As Dara led me into the incredible indoor garden, I said, “So is this at least partly why my family has the oak and ivy motif everywhere?”
Dara smiled, a little sadly, and nodded. “Yes, it is, and why the town is called Oakwood. Once, this area was a very old forest. I don’t know what it’s like out there now, but even when the House was built humans had already cut down quite a bit of it.”
She paused beside her tree and rested a hand against it. “My tree was the oldest in the forest, and your ancestors decided that it needed to be preserved. Fortunately, I was close enough to the Nexus for the House to be built around me.” She smiled at me. “Undoubtedly, my tree would have fallen, as many of my sisters’ trees did. I owe your family my life.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Dara laughed softly, then started walking again. “There aren’t many hamadryads left, you see,” she said quietly. “Even when the House was being built, our numbers were already dwindling.”
“Why?” I asked, helplessly curious.
Dara shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps it is a special trait of the tree itself. There were never many of us to begin with, and we were scattered far and wide around the world. I don’t know how many of us are left now, but it can’t be many.”
“That’s very sad,” I said quietly.
Dara smiled gently and patted my shoulder. “It’s the way of the world. All things pass in time. Even immortal things.”
I gave her a long, considering look, trying to understand her. How could she accept that so calmly, shake off the sadness and show the joy I’d seen in her eyes so easily?
She laughed softly, turning towards me and taking my hands in hers. “You’re young. You’ll understand someday. In the meantime, suffice it to say that I’ve been alive for so long that the sadness of loss no longer has quite the same sting that it did when I was much younger. Come now, enjoy the garden.”
We walked among the flower beds for a few minutes, Dara pointing out particularly rare flowers that were thriving in this perfect garden. But my mind wasn’t really on the beauty here, as distracting and wonderful as it was…I had begun to feel guilty about snapping at Ken and walking out on my magic lesson.
Dara seemed to notice, stopping and tipping her head as she looked at me. “Something troubles you,” she said simply. “Will you share your troubles with me?”
I sighed a little. “I think I hurt Ken’s feelings -“
“Ken?” She asked curiously.
“Oh…that’s what I’ve named the Caretaker.”
“Ah,” she said. “Is there some meaning to it?”
I nodded. “From Old English -“
“Cennan,” she nodded, smiling. “To know, or define one’s range of knowledge or sight. Very clever, and very appropriate. You’re as good at Naming as your great-great-great-grandmother.”
I distinctly got the impression that naming was a big deal…something about the way she said it had the same resonance to it that ‘house’ did when we spoke of the House.
I gave my head a little shake to clear it…there was far too much going on in there right now. “Anyway, my magic lesson this morning didn’t go terribly well…or maybe it went too well, I suppose, depending on how you look at it. I got frustrated, and was rather short with him.”
Dara smiled gently. “I recall your mother getting frustrated with her lessons on more than one occasion. And your grandmother, for that matter. All of you have come to me for soothing when a lesson has gone badly, in fact.”
I returned her smile. “What advice did you give them?”
“Persevere,” Dara said bluntly. “Humans have one great advantage over those of us from most realms with the Otherworld.” She stopped walking and laid a hand on my shoulder gently. “You are tremendously flexible, and capable of shaping yourselves into new things. We of the Otherworld…most of us, anyway…are what we are.”
She turned and gestured to the huge oak tree. “You see my tree, do you not?”
I laughed. “How could I possibly miss it?”
Dara laughed. “Touché. But look at it…aside from growing - and it has mostly finished doing that - it has been largely unchanged since before the House was built.” She spread her arms. “I am unchanged since then as well. I am what I am. Hamadryad Oak. I am strong, I give comfort and shelter; protector, provider, healer, and even adviser from time to time, is what I am. I will never change. I would not, even if I could.”
She touched my shoulder again. “But you, Caitlyn, daughter of Franchesca, you have the potential to be so much more than you are now. And if you are to be a good Guardian, you must grow and change.”
