Norhill 712

Border Guard Glisinda snapped awake to a preternatural knowledge. -A human has entered my boundaries.-

Dawn broke, foggy and humid, as the nymph soared the grounds, seeking the intruder. Her camouflage masked even the color of her lips and the arc of her horns, nothing more than a ripple across the background, and she descended in utter silence upon his camp.

Roho, for his part, would not call the shallow indention between roots a camp. No fire, no blankets, not even a pack. The endless desert of black rock and hot sand ate the boots out from under him, and his skin blistered with a dozen sunburns. He refused to contemplate those left behind, yet what else could possibly drown out the silence?

Unaware of Glisinda spying, the young man forced himself upright. In better conditions, he might be rugged and hardy, but hunger and skin redder than beets disrupted that impression.

"Water." He staggered, aimless, towards the distant sound of it. Finding a pond, he cried out in bliss and dunked his head, gulping greedily. -Great Athos, this is better than a free night in the brothel!-

"A full stomach and I'll be happier than a well-paid scribe!" he vowed. An extra strength vow to make up for the dark clouds behind it.

The nymph, invisible, retrieved one of her many caches and deposited the cornucopia on the pond's bank several feet away from Roho. On a better day, he would have noticed, but singed and exhausted, his swimming mind saw the food and not the conspicuous way it appeared. He crammed in nuts and berries until he thought he would vomit, and then the human collapsed into a peaceful sleep.

-He doesn't seem very harmful.- Glisinda looked about, spied a nest of blue jays, and bid them to sing out when he woke. She slipped off to tend other matters. One of the bear cubs was sick.

For several days, the human showed no inclination towards exploration, debauchery, or violence. He foraged (loud and clumsy) for his food, fashioned a lean-to against the late summer heat, and slept often as the burns began to fade away. After a week of observation, the nymph decided he was no threat.

Meanwhile, Roho recovered enough spirit to begin complaining. "God, I'd lay with a banshee for a pair of boots!" he spat after the fourth thorn in his foot that day.

Then an invisible hand dropped a pair of moccasins at his feet. "What's a banshee?"

He screamed, more shrill than he'd prefer, and flailed for the ax he lost in the battle a week ago.

"Sorry!" called the voice, strawberry sweet, in a very strange Norhill dialect. "Calm down please!"

It belonged to a fern. No, a pair of hazel eyes floating in midair. Only squinting could he pick out the flesh from greenery, and then he flushed hot.

-Athos' balls, the thing's naked!-

Naked and inviting, thighs firm and curves soft and...

"I brought you footwear," it - no, she - said. "What's a banshee?”

"Its...a monster. An ugly monster," Roho stammered in rusty Norhill. He picked up the moccasins and tried them on. Tight like a vice, made for a girl's feet, but a little bit of restitching could fix that. Needed a needle.

She watched, crouched on a rock. His eyes kept slipping from her hawkish eyes to the curve of her bosom and the shadow between her thighs, try as he might to focus.

"Thank you," he said. "I'm Roho Carpenter." Couldn't very well call himself a Blade when he ran screaming like a child.

"Glisinda."

-Glee-send-ah? Not a Norhill name.- Everybody knew the rumors about the fateful nation's refugees, mutated and transformed beyond recognition, that roved in dark places. Could this inviting lass be a Havoc monster, child of Shaitan, like the beastmen? "How do you speak old Norhill?"

"What? Old Norhill?" She snorted. "They learned that language from us, not the other way around!" The Forest was here long before that country, after all.

The mercenary gulped, gathering courage. "If I may...what are you?"

She frowned, tipping her head, and the swish of jade hair revealed two spiral horns. Awful sharp ones. "A nymph. At least for another ten days."

-Duh. It would rather make sense to find a nymph in a nymph's lands.- As a teenager, he had fantasized about mythical, hedonistic forest sprites who threw themselves on the first man they saw. Adolescent legend said they lusted above all things for the essence of a man.

"So...do you guys have sex a lot?" asked his tongue under influence of an organ much lower than his brain.

"That is a strange question. Do humans?" She eyed his tented pants, expression placid. Like examining an ant or a flower! "You're tense."

Blushing like an apprentice, he fumbled the offending organ down. "Its not proper for a maiden to stare!"

