An Artificial Night

“Good; you’re awake.” Acacia stepped into view, the light from her lantern filling the clearing and finally letting me see without squinting. It was a small comfort—there was nothing but the trees. “I was starting to worry.” She didn’t sound it. If anything, she sounded bored.

I looked at her, taking a moment before I spoke. Except for the scar that cut down the side of her face, her skin looked almost impossibly smooth, like she’d been carved from living wood and the knife had slipped. Only one bloodline had skin like that. “You’re a Dryad.” That explained why the forest was willing to obey her: Dryads are the spirits of trees, and they’re halfway to being plants themselves. None of the Dryads I’d met had that sort of control over plants, but that didn’t make it impossible. Dryads are strange, even for fae. What I didn’t understand was what she was doing there—why would a Dryad choose to live where all the trees were dying? Especially a Dryad as powerful as Acacia appeared to be.

“In a sense,” she said, with a small, bitter smile. “You’re quite observant. It’s a pity you don’t pay closer attention to thrown weaponry.”

“It’s hard to pay attention when it’s behind you.” She had to be talking about the spear that caught me in the leg. The only question was how bad the damage was. As calmly as I could, I said, “I can’t feel my legs.”

“That’s to be expected; poison will do that.” She shook her head, tangles of rootlike hair snaking down her shoulders. “The potion on that spear was well brewed. You should be a tree by now, rooted and growing to grace my forest. It’s a mercy, of a sort, to grant my husband’s victims that much freedom.”

I paled. “Then why . . .”

“I stopped it. I brewed it to begin with; it was bound to listen to me.” She tilted her head in a curiously familiar gesture. “I wanted to talk to you. Are you well enough for that?”

“I guess I can make an effort.” Inappropriate humor—the last resort of the terrified.

“Good.” She reached toward me, and for a horrible moment I was afraid she was going to pick me up again. Instead, she stopped her hands a few inches from my chest, and Spike stepped into them. She smiled, cradling it close. Spike chirped, beginning to purr. I gaped at them, stunned and bizarrely hurt. Maybe she was a Dryad, but this felt like a betrayal.

“Where did you get this?” Acacia asked. Spike nudged her fingers with its head, eyes narrowed to content slits. Her smile warmed for a moment, then faded as she raised her head and looked at me.

“It used to belong to a friend of mine,” I said guardedly. I didn’t want to say Luna’s name until I knew more about Acacia.

“I see.” She frowned, pulling the scar on her face into a sharp line. “How did it come to belong to you? It’s yours now. I can tell that much.”

“I named it by mistake.”

“Names have power. It’s been with you since then, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve treated it well.” She ran a hand down Spike’s back, not seeming to mind the thorns. “Rose goblins are hard to care for.”

“It’s pretty easy. I just give it water and sunshine, and sometimes fertilizer.”

“We used to have them in these woods. But they died. All of them.” Acacia sighed, hands stilling. “All the roses that grew here died a very long time ago.”

For a moment, there was nothing frightening about her; she was just a woman, lost and a little bit lonely. I almost wanted to comfort her. I didn’t know how to begin. “I’m sorry,” I said finally, aware of how lame the words sounded.

“They had to die.” Her voice was filled with the sort of distance people create to keep themselves from crying. “What good would they have done? The sun never shines here, and roses never bloom in darkness. Better they should spread their wings and fly away.”

“Roses like the sun,” I said, parroting one of the few gardening tips Luna had been able to drum into my head.

“Yes, they do,” Acacia said. “Where is my youngest rose now?”