Swallowing hard and trying to ignore the increased tingle up her left arm, Jahrra closed her eyes and stepped forward. She stopped, feeling somehow that she had placed her feet where they needed to be, and looked up. The vast space rose for thirty or forty feet, reaching far up into the core of the Oak until it ended in several gaps burned out to let in light.
Jahrra felt a rush of earth magic so strong it nearly swept her off her feet. Yes, this was like her encounter with the Apple Tree, but it was so much more as well. Time passed, not the time she was in, but the time from the beginning, up until the very present. She saw in her mind’s eye the building of the earth and all the races upon it, the plants, the animals, the mountains and forests. It was so overwhelming that Jahrra thought she might lose her ability to breathe.
Jahrraneh Drisihn . . .
Jahrra was gasping but she couldn’t pull her mind away.
Jahrraneh Drisihn . . . he needs your help. They all do . . .
A scene of intense violence and fear joined the whirlwind of images that suddenly swirled around in her mind like a flock of birds tossed in a thunderstorm. A great black and red demon, the same one from her nightmares of her childhood, loomed above a plain. Scattered about the great expanse of land were soldiers, fighting and dying, as they tried to destroy the monsters that attacked them. The images pricked her brain, leaving behind an intense reminder of the memories that had somehow infiltrated her nightmares from several weeks before.
Somehow, Jahrra felt her knees buckle and the faint awareness of her body crumpling into a heap in the center of the Tree hollow. She could hear the screams and cries of anguish; the laments of those who knew they were doomed. The scene changed; the men were still there but one stood out and came closer into view. He rode a great horse, its flanks sweating and bloody from the violence.
Suddenly his face was visible and Jahrra gasped. She knew who this was, the same person she’d wondered about since learning this story years ago. He was the prince of the Tanaan. Jahrra ignored all the other sounds and sights of horror that flew by and focused on the prince’s face. It blurred in and out of vision but from what she could catch she studied with intense concentration. His hair looked fair, like hers, but there was too much blood and grime to know for sure. His face might have been striking but a combination of the ambiguity of the memory and his own anger and fear contorted it. She tried so very hard to see his eyes; to maybe capture the anguish of his spirit and take some of that suffering upon herself but the blurring and swirling of the image refused to give her a clear view. A piercing scream ripped through the air and as the scene rushed from her mind, like an intense headache transforming into wind, Jahrra caught a glimpse of dragon shape.
It was only after the dull colors of the present flooded back into her mind that Jahrra’s senses became her own once again. The scream, she realized in horror, had come from her. At least some of it had.
“Jahrra!”
She suddenly felt the solid ground beneath her as she shook and cradling her left arm. She felt a cold sweat coating her entire body and a fierce pain pounding through her head. Her breathing was harsh and she knew her eyes stared forward, blank and full of pain. She could taste dust in her mouth and coughed when she also felt it lining her throat.
“Jahrra! Aydehn, send for aid! Jahrra!”
It was Jaax who kept calling her name, crying out to her as if she were lost. But she couldn’t respond to him; she felt numb both physically and mentally. Finally, she managed to blink.
“Jahrra, answer me! Curse all things to Ciarrohn’s keep!”
Jahrra would have laughed if she could. Jaax sounded angry. Not just angry, terrified. She had never heard that particular degree of emotion in his voice, ever. Well, perhaps once, the morning Hroombra had . . .
Swallowing and pushing that memory away, Jahrra drew a breath and tried to speak.
“Fine,” she murmured, barely audible above Jaax’s ranting and the nervous murmuring of the Resai elves who had accompanied them.
At some point, she heard Nerrid’s nervous shouts and Little Phaea’s sobbing among the worried sounds of her other friends. Jaax cursed again.
“I’m fine,” Jahrra managed to make some sound this time, and thank all things living, Jaax heard her.
He lowered his head so that it was at the same level with hers, which was resting ungracefully against the ground. How had he entered the Tree without suffering the same effects as her?
“Thank the benevolent gods,” he breathed, closing his eyes and opening them quickly.
They burned with a fierceness that made Jahrra quail but of course, she couldn’t so much as flinch if she wanted to.
“What on Ethoes happened?” he demanded once the villagers had managed to carry her out into the open.
Leaning against one of the Oak’s roots but feeling comfortable despite her episode, Jahrra shrugged. She was thinking about her reaction to the Apple and although similar, it hadn’t been nearly as violent. Also, she hadn’t even touched the Oak. Yet, she didn’t feel as if the Oak had meant her harm, more likely it was the memories that harmed her. She looked up into the Tree’s canopy, the golden light pouring through it warming her soul.
“Jahrra,” Jaax growled, “tell me what that was about.”
Jahrra grimaced and reached for the bracelet wrapped around her left wrist, the tingling subsiding but still there.
Jaax saw the action. “I know it has something to do with that bracelet Yaraa and Viornen gave you.”
Sighing, Jahrra relented. She knew he would pester her in his overbearing manner until she told him so she might as well get it out of the way.
“It tingles when I touch trees. Or when I’m around them,” she amended, thinking of this most recent episode.
“Does it make you fall into fits and seizures?” he demanded.
Jahrra winced. Is that what had happened to her? Is that what had happened with the Apple Tree? Is that why Gieaun and Scede had looked so concerned?
“Not all the time,” she finally answered.
She wasn’t about to elaborate and tell Jaax about her little escapade up Ehnnit Canyon and what she’d discovered there. Unfortunately, the Tanaan dragon was far more adept at reading her than she wished.
“Not all the time? Please, do continue with your little story, Jahrra. When else have you had this reaction to a tree?”
It was Jahrra’s turn to curse but she turned it mostly upon herself. Why was he always able to dig information out of her when the last thing she wanted to do was share it? Jahrra sighed deeply. Oh, why not, she told herself. It happened so long ago it’s not as if he can punish me for it.
Taking a deep breath, Jahrra told him about her trip to Ehnnit Canyon (leaving out her reason for going of course) and what had happened when she had placed her hand on the bark of the Apple Tree.
Jaax swore again, a sudden habit he had picked up in the last hour. He swiveled his head around and noted the curious and strangely quiet villagers standing around them.
“Thank you for your accompaniment here. We can find our way back; Jahrra just needs to rest a while longer. If you see Aydehn on the way back to the village, please inform him help is no longer needed.”
Jahrra imagined, from the eager looks on the villagers’ faces, that if she had been speaking those words they would not have heeded her. When Jaax spoke to them, however, especially with that tone of voice, people were inclined to obey, even the children, who looked as if they didn’t want to leave Jahrra’s side.