The Mirror of Fate by T. A. Barron Read Free Book Online Page B

away.
    At last, the fire on his tunic extinguished, the man turned to face me. For a long moment, he stared in silence. “Sorcery,” he growled at last. “Cursed sorcery.”
    “No, no,” I replied. “Just a little magic. To help you.” I waved at the crackling flames. “Come, now. Warm your family, as well as your food, by this fire.”
    He looked at his wife, her eyes filled with a mixture of terror and longing. Then he took her by the arm. “Never,” he spat. “No sorcerer’s flames for us!”
    “But . . . it’s what you need.”
    Heedless of my protests, they crossed the meadow and retreated into the trees. Hallia and I stood there, dumbfounded, until the sounds of snapping sticks and the crying child no longer reached us.
    Glancing down at my shadow, I caught sight of it slapping its sides. Jeering at me! I roared, jumping on top of it. Hallia spun around, but the instant before she saw the shadow, it returned to normal, moving only as I did. She looked at me in bewilderment.
    Fuming, I stamped out the fire with my boot. My shadow, I was irked to see, did the same but with a touch more vigor. With a sigh, I said, “I hadn’t intended to frighten them—only to help them.”
    She observed me sadly. “Intentions aren’t everything, young hawk. Believe me, I know.” For an instant, she looked as if she yearned to say something more—but caught herself. She gestured in the direction of the departed family. “After all, they hadn’t intended to kill this poor tree. Only to build a fire for their child.”
    “But they’re one and the same!”
    “Wasn’t your trying to send the ballymag home, and sending us all here instead, also one and the same?”
    My cheeks grew hotter. “That’s completely different.” I ground my heel into the coals. “At least this time the magic worked. Just not in the way I’d hoped.”
    “Listen, you did what you could. I’m only lamenting . . . oh, I’m not even sure what.” She watched the dying coals. “It’s just hard, sometimes, to do the right thing.”
    “So I shouldn’t even try?”
    “No. Just try carefully.”
    Still perturbed, I gazed at her. Then, turning back to the scarred pine, I winced at the size of its wound. “Maybe, at least, I can do one right thing today.”
    Kneeling at the base of the elder pine, I reached out a finger and touched the sweet, sticky sap oozing out of the gouge. It felt thicker than blood, and lighter in hue, more amber than red. Even so, it seemed very much like the blood that had flowed from my own shoulder not long before. I listened to the barely audible whisper of its quivering needles. Then, very carefully, I placed both of my hands over the spot, willing the sap to hold itself back, to bind the wound.
    In time I felt the sap congealing under my palms. Removing my hands, I crushed some fallen pine needles and spread them gently over the area. Bending closer, I blew several slow, steady breaths, all the while sending my thoughts into the fibers of the tree. Draw deep, you roots, and hold firm. Soar high, you branches; join with air and sun. Bark—grow thick and strong. And heartwood: stand sturdy, bend well.
    Finally, when I felt I could do no more, I backed away from the trunk. I turned to speak to Hallia, but before I could, another voice spoke first. I had never heard it before—so breathy, vibrant, and strange, made more of air than of sound. Yet I knew it at once. It was the voice of the tree itself.

6: B OUND R OOTS
    To my surprise, the tree spoke not in the language of pines, that whooshing and whispering tongue I had come to know, but in the main language of Fincayra. The same language that Hallia and I spoke to each other! Yet its airy voice, and its cadence that swayed like a sapling, were different. Strikingly different. I had never heard anyone speak—or, in truth, sing—in such a way.
    In deepening soil my under-roots toil:
Following, swallowing—
    Arboresque moil.
    For year after year, for centuries