Spirit - Part Fourteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
The ink-black sky overhead glitters coldly with thousands of stars. The full moon hangs at its height. Salty wind from the coast sweeps in gusting waves across the forest, so that the moonlit leaves at the top of the canopy scatter the silver-white glow in dancing patterns.
Hundreds of feet below, I’m running faster than I ever have before in my life. Shattering my previous record, which I set earlier tonight on my way to the farmhouse to get Charlie. Tearing through the forest so fast that it all goes by in a green blur, huge gasps of green air burning in my chest.
Run, I tell myself. Keep going. Put your head down and get there.
Don’t fall. Don’t slow down for anything. Don’t think. Don’t give into the internal voice crying out that you’ve been beaten and poisoned, that you need to be sick, to lay down, to close your eyes and curl up and let this night be over.
Keep running.
Don’t turn around. There’s someone behind you, but if he doesn’t catch up, he doesn’t matter.
Keep running.
Ignore the sound of Mags’s voice, playing on repeat in your head. The pieces of the argument with him on the beach, remnants of his words that cut like millions of tiny, razor-sharp knives.
The things he said with his Colt aimed at my face…
“I didn’t mean to kill the Commie kid. It was an accident, but someone’s got to take the fall for it. Frankly, Leyla, you’re just the only candidate that makes sense.”
“You think Command will buy that I got him killed? With my track record?”
“I’ll tell them that the Stasi poached you, and that you tried to take the kid and kill me. I had to shoot you in self-defense, but by that point you’d already gotten the boy killed with your recklessness… you get the picture. They will buy it, because… well. You never could stick to protocol and do what you were told. You were always undermining my authority.”
“Oh, your authority. You always invoked that when I supposedly didn’t know what was good for me. You always said that it was just you looking out for me. But I guess that only applies until I’m the one standing in your way, doesn’t it, Mags?”
“Don’t you understand why I have to do this? The Tree could lead us to other people like the green-eyed woman, other people who can do what she can do! Think of the implications for the war, for all the wars of the future! Think of all the military and intelligence applications! This is the break that makes my entire career, and I won’t let it be ruined because some brat got himself killed!”
“You got him killed! Now you want to kill me to cover it up, and you’re asking me to understand?”
“I was wrong to ask for that, clearly! It’s beyond the ability of your little mind to understand the importance of the bigger picture, Leyla, but not me! That’s why I’m willing to make sacrifices for it!”
“As long as that sacrifice is me and not you! How brave, how noble! If my dad was alive, he would look at you and think-”
“Enough talking. I knew you wouldn’t be able to grasp any of it.”
“Think carefully about your next move, Mags. I promised I wouldn’t hurt anyone unless I had no other choice. And you’re not leaving me any other choice.”
His sharp, scoffing laugh as his finger started to put pressure on the trigger. “Goodbye, Leyla.”
And then the fight. The ringing roar of the Colt fired so close to me, an experience that wrenched me out of the fogginess leftover from the ambush in the hotel room, forcing me into instant, total clarity.
The brief flash of satisfaction of that solid crack across Mags’s face, which was then canceled out completely by the ensuing sprint for the farmhouse, nightmarish visions of Charlie’s broken little body half-buried in the ruins running through my mind.
No. He’s safe now. You got him. He’s safe.
The thought of Charlie, safely tucked away in bed - probably doing his math homework or taking apart one of his toy spaceships to calm himself down - allows me a few deep breaths. Enough oxygen to finally catch hold of the agent in me.
For Charlie, and for Rose, I need to be her. Not Leyla, but Rouge.
I’ve been trying to find my usual professional calm all night long. It’s so different when it’s my family on the line. But now, at last, the nerves and the teardrops and the panicked thoughts clawing at me all draw back. Like the rush of a wave, a tide going out.
They trained me to be a machine, and I let the machine take over with a gasp of gratitude.
A neutral expression flatlines the terrified look on my face as I finally lock into gear, body and mind. Snapping up the last fastenings of my invisible battlesuit. Putting on my invisible war paint.
I’m already running faster, more smoothly, leaping in strong strides through the windswept trees. Before I even take my next breath, I know it will be calm and steady. I know that my ears won’t be filled with the pounding of my own heartbeat. They’ll be feeding me all the noise of my surroundings.
