The grove was as silent, lulled to sleep by lack of any sound. A hushed cocoon of stillness enveloped it like a thick cloth. White and pale, an autumn gossamer, but cold and frozen in time. The trees reached up to the sky like black towers, high and thick. But they were not barren. Not devoid of colors. They were blooming with leaves, in the heart of harsh winter. Emerald and thriving, but silent like this whole place.
Perhaps this grove was both alive and dead, just like the village.
Each of the trees grew out of a puddle of dirt and mud. Like plants on a windowsill, Alina was growing before winter came. She tended to them daily, adding water. These trees looked as if they were growing in a nurturing pot.
Do not come closer.
You know it’s magic.
And magic won’t make you any different from any other human, it will just swallow you up, as it always does.
The air here was thick and heavy, like molten silver. Leaves and small, blood-red flowers growing from the branches appeared to be laughing at winter, defying it with colour and life. It would be a hopeful sight if he didn’t know that spring and summer had no place in Avras. If the green was here, it was not a good sign. It was a promise of danger, or at least a trick.
The scent was peculiar too… like old foliage left to decompose, far from sun and light. Wet, somehow sticking to the skin. Like remains of something that drowned in ocean and drifted on the bank, to rot there.
He walked slowly past the trees. Something drew him in, like an inappropriate feeling of safety and peace that he tried to ignore, but… it was still there, whispering to his ear.
The scent of decay became stronger as he entered deeper between the trees. Tiyan couldn’t tell what exuded it, as the place was beaming with sunlit beauty.
At that point, he could swear he saw movement, close to the trunk of the nearest tree. But when he turned, no one was there. The trees stood in hush, no wind in the branches, not even a murmur of the leaves.
No one and nothing… until he looked closer. Until he deciphered the shapes. Until he saw the reason of the wet scent.
Tiyan felt his heart sink. He felt a sudden rush of blood to his face.
In the tree…
… It was the heart, dark crimson, almost black. Almost invisible between the bark… but still beating, still alive. Ona caught up with him, but Tiyan, driven by a morbid curiosity, drew closer, as if pulled by a string.
The heart was melted into the tree, connected to it by veins that still seemed to pump blood. Tiyan’s gaze began to take in the whole scene, with a terrifying clarity.
The veins led to the body. Scattered under the bark, hands not connected to the torso, but held together by lonely tendons, pulled hard between the wood, stretched so tightly, that the bark was biting deep into them; but not breaking.
And there, above… a face. Only eyes and mouth were visible, but it was a human face. They looked just at him, their lips moving. And they let out a powerless sigh.
Tiyan bumped into Ona and backed away, his face pale. Ona followed his gaze and made a low, choked sound.
And it dawned on them as they embraced the entire grove that every tree held a human captive, every tree fed on them.
The puddle under the trunks was not just mud.
It was old blood.
“Damn it!” Tiyan propped himself on his knees and tried to compose himself. Ona’s hand drifted to the melted bark, but didn’t touch it. The whole grove laughed grotesquely at life. Taking and pumping it into its own system.
She took a breath… and exhaled. And once again. And again.
“The whole… village must be here,” she said in a dull voice.
Tiyan’s eyes seemed slightly unfocused as she looked at his face.
“We should leave as soon as possible,” she continued. The silence of this place was deafening.
“Not even to help them? They suffer, for goddess’ sake!” Tiyan sounded more aggressive. Ona though it must be the shock.
“How?” there was an irony in her own voice that she hadn’t intended. “You want to rip them off and put them back together again?”
Tiyan knew it would be futile. Only magic kept them alive, for whatever sick reason the Fae kept them here. Probably for fun. They always do it for fun. The humans were too deeply fused, and they had no suitable weapon or tool to rip the trees in half – even if it did offer the captives the relief of death.
“I hate this.”
“I know. I do too.”
“Ona…”
“I know.”
“Do you think they are still here?”
“The Fae? Perhaps. I don’t plan to be here long enough to check. Or we want to join these people.”
These humans were lost and Tiyan had a purpose, not to let them do this to Mina. To get her out of those cruel claws. She was the most important thing now, she was the reason he didn’t give up and drown in grief.
And the villagers… are already dead. Even if they felt life in every fibre of their being.
They left silently, their souls as heavy as their steps. Their feet buried in the snow, in places where the cursed trees hadn’t sent their roots. Tiyan could swear he could still hear the moans of the humans trapped within the bark… but their lips were still. Like a macabre still life painted by a twisted artist.
They were both almost certain that the Fae had already left this village. They didn’t even seem to stay to feed their eyes with suffering. Who knew how long these people had been exposed to it. Perhaps days… or years. Tiyan couldn’t imagine the latter.
The houses in the city looked even more empty, even more abandoned now. A silent altar to the life that had once been here, even if it had been hard and dangerous, still a life. No imitation of it.
Ona watched Tiyan all the way down the steep slope. He was holding up well, but she could see the pain on his face. He had lost his family too, not long ago. She didn’t know how they were killed or how he found them. But the scene in the grove had to remind him of them. The wound was too fresh, too wide open.
Maybe she hadn’t known him long, but he had lost his sister. And Ona could relate to that.
Being pushed and forced to act, not even being able to experience grief, might have seemed better for a short time. But later it came like an avalanche, leaving even more shattered feelings, crashing against the soul with delayed pain.
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t feel the need to. Tiyan was hit by loss, maybe not with full force… but hard enough to feel it.
The village was soon left behind, with all its magic, all its suffering, all its memories. And they had to move on. Both from here and with their own losses. Ona just hoped they wouldn’t be too late, as they were too late for these people.
The wind began to blow again, as if the enchanted bubble had released it from its influence. The biting cold now stung like a famished predator. But it was better.
Better than silence.
Tiyan’s cheeks immediately reddened. But she knew that he was pale inside, at least until he had finished fighting his own demons.
And that… would take time.