Seven

The rain was pouring down in stinging sheets, so heavy that he couldn't see more than a couple of paces beyond the edge of the cave they'd managed to reach right before the storm broke. Thunder and lightning filled the sky, a cacophony of booming sound and blinding light. Possibly making a long journey during the stormy season had not been the smartest move, but waiting until winter would have been worse and that was a poor reason to delay a trip by months.

Still, he was getting really tired of rain.

"I swear there's been so much rain that we're going to wind up swimming to Shadowfell."

Do you know how to swim?

"No, but I feel I'm about to learn, one way or another." He sighed, but it was lost in a crash of thunder so loud his ears were left ringing, and he barely closed his eyes in time against the searing lightning that cracked down far too close. He withdrew farther into the cave because he was absolutely not dying by getting struck by lightning. Not after he survived a murder attempt, that would just be pathetic. "Even if it stops in the next hour, the ground will be so wet and flooded in places it's not even worth trying to get through, and there'd be nowhere to make camp. Feels like a wasted day, even though logically I know these things happen and we're not on a schedule."

Worse places to be stuck, at least.

"That's certainly true." Last time they'd just stood under a large tree and got slightly less wet. Everyone had gone to bed cranky that night. "All right, guess we're spending the rest of today and possibly tomorrow in a cave. At least this one doesn't seem like it was recently occupied by a bear or drakon." If he'd walked into a den of either of those, death would have been brutal and, perhaps mercifully, swift.

Stepping away from the cave entrance, he got the horses settled for the night, cleaned and dried the tack, then got out of his soaked clothes, changed into dry ones, and finally got to work on the camp itself: fire, bed, and all his equipment neatly stacked off to the side, accessible but out of the way, and easy to grab if they had to leave in a hurry.

After all of that, and with water boiling for tea, he was finally able to sit and relax a bit. The hardest part of traveling was that once you stopped moving, there was always a great deal of work to be done before the resting could start. It would probably be a good deal easier with someone else along, but he still wasn't sorry he was traveling with just Sinn for company.

He was trying hard not to think about the journey back without him.

Once the tea had steeped suitably, he enjoyed two leisurely cups before finally turning his attention to the thankless chore of cooking. While not quite as terrible as he had been, since trying to follow Larn's advice, he was still a long way from good.

After dinner was made, eaten, and cleaned up, there wasn't much left to do. Normally he'd use the remaining daylight to gather additional wood and forage for nuts, berries, edible roots, and other things to fill out his foodstuffs.

Right then, the best he could do was collect rainwater to boil and cool to refill his waterskins. So he set out the bucket he carried for such purposes and then stretched out on his bedroll with a yawn.

He hadn't been lying there long, though, when the breeze stuck. The fact there was a breeze at all was odd, and it was flowing from the back of the cave. "Do you feel that?"

Even I know better than to go venturing into dark, unfamiliar caves .

"I just want to see where the breeze is coming from. If there's an alternate exit out of here, that could be useful if we have to run or hide." Getting up, he pulled his boots back on, created a new, brighter mage light to follow him, and grabbed his knife. He had no idea how to use it in a fight, but better something than nothing.

Unless it's taken and used against you , Sinn replied darkly.

"Since when are you the pessimist?"

Since you decided to do something stupid.

"I'm just looking!"

What had seemed like a solid wall at the back of cave actually proved to only part of a wall, and behind it a passageway to…

Ninos gasped. "Look at that!"

It was a grotto, the cave open at the top to let in a limited amount of sunlight—well, when it wasn't raining—allowing all sorts of plants to grow in this place. There was a single tree, large for the space but small for its species, and around it all sorts of smaller plants. "Oh, look at these!" he dropped to his knees carefully beside a spread of plants, each one a cluster of what looked like gaping mouths. "These are blood plants. They eat insects to get food because their environment prevents them getting it via the sun. And this! This is a ghost plant!"

He delicately picked up the long, slender, thin vine winding through everything else, secured to multiple plants. "It grew wrong, that's why it's completely white, and it can't make its own food like other plants. So it attaches itself to other plants in the area and feeds off them. This is fairy ivy, normally it's so strong that strands can be woven together to make a rope. It's often grown in gardens to better anchor other climbing plants. But this one is all wrong, so it's weak and small. Probably won't live much longer, poor thing."

Breaking off a bit that was already mostly severed from the rest, he wrapped it several times around his left wrist to store later. He wouldn't be able to bring it back to life, but it would be nice to have as a curiosity. "What a beautiful little spot. I hope no one ever comes along and ruins it."

It is beautiful. Come on, I think the storm is slowing down. If so, we should be able to get back on the road tomorrow.

Reluctantly leaving the grotto, wishing he could linger to study it, look into all the corners, see how many plants there were, how many varieties, if they were different for having grown in this quiet little place of their own, he headed back to camp with an impatient Sinn on his shoulder.