As soon as they do, I hear the sprinting footsteps behind me.
The forest is setting off all of its alarms, as if it’s trying to warn me. The wind makes all the millions of leaves and pine needles dance, sending up a hushed kind of roar, but I hear him over it. He’s stepping on twigs with crisp snapping sounds, running through brush that rustles sharply upon being crushed by his shoes.
He’s caught up to me.
I immediately drop flat, flinging out my hands to break my fall. The next breath I draw in tastes like rich soil and moss. Wildflower leaves tangle in my loose hair as it spills over my shoulders.
A huge cracking sound rips apart the night air, impossibly sharp against the muted roar of the wind. It makes my heart jolt in my chest, but I got out of the way with a second or two to spare. The shot went way over my head.
I scramble back to my feet to get running, but a second crack follows the first. I instinctively flatten myself to the forest floor again, then snap up onto my knees behind a massive, moss-laden log. I toss my leafy hair out of my face and peer over the log, glaring into the dark wall of trees.
“Jahn!” I shout, raising my voice over the wind. “Stop shooting at me! I don’t have time for this! Can you hear me? Ich will nicht gegen dich kämpfen!”
I glance over my shoulder at the trunk of the tree behind me as I speak, then blink hard at it, startled. Based on the brand new bullet hole, Jahn’s shot was aimed at exactly where my head was when I had started to get up. He’s shooting to kill. He’s - trying to kill me. Right now.
It should have dawned on me well before this moment. About as soon as I realized that Jahn was chasing after me through the woods, really. I’ve been aware of him pursuing me, this whole time. Those two rounds he just put into the tree trunk were the second and third shots he’s fired at me since he found me in the forest.
Somehow, though, I haven’t given him too much thought.
Despite his multiple attempts on my life since he started chasing me, Jahn has barely registered in my consciousness at all until right now. All of my thoughts have been on Rose. There simply hasn’t been room in my mind for anything, anything besides the fact that I need to save her. Even if my life is in danger, too.
I’m therefore taken by surprise to suddenly notice that I’m engaged in a fight for my life against a fierce, well-trained opponent. An opponent who has a clear enough shot on me that running isn’t an option, and who’s already demonstrated three times just how badly he wants me dead. He’s not going to stop until I am.
I curse beneath my breath, silently apologizing to Rose for having to hurt someone. But I promised not to do that unless I had to, and I do have to. I’m not breaking my promises to her, not any of them.
I promised to always keep her safe. When we secretly started calling each other wife, I promised her that, and she promised me the same thing.
We don’t break our promises, not in this family.
I slip my sidearm free, check that the magazine is full, and flip the safety off. The cold coastal wind sweeps in from the sea, setting the forest canopy to swaying and dancing. It whips my hair around my face as I settle my Colt into place in my hand. The sleek Coltwood grips are a familiar feeling against my palm, one that makes my body automatically shift into a better firing stance.
I run my thumb over the circled rampant colt logo, take a deep breath, then pop up behind the mossy log again.
Jahn fires as soon as I do, leaning out from behind a pine tree, allowing me a fleeting glimpse of his furious eyes before I drop to a crouch behind the log. I wait until it’s over. Counting his shots, breathing deeply and slowly, finding a quiet place within myself.
When the firing stops, I sit up, stabilize myself against the log, and take aim.
Jahn flings himself back behind the tree when he hears my shots go off. I had aimed for his leg, hoping to land a non-lethal but incapacitating hit. He got out of the way just in time.
“I don’t want to fight you, Jahn!” My voice is rising to a scream to be heard over the wind, my words tearing at my throat on their way out. “Just leave me alone, goddamnit!”
I flatten myself behind the log and take cover as he answers me with gunfire. When it stops, I answer him the same way.
This time he barely manages to get back behind the pine tree. He lets out a burst of curses when he sees where my rounds are strafed up the side of a tree trunk at his back. It would have been a textbook kill if he hadn’t taken cover. Three neat shots, stitched up his front, each one landed in a place that can’t afford to take it.
I gave him enough time to get out of the way, and I can only hope he doesn’t make me regret that decision.