Sudden flash of interest. "You know the Maiden?!"

"The maiden? The maiden of what?"

Glisinda frowned. They must not be talking about the same Maiden. Maybe Talia had sisters in human lands? What wonderful news, if she could tell her dream-friend that she wasn't alone. (It was very lonely being unique...) Or perhaps this Roho Carpenter's erection interfered with his brain, just like nymph boys?

Several minutes of silence passed while the nymph turned her attention to the lands, letting Roho get himself under control.

"What brings you here?" she asked eventually.

"I...ran..." Roho searched the underbrush, picking out a handful of twigs that could double as weak needles. "The Empty Armies attacked. Killed most everyone. We were all press ganged...but when it came time to escape, I was the only one to actually make it."

"I mourn with you." Glisinda bowed her head, giving a moment of silence. The human refused to look at her now, eyes glued to the shoes. -Does he find me disgusting, that he refuses to look?-

“Thank you,” said Roho. He could not trust himself to look at the nymph without losing control, not after several weeks on the trail without women.

"Are you from Norhill?" It was the only human land she knew more about than its name.

"No. I'm Lydian."

Yes, she could smell it. Faint under the wasteland dust, plastering of sweat and horses. A tickle of mountain paths that bordered thundering rivers hundreds of feet below. Snow never melted from their peaks, a spine that cleaved apart the lands on either side, and only one pass through that wagons could traverse for hundreds of miles. There, a city of wealth and corruption, desire and satisfaction, rot and metal. So very different from the tides of her Forest...

"Lydia..."

Roho's heart pounded in his ears. The creature knelt, framed by fern and breeze like one of the beastmen shamans. Her eyes closed, lips parted so inviting, body stretched open to encompass the whole world around. What's more, the forest responded. Plants waved in time with her breathing, and the birds fell quiet. A nature goddess, intimate and warm in front of him.

No human girl would match. Not anymore.

"Yeah, Lydia." Voice choking on his own lust. "Home, I guess. I have to return, report the caravan lost. The Guild will throw a fit."

Glisinda faded back into herself, releasing the Forest around her. "Tell me about it."

"Well...its dangerous, alright, but good money. If the bandits don't getcha, the beastmen will. If the beastmen don't get you, some Shaitan worshiping fool will turn everyone around him into a giant pile of rubble.”

“Shaitan?”

"You know....Lord of the Forbidden Word."

She didn't know.

-Athos' balls dipped in vinegar, she doesn't even know what Havoc is?! How can Dryads not know?!- Nobody in the civilized world forgot about Havoc. Not when it destroyed towns, took friends, scrambled geography, and struck down good men.

“The Shaitan is the one who corrupts pure souls. He is responsible for when men fall. They submit to his power, and it destroys the fabric of the world.”

"So...your magic is bad?" -How strange.- Perhaps they weren't properly obtaining permission from the lands they governed. Pull from unruly land, and even a Dryad would be in a world of hurt! -Lucky, then, that the Forest and our King take care of things for us.-

"Its damn dangerous. Don't half trust the Wizards with it either. They're the whole reason why Norhill fried. Hubris, and Athos punished it.

Glisinda had a very dangerous and naughty thought, and approached it with care. "Its that dangerous? Would you perhaps...wish for an escort to your Lydia?" To see beyond the Wastes...

Roho grinned like an idiot, already imagining what his Pa would say to that!

The Forest, on the other hand, would not allow one of the Chosen candidates to waltz from its presence for the sake of a little wanderlust! It dug into the shadows of a clouded mind, withdrew the nightmare from within, and chained it to material form. There were stronger things it could use, ones that would insure the human's death, but it could not risk alerting the King to its activities. The Guide refused to take the process seriously.

Just as the Forest planned, Glisinda jerked back, hissing like a viper. "Abomination!"

The word was too obscure for Roho's old Norhill, but her tone was not. "W-what is it?!"

In the distance, birds flocked skyward in a rainbow carpet of shrieks. Animals darted by, fleeing as if a forest fire. Something black and smoldering shifted, throwing off an acidic smoke.

-I've never seen one appear that fast!- Glisinda snarled.

