The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

–I knew it was the right thing to do. Just as you did, when you agreed to come here to find the tree and to seek help in freeing your aunt–


“But you knew,” he persisted, desperate to wring from her one small concession. “You knew that becoming an aeriad would help me. You knew that giving yourself to the tanequil was what it would take for the tanequil to give me its limb.”

Her hesitation was momentary. –I knew–

She was moving all around him, a part of the ether, a disembodied voice buttressed by the soft singing and humming of her sister aeriads, her new family, her new life. He tried to see her in the sound of her voice, but he could not quite manage it. His memory of her was strong, but his efforts to form a picture from her voice alone were insufficient. He didn’t want her back in still life; he wanted her back as a living, breathing human being, and the images he managed to conjure failed to capture her that way.

He sank back wearily. “When did you decide to do this?” His voice broke as despair threatened to overwhelm him. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

The singing rose and fell like a wave of emotion born on a shift in the wind. –What would I have said to you? That I love you so much that I cannot imagine life without you, but that I am old enough to understand that loving someone that much isn’t always the only measuring stick for making a life with them? That choosing love should never be selfish–

“If you loved me that much …”

–I love you that much, Penderrin. Nothing has changed. I love you still. But you were sent here for another reason, one too important to sacrifice for anything—even for me. I know this. I knew it from the moment that I heard the aeriads speaking to me. They were telling me what was needed—not directly, not in so many words, but in the way they sang to me, in the sound of their voices. I knew–

He shook his head. “I don’t think I can do this without you. I can’t even think straight. I can barely move.”

Matched by the voices of her sisters, soothing as a breeze on a hot summer day, her voice trilled with soft laughter. –Oh, Pen, it will pass! You will go on to do what you were sent to do! You will find your aunt and bring her home again. I am already a memory, already fading away–

He stared into space, into the place from where she spoke to him, trying to make himself accept what she was telling him, and failing.

The voices sighed and hummed and sighed some more. –Do not be sad, Penderrin– she whispered. –I am not sad. I am happy. You can hear it in my voice, can’t you? I made a choice. The aeriads asked me to join them, to help you and myself. While you slept, I went with them from the surface of the earth to the Downbelow. From the sunlight and air world of Father Tanequil to the darkness and earth world of Mother Tanequil. She roots deep, Pen, to provide for her children, to give them life, to allow them the freedom she can never have. I saw the truth of what she is. Of what they both are. Joined as one—Father, the limbs; Mother, the roots. One lives aboveground, but the other must forever live below. She gets lonely. She needs company. I was a gift to her from Father Tanequil. But it was what I wanted. Perhaps he knew that when he sent me to her. Perhaps he knows us both better than we know ourselves. They are very old spirits, Pen. They were here when the world was born, when the Word was still young and the Faerie creatures newly made. We are children in their eyes–

“We are Men!” he snapped. “And they don’t know what’s right for us! They don’t know anything about us because they aren’t like us! Don’t you see? We were manipulated! We were tricked!”

A long silence punctuated his angry words. –No, Pen. We did what we thought was best. Both of us. I don’t regret it. I won’t. We have the lives we have chosen, whether fate or the tanequil or something larger pushed us to that choice–

He took a long slow breath to calm himself. She was wrong; he knew she was wrong. But there was nothing he could do about it. It was over and done with. He would have to live with it, although he couldn’t imagine how he would ever do that.

“Did it hurt at all?” he asked quietly. “Your transformation? Was there any pain?”

–None, Pen–

“But what of your body? Did it just … ?”

He couldn’t finish the thought, unable to bear the image it conjured—an image of her turning to dust, disintegrating.