Walking through the town square and this place does not feel like home. It felt too small to be the grand market of my memory. After the grand cities where I’d studied, calling it a town felt far too generous.
“Don’t be going to the wood stranger.” A kind old lady sitting at the South Gate of town. Mrs.Macarthy with her crotchet in hand. Another baby blanket, this one in coral pink with sky blue hearts. “They’re dangerous.
These woods are a graveyard. The trees are a headstone for the generations they’ve consumed growing tall on the dead. And today, they burn. Making up for the birthday candles you never got. Isolde. My sister, my twin. “I’m not a stranger, Mrs.MaCarthy. And I hope you’ve not lost more children since I left.”
“Yennifer?” She looked up at me, peering into the orange red hood that hid my face. “Where did you go?”
“That is me.” I ignored the whispering. Mages weren’t common in these parts so I’d already gathered a crowd drawn by the ruby tipped staff and glittering robes. “I went to Relcare, and from there I met a plane walker. From there I visited Ignis, the plane of fire.”
I pushed the hood back letting them see. Auburn hair was now a sparks floating around my bald head like embers. Delicate eyes replaced by gleaming garnet, and skin once tanned by the sun was black as charcoal with glitters of ember. I smiled as they stepped back. “I have come to burn the woods.”
“By what authority!” MrCradenball demanded. The crowd parted around him. He strut like a peacock, and was dressed like one. All flair and pompous. “These woods give just as they take, if you really are Yennifer you know that. We have shared this river with it for generations.”
“By the authority of the grieving forced to accept a blood price.” The woods were a graveyard. Each tree a tombstone of a someone taken. Someone loved, someone cherished and wept over. And today it would burn and it would not take another soul.
“Those woods are part of our livelihood.” Ms. edenborough cried. She’d lost two children but had been given a pair of sheep whose fleece spun into fine silk.
“Let the mage try.” Kelthane the blacksmith spoke. She’d been an apprentice when I left and now wore the guild seal of a journeymen. “I’d trade this hammer the woods gave me for my little-one.”
“And if it lashes out because of her?” Mr.Cradenball. “If it takes more than it has before?”
“It will burn this day.” I cross the bridge and stride across the black blighted grass. The dark of the woods swallowed the bright noon-day sun creating an artificial dusk.
A girl crept out of the shadows. A homespun dress of undyed cotton draped over a Fram thinned by not enough food. “Yennifer?”
“I know you aren’t Isolde.” I had expected this. The monstrosity at the centre of this place knew the souls it had consumed.
“Of course it’s me silly.” She looks just as she did when she crossed the bridge. Ten years old and fearless. And the woods took her from me. “Let’s play hide and seek!”
I feel the pull to say yes, to go and hide within the comforting darkness, to lay aside everything and go. I grin. I’ve learned how to resist such magic.
“Come on!” She grabs my arm and pulls. “Let’s play!”
But I’m not ten years old. “I know you aren’t my sister. She died and you’re just wearing her face.”
Tears the colour of amber and the thickness of sap stained her cheeks. “It’s me Yenna! It doesn’t hurt us. We play. I run like a fawn or fly like a robin, or buzz like a bee and have tea parities on daisies. Being here, it isn’t a bad thing. It’s wonderful.”
I don’t even know ifi can cry still. A part of her wanted the release that tears brought. But I’ll let everything out soon. “My sister is dead.”
“She’s standing right here!” She blinked more sap tears away. She stood in the narrow gap between two briars “Please. If you burn the forest you’ll always be alone. You could stay here with us. The oak could make you human again. And we could be sisters again.”
“Move.” I shoved her aside, and it was just leaves and twigs. One cut through the skin on her hand and drew boiling blood that scorch the ground where it landed. “Taste it and know what’s coming!”
Nothing answered me and I stepped through the briar into the copse of trees. The oak was grotquse. Limbs gnarled and covered in bark like old bones. The leaves were pale as the newly dead and the stink was that of a mortuary. The man who stood in front of it looked like my father would have if he hadn’t died from drink a few years after my sister was lost. He lost a daughter, but I lost a sister and a father. And mother died when we were born.
“What is it you truly desire my dear?” It asked in a voice that called to my child hood. To sunny days and helping sheer sheep. Of laughter and glee. Of joy I hadn’t felt since she’d gone. I swallowed hard. I wanted all of that back. But I couldn’t get it.
“Justice.” I grabbed a handful of volcanic ash and felt the memories of destruction, of fire and brimstone in my finger tips. I threw a handful at him. He burned like kindling.
“You will die with me,” his screams promised.
“But I will be the last.” I dumped the rest of the ash and cast the spell, the last of my humanity burning away along with the tainted woods. I felt souls being freed as the malevolent woods burned, as the realm of fire visited and created ash. Greif, and rage consume the forest, but the love of al little girl kept it contained between the rivers. It kept the village that had helped her survive alive.
The fire died, leaving only bones, ash and embers.