“I know. It’s . . . For a minute, you sounded exactly like Headmistress Hanna.”
Daleina sighed. “Yet I’m young enough to be your daughter?” She was half Naelin’s age and had been queen for only a year longer than Naelin, but she was still more experienced. She’d attended the Northeast Academy, trained for months with Champion Ven, and fought spirits at the Coronation Massacre. It was hard not to wave those credentials in front of the older queen.
Naelin winced. “I wasn’t going to say that quite so bluntly, but yes.” She put her canteen back in her pack and stood. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. Teach me how to heal the land.”
“Call to the spirits, the nearby ones. Draw them here. And then give them the land. They want to be connected to Renthia. They just can’t do it without a queen.”
“You know, that sounds pretty, but it doesn’t actually make sense.”
“Look, when you became queen, when the spirits chose you, what did you feel?”
“Besides regret?”
Daleina resisted rolling her eyes. “Yes.”
“Power. Lots of it. Like I’d been whispering my whole life and could suddenly shout.”
Good. Yes. “And . . . ?”
“And I felt the spirits, all of them, across Aratay. I could see their thoughts and feel their feelings. Like they were . . . part of me now.” Naelin visibly shuddered.
“Exactly. You’re connected to them. Linked to them. We both are. That’s the difference between queens and, well, anyone else. So now you have to link them to the land the same way they’re linked to us.” If Daleina concentrated hard enough, she could feel cobweb-like strands that connected her to the spirits. All a queen had to do to fix the barren area was stretch those strands between a few of those spirits and the barren land. The problem was, she couldn’t explain it any better than that. Naelin either felt it or didn’t. Daleina was confident in the older woman, though—she was being honest with herself when she noted how powerful the other queen was. Naelin had started out much stronger than Daleina. When she became queen, that impressive power was amplified a hundredfold. “Just try. Do as I do.”
“But—”
“Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing here you can hurt.” All the dying is already done, she thought. “Come on. We’ll do it together.”
On her knees, Daleina plunged her hands into the dry dirt. She concentrated, reaching for the closest spirits. She felt them just beyond the circle: a tiny earth spirit burrowing with the worms, a tree spirit hidden between two nearby tree roots, a water spirit skipping through a stream. Gently, she called to them. Come play? Play here?
And then she felt a whoosh.
Uh-oh.
“Daleina?”
“You called too many,” Daleina said flatly. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Ven had worked hard with Naelin on her control. Apparently, though, it was still an issue.
“Yes. It appears so.”
“Too many” was a bit of an understatement. Spirits flooded the barren area: tiny dandelion-fluff air spirits filled the air, massive eagle-winged air spirits blocked the sky, mud-coated earth spirits dug out of the ground, and various tree spirits—some the size of acorns and others the size of a man or a wild boar—ran along the branches toward them. Daleina felt rain spatter her face from the air spirits and a chill wind as a solitary ice spirit zipped past.
“Calm them down!” Daleina shouted.
“But they’re bonding with the land! Isn’t that what we want?”
She was right—Daleina could feel the dozens of spirits reaching for the air and the soil . . . No! Stop! There were too many trying to claim too small a space! They’d—
The spirits attacked one another.
An air spirit with talons shredded a feathered spirit. Snarling, the earth spirits leapt at one another. A bear-shaped spirit made of rocks pounded its boulder fists into a bark-coated tree spirit.
She felt their rage course through her, and for an instant, she was there, in the grove again, with her friends dying around her, and Daleina felt herself screaming and she couldn’t stop.
Kill. Hurt. Destroy.
The spirits screamed inside her head and then turned on her. She felt their white-hot hate sear into her, and she felt pain as they slashed into her skin. Caught in her memory, she couldn’t form a clear thought to—
STOP!
Coming from outside, from Naelin, the word reverberated through her—Daleina felt it echo through all the spirits and into her, and as one, the spirits halted, as if frozen. She felt arms around her shoulders as Naelin gathered her up and rocked her against her chest as if she were a small child. She didn’t resist. She let herself, for a moment, be comforted.
But only for a moment. She was still queen, and she had a duty. Daleina pried open her eyes. She breathed deeply, slowly, as she pushed the memory back down into the tiny box in her mind where she kept it, the day she’d saved her world but failed to save her friends. “Choose a few,” she croaked, “and send the rest away.”
“How?”
“Reach through your bond to them. Feel it like it’s a rope tethering you to them, and then imagine you’re tying that rope to the air and the earth. As to the rest, praise their home. Make them want to return. Think of the forest, the streams, the rocks, the sky, and make them want to be there.” As she spoke, she felt her heart return to its normal thump.
She felt the spirits obeying Naelin and tried to keep her own mind as calm and clear as possible. She let Naelin do it all—keeping her distance, Daleina sensed the spirits struggle and then cave. Naelin had a different style: she ordered more than coaxed. But it worked.
“I’m doing it!” Naelin cried.
“Great. Now fix a picture of the forest in your mind, and tell the spirits to make it grow like that here.”
She felt raindrops hit her cheeks. Faster and harder, until it poured down on the dry earth and the two queens. Beneath her, she felt the soil soften, and she sensed the earth spirits swimming through it, drawing life back into it.
An air spirit flitted overhead, dropping seeds into the wet earth, and three tree spirits scurried to the seeds. Green sprouted throughout the barren area. Moss spread and lichen blossomed across the rocks. Vines chased over the forest floor, toward the queens. Daleina felt them curl around her wrists and ankles. “Um, Naelin?”
But Naelin’s eyes were closed, her expression blissful.
Daleina elected to stay silent.
She watched as the vines weaved themselves up Naelin’s legs. Moving slowly so as not to make a sound, Daleina shook a vine off her arm. Another vine wrapped around her stomach, and flowers bloomed around her waist. She let them stay.
Soon, the grove was draped in color: a cluster of purple flowers, vines filled with yellow and white blooms, and a dancing stream that skipped over green mossy rocks. The luscious scent of honeysuckle filled the air.
Daleina saw Naelin open her eyes and smile, looking all around her.
And then she saw Naelin notice the vines that bound them both.
Daleina felt her lips twitch. Don’t laugh. She reached out with her mind and caught the attention of a tiny tree spirit with twig arms and a birdlike beaked face. It hopped over to her and began to peck at the vines with its beak as it untangled them with its long stick fingers.
Naelin met her eyes.
And they both burst out laughing.
I think . . . we can do this, Daleina thought. With the strength of two queens, they’d heal what was broken, restore the harvest, and bring an era of peace and prosperity to all their people.
So long as Naelin can avoid destroying everything.
Chapter 2
“I’m home!” Naelin called, and then, bemused, halted beneath an exquisite archway of carved wooden leaves inlaid with polished blue river stones. Exactly when did I start thinking of the palace as “home”? She supposed it was close enough these days.