An abomination of bark lit by an inner balefire, the possessed treant charged through underbrush straight for Roho. Its insides smoldered, flaking a wake of soot, and branches bent into gnarled, sharp arms. One stray ember could send the whole forest into a blaze, beyond even a nymph's control.

Roho, sensibly, stuffed his feet into the moccasins and dived for cover.

Glisinda let her heart ache for a fraction of a second for all the things that would die, and then she summoned the Forest magic to her. The mana arced into her, sucking dry a whole bed of brilliant flowers to wilted and dead things, and with it she swept the pond from its bounds and heaved it onto the monster. A wave of fog swallowed the scene, but the treant extinguished.

The monster tree staggered onwards, pounding a limb like a sledgehammer into the soil not an inch from where Roho huddled. He rolled away in combat instincts, avoiding the follow up blow, and sprinted for new cover.

-Its after him!- Could the land be allergic to humans? Did the memory of their carelessness in Norhill enrage the trees themselves? Whatever the reason, he could not stay.

Not even to tell her about a world far beyond the Cycle she knew.

She called the mud under the treant's tendrils to snare it and screamed to Roho. "You have to get out of here! Roho, take my pack and flee!" Scurrying up another tree, she bounced along past the raging abomination to where her hidden skin of water and dried fruit waited. Like a squirrel, a good nymph always prepared for winter. To the man it flew.

He fumbled the pack, transfixed on the monster. "Damn....that is one angry tree."

"I said, Get out of here! Its after you!" -So long, Beyond.- “Get home safe!"

Breaking free of the clay, the abomination tore off a chunk of bark and flung it at Roho. It glanced across his shoulder, the force knocking him over. No need to another warning! "Thank you, Glisinda."

As he scrambled across the dead barrier of brush between Forest and Wastes, Glisinda sighed. -I cannot follow. This land is my responsibility. My chain.-

Then she turned to the fight and the abomination.

"You've pissed me off now!"

She didn't have to find any extra firewood that winter. Yet the nymph found no satisfaction as her skin shifted and Thanata rose to the surface. None of the trees could explain their brother's sudden enraged transformation any better than her.

Another frozen winter, alone.

**********

Norhill 714, the eve of the autumn Turning

Placid dreams for an eighteen year old. Seated at the head of the Turning feast, Mother on her right and Serge on her left, Glisinda chatted with her childhood friends as if nothing ever changed. In dreamy logic, everyone accepted without a frown that she and Thanata were one now. They even hailed her as a hero for saving her sister. She banished the monsters with a clever trick (she couldn't quite remember what), and the King came with a smile on his worn face to kneel and offer her the Sylvan Crown. He opened his lips to offer a speech of praise and kindness.

Talia's scream rang out, drowning the festival and the King out.

"Glee!" Voice wracked in pain and need. “Please help!”"

It called for her through the Other-place just like Thanata that cold winter.

The dream-nymph couldn't force air out, couldn't call back. Paralyzed, buried in dream-numbness.

"Glee...please...why didn't you answer me?"

And the voice of her only friend faded away.

Snapping awake, Glisinda lunged after that echo. She found her hands outstretched into empty air and, at the last moment, twisted her fall into a dive. Her soul sang, intent only on Talia's broken voice, and the nymph dove straight into the heart of her tree. Its bark and the Green Way parted, a spirit road of jade and crystal that she blasted into. Territory could survive on its own. The Maiden needed her!

She called the Forest to carry her like the wind.

It answered, accelerating the young woman into an arrow, little more than a thought. Several hundred miles separated the Wastes border from Capitol, and Glisinda intended to make the trek in hours.

-I'm coming, Talia!-

As Glisinda barreled for home, the King rose late in the morning, bones frozen to lead. His tongue tasted of mildew, and old eyes could not focus. Though he could wrap the luxurious furs closer, he could not shake the serpent around his heart.

"Finally time, isn't it?" he asked the air.

Yanu, the Forest, deigned to respond directly. "Yes." To the King, its voice was the mellow gold of the previous Queen. To her, it had been the King before that.

-Really, I'm just its puppet. I spend my centuries mopping up its messes.-

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But now, this morning of spring equinox, he would die and pass his crown on. Another monarch would toil for a millennium in his place. Oh, but the choices were so few now.

