Page 78 of How to Woo the Undead

Hyacinth snarled, kicking her legs against the tree. “Please! You’ve got to be my tree! I need a tree!”

Nothing. The willow stood, unchanged and uncaring.

Hyacinth cried out, pulling back. Water stung her eyes as she slapped at the tree. “Please!I don’t know what I’m doing! Or how to be a grove witch!But I can’t let her hurt more people. You have to be my tree! Please…Please!” She shrieked in frustration, punching the tree. The vibrations ran up her arm and caused her to stumble.

Hyacinth fell to her knees at the base of the willow, scraping her palms down the bark. She didn’t care that it ripped up her skin, or that it smeared blood. Nothing mattered if the tree didn’t listen.How do I stop Sabine?

“Please,” she croaked, pressing her ratty palms against the tree. Putting all her weight against her palms, she hung her head. She couldn’t even cry because her eyes were so dry.Despite everything and the rain my eyes are still dry!Hyacinth shivered, “Please…Please…please…”

A long, drawn-out sigh filled her ears as something shifted against her palms. Hyacinth froze, feeling the bark scrape harder across her skin until something like the smoothness of a face was in its place. Wide eyed, she glanced up through her sopping wet hair at a face. Made of gnarled bark for the eyes, creeping ivy for the brows, and a gnarled opening for a mouth, a tongue made of sap lapped at her palms.

“The old blood. Oh, how long it’s been since I’ve tasted dream essence. What do you require, child?”

She blinked, letting branches cup her wrists. The tree continued to lap at her palms, leaving sticky sap in its wake.

“Will you be my grove?” she blurted out.

“You wish to claim this grove as your home? It’s not much of a grove, child. The plants that grow here are rotten or poisonous. The soils mostly full of dead things. The lich that walks these lands is kind, but not likely to tolerate a competitor.” The face softened, the ivy rustling in the wind. Yet, she couldn’t hear the bellowing winds or feel the rain slicing through the branches.

“That lich is my maker, and I want to protect him for once. I want to protect all of them. There’s another who is trying to rip them all apart.” Hyacinth leaned into it, pressing her sticky palms to the cheeks of the tree face. “This is my home, and this is my body. I won’t let her take either of those from me. Whatever it takes. Make me a grove witch. Help me stop her.”

They sighed again, like something weighing it down had been finally lifted. Hyacinth’s ears caught the eerie silence that followed. None of the branches bristled and the rain slowed to a soft mist. Eventually, sunlight broke through the clouds over her head, making the damp branches glitter. Vines of emerald green slithered out of the ground and wrapped around her arms. Little white roots rose up and pulled her knees deep into the mud. I never occurred to her to be scared, not as something strange filled her chest. A feeling she’d only caught in passing or heard of, a feeling she knew but couldn’t describe.

Not until the willow at Rosemont Manor spoke again, “You are this grove’s witch now. Only you may draw power here. You are home.”

Hyacinth felt athome.

A feeling that made every inch of her tingle and every inch of her melt, as the tree dragged her down into the mud and underneath its roots.

Chapter Thirty-Nine:

Sabine

Grovewitchesarenotborn. They are made.

Sabine of the Lavender Isles was one of the first. Back when she lived in the old realms where Fae were not shackled by new gods. A world of floating trees. Where roses spun their petals like wings to move from place to place. Waterfalls that ran upside down and the fauna used their magic to blink from place to place. Sabine used to think that world was perfect.

How could she ever want to be anywhere else?

Tale as old as time, she happened upon one of the many faerie circles that grew in abundance. A realm made of pure magic, portals to places where magic did not touch were to be expected. They were curious little things, the humans. So full of wonder and amazement. Even her tiniest little parlor tricks entertained them. And they tasted so good when they were delighted. They would beg her come into their homes, show them magic, break bread with them…and when they fell asleep, their defenses down, she would sop up their blood with warm bread from their hearth. Sabine wasn’t like her mother, she didn’t drag back several humans, kicking and screaming to water her gardens or swing by their toes. She didn’t enjoy their suffering.

They were so tasty, though. So, Sabine came to the human realm often. Slipping through at night and going as far as the trees would cover, only to run into a human at first light. She liked spending time with them, hearing their tales, listening to their songs.

Always, there was the Hunter. A child, really, in the eyes of an old one. 29 years was not old for fae, that barely got one out of the crib in her realm. However, the Hunter, for humans, was an adult. He was wise and suspicious, having come across Sabine a few times. He’d catch her luring small children into flower groves and he’d shoo them off. Big, bearded, broad shouldered, he was the oxen of humans. Barrel chested and able to split a tree with a single blow from his axe. Despite every attempt, when the Hunter saw her, he’d refuse her in every way.

Until he’d convinced everyone in the woods through that portal to ignore Sabine.

It shouldn’t have upset her, as there were so many portals to try. So many other places to find food and entertainment. Her mother would have scoffed at her. But Sabine stalked the Hunter. Found him and his home. Demanded he come out and face her. She recalled pounding her fist against his door in her rose petal dress and wings fluttering behind her. The winds stirred and rain spat over top as her fury grew.

He ripped open that door to yell at her, telling her to leave as he always did. But, something loomed behind her. Sabine never feared a thing in those woods. Bears avoided her out of respect for her power, wolves trembled at her feet, and the very trees moved when she commanded it. What was there to fear in those woods?

The Hunter gave her little warning when he pushed past her and lunged at a shadow behind her. Sabine, in all her foolish curiosity and desire, didn’t realize she’d attracted the attention of a nearby cleric. Her mother warned her that the gods outsidetheir realm were unkind. They did not view fae as gods, nor did their followers. In fact, she distinctly remembered the word ‘heretic’ being lobbed at her before the cleric was struck down by an axe.

Apparently, not all gods cherish life over glory after all.

The Hunter did not take kindly to the followers of a vengeful, righteous god. Something he told her over bread in his cabin. After the pair of them decimated a pack of the cleric’s, he made her swear a truce for the night. If it weren’t for the silver axe he waggled in her face, she’d sneer at him.Swear? No fae swears an oath for anything.To swear an oath is to be rooted in place. To make deals is to be bound by them. And she never thought herselfthatmuch of a fool. Only, she followed him into that cabin, practically stuffed from feasting on clerics.Fine, I won’t eat you…tonightshe told herself.And they shared stories. Him of the clerics like the ones who attacked. They were followers who saw nothing wrong with burning a village at the whims of a being that did not have to bury the dead. The Hunter hated them for that.

Apparently, Sabine, he understood unlike the clerics.