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“Karayea!” Leila gasped as they walked into the grove. It took so much energy to even raise her voice. Landon took slow steps, each cautious and careful, muttering about how slippery and slick the soil around them was. He slid on the dead leaves a few times, and each time his foot made a quick, squishy sound against the earth Leila felt his hands grip her tightly, his strong arms flex around her as he cradled her against his chest. She pushed her head against him and took a deep breath, but the smell of sandalwood and sawdust had been replaced with a raw, harsh chemical smell that seemed to permeate the air around them.
“Do you . . . do you smell that?” Leila asked, pressing a hand against Landon’s chest.
Landon looked at her and then at Sarika with a worried expression on his face.
The dark soil that they could see under the leaves that surrounded the grove was tinted an off, pale-blue color, and specks of the liquid stained the stone ring around the dryad’s trees. They all still bore the red Xs from the developers. The dryads’ trees were barren, their leaves gone.
“Tifola! Shorea!” Leila shouted as loud as she could. She coughed and shook her head against the pounding in the back of her skull. Sarika darted ahead of Landon, and they walked into the grove.
The trees were silent.
The woods were quiet.
The sounds of wildlife that normally scampered about most of Fairmount Park were simply gone. Leila looked around, moving her head slowly. No squirrels, no birds singing in the nearby trees. No insects lazily buzzing by her face.
Nothing.
“Let’s get closer,” Leila muttered.
Landon walked towards the three oak trees, which stood tall and quiet in the middle of the stone ring. He held Leila close as they approached the trees, and she stretched out from his arms to run her hand over the surface of the middle one, where Karayea dwelled.
“I wonder how long they’ve been poisoning the ground here,” Leila said, her fingers caressing the hard bark on the tree’s surface. “She wasn’t acting the same the last time we were here, and the others . . .” She looked at the two trees, neither of which had awoken even the last time they had come to the grove. “What . . . what if they’re gone?”
“I don’t know,” Landon said, shaking his head. “Will the park really wither up?” He looked up at the sky, towards the canopy, and then around, taking Leila with him for the spin. “I just, I can’t imagine it. The city with no trees. No breathable air. No people.”
And no me, Leila thought.
A rustling.
A soft breeze shook the empty branches in the trees, and the center tree split open.
Landon stumbled back a little at the resounding crack from the tree, and Leila could hear his feet sliding against the slick earth. She winced, preparing for the inevitable impact against the ground, when Sarika darted over, grabbing and steadying him.
“Whew. Thanks,” Landon muttered as he regained his footing. Leila smiled at Sarika, who then gawked at something behind her. Leila turned around to spot Karayea watching them from inside the split oak tree.
“Hello, children,” she said, her voice old and haunting. A soft smile appeared on her weathered, bark-like face.
“You’re alive!” Leila exclaimed, despite the pain that pounded in her head at the effort. “I thought, I thought that was it. All of this.” She waved at the poison on the ground from Landon’s arms.
“The soil,” Karayea said, the power gone from her voice. “It’s in the soil, spilled upon the earth. Our power is fading, I feel the life in your city draining away.”
“I know,” Leila said. “All the trees, the leaves are falling off everywhere. Birds are leaving. It’s all over the news. But no one understands why it is happening. But we’re . . . we’re going to take care of it. We’re going to tell the right people, and they’ll clean it up. We . . .” she faded off.
Would anyone clean it up?
They’d come to the woods to get evidence of the endangered mouse. They’d brought the traps here to capture them and show people. They would tell the press, present their proof to the board and Dr. Cordova’s team.
Leila looked around at the blue-ish earth, at the soil covered in poison. It glimmered on the ground like weed killer. She closed her eyes, shaking her head, but couldn’t hear a thing. The silence of the woods, barren of life, of animals. It was the loudest of noises.
“It is fine, my sapling,” Karayea said, reaching out a hand, her arm made of brambles and branches, her fingers small twigs with tiny leaves bursting from them. Her leaves had gone from bright green to a dull brown, and as she ran her fingers over Leila’s face the leaves crumbled off her hands, breaking and dissipating into the wind. Leila looked at Karayea’s once bright-green eyes, which had faded to brown.
“Why . . . why is this happening to you? Why now? After all this time, to find you and now to lose you. It isn’t fair! It isn’t right.”
“We had some time. It is likely more than most,” Karayea said, her incredibly human eyes sad and wet.
“What about Leila?” Landon choked out, holding her close. “What will happen to her? With all of this?”
Leila stared into Karayea’s fading brown eyes.
The dryad didn’t have to say it.
She knew. With that look, she knew.
“She’s one of us,” Karayea said, lowering her arm. “Just like all the trees surrounding these woods. Tall and bordering the rivers, thin and struggling in the human’s cities . . . all of them . . . this whole park, as you and your friends have called it. As we fade,” she gazed at Leila with a pained expression, “so, my dear, do you.”
Leila’s heart hammered in her chest as she glanced up at Landon, whose eyes were already watering.
“No,” Sarika said, taking a step forward. “No. No. No. We will clean everything up here ourselves if we have to, chain ourselves to you and the other two. No bulldozer is going to come in here and tear you from your home. There are three of us, three of you—”
“Two,” Karayea barely whispered.
A pause, full of silence.
“What?” Sarika asked.
“There are . . . two of us.” The dryad walked over to the two trees that stood behind hers, her limbs creaking and groaning, and ran her hand over the one that had held Tifola. “I’m afraid my sister did not survive. I felt her leaving this world, returning to the Earth, just days ago.”
Karayea turned and looked to Leila.
“You should know,” Karayea said, walking towards her oak tree, her movements slowed and measured. “I have valued this time we have had, short as it may have been.” She stepped inside her tree, and with loud cracks and snaps, it began sealing up but stopped halfway, leaving her exposed from her torso up.
“My sapling.” She reached out from the tree, and again, ran her hand over Leila’s face as Landon held her out towards the dryad. “I wanted so much more for you. A real life, among the humans. I never wanted you to know of this. I should have never called you here. But I watched you. I listened. Through the trees and the wind, as you grew and blossomed, and I knew you would want to help those other than yourself. This is who you are.”
Leila sniffled back, closing her eyes, tears streaming down her face.
“It was always about more than just you and me . . .” Karayea said, pulling her arm back. “But at the same time, it never was.”
“What do I do?” Leila asked.
“I’m not sure how long I have,” Karayea said. “This ground, this soil . . .” she sighed, and the wind rustled around them. “I’m stronger than my sisters. My sister,” she corrected herself, her eyes closed and pained. “If these woods aren’t mended . . .” She looked at Leila, her eyes hard and worried, washed with concern and fear.