Page 10

THORN

S he’s watching my hands again.

Clara sits cross-legged in the moss, elbows on her knees, head tilted just slightly. Her eyes follow the twining of the vine as I braid it through my fingers, whispering an old forest spell that makes the leaves shimmer silver for a moment before fading.

She laughs softly. “It’s like knitting, but with more…sentience.”

I grunt. “Knitting doesn’t bite if you insult it.”

“Speak for yourself,” she says, grinning.

The Grove pulses around us, quiet and warm. Content.

I should not be.

But I am.

She doesn’t ask for more stories. Not today. She just is here, and that’s what makes it dangerous. Her presence, soft as it is, pushes at walls I’ve held up for centuries. Makes me feel something other than stillness.

Which is why I speak.

“I wasn’t born,” I say suddenly.

She looks up. “What?”

“I was grown.”

Her eyes search my face. “Like… literally?”

I nod. “Years ago. Too many to count, though the trees remember the season.”

Clara doesn’t interrupt. She sets her hands gently in her lap and listens. Always listening.

“They gathered root and soil from sacred ground. Chanted in the old tongue. They used the last sap from a dying world tree and shaped me from bark and breath.”

I press a hand to the scar just beneath my ribs. “And they tied me to this place.”

“To protect it?” she asks softly.

“Yes. My bond is to the Grove’s heart. A ward tree, ancient and deep. Its roots are laced through my own. Its pulse keeps mine steady. If it falters—I fade.”

Her breath catches. “So you… you can’t leave?”

I meet her gaze. “No farther than the outer stone ring. Beyond that, the bond weakens. Beyond the river bend, it breaks.”

She looks like she wants to say something and doesn’t know if she should.

“Say it.”

Clara hesitates. “That sounds… lonely.”

“It is.”

My voice is steady. Unapologetic. I was made to serve. That’s what I tell myself.

But she doesn’t look away from me.

And in her silence, I feel the full weight of what I’ve admitted.

“I don’t dream,” I say quietly. “I don’t sleep. I exist only when the Grove stirs. For decades, it slumbered. I did too.”

She shifts forward, fingers brushing the moss. “And now?”

“Now it wakes.”

Her lips part. She doesn’t speak.

I turn toward the heart tree, the oldest one—gnarled and weathered with veins of glowing green across its bark.

“I am part of it,” I say. “Bound and buried beneath its roots. This is all I have ever known.”

She rises slowly, crossing the glade. Her hand hovers just over my forearm but doesn’t touch.

“You don’t sound angry,” she whispers.

“I’m not.”

I pause.

“But sometimes… I wonder what it would be like to belong to something by choice .”

Her eyes go glassy. She nods once.

Then she says nothing else.

And we sit, bound by silence.

But not alone.

After a long pause, she finally speaks.

“Thorn… is it okay if I ask—why is the tree dimming?”

I don’t answer at first.

Instead, I walk to it—my ward, my anchor. My hand rests on the bark where the glow once bled bright through the cracks. Now it flickers, faint and slow, like a heartbeat going quiet.

“It is dying,” I say.

Clara sucks in a breath. “Wait—what?”

“It began to fade seasons ago. Quietly. Like a tide pulling out.” I glance back at her. “The Grove slowed. I slowed. I thought it would end quietly.”

Her steps crunch over moss as she nears. “But if the tree dies…”

“So do I.”

She freezes. “You mean, like?—”

“I mean fully ,” I say, voice low and flat. “Without the ward, my essence unwinds. I am not human. I do not pass. I dissolve.”

There's silence.

“No,” she says.

Firm. Fierce.

It catches me off guard.

“No?” I echo.

“You don’t get to just say that like it’s… like it’s fine .” Her face is pale, but her jaw is set hard. “You’re not furniture, Thorn. You’re not some old statue we let crumble ‘cause it’s inconvenient to fix.”

I stare at her.

No one has ever spoken to me like that.

“You don’t even know what I am,” I murmur.

“I don’t care,” she snaps. “You’re you . You’re alive. And this place is better because of you.”

Her hands are trembling, balled into fists. Her voice softens. “So no. That tree doesn’t get to die without a fight. Not if I’m here.”

The Grove goes still.

Even the vines listen.

And now… I feel the impossible.

Hope.

She leaves just after sunset.

Doesn’t say goodbye.

Just presses a hand to the moss near the base of the tree—like a promise—and walks away, back along the path with her satchel bumping at her hip and determination in her spine.

I don’t follow.

But I watch.

When she disappears beyond the arch of brambles, the Grove exhales. The vines shift. The air stills.

But I remain standing.

Still rooted. Still burning.

She’s strange, that human. Too quiet and too bold all at once. She stammers and laughs and blurts out things she probably meant to keep to herself. She reads science books to spirits like it makes sense.

She sees things others don’t.

She looks at this old, broken place and doesn’t flinch.

She looks at me and doesn’t look away.

Odd.

Unpredictable.

Beautiful.

I glance back at the tree. The glow hasn’t returned. The rot hasn’t slowed.

But I wonder if something might grow from this dying place after all.