Page 111 of The Tree of Spirits
“I told you. I’m purging our world of magic.”
I coughed again. “You can’t do that.”
“Oh? And why is that?” She sounded amused.
“Because humanity needs magic. It’s our only hope of beating the Curse.”
“Magic brought the Curse here!” she shouted, her voice shrill and angry. “It cost me my husbandandmy daughter. Magic is the problem. It needs to be eliminated. Starting with this tree.”
I glanced at the boys, but they shook their heads.
“The fire is burning really hot,” Conner said. “We can’t put it out. We can only hold it off.” He caught me as I swayed to the side; all that smoke was really going to my head. “And I’m not even sure how long we can do that,” he added.
I fought off the despair, the fear, the sense of impending doom. Falling to pieces wouldn’t help us out of this situation. There had to be something—some way to fix this.
“Elandra?” I called out, trying to appeal to her humanity, hoping she still had some of it left in her, buried somewhere beneath all her anger and pain and hate. “Please, put out the fire. You don’t want to kill me.”
“I had such high hopes for you, Savannah, when I met you at the Black Market. Kylie spoke very highly of you. She said you have such compassion, such a powerful drive to help others.”Elandra sighed. “But those days are over. You’re working withthemnow. You’re working with theenemy. It’s a shame really. You’re such a clever, resourceful girl. You could have helped me save this world.”
The inside of the fire cage was unbearably hot, but I felt like a frozen hand had just clutched my heart with its icy fingers.
“I want no part of your scheme,” I snapped back. “You aren’t saving the world. You’re destroying it.”
“You are just like your mother: so smart and yet so naive.” Elandra sighed. “If you refuse to be part of the solution, you are part of the problem. But no hard feelings, ok?”
“No hard feelings? You are trying to burn me alive!”
“No, I’m taking care of the biggest threat to Earth’s salvation: the Knights. You just happen to be standing next to them.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. When I’d met Kylie’s mom, I’d never suspected she was secretly a psychopath. Was she really that good of a liar? Or was I just a totally terrible judge of character?
“Why?” I coughed. “Why bother organizing protests against the Summit? If you destroy the Spirit Tree, there won’t even be a Summit.”
“I would think the answer is obvious, Savannah,” she said coyly.
I blinked back the smoke stinging my eyes. “You wanted people to lose faith in the Government and their leadership.”
She was right. The answer was obvious. But it was so hard to think straight when I could hardly breathe.
“And it worked.” Victory resonated in Elandra’s voice. “Peoplehavelost faith in the Government. More people than ever before joined yesterday’s protests. The streets were full of them!”
“Ok, so you got people angry and scared. Now what?” I demanded.
“People werealreadyangry and scared.” Her laugh was a smooth purr. “But now they’re ready to act. Showing up at the protests was just that first taste of rebellion they so very much needed. And now there’s no turning back. There’s no stuffing this all back into the bottle, no matter how much the Government wants to do it. And once magic is dead on Earth—once people can’t rely on the Knights and the spirits to solve their problems for them—they will take matters into their own hands.”
Beside me, Kato and Conner swayed. They’d used up so much magic fighting the fire, and the air was growing thick with smoke. They were probably only a minute or two away from passing out, but they weren’t giving up. They were still battling the flames.
“Put out the fire, Elandra,” I hissed. “It’s not too late to stop this.”
“Of course it’s too late. Magic brought the Curse to us. The Curse took everything from us. It steals everything that we hold dear.” Her voice shook. “The only way to protect what we have left is to expel all magic from our realm.”
Conviction rang in her voice. The kind of conviction that only touched heroes or madmen. But Elandra’s actions were not those of a hero.
She wasn’t going to stop. Not until the Spirit Tree was dead and the three of us along with it.
There is no way out of this.
As soon as I allowed the words to touch my mind, my legs collapsed, surrendering to the horrific truth.
