Page 96 of Wench

She closes her eyes and the world transforms. Beneath them, she can see faint, golden threads pulse weakly. Thin streams of fae ore trembling on the edge of collapse. Sherwood’s marrow hums against her ribs. She sinks to her knees in the soot. When she presses her palm against the scorched ground, the hum seizes her bones. Weak. Distant. But there. The fae ore is strangled, trapped under the kindling.

The thrum rushes toward her, through her, until her body trembles under the surge. The sensations overlap – fragments of trees felled, beasts slain, and fae silenced, begging not to be forgotten.

It’s all too much.

Marian staggers under the chorus of wounds that don’t belong to her, yet lodge themselves inside her bones all the same. Her stomach knots, bile burning up her throat – and still, she doesn’t move her hand. She can’t. To lift it would be to abandon what little life clings here, and Sherwood has suffered enough abandonment.

Instinct tells her to pull, and she listens.

The hum threads upward, splintering through her ribs. She lets it scrape the hollow places inside her, leaning into the ache to offer herself as a conduit. If the ore needs breath, then let her lungs be bellows.

Her palm burns against the soil. The ash grows hot, searing, but she only presses deeper.

Slowly, the threads begin to tighten. What had been faint, flickering, starts to gather itself, knitting in her palm before spreading outward to strengthen every line across the clearing. Her pulse falls in rhythm with the feeble golden streams beneath her.

Behind her, Lox stiffens and she knows he can feel it swelling beneath him. He takes one step closer, burned twigs crunching beneath his boots.

‘You . . .’ He stops, swallows hard, then tries again. ‘You’re doing this?’

Marian doesn’t answer. She can’t. Speech would fracture the thin filament of connection she’s holding. Instead, her body folds toward the ground until her forehead nearly touches the soil.

The air changes.

It carries the slight tang of sap, of something green struggling through blackened ruin, and beneath the ash she can feel the earth breathe again.

‘Marian.’

Lox kneels beside her, voice torn between awe and reverence. He presses his palm into the soil, beside hers, and the response is immediate. The hum seizes them both, spiralling through her ribs and into his, winding into a circuit that binds them to each other as surely as it binds them to Sherwood. A sharp grunt rattles him as if the ache of the ore wounds him as deeply as it does her.

His fingers twitch against the soil, and she feels his power slip into hers – not to take it, but to steady it. The whir that had been ragged and wild inside her bones eases, smoothing into something bearable.

And together, they hold it.

Marian dares a glance at him and the sight nearly undoes her.

Lox is bent close, face etched with both pain and wonder. His golden eyes are brighter than she has ever seen them. He’s the holiest thing she’s ever witnessed.

His hand shifts, his fingers brushing hers in the soil. The contact is small, but the surge it brings is not. The hum spikes, then steadies, flowing through them both in tandem. And with it comes growth.

Tiny shoots pierce the ash. Quivering green tips push through the blackened seam with defiance. The glow beneath the soil strengthens, golden threads knitting themselves together, weaving a new pattern through the scorched veins.

Around them, the clearing hums; no longer void, but with a low, resonant note of return.

His palm slips over hers where it rests on the soil. Their connection to Sherwood vibrates between them.

The first leaf shakes itself free of ash and unfurls; another unfurls beside it, and another. What was a wound begins to lace itself shut from the inside. The golden threads beneath them brighten, braiding and carrying warmth outward.

Marian doesn’t push the growth, but merely strengthens what it needs to thrive. The once-thin veins begin to fatten to a steady glow. Beside her, Lox’s power is a weight that holds the banks so her flood does not break them.

In the ring of black around them, moss drinks; its soot-grimed nap lifts, brightening by shades like a bruise blooming backward into health. Fern ribs arch and lace into fronds. Charred trunks do not spring back into trees – death keeps its dignity – but each carbonized pillar grows a fringe of tender green.

Marian’s body collapses into the dirt with a wet gasp. She rolls onto her back, limbs quivering, breath uneven, as her eyes dart around to the ring of green around them. It’s imperfect and earnest and alive. It will take seasons to forgive the rest, maybe years, but the clearing is no longer a mouth that only devours. It is a throat that swallows, and it will sing again.

Marian lets out a sob she didn’t know she was swallowing. The chorus inside her, which moments ago was a clamour of pain, evens into soft harmony.

Her muscles shake from neck to fingers, used up in a way that feels good. When she turns to Lox, gratitude rushes up so fierce, it shames her earlier apology. He leans over her, soil-stained fingers brushing her cheek with veneration.

‘How is this possible?’ he whispers.