“But…” I hesitated and tried to sort through my feelings. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn magic. I did, more than I’d ever wanted anything. So what was bothering me?
Dara tipped her head a little, then gently caressed my cheek and forehead. “Be easy, Caley. You know what is bothering you. Let go of the frustration, and see clearly.”
It was like clouds parting to let the sun shine through. “I don’t want to hurt anything or anyone, and Ken is insisting that I learn to fight.” I blinked a few times. “Did you do that?”
Dara smiled. “Yes, and no. I helped you calm down and let go of your frustration. That simply allowed you to see the truth.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, smiling. “Thank you!”
“You are most welcome,” she bowed a little. “I am pleased to have been of aid. Now, will you hear my words of advice?”
“Gladly, Dara,” I nodded. “Very gladly.”
“All who learn the ways of magic must learn to fight,” she said gently. “The act of learning to wield power inevitably draws those who seek power themselves, or those who wish to smother it. Additionally, your ancestors have always felt a calling to use their power to protect those who could not protect themselves, especially within their domain…their protectorate…of Oakwood. I suspect you will desire to do the same.”
I pursed my lips. “What is the power for, really?”
Dara smiled, her eyes sparkling. “That is a delightful question. Power is for whatever you feel you must use it for. The more you have, the more you can do. Power is not - usually - inherently good or evil. How it’s used is what defines it. Is that not true of all power, not simply magic?”
I thought about it for a moment. She was right. All power…money, influence, physical strength…could be used in many different ways. Today, I’d learned that I had power, tremendous power from the looks of it, at my fingertips. I had accidentally destroyed something with it.
But that wasn’t all it was for. The same power I’d used to destroy that poor Tesla coil could just as easily be used to defend someone who was being attacked.
I could protect someone who was being attacked. I could protect people.
Dara smiled. “There. That’s the fire I saw in your ancestors’ eyes. You see? It’s just a matter of perspective.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “It won’t be easy.”
“Of course not,” she agreed. “Your grandmother used to say that nothing worth doing was ever easy. The most important choices in life, she told me, will always be the hardest.” She squeezed my shoulder gently. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone, and that’s a good thing! But you must be prepared to do so…for your own life may depend on it someday, and the lives of others.”
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“What does it really mean,” I asked, “to be the Guardian?”
Dara laughed. “It means what you make of it, Caley.” She winked. “Aside from protecting the House and the nexus it was built to cap and hide, nothing is chiseled in stone. But if you’re anything like your ancestors, you won’t be content to sit idle here and hide from the world. Not for long.”
I considered that for a moment and decided that she was right. I couldn’t just hide from the world inside this glorious House. If I had power, wealth, and - from the sound of it - influence, I had a responsibility to use them.
Dara smiled gently. “As I thought.”
“Are you reading my mind?”
She laughed. “No, your expression and body language. Most humans are easy…you have a tendency to wear your hearts on your sleeves, as the saying goes. Now, are you feeling better?”
“I will be once I’ve apologized to Ken,” I said. “But I am, at least, feeling clear-headed again. I’ve been muddled since I woke up this morning.”
Dara bowed slightly. “I am glad to have been of help.” She slipped her arm through mine and started walking again. “Come and see my night garden.”
“Your what?”
She led me to a rough stone shed towards the back of the garden and opened the door. Inside were a variety of very mundane gardening tools, and a set of stone stairs leading down into the ground.
“What’s this?” I asked.
She smiled. “You’ll see. Much of what grows in my garden is good for spicing food, or has medicinal properties as well as being pretty, you know, which is why I began this extension of it.”
Dara led me down the stairs into the dark, touching lanterns that lit up - presumably with magic - as we passed. The walls were hard-packed dirt and stone, shored up with wooden beams…but they honestly didn’t look like enough to keep the structure intact.
“What’s keeping the walls and ceiling stable?” I asked, feeling just a bit nervous.
