for her healing-kit, and then hurried after the impatient fauns.
IDALIA followed the fauns through the trees, her workbag slung over her shoulder. She had to admit, if only to herself, that it was a relief to be more or less alone for a change. Kellen never seemed to tire of asking questions—though she did have to admit, he'd made a lot of progress since he'd gotten here. And it was true that if she'd had someone like herself to question when she'd begun learning the Wild Magic, she'd have asked just as many questions. If only he was as open to it as she had been…
If she were to make a guess, she'd have said it frightened him, though that hardly seemed possible… He might not think so, but in her opinion he was as brave as a young lion.
She sighed inwardly, shifting her heavy pack as she ducked to avoid a low-growing branch. She knew, just by seeing his progress over the past few moonturns, that she'd been a better Wildmage at his age than he was, and she knew, without vanity, that she would always be a hundred times the Wildmage Kellen would ever be.
Something in him always holds back—it's as if he's afraid of it, but Kellen has as much courage where it counts as anyone I've ever met.
I must say, I'm baffled. There was no reason for anyone to be afraid of Wild Magic, no matter what the High Mages said. He holds back; he won't commit himself, but to be a Wildmage, you must have the magic in your bones and blood, understand it so deeply you don't have to think about it any more than you have to think about breathing. You have to become the magic, until nothing happens around you that you're not aware of, as if the world around you is merely an extension of your own body. As The Book of Stars says, 'You will come to live within my pages, and my pages are written on your heart.'
But not on Kellens, apparently.
Was it only fear? Or was there something else going on? Whatever it was, she suspected poor Kellen would never come to the magic through the same route she had taken. It would seem, all things considered, that her little brother's destiny was to become something quite different from your ordinary sort of Wildmage.
I do wish I knew what it was.
Her musings were interrupted by their arrival at the oak-dryad's grove.
The oak was the Queen of the Wood, and the oak-dryads were the greatest of the tree-spirits, but the great trees were particularly vulnerable to lightning, and last night's storm had not been kind to the grove. Idalia could see that the ground here was littered with many branches torn loose by the storm winds—Nature's rough mercy, pruning the weaker branches now before they were layered with a heavy coat of winter's ice and snow— but that was only minor storm damage, part of the cycle of Life, not why she'd been called. On the largest of the oaks, one of the great branches was sheared half away from the trunk, half-charred by the lightning strike that had done it, exposing the heartwood to insect damage and frost-kill.
Its dryad sat slumped on the ground before the tree, her skin as pale as the heartwood and her ash-brown hair tangled and tumbled. She was surrounded by her sisters, their healthy golden skin and hair a sharp contrast to hers. The brownie families who made their homes in the dryads' oaks stood in clumps in the clearing, wringing their hands and murmuring mournfully, and Idalia could see more fauns watching from the bushes at the edges of the clearing.
This is bad, Idalia thought to herself with a sinking heart. The dryad was in shock from the damage to her tree, and the tree itself might very well die slowly over the winter if the damage to its trunk wasn't seen to immediately.
'Here she is—here she is—here she is—' The fauns who had brought Idalia rushed ahead of her into the clearing to join the dryads, some of them climbing into the lap of the wounded one to offer their own rough comfort. As if their arrival had been a signal, the other fauns came crowding into the clearing. Idalia followed more slowly, taking in the damage to tree and spirit, assessing it, making a plan…
One of the healthy dryads came to meet her.
*Can you heal her?* the oak-maiden asked silently.
'Yes,' Idalia said aloud. 'Who will share the price?'
The dryad looked surprised for a moment. *All,* she answered. *All will share,* she answered, with a gesture that encompassed the inhabitants of the clearing—brownies, dryads, fauns.
'Do you all agree to this?' Idalia asked, raising her voice a little so that all could hear. 'Will you all share in the price of this healing?'
There was a clamor as every voice—even the dryads' silent ones— was raised in agreement, and Idalia winced as the shrill voices of the brownies pierced her skull. But the Wild Magic could not take what was not asked for and freely given. She walked forward through the crowd of Otherfolk, and knelt before the suffering dryad.
'Shoo,' she said gently to the faun sitting in the dryad's lap, and the small creature reluctantly squirmed out of the way.
Idalia reached out and stroked the dryad's cheek, then took the dryad's hands in her own. They were ice-