“Giving you one more chance to walk away, Jahn!” My wild, screaming voice is half carried away on the roar of the wind, but I know he hears me. “Don’t make me do this, I don’t want to! I don’t want her to have to listen to it, damn you!”
There’s no response. I stay crouched and frozen behind the log, my heart hammering. Then I decide to take a gamble, and I run.
Sprinting through the moonlit forest again, hearing my breath very loudly, but almost nothing else. Realizing in some vague, distant way that we must be near the coastline. The forest grows to the edges here, right up to the crumbling cliffs of black stone that give way to a sharp fall down to the glittering sea. There comes a place where through the trees you can see the glint of the water, and taste the closeness of the salt on the air. I know it well, from the many times Rose and I walked here together on the way to her Tree.
I sharply adjust my course to account for the cliff edge that I know is nearby, dangerously hidden in the darkness.
The little swerve has the inadvertent effect of saving my life immediately, because when Jahn suddenly fires again, it’s a miss.
Gasping, I catch myself on a tree trunk and use it to swing myself around into cover, my clothes swirling around me. I drop low, then lean around the side of the tree to take aim, catching a glint of Jahn’s firearm in the darkness.
Two shots burst from my Colt. Misses, both. I can tell right away. My last two bullets.
But his last two, as well, I realize, hearing them thunk into the tree I’m crouching behind.
That is, unless he has an extended capacity mag, or he brought a few extra rounds… But I don’t care anymore. I’m all out of bullets and patience. This is a waste of precious time, time I don’t have to spare. He’s standing between me and my wife.
I straighten up, breathing hard, then step around the side of the tree I was using for cover. I stride right out into the open and stop there, glaring furiously into the darkness of the trees.
I toss my pistol aside, then crack my knuckles.
“Alright, Jahn!” I throw my arms out wide, my voice echoing around the forest. “Let’s do this! It’s you and me!”
I stand there with the wind snapping my hair around my face and neck, half-expecting to hear a shot ring out.
Instead, Jahn steps forward out of the darkness. Standing much taller than me, glowering at me with livid, unhinged fire in his eyes. His spent sidearm hangs from his finger by the trigger guard, but I shift into a position to dodge if he swings at me with it. He flashes me a dark grin that indicates he’s planning to tear me apart. I match it, beckoning to him with both hands.
He looks angry, suddenly, that I’m not intimidated. He starts to stride for me, and I roll out my neck, waiting for him to make the first move.
I blink in confusion as Jahn pulls up short. He freezes to the spot, squinting at some distant point in the forest beyond me. My first thought is that it’s a distraction tactic, but - true, genuine fear fills Jahn’s eyes, which grow perfectly round with shock. His mouth drops open, the color falling from his face as swiftly as the drop of a curtain.
“Was zur Hölle?” he roars, his voice fracturing with panic.
I spin around in the crushing wind, struggling to see through my hair whipping across my eyes - then freeze when I see the demon coming through the forest towards us.
He truly is terrifying. His body glows molten red, and deep, deep black everywhere else. He’s massive, with shoulders wider than I’m tall. Gigantic, perfectly round eyes burning with real fire, smoking flames that reach his angular brow bones. Huge, hungry, razor-sharp fangs show themselves between his snapping jaws.
I jokingly told Rose that I thought he came out more like a hellhound than a demon. He’s vaguely wolf-like in his features, but with enormous, sweeping, curled horns. He stands upright, but runs on all fours.
He’s running right now. Soaring through the wind-tossed forest with unnerving, impossible speed, trailing curls of ink-black smoke in his wake.
Jahn screams at the top of his lungs as the demon bears down on him like a hawk closing in on its prey. He goes scrambling backwards, trying to fire his empty pistol, his shell-shocked eyes never breaking away from the demon -
Then he simply vanishes. He’s just gone, disappeared over the side of the cliff. He took a step backwards, right onto nothing.
There’s a split second of silence, followed by a piercing, wailing scream as he plummets through the open air and down to the sea.
I drag in a gasping breath, already sprinting for the side of the cliff. I drop to my knees and lean out to stare over the rocky edge, holding on tightly in the punishing wind.
Far below me, the glittering, choppy ocean smashes around pillars and walls of slick black stone, the waves crashing into bursts of mist against the cliffside. My eyes immediately find a churned-up white spot on the surface of the sea, the bubbles of a recent impact.
