The creature howls in anger. “They deceive us! This is not the one!”
“Find the one. The true one.”
“Over here,” one of us calls.
“No, it is I. I am the chosen one!” another shouts from the battlefield.
“I’m the one you want,” comes yet another voice.
The creatures screech. “They confuse us! How can we see when they use the realms magic against us?”
A Poppy Warrior shouts, “It is that one by the rock!”
“No, it is this one near me, I tell you!”
We are everywhere, and it is too much for them. They fall into fighting each other.
I shout over their din. “Why should you fight for the tree’s glory? For the trackers’? They will let you die and take all the magic for themselves. The tree will rule you as the Order did.”
The creatures eye me narrowly, but they listen.
One of us calls, “You will still be slaves to someone else’s power. Do you honestly believe they will share it equally with you?”
Amar paces on his white steed. “Do not listen to them! They are deceivers!”
A skeletal creature with long shredded moth’s wings shakes his spear above his head. “Why should we give the power to them, when we can have it for ourselves?”
“What will you promise us?” another man asks. His skin is as gray as rain.
“Silence!” The trackers open their hideous cloaks to reveal the screaming souls within. “You see what we wish you to see.”
The Winterlands creatures cower and fall again under the spell of their leaders.
She works her enchantment against us. Find the girl, the true girl, the tree says. Do not let them deceive you. She will be the one they try to protect.
A tracker races for Gorgon. Gorgon fixes him with a stare, and the thing sinks into a trance. The sword swings high. It screams down, and the tracker falls like a sapling in a mighty storm. Whatever is left of him, some force within, spirals out of his body like a dust storm and into the Tree of All Souls. The tree accepts him with a terrible scream. With a loud crackle, the branches reach out farther and taller; the roots dig deeper into the frozen wasteland. The tree glows with new energy.
“Gorgon!” I shout over the hail of arrows and the shrieks of battle. “We must stop!”
She does not dare to look at me. “Why?”
“The more we kill, the stronger the tree becomes. It takes in the souls! We’re not defeating them; we’re strengthening them!”
I search the battlefield, and I spy Kartik running for his brother. It is Kartik free of his disguise, his dark curls framing his face like a lion’s mane. He runs with grace and strength. I look about and I see glimpses of Felicity and Philon coming through. The magic is not holding! It is only a matter of moments before our plan is uncovered and I am found, and then…
I hear Philon’s cry. The tall, elegant creature has been injured by a tracker. His ax has been thrown aside. There is no time to think. I have to get to the tree.
Pulling up my skirts, I run as hard as I can, grabbing the ax. I nearly slip on the ice and the blood, but I do not break my stride. I run straight for the tree.
She comes! the tree screeches. Its roots reach out and tangle round my ankles, bringing me down hard. The ax skitters from my hand and lands just out of reach.
“Gemma…”
I look up. Above me in the tree’s maze of branches, Circe is wrapped in a cocoon of twigs and vines and sharp nettles. Her face is gray, and her mouth is blistered and swollen. In her hands is the dagger.
“Gemma,” she calls in a strangled voice. “You must…finish it…”
The twigs tighten round her neck, cutting off her warning, but not before she drops the dagger to the ground below. I scrabble for it in the thick roots.
Gemma, would you give this all up? For what? What will you return to when you have finished me? the tree intones. A careful little life? No longer special? No longer anything at all?
“I shall be different,” I say.
That is what they all say. The tree laughs, bitterly. And then their magic grows less and less. They grow up, away. Their dreams fade like their beauty. They change. And when they finally know that they would like this, it is too late for them. They cannot come back. Will this be your fate?
“N-no,” I say, turning away from the dagger in the vines.
“Gemma!” Kartik is calling me. But I cannot look away from the tree, can’t stop listening.
Stay with me, it says sweetly. Like this, always. Young. Beautiful. Blooming. They will worship you.