Page 494

"We’re not the same as vampires," Heila said, taking Ollie’s hand in hers and giving him a reassuring squeeze as they watched Ashlynn drink in the energy her body so desperately needed to recover from her wounds.

"The whole world is a living, breathing thing," Heila explained. "There’s a little bit of magic in everything that shapes the world."

"You mean in every living thing?" Ollie asked, turning his attention away from Ashlynn to focus on Heila as he struggled to understand what he was witnessing. "Like the energy vampires feed on when they take blood? Sir Thane says that the reason vampires need to feed on people is because there isn’t enough ’vitality’ in beasts. "

"Ignore vampires," Heila said, thinking back on all of the misunderstandings she’d had to clear up while learning because she’d been like Ollie, seeing the similarities that were only present on the surface without understanding how different things were underneath.

"I said everything that shapes the world," she said, repeating one of Amahle’s early lessons. "The wind has energy, the rocks have energy, the storming seas have energy. Everything that shapes the world has power, but that power doesn’t have any desires. The trees don’t want to do anything with their power, they just collect it and then they offer it up to others when they fall. "

"But, doesn’t every living thing want to keep on living?" Ollie protested. "If she keeps going like this, and all the trees die, there won’t be a forest left here at all," he said, shuddering at the thought of clearing an entire mountainside of trees.

The Heartwood clan held trees to be sacred, and while they were building the village, the refugees from the village Owain burned worked very hard to identify the trees that were sickly, beginning to rot or who had poor conditions to grow in to be the first they felled while building the dam that would serve the village or harvesting trees for timber.

When they dug their burrows, they used the limbs of trees to weave together their walls and roofs instead of hewing their trunks into planks the way others did, felling as few trees as possible.

Ollie hadn’t realized it at the time, but the more time he spent with Milo and his family, the more that reverence rubbed off on him until watching Ashlynn fell trees by the dozen filled his heart with a strange kind of distress that he’d never felt before.

"In a few days, Lady Nyrielle’s army will arrive, and trees will be felled to fuel their campfires and cook their meals. Orava village will grow in the years to come and more of these trees will be felled to build new long houses," she added.

"What Mother Ashlynn is doing is actually a kindness to the forest," Heila explained.

"Now, the trees that were weakest will be the ones to fall. When the army arrives, we can send them to gather up the fallen timber instead of felling young, hearty trees. But there’s more to it than that," she added as she felt Ashlynn’s spell drawing to its final stage.

"Vampires exist outside of life and death, but in nature, the old must eventually die to make way for the young to thrive," Heila said.

"If Mother Ashlynn was a cruel witch, she might not care about what comes after she takes what she needs, but she isn’t like that," Heila said proudly.

"Watch," she whispered, pointing Ollie’s attention back at Ashlynn’s luminous figure.

Finally, when Ashlynn felt the last of the frozen and fiery energies that refused to allow her to recover naturally fading and flickering away, she lowered her wand and began the final verse with the faintest traces of lingering energy that clung to the ground around her.

"The withered ones who fall today,

Your final gift I shall repay.

Your essence flows to seeds unborn,

That when they sprout in coming morn,

Your strength lives on in saplings new,

The circle whole, your gift stays true."

Suddenly, the flow of energy reversed and the last of the energy that clung to Ashlynn flowed outward, seeking the pinecones that fell from trees as they died, placing within them a spark of life that would quickly propel their growth, allowing them to catch up to saplings planted two or even three years ago before they had to face the winter’s frost.

"Ollie," Ashlynn called softly when the last of the magic faded away.

"Heila. Come help me with the bandages," she said, tugging back the loose sleeves of her dress to reveal arms that had been wrapped to well above her elbows.

"Ollie, see for yourself the difference between a sorcerer’s healing and what a witch can do. "

"Is it, is it really fine?" Ollie asked, uncertain about helping her with such an intimate feeling task as removing bandages from her body.

It felt, somehow, like he was helping her to undress, and that felt very, very wrong.

Dangerous even when he considered how Lady Nyrielle might react to it if she heard that he had put his hands on her!

"It’s fine, Little Brother," Heila said, stepping forward confidently to take one of Ashlynn’s hands in her own and beginning to unwind the layers of bandages that had protected the flesh burned by the Holy Flame Blade.

"Get her other arm, that one wasn’t broken by the Holy Flame Blade’s power, so you don’t have to be as gentle. "

"Holy Flame Blade..." Ollie said numbly, realizing that there was far more than Heila’s apparent battles in the arena that he had to catch up on. "If you’re certain then," he said, stepping forward and gently lifting Ashlynn’s bandaged hand to unwind the layers of soft fabric.

When he saw the flesh beneath the bandage, however, his eyes opened wide in surprise as he kept waiting to see flesh that looked painfully tender or showed scars of healing the way sorcery made wounds look like they’d been healed years in the past. But unlike the limited healing he’d witnessed in his time in the Vale of Mists, Ashlynn’s slender, toned arms looked.

.. flawless. As though she’d never been injured in the first place!

"You see, Ollie?" Ashlynn said softly as she looked into his pale, awe-filled eyes. "This is the power that witches wield. This is part of what it means to be the Mother of Trees. So I’ll ask one last time tonight and hear your final answer when we return to the castle," she said.

"Will you join Heila and become my Cypress Witch?"