Thoughts of the Choosing dug up the dead children, the silent crowd of failures in Yanu's bloody game. He had lied to each and every one's parent. Reassured grieving mothers. Told them each death was an accident, a natural part of the Cycle.

-A farce. If only I was younger, stronger...I would wake Her myself and be done with it.-

Even though death nipped at sludge-filled limbs, the King forsook his cane on the trip to the foyer, enjoying the cool breeze between gnarled roots that supported his roof. He caught his young aide, Leesa, napping against the open portal.

"Darling, fetch Miranda please."

She jerked awake, cracked an elbow on the floor, and hissed in pain.

"Miranda, please."

"Y-yes, your Majesty." Cradling her elbow, she rushed off.

He shook his head and smiled to the Forest. “You know I do not prefer her.”

Limbs swished together, a ghostly shrug. “She passed the tests.”

“I suppose so. Miranda will have to do then.”

The rest would depend on the Maiden, as always before.

***********

The Forest released Glisinda from the Green Way at the exact moment that, a nation assembled, nymph and mors began the Turning ritual. Alabaster, the Guardian Stone of the east, spat the grimy and sore girl onto the capitol boulevard. She flopped, a fish on land, trying to recover the mechanics of arms and legs from that ethereal Other.

Despite stagnant air, the trees hissed and shivered. The sky was slate. Stale air tasted like lightning, and the animals hid.

"Its all wrong, Glee," echoed Talia from the hollows between trunks. Her voice cracked, high and exhausted as if she had been running. "I don't want Miranda!"

"Talia, wait! What?!"

"Miranda doesn't want me!" she wailed.

The grass wilted, the wind wailed, and the underbrush susurrated angrily, all smothered by the Maiden's mood. Then they resurged, pushing back the tide in a surreal ripple. Back and forth, unseen giants slugged through the air.

-Talia...and the Forest...are fighting-. Glisinda shivered. -That's preposterous! The Maiden is the heart of the Forest! How can they fight?- She struck out for the shrine, scrambling in the loose dirt for more speed.

Miles away, outside the Maiden's shrine, Miranda in a gown of golden leaves presided over the Turning ritual. People murmured in confusion. She steeled herself, rehearsing the King's secret instructions. Instead of passing a seed between hands, she and the Monarch crossed arms and ascended the rise to the shrine. Behind them, the nervous mutter buzzed louder, punctuated by the objections of the elders.

Yet the King only waved somber goodbye. “Farewell, my people.”

Old eyes swept the assembled, fair nymph and pale mors alike, and he smiled. "Do not worry. All things have their place under the heavens."

At his bidding, the great oaks that encircled the shrine knitted together like clay, swallowing the duo in deep shadow. (Really, they were all one echo of the Yggdrasil that protected the Maiden.) Miranda's arm grated against his parchment skin, trembling slightly.

"I am to be Queen?" the nymph asked, eyes clouded. The growing tree sealed the way and cut off her way back.

"Yes."

She glanced up. The branches so far above, wide as roads, were intertwining to cut them away in total darkness, a bubble in the great tree's belly. Or perhaps a womb, the shrine and all. She smiled despite her fear. -Queen. All those ideas that the elders never wanted to hear. I can implement every one of them now, and they can't stop me. How will the elders feel when I replace their whining councils with communal ditch digging?-

The King coaxed light from the marble stones, a soft pearl that highlighted the crevices in each wrinkle. "Come. We must pray to the Maiden."

"The Maiden?" -What does she matter?- thought Miranda, lost in how her rule would modernize the whole Forest.

That should have been the King's clue, but a man of a thousand years, bent with so many Cycles, earned a few slips every century or two.

Mastering strength, he escorted the nymph through the shrine, father of the bride for the ascendant Queen. He could not afford to second-guess in the last hours of his life.

Except for their footsteps, claustrophobic silence. A mausoleum.

The final doors squealed and rasped against his shove, stubborn. A barrier to the innermost sanctum of their Forest. In the bowels of Yggdrasil, the shrine became more than simply resting place for a young girl. It entered an Other place.

It was the seed of creation.

Remember me, wood and stone! Remember my hand upon you so long ago!

