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He clapped his hands. "No wonder I could not see it before. Thessar is
practically shouting to me that it is upside down! Delrael _Kennok_limb, help
me."
Thilane Healer watched for a moment, then came over to help. The three
of them effortlessly rolled the hulk of the ancient Father Pine. Delrael
blinked his eyes in wonder -- he had felt the new power sparkling through him
for an instant. The blackened log seemed eager to move and floated like a
dandelion seed until it came back to rest on the scorched grass.
"Look!" Thilane paused, then replaced her excitement with a show of
dignity. She nodded at the depression where Thessar had fallen -- a small
seedling, rumpled and nearly crushed, straightened in the sunlight.
"Thessar knew!" she whispered. "When the Father Pine fell, he sheltered
this seedling with a hollow in his trunk!"
Noldir called to the khelebar who had remained be hind. "A tree still
lives! A seedling! Ledaygen is not completely lost!"
Thilane turned away though. "The _dayid_ does not live within it."
Delrael tried to offer comfort. "Maybe when you get enough trees to
grow again -- "
"Yes," she said. "And maybe the Outsiders will feel sorry for us and
magically make the forest reappear all by itself. I prefer not to count on
miracles. If a miracle was going to happen, it should have stopped Ledaygen
from burning in the first place."
Delrael tried to hide his anger. The Woodcarver spoke against Thilane.
"But a miracle _has_ happened -- Thessar has given us a new seedling."
Thilane said nothing and plodded back into the burned forest. She and
the lesser Healers tended the five dying trees, though they knew their efforts
were in vain. She walked away, and Delrael watched her bare, weathered back
with its wealth of corded muscles.
Troubled, Noldir turned back to the hulk of Thessar. He plunged his
hands up to the wrists into the charred trunk, sculpting a wooden gravestone
for Ledaygen.
Delrael watched the Woodcarver, fascinated with his work but impatient
to be doing something else, to be continuing their quest southward. He walked
into the dead forest to find Thilane.
The skeletal branches of the trees closed over him. The gray ash
muffled all sound like tainted snow. He came upon one of the Treescavengers
who was methodically removing every twig and scrap of wood from a large area
and piling an immense mound of debris near the path. The Treescavenger
gathered branches, uprooted tree trunks, picked up the smallest twig.
Delrael watched her work. "Want some help?" His leg no longer bothered
him, and he enjoyed feeling it as he moved.
The Treescavenger took no notice of his question. Delrael helped
anyway, carrying loads of fallen branches to the growing mound. He wiped a
wristful of sweat off his forehead, leaving a charcoal smudge on his skin.
"So, why are we carrying all this wood away?"
The khelebar stopped and looked up at him with eyes as blank and empty
as the sky. She blinked and fumbled with her words. "That is my work. The
_dayid_ made me a Treescavenger, and I must collect whatever dead wood I
find." She went back to her task again, widening the radius of the cleared
circle. She faltered, pondering, then she heaved another branch. "That is my
work."
Delrael waited a moment, uncomfortable, and then slipped off into the
deeper forest. He knew where Thilane would be working with the two other
Healers.
After passing through the wreckage of trees and brush, he reached a
place where the ashes had been trampled and the broken branches moved away.
Delrael guessed that this was one of the first places where Bryl had used the
Water Stone against the fire. Somehow, two trees had survived here. Two
Healers stood beside each other, watching Thilane touch one of the burned
trees.
The oak was huge and very old, surviving because of its immense size.
Delrael looked upward through the dizzying crosswork of black branches. A few
areas near the top of the tree appeared undamaged. The other surviving oak was
a mere sapling, blackened and scarred -- but Thilane insisted it still lived.
Delrael didn't know how she could tell, but the Healer expended most of her
effort there.
Thilane looked up from her work, removing her palms from the thin trunk
and pressing the side of her head against it, listening to the tree. Her
garland had wilted: Ledaygen had no more flowers to offer her.
She pursed her lips when she saw Delrael but continued her
ministrations. He waited, hesitant about interrupting. Finally, he asked why
she had not seemed excited about Noldir's discovery of the pine seedling. "At
least you have a start now, a tree from Ledaygen."
The other two Healers heard Delrael mention the pine seedling and
looked to Thilane in surprise, but they did not speak. Thilane kept her
attention on him.
"Ledaygen was a forest of pine and oak. Both! Because of Thessar the
pines may now return -- but _what of the oaks_?"
Delrael fidgeted. "Can't you heal one of these?"
Thilane shook her head and pointed at the large oak.
"That tree could have survived its fire damage, but it is old and has
already surrendered. This one, though," she ran her fingers along the
surviving sapling, "has an extraordinary will to live. How can it cling to
life when it has endured more than any of these others? But it, too, has been
mortally wounded. It will be dead -- dead, like the rest of the forest."
Delrael looked at the emerald eyes of the other Healers, but they
avoided his gaze. He spoke quietly to Thilane. "Why can't you bring in other
trees? Start over?"
"Stop being so stupid and optimistic! If we brought outside trees, our
home would be just another forest. It would not be _Ledaygen_. Better that
Ledaygen be dead and remembered than absorbed as part of more forest terrain."
She clamped her wavering lips together and drew herself straight. "And now we
shall have only pine."
Thilane stepped away from the charred sapling and sank to the forest
floor. She tucked her great paws beneath her belly, then reached out to run
her fingernail along the peeled bark. The other Healers stopped their own work
and watched her.
Delrael felt uneasy. Thilane smiled at something he could not see.
Tears made tracks through the settled ash on her cheeks. She reached behind
her neck and undid the long braid of gray-streaked hair that ran like a mane
down her bare back. She turned and hissed at the two Healers, "Yes!"
They both took a half-step backward in surprise.
"It is decided," Thilane said.
"What is?" Delrael asked.
The Healer turned. Her eerie eyes stared through him, seeming to see
the ghosts of the forest. "Ledaygen has a new Father Pine. I can provide a new
Father Oak. I must heal this young tree."
"But you said you couldn't -- "
"I can. You must remember how we Heal."
Thilane would say no more, but rose and marched around the blackened
oak sapling, contemplating. One of the other Healers took Delrael by the
shoulder and pulled him away, silencing his questions with a stern gesture.
Her eyes glittered with a mixture of dread, enthusiasm, and hope.
_You must remember how we Heal_.
Delrael watched Thilane, thinking of how she had treated some of the
khelebar burns by laying green leaves on the injury; the leaves had turned
black and charred.
Noldir Woodcarver had told him how she had treated Delrael's bruises
and smashed muscles with twigs and branches, which had somehow become crushed
and mangled in exchange.
She had brought his _kennok_ wood leg to life by exchanging his flesh
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