“I knew something had gone wrong. They were trees too long, Healer. They couldn’t—they can’t—spin back,” Padrig rushed to expound, obviously relieved by Kjell’s pardon. Kjell pushed the torch into the Spinner’s hands and approached the nearest tree.
“How do we know whether the tree is a Spinner or simply a tree of Caarn?” Kjell asked.
Padrig inclined his head toward the trunk. “Touch it.”
Kjell pressed his hands to the bark and immediately withdrew them. This tree was different from the trees blocking the road into the valley. The sensation was like standing on the deck of the ship again, swaying on stormy seas, his stomach tossing to and fro.
“You feel it!” Padrig crowed, jubilant. “It is not simply a tree. It is a Spinner.”
“Yes.” Kjell nodded, but he immediately stepped away. He didn’t want to touch the tree. “But I am not.”
“You are a Healer. They need healing. And you have proven you can talk to the trees.” Padrig’s eyes were bright with knowing, and Kjell wondered if his loss of temper in the gallery had been overheard by the inquisitive Star Maker.
Kjell approached the tree again, addressing it with flattened palms and a clear command. The sensation traveled up his arms, filling Kjell with nausea, but unlike the trees on the road to Caarn, the trunk didn’t quake or shift, the roots didn’t unfurl, and the leaves were silent. It didn’t seem to hear him at all. He tried again, adjusting his message, but all he got for his efforts was a whirling head and a churning belly.
“Talking to them is not enough,” he said, dropping his hands and stepping away. He breathed deeply, attempting to calm his stomach and quiet his nerves.
“You have to try to heal them, Captain,” Padrig pled. “These are not simply trees of Caarn. They are people. Some of them were children so young they’ve been trees longer than they were babes. They were hiding, and they don’t know how to stop.”
Kjell placed his hands on a different tree, one of the smallest in the grove, its bark pale and thin and remarkably smooth. The swaying sensation welled immediately, and Kjell planted his feet to keep from falling. If the smallest tree in the wood made him feel this way, he had no hope of success.
“I will help you,” Sasha said, and took one of his hands, pulling it from the trunk, just like she’d done in the unforgiving village of Solemn. She laid her other palm against the tree next to his, pressing her fingers into the smooth bark. Her eyes clung to his face, brimming with tears that began to streak her cheeks and drip from her chin.
“I need you to help me find compassion, Sasha,” he murmured. “You loved these people once.”
“I love them still. But I love you more,” she wept. “May Caarn forgive me, I love you more.”
For a moment they were silent, hands clasped, hearts heavy, trying to find the will to do what must be done.
“I believe this tree was a child,” Padrig offered, stepping beside them with the torch. “If you look closely, you can see her face.”
They peered, grateful for the distraction, for the opportunity to forget themselves and forge ahead.
“It is a child, a little girl. There are flowers in her hair. See?” Sasha whispered, tracing the eyes and the nose, barely visible in the orange glow of the torch and the shadows on the bark.
“I see,” Kjell rasped. “But if I wake her, will she be afraid? Let us heal the parents first and let them help us wake the children.”
They moved to the next tree, an umbrella tree that sheltered the smaller tree beneath its boughs.
“I know who this is,” Sasha breathed, her eyes on the hollows that created a hint of a profile. “She is Yetta, the castle chef—so dour and dramatic. She was always convinced her next meal would disappoint, and worked tirelessly to make sure that it didn’t. She knew how much I loved her tarts and would find me, wherever I was in the castle, and make me swear each batch was better than the last.”
“Yetta had a granddaughter,” Padrig said. “Let us see if we can’t wake her, and then we’ll wake the child.”
It was not like healing a human or even a horse. The tossing in Kjell’s stomach continued to intensify, as if he drew the fear that made the Spinners of Caarn hide into himself. The sound he heard was not a song but a wail, and he didn’t try to duplicate it. He absorbed it, sinking beneath the layers of bark until the wailing became a whimper and a heartbeat emerged. He willed his heart to match the rhythm until he became the tree, and the tree became a tall woman, reed thin and clothed in a dress covered with a long apron. Her arms hung at her sides, and her eyes were closed like she slept upright.
Slowly her eyes opened, and she regarded Kjell in confusion before her gaze settled on the queen.
“M-majesty?” she stuttered, her voice raspy with disuse. “Queen Saoirse? Are the Volgar gone?”
Kjell dropped his hands, turned, and lost the contents of his stomach before bracing himself against the smaller tree and immediately starting again, Sasha at his side.
Not every tree was a Spinner, not every Spinner was a tree. Some were crouching bushes and shrubs; a climbing vine of roses was a woman by the same name. Some were easier to wake than others, and some refused to be roused. When he spent too long on one tree, Sasha forced him to move on. When he became too weak, she made him rest. But he slept in the groves, not even stumbling to the castle for reprieve, saving his strength for waking the forest. When he awoke, Sasha was always there, waiting. He made sure she ate when he ate, rested when he rested, and he commanded Jerick to watch her when he couldn’t.
As Kjell continued to heal and awaken, the wailing abated and the heartbeats beneath the trunks and hidden in bristled branches became more like the melodies of human healing and less like terrified screams. Each healing was accomplished with less sickness and more song, as if the Spinners of Caarn had heard their loved ones reemerge and had begun to reemerge themselves. But the numbers were great and the press of the healed and the waiting became more trying than the healing itself.
“Healer—this is my son,” a hovering mother said, patting a white sapling.
“Healer, will you help my child?” a father begged, standing beside a flowering lilac tree.
“Healer, will you wake my husband next?” the woman named Rose implored.
His guard formed a ring around him, asking the people to stand back, to be patient, but they obeyed only when Sasha commanded them to wait beside their loved ones, in whatever form they may be. Padrig began compiling a list of citizens, and slowly, families were reunited and sent home. One by one, the copses thinned and the village of Caarn grew around them.
There were so many. One day become another. And another. And another, until only one tree remained.
“He would have wanted to be last. He would have wanted to wait until everyone else was seen to,” Padrig whispered. His eyes were bright and his compassion evident, and Kjell knew the time had come. He hadn’t rested in many hours, but he would finish before he rested again.
“This is King Aren. He is good. And kind. He loves his people.” Sasha’s voice caught and her fingers clenched, and Kjell could only hold her hand, press his palm to the tree, and let her sorrow and his resistance roll over him.
“When I was just a girl, afraid of the things I saw, hidden away in a foreign land, he was my friend. I know what it costs you to call to him . . . but he is worthy of healing.”
Kjell’s heart began to tremble and quake, making a song of its own. Groaning and deep, a healing melody rose from his chest and rippled down his arms. The sound escaped through his lips, bellowing and great, like the rumble of the skies or the falling of the rocks, and just as before, he felt the moment when the tree awoke, when the old fell away and the flesh became new. Unlike the Changers when they shifted, the Spinners were fully clothed, their apparel becoming bark and leaves, branches and blossoms.