Forest power rushed from Sylvan Crown and lent him the strength of a hundred men. Its hands and will joined with his fingers, and they pushed. Both doors swung open into the chamber where Talia the Maiden slept.

**********

Glisinda, sprinting, just reached the farthest edges of the crowd around the Maiden's -- giant ash?! Good sun above, its leaves brushed against the clouds!

Talia cried out. "Glee! They're here! Oh, I don't want to sleep again! No, let me stay with --"

"Hold on!" Glisinda shouted. Heads turned, but the collected assembly remained in terse waiting. Was it a moving sign of faith in their King, or were they simply afraid to leave without results?

Not that she waited for them to part. "Rise, rise, to the skies!"

Glisinda vaulted, her veins luminescent violet with magic, and soared above the heads of the assembled. A root ripped free of its home, gnarled and strong, and arced skyward. It caught her feet at the crest of her jump and launched the nymph further. Another, another, another; uprooted flora cracked foundations and caved in homes so they could speed her along, hopscotch, to the great tree.

The nation below saw the Horned Waker flying overhead, a beacon of light and color, and the placid land around them suddenly waken to chaos. They saw without understanding, and elder voices called out condemnation.

"Demon!"

"Monster!"

"Corrupted one!"

The Horned Waker ignored them, entire body coiling for the last leap. Then she soared, drawn into a taunt arrow, and thought only of Talia as the walls of bark approached.

Smooth as a pebble, she disappeared into the Green Way. A maze of twists and false turns, it would not deter her!

**********

He brushed a hair from Talia's cheek. "Maiden, you must stir for a moment. It is time for the Great Turning."

Miranda, polite at the end of the stone bed, frowned. "The Maiden has always slept. How do you wake her up with a tap?"

"Always slept? That is not...entirely accurate. I suppose you could best call her restless. A few loving words in a place not quite normal, not quite a dream, can call her soul to us," replied the King. Again, he whispered in the Maiden's ear. "I am old. Come. Meet your new Guide, darling child."

"Guide?" Miranda asked. -I thought I was to be Queen, not a babysitter!-

The Maiden stirred.

"It is our most sacred journey," explained the King. "Those of us called Monarch exist only to protect the dreams of the Maiden."

"You're King! You can veto the assembled vote of any elder council on a whim!”

"Ah, true, but it was not always so. The first of our line, before the elders decided to vest power in the long-lived, was a simple hermit on this very land."

Restless, the Maiden frowned, groaned, and clenched her fists. Caught in a feverish nightmare, she began to whimper.

"So, what? That's it?" Petulant Miranda found her fists clenched, too. -How am I going to whip the Forest into shape while I guard this brat? Promised power and handed a nanny's apron! I will not be a thousand year nanny!-

The King spied Miranda's stormy brow and paled to ash. Too late, he realized the truth. This young woman sought only power and prestige, ne'er a care for the health of Forest and Maiden. -She must not be Queen!- Damn these half-dead bones, he must disrupt the Great Turning!

Talia's eyes flew open. She jerked upright, stiff like a puppet, and stared through Miranda. In the Other, her voice rattled through the entire room, rasping.

To be Queen. To live a thousand years. To guard me. Shackled to me, bound to me. A millennium of tending dreams. Power is dust and prestige a flickering illusion. Our bond will span the ages.

It all tumbled in Miranda's head – her own thoughts, Talia's solemn offer. Visions of horizons painted such majestic hues that she wept, and nightmares lurking in the shadows with purple teeth and wide maws dragged her into darkness. The Maiden pressed against her soul, siphoning the color from her world and demanding a union.

Somewhere distant, Miranda's throat stretched to make words and her hands clawed at phantoms. "No! Don't come in! I'm me! Go away!"

Layers just kept peeling back, whittling them both to their essence. Naked as a babe, Miranda quivered under the heat of Talia's scorn. The Maiden had pined for another – hoped that Miranda died in the Choosing!

"You don't want me, do you? You tried to get her....You want the Horned Waker! What's so damn special about Glisinda?!”

"She is my friend," whispered the Maiden from her own lips, apart from the jerky doll dance of the ceremony.