I draw back in disbelief as Jahn’s head breaks the surface of the water. He tosses his soaked hair out of his eyes and looks up at me, his face tiny from this distance. He shouts something up at me. Impossible to hear from up here, but it looks like he’s cursing violently, wrenching a piece of seaweed off of his shoulder.
“Oh, you’re fine!” I shout back, scowling down at him as he angrily flings the seaweed aside. “Just get to the sand and we’ll rescue you tomorrow when you don’t remember anything, you giant oaf!”
He strikes out for the tiny strip of sand lining the cliff wall, still shouting at me as he swims.
“Idiot!” I shout back, getting to my feet. “Dummkopf!”
And then, when I turn around and realize the demon is standing behind me - “Oh.”
He’s been watching curiously as Jahn curses up a storm and paddles for the shore, but now he moves his fire-eyed gaze to me.
“Thank you for saving me some time,” I stammer, knowing full well that I’m speaking to an illusion. “I need to - to get to Rose - she’s in trouble-”
I break off as the demon illusion lowers himself like a crouching wolf, then looks up at me, waiting. I let out a soft, surprised laugh.
“Why, thank you, puppy dog, but you’re only an illusion. Won’t I-?” I break off again, having reached down to touch his back. I expected my hand to pass right through him, but my fingers are stopped by a hide of shaggy black fur. “Oh.”
He’s solid. He feels real even to me, and I know for a fact that he isn’t. I let out a ragged, helpless laugh.
“Rose did a beautiful job on you, didn’t she?” I ask, my voice suddenly trembling. “Just like she always does. I saw the needlework you came from. It was gorgeous. She has a real gift.”
His three enormous, perfectly round, burning eyes stare at me. Waiting.
I let out another helpless laugh, then bend down to retrieve my spent pistol. “Well, why not?”
I tuck my sidearm away, then spring up onto the back of the demon and get a grip on him with my knees.
“Get me as close as you can.”
The demon surges into movement instantly at the command, flying like the wind, so fast that I barely have time to throw my arms around his neck. He moves like a streak of blackness through the forest, with me holding on tight.
Hang on, Rose, I plead silently, lifting my eyes to the stars overhead. Hang on just a little longer. I’m almost there.
~~~~
The demon disintegrates out from under me by slow degrees, so that when he finally disappears altogether, I’ve had something like a gentle touchdown onto the forest floor. A dismount that allows me to keep running without losing momentum.
I slow down as I approach the grove with Rose’s Guardian Tree. My heart is in my throat, my pulse fluttering wildly. I have no idea what I’m going to find. I don’t know if I can bear it.
But I have to look. Rose needs me. I take the longest, deepest breaths I can as I slowly sneak up to the grove. I stop when I’m close enough to peer through the leaves at what’s happening.
My eyes focus on the moonlit Guardian Tree clearing, and my heart stops still. Frozen in my chest.
“No,” I whisper, pressing my trembling fingertips to my mouth in utter disbelief. “No, no, no…”
The two agents that Mags sent here with Rose are having a heated argument, shouting into each other’s faces. One of them is gesturing violently at Rose’s Guardian Tree, which is…
Uprooted.
Fallen. Laying flat in the mud with its fragile roots half-torn from its waterfall perch. The branches that hit the ground first are snapped, crushed. Sap is leaking down the bark of the trunk like glimmering, moonlit tears. Half of the tangled roots are sticking out into the air. Others are broken completely.
Struggling to breathe, curled up in agony on the forest floor beside her fallen Tree, is Rose. In a soft white dress, her sweet brunette curls spread on the grass, her beautiful, gentle face glistening with tears.
I stand perfectly still for a moment, immobilized with shock, then turn my eyes back to the agents. I can’t even imagine the glare that takes over my face as my eyes level on the two arguing men.
I silently begin to weave my way closer.
“-that the whole fucking thing would just topple like that?” the agent closer to me is snapping at the other one, who stares back at him in cold fury. “I stepped on a few roots, was I really supposed to know-?”
“I - told - you,” Rose gasps, hugging herself, her voice shattered apart with pain. “I warned you-”
“It’s supposed to be some incredible source of power, how the hell could it let me do something like that by accident?”
