s neck and shoulder, massive jaws and claws ripping it asunder. The fae hunting tree shattered into brittle splinters, and that last thing I saw was a bird flying across the cloudless sky, returning home now that the threats had been destroyed.

As the world faded away, the roar of the river was replaced by a familiar voice.

“You are becoming,” Violet told me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The crackling of the hearth and the comforting scent of woodsmoke roused me. Groaning, I became aware of a dull ache in my right shoulder and a weight on my chest.

A moment later, whiskers tickled my cheek.

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