-So I'm nobody to you?- thought Miranda, rage crushing her vision. -This is just your silly game? No, I will be Queen on my own terms!- She found words like daggers and flung them. "Then you can DIE in your fucking dreams! Die and leave me the Crown!"

That soul-bond - that chain - offered by Talia, Miranda rejected wholesale.

A cog in the Great Turning stumbled and shattered, and the Maiden crumpled back onto her bed, dead again. A long, low howl rose from the innards of the tree.

"Fool!" spat the King. "Guide and Forest work in unison to balance the Maiden's world. You have broken the Cycle! You have unleashed the Forest from any semblance of a restraining hand, and its sole purpose is to see that She sleeps in peace forever!"

The Green Way spat Glisinda out already running, still dizzy from the labyrinth.

"Without the Guide, there is no restraint for the Forest. There can be no wisdom. No mercy."

Miranda turned tail. Maiden, King, the Chosen, and the Forest - damn them all! She rushed from the hall in tears, dodging past Glisinda with no more than a glance of pure hatred. -Damn the Horned Waker most of all!- Out of the shrine's structure, she forced her way clumsily through the Green Way (aided by a Forest that very much wanted everyone away from its charge).

Glisinda barreled in, bristled as a mother bear and ready to rip throats out. Glancing to the elderly Monarch whose face was a mask of grief, she darted for Talia. "I'm here! Let me help - just tell me what's wrong!"

Limp, as good as dead on her harsh bed, Talia lay still.

The King wrestled an inner battle, stretching to regain the Forest's rapport. It refused him, slipping farther and farther away from his guiding hand. On its own, it decided to close off the shrine, and on command Yggdrasil's womb began to contract.

Four generations of Monarchs have failed, old man. We will not waste our time on a fifth trial.

"Talia, please!"

-I have lost. I must salvage what little remains.- The King interceded on Glisinda's shaking, wrestling to pry her fingers free. "We must go! The Forest means to seal Yggdrasil against all intrusion, and it cares not for us!"

Yggdrasil's shrinking pocket contracted against the marble of the shrine, and the stone cracked under incredible pressure.

"No! I have to stay with Talia! The Forest won't hurt me - we're friends!" With the Turning lost and gone, her skin began to pale, her patterns taking on dry branches and snow drifts. Her mors nature rose to the surface with each passing moment, and that deathly touch forced the King to concentrate on forcing his heart to pump.

"G-Glisinda! The Forest exists to protect the Maiden! It...it only cares...for her eternal sleep!" he panted.

Grunting, the Dryad shoved him aside and wrenched the Maiden from her tablet.

Every rock, leaf, limb and stream for a thousand miles roared in primal fury, blind protective rage. Outside Yggdrasil, the land again came alive, but this time it lashed at the Dryads, casting down their homes, sending the crowd scrambling pursued by vines like whips and a swarm of insects that blotted the sun. Boiling clouds swirled overhead and animals fled in a wild stampede.

You are not worthy to touch Her! The Forest Yanu would set its limbs to kill every man, woman, and child of their breed before it let them lay hands on Talia. Let the trees become a tomb!

The King dove forward. Barbed stingers, vines more akin to a scorpion tail, struck down thick as rain to impale the one who dared to steal the Maiden. He summoned a final wind, wrenched Talia from Glisinda, and kicked the newly changed mors away. Stingers swerved and lanced into his flesh instead, peppering him.

Each one keen and unique, pierced through muscle and organ. Mercifully, the rush of toxins numbed his body. Talia tumbled into the waiting cradle of ivy from old, slack arms.

Glisinda gaped in wide-eyed horror, the kind of numb incomprehension born of witnessing a trusted friend turn rabid.

"D-dearest child..." Diaphragm punctured, he strained to whisper. "...if only...only I had found the true Chosen..."

Death nestled around, and he heard each of his anchors to the world snap free in turn. "Glee...its....not..."

-Not your fault,- his mind said, but his lips froze. Then the chains of heart, brain, and eyes all snapped, and his spirit rushed through a hurricane emptiness to...to...

Glisinda-the-mors saw the inner fire of her grandfatherly King dissolve, and she wanted to lay down and die. Her peaceful Forest shattered the shrine walls, crushing inwards. Vines spirited her friend Talia away, and she lacked the strength to follow. Viscous black ooze dripped from the rag doll body of the greatest King to ever live.