“Don’t - you know - that the most precious things - can be the most - delicate?” Rose shakes her head, agonized tears rolling down her cheeks. “It’s too late. You - killed it. It’s dying. I can - feel it…”
“We’re gonna be in some real shit because of this!” the other agent snarls. He stabs a finger at Rose, the color drained from his face. “And what’s wrong with her? What do you think they’re gonna say if we come back with both her and the Tree dead?”
Rose lets out a sudden, trembling burst of laughter. Both of the agents look down at her, shifting uneasily on their feet.
“You should be a lot more afraid than you are, doll,” one of them snaps. “If this is some joke you’re playing-”
“I’m not afraid,” Rose gasps, shivering with her whole body. “I can hear what’s - coming for you.”
“Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”
Rose closes her eyes and smiles.
“My wife,” she answers, right as I tap the shoulder of the nearest agent.
He spins around to face me, and I get him right across the face with my now-empty pistol. He crumples to the ground, leaving me facing his partner, who’s cursing and reaching into his jacket for his weapon.
He was trained by the same people who trained me, but he pales and backs away as I bear down on him, his eyes widening in fear as he gets a good look at the expression in mine.
It’s the last thing he sees before he’s down on the ground, limply sprawled across his partner. I shake out my fist, then rush to Rose.
Her stunning green eyes are glittering with pain, but she smiles again as I drop to my knees beside her.
“Leyla,” she breathes, reaching up to press her trembling hand to my face. “Oh, thank god - I knew you’d - come for me…”
“Always, darling!” I gather her into my arms, tears flooding my eyes and tumbling from my lashes. “You w-wouldn’t believe how I got here, either!”
Rose’s breathtaking green eyes gaze up into mine, swimming with love. “Are you - okay?”
I smooth her soft brunette curls out of her face, biting back a sob. “No, not finding you like this!”
She drags in a strained breath, pale with the effort of every word she speaks. “Charlie?”
“He’s-”
She grasps my wrist urgently. “I heard him - in danger-”
“He’s alright, darling. I’ve got him at the cottage. He’s fine, he just needs his mama back, that’s all.”
Cradling Rose to my chest, I cup her beautiful face in my hand and tilt it gently, making her look up at me. My eyes widen in dismay when I see the agony written all over her face.
“I’ve heard so many… so many people in danger tonight…” She’s swaying slightly, even clasped this tight in my embrace. “It’s been so loud, Leyla… I just want… I just want it to be quiet, now…”
“No, no - stay with me, darling!” I’m rushing through my stammered words, trying not to crush her in my arms. My voice is splintering apart, rough and raspy with tears. “Your Tree - what happened to your Tree?”
“They didn’t believe it was the real source,” Rose pants, her words unraveling as she speaks. “One of them tried to search the Tree to see if there was - something hidden, but he - he trampled the roots, uprooted it… it fell right out of the water…”
She blinks back tears, burying her face into my neck.
“It’s dying, Leyla. And that means I - I…”
“No!” I hold her body to mine like that could keep her safe, stroking my trembling fingers through her hair. “Does a Guardian have to die with their Tree? Haven’t any survived it? Isn’t there some way-?”
“What happens to the Tree happens to the Guardian,” Rose sobs softly.
“No, but - you - you can use your magic, Rose!” I draw back to look down at her desperately. “Save it, save your Tree! I’ll help you, I’ll do whatever I-”
I break off as Rose sadly shakes her head no.
“I don’t know how to save it. And there’s n-no time for - multiple tries, for me to get it wrong… I need to use all m-my - magic before it’s gone, to - get us out of everyone’s memory…”
“Forget that, darling, it’s too late - we don’t even have it with us!”
Rose breathes out a quiet, ragged laugh.
I stare at her in total bewilderment as she extends one hand down to the folds of her soft white dress. She catches the topmost layer of her skirt between her fingertips, then slowly draws it back, revealing the layer beneath.
The underlayer of Rose’s skirt is the piece of magic that she’s been painstakingly working on all this time. Hastily stitched into the seams of the dress, neatly hidden by the layer above it. Her sewing needle is threaded into the fabric, carefully hidden in one of the folds.
Rose smiles at the thunderstruck expression on my face.
“I thought I should - keep it on m-me - at all times,” she explains. “Just to be - safe.”
