dry leaves on the trees slowly crisping as they smouldered in the cold wind. He could almost see the air moving the branches, the charred particles streaming past. Overhead, the clouds had ceased to trail across the face of the sun, arrested in their passage across the sky. Brendan, despite the threat facing him, grinned with delight.
Turning his attention back to Orcadia, he watched the sizzling ball approach, fire boiling up and dying down like solar flares on the surface of a tiny sun. Brendan almost laughed out loud. “This is too easy!” He stepped to one side as the ball of energy drifted harmlessly past. He turned to face Orcadia.
“Time to slap you down again,” Brendan said grimly. “Don’t you ever learn?” He dashed to the side with the intention of going around behind his adversary. His plan was good, but it didn’t survive his running into the tree trunk. Where there had been open space before, a solid oak now stood. He crashed into the rough bark of the thick trunk and staggered, falling onto his back in the carpet of musty leaves.
His nose felt as if it had been whacked with a hammer. Spots swarmed before his eyes. He tasted blood in the back of his throat. He tried to sit up, but Orcadia’s foot slammed him back to the ground. His vision cleared. Orcadia leaned over him, her head blotting out the weak early-winter sun. The branches of the hoary old oak tree waved.
“Well,” she snarled. “That was too easy! I made you think the path was clear and you ran straight into a tree. Fool! A child could have seen through that trick! But then again, you are a child and a fool both!” The bat creature on her shoulder chittered with laughter.
Her tone twisted in Brendan’s heart like a knife. Her disdain ignited something in his soul. He would not be beaten. He cast his mind about, searching for some contact. Birds? No. Not powerful enough. Bugs? Not enough of them in the cold weather. Raccoons and squirrels? Maybe…^ 22
Then he felt it. A slumbering yet powerful presence, so ancient and deep that it formed an underlying hum of life, slower and more ponderous than the animals and birds and insects. He reached out to it with all the strength his soul could muster. He felt the presence stir.
“Well?” Orcadia barked. She pushed her foot harder into his chest, her slim heel gouging his ribs. Brendan ignored the pain. He concentrated as hard as he could. He felt the thing stir. His mind was filled with a huge and powerful voice… The thing was speaking to him, but it wasn’t really a voice. More like an intention, a question.
Help me! Brendan shouted with all his might.
He got through. There was a ripping, popping sound of something tearing loose from the ground. Orcadia yelped in surprise as a tree root as thick as a man’s arm coiled around her ankles and yanked her from her feet. Brendan gasped for breath, hauling himself erect. He watched in wonder as the scene unfolded before him.
The oak tree was moving. The root circling Orcadia’s feet wound tighter and moved higher to grip her waist. As Brendan watched in amazement, one gnarled limb of the ancient oak bent down and entwined Orcadia’s arms, pinning her to the earth. The tips of the branches dug deep into the dead leaves and into the soil, completely immobilizing the flailing Faerie Sorceress. She struggled mightily but to no effect. The oak’s limbs were filled with strength, the wood unbreakable. The grinding and popping of the woody sinews was like a series of gunshots in the crisp winter air.
Brendan couldn’t believe what had happened. “Did I do that?” he whispered.
“The tree did it,” came Greenleaf’s voice, obviously in some discomfort. Even stranger, the teacher’s voice was coming from Orcadia’s mouth. “You asked it to help you and it did.”
Suddenly, the flames that had been blazing all around were extinguished. In fact, no sign remained that there had been any fire at all. The clearing was restored to how it had looked before Orcadia had wrought ruin upon it.
To Brendan’s astonishment, BLT leapt up from the leaves and flew to his shoulder. “Nice one, boss!” she cheered, pumping her fist.
“BLT! You’re okay!”
Brendan looked down and was shocked again to see that Orcadia was melting away. In her place lay Greenleaf, trapped beneath the tree’s limbs, his clothes rumpled and smeared with dirt. Titi melted back into her normal shape, flitting down to rest on Greenleaf’s chest, dusting leaves from his jacket with fastidious flicks of her wings. Despite his situation, he smiled up at Brendan.
“We played a little trick on you, I’m afraid,” Greenleaf chuckled. “A glamour to make me appear as Orcadia. I had to frighten you into using your powers. Obviously, you haven’t lost them. You just need to have a little incentive.”
“But the girl?” Brendan sought out the place where the park warden had fallen and saw only a raccoon waddling away.
“An improvisation on my part,” Greenleaf said. “I made you see a girl in place of the raccoon.”
Brendan shook his head in disbelief. Then another thought struck him. “Wait a minute. I talked to a tree!”
“Ah, indeed.” Greenleaf nodded. “That actually did happen. It’s quite amazing. Ki-Mata will be very excited to hear about this. Apparently, you also have a latent Talent for manipulating the green world. Remarkable!”
Brendan tried to absorb this news. “I can talk to birds. I am a Warp Warrior. I can Compel people, and now I can talk to trees!”
Mr. Greenleaf grunted. “And I think it would be an excellent idea if you would talk to this tree again and tell him to let me go.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.” Brendan closed his eyes and thought hard. He reached for the mind of the tree. He could still sense it, but somehow it was slightly out of his reach.
“Uh-oh…? Brendan scratched his head. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Of course you can. Just try.”
Brendan closed his eyes and tried to shut out everything but the sound of the tree. He concentrated for a minute. Then another. Finally, he threw up his hands.“I can’t do it! I can feel the tree’s mind, but I can’t seem to get through.”
“Oh dear,” Mr. Greenleaf frowned. “I don’t relish lying out here for the next few days.”
Brendan snapped his fingers. “I know.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the small block of smooth wood that was his Faerie cellphone. Og, his Artificer uncle, had fashioned it for him to replace the one that was fried during his last adventure. All his old electronic devices had suffered a similar fate. In the end, Og had made him a new watch and an MP3 player out of Faerie-friendly materials. The watch served as a sort of glamour projector, as well as a timepiece. He had trouble maintaining a reliable Human disguise but was getting better all the time. The watch was a useful backup for when he dropped his concentration.
Tapping the centre of the block, he waited for the faint glow of the keyboard to appear and started to dial. “I’ll call Kim. She’s a pro with vegetation, isn’t she?”
“No!” said Greenleaf with uncharacteristic desperation creeping into his voice. “Not Ki-Mata! I’ll never hear the end of it!” Greenleaf and Ki-Mata had a rather adversarial relationship. Though both were participating in Brendan’s Faerie education, they often had differing opinions about what form that education should take. Ki-Mata would revel in Greenleaf’s predicament.
“I’d say you haven’t got much choice.” Brendan kicked one of the thick roots imprisoning Greenleaf. It didn’t budge.
“Very well,” Greenleaf sighed. “Call the she-devil.”
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” BLT crowed. “This is going to be good!”
Titi sneered.
^ 22. Never count on a squirel or a raccoon to have your back. Anybody with a peanut or a crust of bread can distract them.
THE HOT POT
Brendan glumly took in the view out the window of Roncesvalles Avenue below. Pedestrians, shoulders hunched and umbrellas clenched, leaned into the wind that had blown up on the way to the cafe from the park.
Until a few weeks ago, Brendan would have been just as uncomfortable in the cold and wind as those
