The Oak Earl looked again at Brona. “Don’t you see? I must act.”
“I do see,” she murmured, standing. She moved away, and Kayo felt the loss of it, though she only went to a box tucked to a corner shelf beside the hearth and brought it back.
Carved of dark wood, the box was etched with the hash-marks that represented the language of trees. Kayo understood some of the spoken words, but he could not read nor write it, beyond a basic fertility blessing he’d learned to use as the earl over all those dying moors. He’d never been sure the land truly respected him; he’d asked an old grandmother to teach him to tend the needs within his borders. Was the decay some fault of his own; was he too foreign in his thoughts and wanderings to care for the roots? The grandmother had ignored his anxieties in a practiced way and chided him for not knowing the simplest blessings. For a little while, his land had thrived. No more. Kayo understood in his bones that the king’s rejection of the rootwaters had forced the island to consolidate its power here in the White Forest, and yet—and yet he could not help wondering if, had Kayo himself been somehow more devoted to Innis Lear, never left to travel, rejected the ties to his homeland, the roots would thrive. The witch held her part of the island healthy and whole. Why couldn’t he?
Brona lifted the lid to reveal a stack of worn, gilded cards and a small silk bag. Without speaking, she removed the cards and shuffled them, then handed them to Kayo. He awkwardly did the same, looking at images of crowns and stars, feathers and claws and worms and roots.
Brona took them again and laid out all twenty-seven cards in four circles, spiraling out from center. Then she upended the silk bag into her palm and breathed into her hand. She whispered a blessing in the language of trees and dropped the bones across the spread of cards.
Each of the nine bones hit with a hard knock, vibrating the table in little ripples that ought to have stopped long before they did. Kayo shivered, staring.
“This is always how they fall, Kay Oak,” Brona said after a long moment. “Whenever I throw them for Innis Lear, and for Elia Lear. The Crown of Trees, Saint of Stars, and Worm of Birds aligned atop all nine cards of the suit of stars. Choice, heart, and patience in the core.” She shook her head at him. “Even now with you here it does not change.”
“What does it mean? I do not know the bones. They’ve been forbidden nearly as long as I’ve been back.”
He could not stop staring at the silver lines painted along the roots of every tree card and the perfect blue of the worms. The edges of Brona’s cards seemed soft and worn. Some paint was smeared away, and a drop or two of old brown blood stained a card with a lovely black bird sliced perfectly in half, but still flying.
“It means we must wait for Elia, if the island would thrive forever.”
Kayo made a fist against his knee. “We cannot wait! Elia despairs, and our land does, too.”
“The land will cope, and the heart of the White Forest beats so long as I am here, enough for now. So long as there are folk around the island whispering to the wind, we can be patient. And many do, Kay Oak, despite the edicts of the crown. Including Regan Lear.”
“Regan Connley,” the Oak Earl corrected.
“Regan Connley, then.”
“Which is this card?” he asked, pointing at the bird in two pieces, curious but afraid.
“Oh,” Brona breathed shakily, the first indication that her calm was hard-won. “Oh, Kayo.” She came around the table to him and perched on the edge, taking one of his brown hands in hers. “Why does it call to you?”
With her near, he felt soothed, and her fingers stroked his wrist so kindly as he spoke. “It has not fallen, though it is cut in two pieces, straight through the middle. It lives in pieces.”
“That is the sacrifice the bird makes,” the witch of the White Forest whispered. “Not to be cut in half, but to keep flying despite it.”
Her words broke open the thing inside him, and Kayo bent over, eyes squeezed closed against the tears pulling fire down his cheeks. “Brona,” he choked. “Oh no, oh no. I can’t. I never meant to—I am not—” He gripped her hips, pulling her nearer, and buried his face in her lap.
She petted his head, the three weeks’ worth of thick black curls growing against his scalp. She bent around him, kissed the knob of his skull, murmuring soft nothings as he cried.
Moments, hours, uncountable tears later, he stopped. His breath skimmed along the stripes of her skirt, and Brona lifted the corner to wipe his cheeks. “Remain here for a few days, my oak lord,” she said. “Remain here, and be in pieces. You do not have to fly when you are