Once he was in bed, Sinn on his chest preening, Sinn asked, Is that what you would do with your time, if you could? Study strange plants, and plants in unique situations?

The question was oddly difficult to answer. I don't know, he said at last. No one has ever really asked me what I would do, what I want to do. I had a strong affinity for magic, I was sent off to school on scholarship, I was expected to return home to help. That's why I chose sylvan magic; it would be the most useful in a farming village known for wheat and other crops.

So if you could do anything, if right this moment you could abandon your plans and make new ones, what would you do?

"I…" He didn't know. Where answers should be in his mind was only a dark void.

He did genuinely like working with plants; he hadn't settled on sylvan magic solely for the sake of helping crops grow and survive. But he preferred when he could do things like his project, cultivating specific plants, blending them together to create something new. He'd wanted to create a companion for the Mourning Rose, a Dawn Rose or something like that.

If he could, that was what he'd do. Create new plants, study them, find uses for them, create medicinal plants that didn't exist by combining existing ones.

That would certainly suit you, an inquisitive little thing who traipses about the countryside with a raven and investigates mysterious caves and kidnaps plants that should by all rights be dead already.

"I can't tell if you're complimenting or insulting me."

Observing with a helping of compliment and a dash of mockery.

Ninos smiled and reached out in the dark to stroke his feathers, soft and slick beneath his fingers.

That's the first time you've done that.

He froze.

Don't stop. It's just… I assumed you didn't want to touch me because I'm not what you wanted.

Ninos resumed petting. "It's not that, it's just… I was shipped off at five. My life has been school and students, and I often kept to myself, you know? Not a lot of hugs and head pats and such in my life. So it just didn't occur to me, especially since you're obviously always flying or flitting about or on my shoulder where it's awkward to reach up to pet you. I also should have asked first."

You are my little human. You are free to touch as you please.

Ninos pet him a little while longer, until he was pretty certain that if Sinn was a cat he'd be purring.

Eventually, though, sleep won out.

He jerked awake sometime in the night, groggy and disoriented, fumbling at his forearm where a sharp, digging pain seemed to come from—but then dizziness washed over him, a fresh wave of exhaustion, and he slipped back into sleep pain entirely forgotten.

A loud, piercing caw jerked him awake the second time, to see sunlight spilling in the cave entrance and Sinn fighting back a nosy juvenile drakon. Thankfully, the sight of Ninos standing up was enough to spook it.

Thank goodness.

Ninos yawned, reaching up to cover it with hand—and stopped. Stared. Drew his hand back to get a better look.

His hand—his arm was covered in the white ivy, like it had grown exponentially in the night. He tugged at, and promptly hissed in pain.

It hadn't just grown, it had rooted in his arm! How was that possible? "Sinn? Sinn!"

Cawing, Sinn landed on his affected arm and pulled gently at the vine with his beak, only stopping when Ninos cried out in pain. He stopped then picked at it more carefully and thoughtfully, investigating rather than removing.

"How can it do this? I've never once heard of a plant that grows by way of a living human being!"

It's not without record, though it's usually fairies, certain species of dragon, nymphs, other deep forest dwellers. The plant likes you, feels safe with you. There wasn't much life left in her, obviously, but she felt enough of you to try. She will be of use, I think.

"That's great and all but I can't walk around with an entire plant embedded in my arm!"

Sinn flapped down to land on the pile of supplies, cocked his head before turning to focus a single eye on him. Why not? Because other people don't? Because it will take some adapting to having one arm bare all the time?

"Why are you being so blasé about this?"

Answer me this, little human: do you want me to rip it out? It will hurt, and the plant with die, but it can be done and then you'll be back to the standard definition of normal.

The idea of killing the poor plant for just wanting to survive made him sick. "No, of course I don't want to kill it." He sat back down, raking a hand through his hair and staring at the mostly extinguished fire. "You're right. If I'm not getting rid of it, then there's no point in not proceeding logically. You said it will be of use? No, you said she."

Plants don't have gender, not the way most people think of such things, but that is what seems to feel the most accurate for her, yes.

"Does she have a name?"

Again, nothing that would translate across species. They don't have names, because they aren't human, the needs and wants aren't the same. She's not exactly present the way we are, nothing that complicated. Less awareness than most animals, but more awareness than say an insect. Fascinating stuff.

"You sound like my professors," Ninos said with a smile. "You'd probably give great lectures, interesting and engaging."

That made Sinn puff up to twice his size, more adorable than Ninos would ever tell him.

"Well I can't cover her up, as you already mentioned. I guess I'll have to start removing the left sleeve of all my clothes." She'd climbed all the way up in the night, stopping just short of going up onto his shoulder, and ending at the base of each finger, leaving them clear. When he moved his arm, flexed or even just shifted, there was the strangest, most unsettling pull, like he could feel every muscle and tendon working in a way he hadn't before. It also tugged at his skin, but as long as he wasn't pulling like he had earlier it didn't hurt. At worst it was uncomfortable, but mostly just strange. If he was really doing this, he'd probably stop noticing entirely after a few weeks.