She gave me a bright smile. “I am, of course.”
I returned her smile with a dubious expression.
She laughed. “A combination of root system and magic. Relax, it’s quite stable. But here, look.”
We entered a chamber that was loaded…floors, walls, and even hanging from the ceiling…with different types of mushrooms, mosses, and other similar plant life.
“Wow,” I said. “Are these all…”
“Medicinal, mostly,” Dara said, moving among them and checking on them. “Some have healing properties that humanity has forgotten, or never learned of in the first place. I used to supply a few people in town with them regularly, before your mother died. I don’t know what’s happened with them since.” She gave me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. “I hope to do so again…”
I nodded, immediately seeing the potential benefits of such a relationship with the town. “I’m sure that can be arranged once I’m settled in and have gotten to know people.”
She looked pleased. “Excellent. It’s good for you to have strong ties with Oakwood, and it’s good for the House as well. And thus, for me.”
I looked at her for a long moment, then - keeping my face quite emotionless, said “You’re saying I should put down roots here.”
Dara blinked a few times, then laughed delightedly. “I am! I am indeed!”
I grinned, relieved to be feeling quite myself again.
Sparkle zoomed in then, orbited my head a few times, and came to a hover in front of me. “There you are!”
I laughed. “Yes, here I am. Done with your reunion?”
“All done!” She giggled and did a pirouette in mid-air. “It was great seeing them again. I’m so glad they’re still here.”
“And very helpful,” Dara said firmly. “It would be quite a lot more work for me to take care of the garden on my own without them.”
Sparkle looked at me more closely. “Dara helped you sort out what was bothering you, didn’t she.”
I smiled. “Yes, she did.”
Sparkle nodded firmly and then landed on my shoulder. “I knew she would.”
“Brought me to her on purpose, did you?” I asked.
“Yup!” She sounded smug.
But, to be honest, I was glad she had. Dara had undoubtedly helped me sort myself out in a lot less time - and with a lot less stress - than it would’ve taken me otherwise. “Thank you, Sparkle.”
She made that adorable sound that I was quickly coming to associate with her ‘I’m helping!’ expression. “You’re welcome, Caley!”
We made our way back upstairs into the garden proper, by which time someone - I guessed Sparkle’s kin - had set out a selection of foods on the glass-topped table near the entrance. I looked at it with some amusement…deli meats, cheeses, bread, a bowl of fruit (apples, pears, and plums), carafes of water and what I thought was probably apple juice, and a tray of small cakes. “What’s this?”
“I thought you might like to have lunch here,” Sparkle explained, “instead of the kitchen.”
The atmosphere in the garden was definitely soothing, and I found I was reluctant to leave it just yet. “That sounds like a wonderful idea, Sparkle. Thank you.” I looked at Dara and hesitated. “Um…”
She laughed. “I don’t eat the way you do, but don’t let that stop you. And yes, I will join you, if you’d like me to.”
“Very much,” I said, sitting down at the table. “I’d like to hear more about my family, but I think maybe hearing more about what previous Guardians have done might be more…relevant.”
Dara poured herself a glass of water and sat down across from me as I started building a sandwich (ham, turkey, and swiss, on slices of a really lovely sourdough). “Indeed, and I can tell you a great deal.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I imagine that the Caretaker…that Ken has given you an earful about protecting the House already.”
“And some,” I said, feeling a fresh surge of irritation. “It’s about all he’s told me.”
After some deliberation, Sparkle flung herself on one of the plums, rolled it out of the bowl, and proceeded to devour it like a starving piranha.
Dara shook her head and smiled a little. “Some things never change, at least. Well, let me tell you about some of the other things I’ve seen previous Guardians do, then. Because in my opinion, protecting the House may be the least of the Guardian’s duties.”
I nodded and tucked into my sandwich.
