For a moment they were silent, hands clasped, hearts heavy, trying to find the will to do what must be done.
“I believe this tree was a child,” Padrig offered, stepping beside them with the torch. “If you look closely, you can see her face.”
They peered, grateful for the distraction, for the opportunity to forget themselves and forge ahead.
“It is a child, a little girl. There are flowers in her hair. See?” Sasha whispered, tracing the eyes and the nose, barely visible in the orange glow of the torch and the shadows on the bark.
“I see,” Kjell rasped. “But if I wake her, will she be afraid? Let us heal the parents first and let them help us wake the children.”
They moved to the next tree, an umbrella tree that sheltered the smaller tree beneath its boughs.
“I know who this is,” Sasha breathed, her eyes on the hollows that created a hint of a profile. “She is Yetta, the castle chef—so dour and dramatic. She was always convinced her next meal would disappoint, and worked tirelessly to make sure that it didn’t. She knew how much I loved her tarts and would find me, wherever I was in the castle, and make me swear each batch was better than the last.”
“Yetta had a granddaughter,” Padrig said. “Let us see if we can’t wake her, and then we’ll wake the child.”
It was not like healing a human or even a horse. The tossing in Kjell’s stomach continued to intensify, as if he drew the fear that made the Spinners of Caarn hide into himself. The sound he heard was not a song but a wail, and he didn’t try to duplicate it. He absorbed it, sinking beneath the layers of bark until the wailing became a whimper and a heartbeat emerged. He willed his heart to match the rhythm until he became the tree, and the tree became a tall woman, reed thin and clothed in a dress covered with a long apron. Her arms hung at her sides, and her eyes were closed like she slept upright.
Slowly her eyes opened, and she regarded Kjell in confusion before her gaze settled on the queen.
“M-majesty?” she stuttered, her voice raspy with disuse. “Queen Saoirse? Are the Volgar gone?”
Kjell dropped his hands, turned, and lost the contents of his stomach before bracing himself against the smaller tree and immediately starting again, Sasha at his side.
Not every tree was a Spinner, not every Spinner was a tree. Some were crouching bushes and shrubs; a climbing vine of roses was a woman by the same name. Some were easier to wake than others, and some refused to be roused. When he spent too long on one tree, Sasha forced him to move on. When he became too weak, she made him rest. But he slept in the groves, not even stumbling to the castle for reprieve, saving his strength for waking the forest. When he awoke, Sasha was always there, waiting. He made sure she ate when he ate, rested when he rested, and he commanded Jerick to watch her when he couldn’t.
As Kjell continued to heal and awaken, the wailing abated and the heartbeats beneath the trunks and hidden in bristled branches became more like the melodies of human healing and less like terrified screams. Each healing was accomplished with less sickness and more song, as if the Spinners of Caarn had heard their loved ones reemerge and had begun to reemerge themselves. But the numbers were great and the press of the healed and the waiting became more trying than the healing itself.
“Healer—this is my son,” a hovering mother said, patting a white sapling.
“Healer, will you help my child?” a father begged, standing beside a flowering lilac tree.
“Healer, will you wake my husband next?” the woman named Rose implored.
His guard formed a ring around him, asking the people to stand back, to be patient, but they obeyed only when Sasha commanded them to wait beside their loved ones, in whatever form they may be. Padrig began compiling a list of citizens, and slowly, families were reunited and sent home. One by one, the copses thinned and the village of Caarn grew around them.
There were so many. One day become another. And another. And another, until only one tree remained.
“He would have wanted to be last. He would have wanted to wait until everyone else was seen to,” Padrig whispered. His eyes were bright and his compassion evident, and Kjell knew the time had come. He hadn’t rested in many hours, but he would finish before he rested again.
“This is King Aren. He is good. And kind. He loves his people.” Sasha’s voice caught and her fingers clenched, and Kjell could only hold her hand, press his palm to the tree, and let her sorrow and his resistance roll over him.
“When I was just a girl, afraid of the things I saw, hidden away in a foreign land, he was my friend. I know what it costs you to call to him . . . but he is worthy of healing.”
Kjell’s heart began to tremble and quake, making a song of its own. Groaning and deep, a healing melody rose from his chest and rippled down his arms. The sound escaped through his lips, bellowing and great, like the rumble of the skies or the falling of the rocks, and just as before, he felt the moment when the tree awoke, when the old fell away and the flesh became new. Unlike the Changers when they shifted, the Spinners were fully clothed, their apparel becoming bark and leaves, branches and blossoms.
The trunk didn’t dissolve or slip away, it simply morphed, becoming man. The leaves curled and condensed, the bark became bone and sinew, and the king, his hair white and his beard full, stood before them. He was as tall as Kjell but leaner and more angular, every plane of his body and feature of his face severe and squared, his sharp cheekbones and his beaked nose giving him the chiseled look of a man carved from wood.
Kjell fell to his knees, his strength gone, and King Aren gripped his arms, wrapping his large hands around Kjell’s shoulders to bear him up.
“Saoirse said you’d come. She said one day a Healer would come to Caarn. She didn’t know your name, but she saw your face.”
Kjell lifted his heavy head, the weight making it loll to the side, but his eyes found Sasha’s. She wept openly, as if she’d betrayed him, as if she’d traded his life for her kingdom.
“Forgive me, Captain. Forgive me,” she begged.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Kjell said. His vision narrowed, and he rested his head upon the ground, bent as if in prayer, and let the darkness sweep him away, releasing him.
***
He was spared from watching Sasha greet her husband. Spared from their reunion. When consciousness found him once more, he was in a chamber, stretched across the wide bed, his boots removed, his weapons placed carefully aside. He wondered briefly how many men it had taken to carry him from the woods and marveled that he hadn’t been left to recover under the trees. He felt bruised in layers—his skin was even sore to the touch—the ache deep, dark and multi-colored. The last time he’d healed a multitude, he’d slept for several days and awakened with his head in Sasha’s lap. This time he awoke alone, sore and soul-weary.