I let out a sobbing laugh, lifting my adoring eyes to her face. “You’re brilliant.”
With trembling fingers, Rose slips the sewing needle free. She’s catching only the shallowest, most strained of breaths, her whole body shivering. But green magic sparkles and shimmers to life in her eyes, glittering like crushed emeralds. The needle between her fingertips begins to glow, shining in the darkness of the forest.
“There’s no time,” she sobs, in a broken voice. “No time to save my Tree. I have to do this.”
“Wait - no!” I gasp frantically, catching her by her wrist. “Don’t activate it! I don’t know how to save you without magic, and this will take all the rest of your energy-”
Rose leans up and presses an urgent kiss onto my mouth. I melt into her, kissing her back with everything in my heart. Molten sparks are flying through my chest, passion and adoration and love crashing through me in waves taller than mountains. Rocking me, reaching the very core of my being.
Rose draws back and looks at me, studying every detail of my face like she wants to take the sight of me with her wherever she’s going.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, stroking my cheek with her thumb. “I have to keep you and Charlie safe.”
“Don’t die for me, darling.” I shake my head desperately, gazing deep into her eyes, my falling tears dotting her sweet, warm face. “Don’t you know that if you die, the whole rest of my life I’ll just be - waiting? Waiting to see you again…”
“I don’t want to,” Rose sobs, clinging tightly to my clothes. “I don’t want to leave you, or Charlie. I want the - life we - planned together. I w-wanted to get Charlie that - spaceship model - kit - for Christmas. I wanted to go with y-you to the drive-in, to watch romantic movies, and - make it into a - passion pit, like you said...”
I let out a trembling laugh, half a sob.
Rose smooths my tears away with her fingertips, even as more slip down her own cheeks. “But I promised to keep y-you safe, and I’m - a Guardian. It’s my job, anyways. I want - you and Charlie - to be my last - rescue.”
She tightens her grasp around the needle, the magic swirling and gathering in her eyes.
“Let me listen to you, one last time,” she says, her striking green eyes fluttering shut. “Even when you’re this upset, it’s so beautiful… I want it to be the - the last thing I…”
“No, darling, I love you too much to let you do this! I can’t let you go-” I gasp sharply, trying to seize her wrist. “No - Rose, no!”
Rose smiles, listening to my note.
“I love you, Leyla,” she whispers, then plunges the sewing needle into the fabric.
Radiant gold and green light bursts from Rose in a supernova explosion, staggeringly bright. The sparkling tidal wave of magic and power that rushes out with Rose at the center is so strong that it blasts my hair back from my shoulders, nearly knocking me off of my knees. I gasp and bow my head, curling around Rose instinctively, protectively, cradling her to my chest. Squeezing my eyes shut, but I sense the wave of magic spreading, spreading, rushing out far beyond us.
As it fades away around us, Rose lets out a soft, gentle little breath, then collapses back against me.
My eyes fly open to find her limp and unmoving. Curled up in my arms, the soft fringes of her eyelashes resting against her cheekbones, her cheek resting against my collarbone.
The sewing needle is glowing green in the folds of the fabric. Her fingers have fallen away from it.
Gasping for breath, I give Rose a shake, then another. No response.
“Darling?” I tilt her head back, but she doesn’t open her eyes. I press desperate kisses onto her mouth, her cheeks, her scar. “Rose? Answer me, darling… answer m-me…”
I lay her out flat on the forest floor beside her fallen Tree, my entire internal world swaying on the brink of collapse. She lays perfectly motionless, unbreathing. Her head has fallen to the side, her peach-colored lips still turned up in an adoring smile from listening to my note.
“No, you - you can’t!” I whisper. I choke out an anguished sob, fighting down a scream that could rip the sky open, my trembling fingers stroking Rose’s soft, loose curls. “You - you can’t - please, please, I’ll do anything, but y-you can’t be-”
I draw back sharply, frantically blinking away my tears as a gentle glow begins to emanate from Rose’s unmoving body.
My breath stays frozen in my throat, my racing heart stumbling in my chest as a shimmering figure of soft, silvery-white light rises up from Rose’s body.
A spirit, radiant and shining, blazing above me, haloed in her own glow. Suspended in the air at the center of the grove, above the broken Tree. Above me, where I’m watching in awe from my knees.