Dara sipped her water before continuing. “Your mother - once she emerged from the dark period after her parents died - and many of your other predecessors frequently acted as a neutral negotiator between feuding parties in the supernatural world. Werewolf clans, vampires debating territorial boundaries, that sort of thing. Even a group of wizards from the International Consortium of Organized Arcana once asked your mother to help them negotiate a treaty with the Seelie Court of the Sidhe.”
Sparkle discarded the plum’s pit, selected a second one, and resumed gorging herself. I tried not to watch.
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said. “Complicated and probably stressful, but certainly not violent.”
Dara smiled. “Though there have been times when the stress of such negotiations have left previous Guardians metaphorically tearing their hair out, it is rarely violent. But don’t make the mistake of believing that you can bend your time as Guardian to being just a diplomat.” She leaned forward. “Every Guardian has had to defend their community from time to time, and for every comparatively friendly being who comes to you for peaceful services, another will seek you out to challenge your power or use the House and what it protects for their own gain.”
I swallowed the bite of sandwich I’d been chewing on around a sudden lump in my throat and sipped some juice. “What does the House protect? Aside from me, apparently.”
Dara nodded. “Indeed, the House will protect you as you protect It.” She sighed. “There are…secrets here within, which I am bound not to reveal and cannot speak of until you know of them.” She held up her hand when I started to protest. “Not because I do not want to, but because you are still becoming.”
“Becoming what?” I asked, setting my sandwich down as I felt a fresh rise of frustration.
She smiled gently. “What you are meant to be. Beyond that, there is no easy answer. Some of it - most of it, even - you must figure out for yourself. But I can tell you what the House was originally built to protect…the Nexus of Realities that converges here.”
I nodded a little. “Ken mentioned that. He said that one of my ancestors opened it accidentally, but…we got distracted at that point.”
“Caley freaked out a little,” Sparkle explained from where she was sprawled between the two plum pits, then belched spectacularly.
Dara shook her head, but was still smiling. “Manners, Sparkle.”
“What’re those?” Sparkle shot back, grinning.
I got the impression that this was an old joke between them.
“The Nexus,” Dara said to me, ignoring Sparkle’s retort, “is…” She paused and considered the question for a long moment, then smiled ruefully. “It’s very complicated, and I do not completely understand it myself. It is beyond my ken, as it were.”
I smiled a little at the pun. “Tell me what you can, then. Or, perhaps, tell me what you think I’ll understand.”
She nodded. “Very wise. You have seen something of the magic of the House’s doors, yes? That they can open on many places in the world?”
“Yes, I have. Ken just about melted my brain by having me open one up on downtown Seattle.”
“The Nexus of Realities is like that,” Dara said, “but for other worlds.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I apologize, that was imprecise. Not just for other worlds, but for worlds within other realities.”
I tipped my head. “You’re talking about the Multiverse theory.”
“The what?” She asked curiously.
“Multiverse theory,” I said. “It’s something that quantum physicists have been discussing on and off since the 1950’s or so. But only seriously in the last twenty years. It states - and forgive me if this isn’t quite correct, it’s not my area of study - that the universe we live in is one of many universes that exist side-by-side, with everything happening at once in many different ways.”
Sparkle attacked another plum. I completely gave up on figuring out her physiology and mentally scratched it off my to do list, deciding to chalk it up entirely to magic and move on to things I stood a chance of actually understanding.
Dara was nodding. “That sounds roughly correct, yes. You can imagine why people and organizations - both reputable and disreputable - might want easy access to such a thing.”
Boy, could I ever. I imagined a dozen amazing discoveries, and a dozen more horrible outcomes within the first ten seconds of really understanding that I was sitting on something that could give someone - anyone - easy access to other universes. The wonder and horror of it. Who knew what incredible things would be out there to discover…and what awful things would be lurking in the dark, waiting to take advantage of such an easy path between realities.
“Oh my God,” I said quietly as my brain frantically tried to digest the concept.