Eletha awoke inside the womb of a budding heart tree, feeling foreign soil under its roots and warm, dry air blowing around its leaves.

She heard the sounds of splashing water and stones knocking together, of cutting, and desperate-sounding cries of animals she couldn’t recognize. And above all that … chatter. The all-encompassing, almost comprehensible chatter of a thousand meat-men voices. Memories surfaced in her mind, dim and foggy, but gradually becoming clearer.

She opened her eyes … and was horrified.

She lay inside a large heart tree growing right in the middle of a huge meat-man settlement, near to a ‘house’ made of broken birch wood. A border was constructed around the house and her tree, also made of tortured wood. It’d be called a ‘fence’, if she recalled a certain old man’s words correctly. Once she saw it, she couldn’t look away. It was too terrible.

Trying to force her heart tree’s magical eyes closed, she opened her mind to the soil beneath its roots, quickly sending out a wave of magic to the surrounding area. A distress signal. She got no response.

She tried again.

She got no response.

And again, and again, and again. And there was nothing.

She was alone … all alone … amidst meat-men.

Her eyes began to fill with water and sap.

“I’m going to come get you!” screamed May’s panicked voice, echoing in her head. “I’m not leaving you behind—tell me where you are!”

Eletha wildly looked around … but she saw nothing but small plants struggling for life in a place dominated by meat-men.

“I don’t know!” she screamed. “May! May, are you there?”

Her voice echoed through her heart tree’s roots, then through the dirt … and faded to nothing.

Eletha lifted her gaze before she could tear up again, sniffed, and connected herself deeply with her heart tree again. Feelings flooded over her. Everything seemed completely foreign—the warmth, the dryness, the composition of the soil, the … the fact that she was surrounded by meat-men. There was not a forest in sight. A few trees, yes, but they were all fast asleep.

Her breath suddenly caught in her throat. She saw a small, burnt little acorn in the very center of her heart tree.

“I didn’t make it,” she murmured to herself, feeling an intense heat around her as more memories of her previous life flooded out of the acorn, into her mind. “May … never found me.”

She shook her head, overwhelmed by the torrent of feelings and images. Surprisingly, she was able to do so completely unimpeded. Her new heart tree had grown to be large. Surprisingly large, in fact … how much time had passed, since her previous one had died? How long ago had her acorn been planted—and who had fed it with corpses?

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She looked around, searching for answers, but she found none.

More memories flooded out of the acorn. Her first time emerging out of a heart tree, right behind May. The stunned expressions of their sisters. Meeting the Oakmother, who’d told them they were special. Caring for the flowers growing in the shade. Tending to grass that was covered by the snow. Protecting the forest…

Eletha stopped breathing. All of that was over … Inside the womb of her heart tree, she tucked her head between her knees and cried.

As the next three days passed, she tried sending many more distress signals, probing the soil for any sign of another dryad. Her strength built up astonishingly quickly, as if the goddess Phosyphia herself had commanded the soil to deliver her nutrients, but she never found a sign of her sisters.

Even the grass and the small bushes surrounding her heart tree seemed to ignore her desperate, trembling pleas.

The horrible sounds of meat-men, however, were never-ending.

On the fourth morning, two of them came into view. They struggled to carry the corpse of a fat, pink animal by its legs as they trudged out of their ‘house’. The morning dew sat on the blades of grass in front of their feet, bringing the little plants some small measure of happiness … before the meat-men cruelly trampled all over them.

Eletha scowled at the monsters, rapidly growing angry. It’d be just a little longer, she knew, and her body would be ready. She’d be walking out of her heart tree very soon.

Throwing a torrent of magic into one of its branches, she willed it to take the long, curving shape of a bow.

The two meat-men didn’t notice. They trampled the grass under their feet, lugging the corpse of animal to her heart tree and dumping it there. They sighed loudly and wiped the sweat from their brows.

“Another, right, Tennen?” one of them asked.

“Yeah. Damned swine flu. That’s months of work down the gutter—get one of your boys to bury it.”

“Sure thing. In the name of the prophets.”

“Dremon is their name.”

The two meat-men left and shortly thereafter returned with another dead ‘pig’. Then came a third, a younger one, with a long piece of wood horridly skinned and fastened to a molded piece of rock. He used it to dig a large hole in the ground, muttering complaints about Eletha’s heart tree’s roots, and buried the two dead pigs in it. Once the hole was filled back in, Eletha asked her heart tree to strangle the corpses with its roots. It did, and more nutrients started to flood into her.

Eyeing the retreating meat-man, she felt sad and angry in equal measure. Sad for so utterly failing in her previous life, and angry at the meat-men who were complicit in causing her downfall.

She shook her head, letting the thought drift away from her. It’d be foolish to blame the meat-men for following their nature. Murder was in their design, as natural to them as breathing. It wasn’t personal—it was who they were.

But … so what?

That didn’t absolve them of the harm they caused. Their nature didn’t make their actions any less destructive, any less deserving of consequence. They still had to be stopped. And her anger, hot and unyielding as it was, was not a burden to be quelled; it was a weapon. Fury was a tool, one she could refine, sharpen, and wield. With it, she could carve the world into something better, something just, something deserving of the life the goddess Phosyphia had given it.

She asked her heart tree to release her from its sappy womb. Slowly, with a message to be careful, it acknowledged her request and began to unwrap her.

With her hands and feet, Eletha gently prodded the inside of the wood and bark, giving it time to create an opening. Once that was large enough, she stepped out of the heart tree into the dry, fresh air.

“This time,” she said, to herself and her new heart tree, “I am not playing nice. This time, I’m doing the right thing.”