"All right, well, this has been a strange start to the day. Hopefully, the rest of it is much more ordinary. I'm now sustaining a ghost plant. What in the world will happen next?"

He finished putting out the fire, making certain it was good and dead, then got the horses fed and saddled up. After that came the laborious process of loading up the gear, making certain everything was secured, the weight properly distributed, and all manner of other little details so that they could all travel in ease and comfort for several hours.

After all that, he sat down and ripped out the stitching on the left sleeve of his shirt before pulling it back on. Strange, to say the least. That would drive him absolutely crazy until he got used to it. He didn't think he was imagining the overall feeling of joy that buzzed at the back of his mind. Bound to him though the plant might be, she was still freer to thrive than she had been in that grotto. He could not begin to fathom what such a shift was like, from such a small world to having all the world before him.

Well, actually, maybe he could at that. Huh.

Given they were starting so much later than usual, he'd probably skip right past their usual midday break, pause only for the horses to drink and eat, and then push on to keep going. If there were no further delays, they'd reach the ravine in another two days. After that, they'd be in the foothills, and in about a week, two at the worst with bad weather, they would at last reach Shadowfell.

The only signs of the dramatic storm were some tossed-about leaves and sticks, and a few fallen branches. Even the torrents of endless rain had been reduced to only a few puddles and swollen creeks and brooks. As they reached the road, Sinn cawed and took to the sky, alert as always for something or someone that might threaten or otherwise impede.

They'd been traveling for perhaps an hour when he landed on Ninos's shoulder again. There is a fallen tree across the road, too large for you to move.

Ninos frowned. "Hmm… alternate routes?"

None that wouldn't take us at least a day out of our way.

"I mean we're not technically under a time constraint…" Still, traveling a day out of the way, and then who knew how long to get back to their path was yet more days sleeping on the ground, dealing with weather, and while the food wasn't running low quite yet, if they kept getting delayed it would become a problem. He was no hunter, and even if Sinn did catch them food, Ninos had no idea how to butcher it. He thought maybe some of the animal-focused mages learned that kind of thing but wasn't sure. Certainly, it hadn't been part of his curriculum.

Who needs to hunt when you can forage better than a deer? At the rate you're going, little mage, you will be able to ask the forest itself where to find food. Mushrooms, maybe? I like mushrooms.

"You never mentioned that before. You should have, I would've looked for mushrooms. I'll look around when we stop for the night."

They came across the tree several minutes later, a truly gigantic ogre maple that people would spill blood to have. It was a strong hardwood, good for furniture, buildings, even ships. Alas for all those would-be people, this one would be left in peace to decay and further help the forest.

Unfortunately, exactly as Sinn had said, there would be no moving it, and this tree was significantly taller than even the royal palace and it was, according to all he'd heard, four stories high. They'd have to venture back into the woods and find a way around. Easy in theory, but a felled tree of this size disrupted the whole area. There wouldn't be just one tree down, so as they said, they'd have to go out of their way enough it would cost them the day in traveling. He could probably climb it, though not without difficulty and a few humiliating tumbles, but there was no way the horses could.

Approaching it, he trailed the fingers of his left hand along it just for the pleasure, admiring the smooth bark, the patches of moss that grew where sunlight wouldn't have reached—and some farmer's hat mushrooms. "You willed them into appearance, Sinn." Taking out his knife, he delicately pried the mushrooms off and wrapped them up in a kerchief before tucking them into one of the saddlebags.

Look at that! Sinn said, flapping his wings excitedly from the saddle.

Ninos heard the noise just as he turned around—and gawked, jaw dropped, as the tree started to move.

Vines. The nearby trees had cast out vines and were dragging the fallen tree into the woods. Even though it was enormous, and impossible heavy.

They didn't move it far, but they moved it far enough.

"How…"

I was wrong, Sinn said, sounding pleased and smug for some reason. You can already speak with the forest. Once upon a time they called mages like you speakers, because you can communicate and speak for those the rest of the world cannot hear. A sylvan speaker, specifically. It was considered a great honor, akin with being knighted or declared a royal mage. I do not know if they do that anymore.

"I've never heard of that. How do you know about it?"

Ravens like shiny things, and my shiny thing is knowledge. Don't complain I came with more of it than you were expecting.

"Fine, fine. Well, I guess we can carry on as planned after all." He placed his left hand on the tree again, sending out thoughts of gratitude and thanks, hoping it conveyed.

It did. The forest likes you, little speaker.

"Would it do any good to tell you I'm not little? You weigh like what, three pell, four at most? I am magnitudes larger than you, mouse eater."

There is more than one way to be little. Now get moving. With that imperious command, he launched into the sky again.

Rolling his eyes, Ninos nevertheless obeyed, whistling as they traveled.