-I should die too,- she thought, slumping.

Thanata's will pressed her to her feet. Mors knew that sometimes mourning must wait. They believed that death began renewal. Most of all, a mors knew that dying in that hall meant giving up on the hope of anything better in the future.

So she somehow found her way through the chaos of the collapsing Shrine back to the foyer. The Green Way did not hearken to her call; the Forest, her companion, now abandoned her to death. Yet another way opened, a portal of fierce white that appeared from the aethers.

Talia showed her first sign of life, teeth gritting together.

Who cared where it went?

Outside, apparently, to survey ruin. Foliage that once aided Glisinda in childish games now tore and ground away all traces of civilization. Yanu decided in its boughs that the little creatures who tended to the gardens no longer deserved to be near the Maiden thanks to Glisinda's transgression, and so it set about to destroy their homes.

The rabid roots ignored Glisinda as she stumbled by.

**********

Talia felt Yggdrasil encapsulating her, swallowing her. It cut off not just the breeze and the sun, but the very memories of a wider world.

Sleep, it whispered through the pitch black. We will make sure you sleep forever. We will protect you forever.

Her lips budged. "I don't..."

Sleep.

"I don't want to forget..."

**********

A towering barricade of bark, nested with swaying, alert poison-stingers and briar's arms like scythes, wove up to seal away Capitol's ruins and Yggdrasil. Even the Guardian Stones disappeared into its embrace, forbidden to the Dryads now.

Coming upon the inner wall of this barrier, every bit as deadly, Glisinda slammed fists against it! She could no more climb that thicket of poison in her exhausted state than fly. -Defeated by a stupid wall!-

Another portal opened by mysterious means, the solid matter beneath her hands giving way, and she tumbled through.

On the other side, Dryad refugees clustered, their murmurs few. Too many nursed injuries: lashes, stings, broken bones. Half swayed on their feet, the Nymphs struggling to remain active against the pull of Hibernation. The Cycle did not care that the largest sleeping chambers were in Capitol, and the ones still available would not host everyone.

Thus, grave elders had gathered with the one survivor who might illuminate matters.

Perhaps Yanu spited her, because Glisinda tumbled into the knees of that witness, and Miranda toppled. The Horned Waker very nearly skewered Miranda through on her horns. As if her position was not precarious enough without open murder.

Miranda scuttled off, eyes dancing with fear - and a bestial cunning. "That-that's her!" All I've told you - the Maiden, the King's delusions - all are because of her!"

Glisinda gaped in shock and naivety when she needed to arm herself with truth and provide a dissenting voice.

"She wanted to be Queen! She tricked our ailing king. You saw her storm Yggdrasil, and it punished us all for it! Her hands are slick with blood - a King's blood!"

-He died to save me!- Glisinda thought.

Some of the elders, grief-blinded, believed deceitful words. Others saw a chance for authority denied them by a Chosen lineage and latched hold. An unusual concord rose between them: a scapegoat. They all raised curses, and Miranda guided their anger.

"Look! She is silent, struck by guilt! Even as a child, she fawned on the King, wheedling his heart to feed her ambitions! She envied me for being Chosen!"

"Wh-what proof is there that you were Chosen?" Glisinda stammered. How could the elders bend to Miranda's word over hers with no evidence?!

The King's aide, Leesa, stepped forward, her young eyes hateful. "His Majesty confided in me. He sent me to prepare Miranda. You traitorous abomination, how could you betray him?! He loved you like a daughter and you used him!"

Those gathered drew closer, herding the Horned Waker into a bubble against the new-formed Guardian Wall. No powers answered her plea.

"See her cower! King-killer! Destroyer! We face dark winter naked and unprepared - our supplies lost, our homes lost, our relics lost! Because of her!"

"N-no! I was just...Tali - the Maiden - needed me!"

"Only the Chosen may enter the Maiden's sanctuary!" Miranda spat, and the elders nodded vehemently.

She froze, choked on a sick realization. -I'm the Chosen.-

-Of course I'm the Chosen.-

Which meant...

