Doing what people tell me is getting old. Yet, I sit and wait in front of the potted version of the very same plant Sirocco took berries from: Nightshade.
Ms. Fernren goes into the kitchen, puts on a kettle and snips a few herbs from a window garden. Riddle peeps at me and rubs his feathery face on my cheek.
“Here.” Ms. Fernren sets a cup in front of me.
“What is it?” I wrap my hands around the mug and gaze into the dark swill.
“Drink it.” She sets her own cup down and sits across from me.
“Okay, okay,” I say, but I stop and stare at the tea.
She sighs. “It’s Founder’s root. It won’t hurt you.”
I pull back. “How is Founder’s root going to help with Pit Monster sand?”
Ms. Fernren smiles, softly and not unkindly. “Why am I giving you this snake oil? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Well, it doesn’t do anything.”
“How little you know for a dryad.” She laughs at me.
Now I’m annoyed. “From what I’ve been taught, Founder’s root is a catch-all remedy that does nothing.”
“No, it prevents a lot of things. Just because you don’t feel the effects doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”
“Oh.”
She sighs and sips her tea. “When Founder’s root is ingested, people think it will relieve the symptoms of the common cold. When it doesn’t help with those ailments, people think it doesn’t work. But all that really means is that there was a much more serious problem going on.”
“A much more serious problem?” Now she has my attention.
Ms. Fernren nods, and the leaves crowning behind her shoulders ruffle. “People don’t see it that way when they’re trying to relieve symptoms of the common cold, but what Founder’s root does is finds the ailment that caused the sickness in the first place. It eradicates the larger threat. So maybe the cold wasn’t the problem. Maybe the cold was caused by free radicals in your system. Then the Founder’s root would wipe out the free radicals but would be too weak to help with common cold symptoms. It cured a more serious condition, yet you’d say it failed because you didn’t get rid of your sniffles.”
I’m beginning to see her point.
“So,” Ms. Fernren takes another sip of tea. “How is that you came to EverDark Forest?”
Uh oh. RavenNight is off limits to students, and RavenNight Forest leads straight there.
“Um.”
She looks at me. “The truth, Everly.”
I nod. After everything she’s done for me, I won’t lie to her. She saved my life—I at least owe her the truth. I take a deep breath. “You caught me.” I look up at her then and frown. “I was going to the city, but I learned my lesson. I will never go to the city again.” And then I remember the reason I need to hurry this visit up. The count and possibly Harlow are going to get poisoned, and I have to stop it.
“Then you’ve learned your lesson?”
I nod. “I have.” I stand up and smile down at her. “Thank you for everything, Ms. Fernren, but I really need to get back.”
“No.” Ms. Fernren lays her hand on the table. “It’s near dark now.”
“Then I really need to get going in I’m going to beat the sunset.”
“I wouldn’t advise going alone.”
“I’ll stick to the path.”
“I can’t let a student just walk through the EverDark Forest without an escort.” Meaning, she has to make sure I don’t go into the city.
“I have Riddle.” I turn my head and look at the golem where he sits on my shoulder. He chirps at me, content.
Ms. Fernren picks at the berries on the potted plant on the table and pops them into her mouth, and my eyes go wide.
“You… you…” I sputter. Can she eat that? Even plants have their toxin limits. “Isn’t that Nightshade?”
She smiles. “Ah, so you can’t tell the difference?”
“Difference?” My eyes fly down to my cup.
“Stop judging your tea.” She picks another berry and eats it. “These are not poisonous.”
“What do you mean? It’s Belladonna!”
The blight smiles and takes another berry from the plant. Cannibalism, much?
“I changed it.”
“What do you mean, changed it?” Changing an herb is like messing with perfection.
“Too many students were getting the wrong idea and taking Deadly Nightshade for nefarious reasons.” She flashes a pointed look at me. “So, I made it harmless as tomatoes.”
“You can do that?” I don’t mean to blurt the words out, but here we are.
She smiles with dry amusement. “I know a little something about plants.”
Relief drops me back into my seat. “So, you’ve changed just this plant? Or all of the Nightshade plants?”
“I have Deadly Nightshade, but it isn’t kept here. Nor is Deadly Nightshade available in this forest anymore. I have made many… changes to this forest.”
That perks up my ears. Does that mean Jean-Claude and Harlow are safe? That whatever Tor and Sirocco picked will be useless?
“You’ve altered all the plants in the forest?”
She pauses, looking at me. “Yes.”
“Even the trees?”
My teacher pauses. “Even the trees.”
All those sleeping trees. It’s natural to die, to serve as sustenance for the next generation. If the trees aren’t allowed to procreate and live a natural life, it doesn’t allow saplings to grow. “That’s… that…”
“Goes against nature?” She crosses her arms and straightens.
“Dangerous, yes…” I nod my head. “But…” I consider the circumstance. “It’s not like you have a bunch of dryads living here.”
When I think about it, she’s done a massive undertaking. All those plants, changed. All those trees, asleep. And she did alter the chemistry of an entire plant species so they would be safe to eat. This turns all the things I know about blights around, or at least this one blight.