“Leyla?” Rose stammers, her wide eyes blinking down at herself.
I stare at the being of pure, glowing light, my mouth fallen open. It’s… her. My Rose. Open-eyed, breathing, gently aglow. But she’s transparent. Glittering and see-through, like dew sparkling on gossamer.
To hear her voice again, after I thought she was gone - now I know what she’s talking about when she speaks of a sound so beautiful you could go on listening to it for the rest of your life.
I wrench myself out of my state of stunned inaction, leaping to my feet.
“What - what’s happening?” I reach up for her, letting out a sob of relief and gratitude at the feeling of her gaze resting on my face. “Talk to me, darling!”
Rose looks just as bewildered as I am. Her soft, full lips are slightly parted in disbelief as she examines her silvery white hands. She’s connected to her body by the soft spun veil of her light, which flows into and out of her in slow, unbroken, shimmering waves. Her loose, glossy curls are floating around her shoulders, her white dress stirring in gentle movement.
We both look down sharply as the silvery light connecting Rose to herself begins to grow thin, then break apart. Just above her body, it’s slowly tearing. Like fabric giving away, threads snapping.
Rose looks over her shoulder at her fallen Tree, then quickly looks back at me, her silver eyes widening in understanding.
“Leyla,” she whispers, pressing her fingertips to her mouth. “My Tree is unrooted…”
I’ve already understood. The Guardian Tree is unrooted, so Rose is coming unrooted, too.
Her spirit is breaking away from her physical form. The light connecting her to her body is giving way, piece by piece, right before my eyes. She’s quite literally coming apart at the seams.
Before I can even grasp that, she begins sinking very slowly upwards. Giving into an invisible pull taking her away, untethering her. And I know. Instantly and inexplicably, I know. Once she’s unbound from her body completely, she’ll be - gone.
Rose must know the same thing.
She raises her tear-filled gaze to me and looks into my eyes, silently trying to tell me goodbye.
I meet her gaze, and the fire in my heart, the one that burns only for her - it rushes out to flood my every vein. My whole body runs hot with tenderness and love almost too powerful to bear. My racing heart slams me with determination.
No. I’m not losing her. I can’t. I won’t.
I throw myself to my knees, catching at the fraying silver-white connection with my hands, desperately trying to think of something, anything I can do. My eyes fall on the sewing needle, still stuck through the piece of magic hidden in Rose’s skirt.
It’s still glowing.
I seize the needle and slip it free from the fabric. It seems to hum in my hand, warmed from within, its light pooling on my palm. I have no magic, but Rose just expended all of hers through this needle…
I look up at Rose, into her beautiful, terrified eyes.
I can’t do magic or control the power of Fate, but I sink my every hope into this. I sink all of my boundless, white-hot love for Rose into my hands, imagining it pooling around the sewing needle. I silently beg the magic to listen. To hear me.
Then, without thinking, guided by some sudden instinct, I push the needle through the light connecting Rose’s spirit to her body. I clumsily work in an imaginary stitch, then push the needle back through, the way I’ve seen Rose do a thousand times.
I let out a sharp gasp of giddy laughter when the needle comes back threaded with golden, glowing, light-spun thread.
Rose watches me in astonishment, her fingers pressed over her mouth.
“Try it again,” she whispers, her soft-spoken voice falling to me from where she’s suspended in the air.
I’ve never been the one of us who could sew, but I do my best to imitate what my adoring eyes have watched her do over and over again. I add another reinforcing stitch to the fabric of silvery-white light holding Rose to her body, this time aiming for the part that’s fraying away at the quickest rate.
As soon as I tighten the stitch, the fraying there stops. The light rejoins itself, rippling softly. And pulling the thread taut seemed to pull Rose back down out of the air, closer to her body.
Rose gasps, and I do, too. I let out another trembling laugh, and this time Rose joins in.
“Leyla,” she sobs, looking like she wants to collapse in relief. “Oh my god, Leyla…”
I take a deep, determined breath, swipe the tears away from my eyes, and start to sew.
“I’ve got you, darling!” I steady out my trembling hands. I add another stitch, then another. “I’ll bring you back. I’ll save you. Just hold on, my love. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve always got you…”
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