-I lied. The King sought signs of the Chosen. He was so disappointed when I lied about the Guardian Stone. He hoped I was the one. The Other-place I dreamed of, the whispers from Talia, my aptitude with the Forest magic, a soul half nymph and half mors! The King never knew. He accepted Miranda because of my silence!-

"Oh, sun and moon, no..."

-If I told the truth, none of this would have happened. The King would be alive. Capitol would be fine. Everything...-

"Glisinda, you have murdered our great King and thrown our society into chaos."

Elders who would have spat at their Monarch while he lived nodded vigorously.

-Everything is my fault!-

Her vision narrowed, throat clutched too tight. Tears leaked out, and her stomach convulsed. -My fault...-

Miranda drew herself up. "As the rightful monarch of our Forest, I will be merciful. Flee, monster. Run beyond our lands and never return on pain of death."

Several murmured about undeserved leniency, but the self-crowned Queen merely smiled. "Let her live her days in exile, away from home, family, and the Cycle. Let her wallow in sin."

Glisinda fled. Spittle and curses rained on her back. She could not see for tears, but neither could she stop for grief. Not as long as Yggdrasil still loomed, casting its shadow of guilt.

**********

Behind, the 'Queen' sighed in relief as the only one who could contradict her story disappeared. Her neck ached for warm Hibernation. Unlike the late King, she could not command the Forest to exempt her. No matter. She could blame temporary deficiencies on the disruption, and surely an elder somewhere knew a way to escape the long sleep. In time...

The King had been blind. Royalty died when the Maiden woke - so let her sleep forever. Once it saw that their goals coincided, the Forest would yield to her. Her life and power would extend as long as any human Wizard.

**********

-Open, please! Dammit!- The Green Way might as well not exist.

Her entire life, Glisinda lived in a comforting background noise, melody of life and death that wove to include her in its dance. Ever-present, so steadfast that a young mind simply called it eternal. She part of the Forest, and it a part of her.

Now the melody shattered, each note rendered jagged and insane. Each flower shrieked in its own voice, quarreling with everything around it, and the sheer noise of it whipped at the mors. She could not grab hold of the living rivers to draw mana into her aching legs. Deer and rabbits fled her as a stranger. Deaf, dumb, disconnected.

She ran all day, and when she collapsed at night, quiet Guards encircled her camp. They did not interfere, just hover, but she doubted not a second that they would kill her if she paused in her journey. She would not. The Horned Waker pushed to outrun shame and memories that bayed at her dreams.

Weeks later, the mors reached Roho's abandoned lean-to. Then further, to the edge of the Norhill wastes.

Roho. Lydia...Only two names in a vast Beyond, but where else could she head?

She recovered winter cloak and supplies, ignoring the Guards who bristled, and departed the Forest. As soon as she crossed the ditch, the familiar voices of the green world disappeared. Forever.

The Guards melted back into the trees, returning to Capitol to aid in the desperate consolidation of supplies and shelter. A nymph resisting Hibernation burned energy like a marathon runner, and there was nowhere for most of them to sleep yet.

Only one in the nation thought of his little sister before the plight of the citizens. Serge fought the sleep that felt like being strangled by a lead blanket so he could watch the new Queen. So he could wait for her to slip, pin her in deceit, and clear Glisinda's name.

It would be a long and lonely vigil.

**********

Talia woke, chill and naked, in a forest clearing below the largest ash she had ever seen. Sitting up, she dug her hands into wonderful, thick loam and smiled sunlight back up to the sky-star that made such a peaceful spring day. For a moment, the clouds coiled together into a massive snake, floating dragon in the sky that gazed down at her in sadness.

No worries for the Maiden. Mind and memories untroubled as the puffy clouds. All should have been perfect, the Cycle renewed.

Why, then, did she find tears in her eyes, threatening to crest despite the smile? They swelled and spilled over onto her cheeks, and the day rumbled as thunderclouds approached to shove their cheerful brethren away. The strange dragon evaporated with a serpentine shrug. Dark things began to flit through the trees, flexing their twisted claws, and the earth turned chill and barren.

Then the great tree gave its roar, and the darkness scuttled away.

The Maiden shook her head. She could not remember what just troubled her so, much less why she tasted salt water.

-Such a beautiful day!-