Page 30 of Little Witch

She turned to look at me, surprised, and I realized I'd never actually told her that — that the same tree had been haunting my sleep for weeks before I'd ever set foot back in this town, long before I'd known she was dreaming about it too. There hadn't been a right moment to bring it up. There still wasn't, not really, standing here with the thing looming over both of us, but keeping it to myself any longer felt pointless now.

A crash through the undergrowth behind us spun us both around, my hand already gathering wind on instinct before I registered who it was.

Orias staggered into the clearing with one arm pressed hard against his ribs, blood soaked dark through his shirt from collarbone to hip, face pale in a way that made my stomach drop straight through the ground.

"You're hit." I closed the distance fast, catching him as his knees buckled slightly on the uneven ground, his weight heavier against my shoulder than he'd ever willingly admit to.

"I'm fine." He wasn't. His voice came out thinner than usual, forced steady through obvious effort, each word costing him more than it should have. "Took a few hits covering you both. Nothing that won't heal eventually."

"You're bleeding through your shirt, Orias. That's not nothing."

"Amber can play nurse." He winked, staring at her until she laughed. "I'm really fine. I can heal."

He straightened, waving off the hand I had braced against his shoulder, though the effort it cost him to do it didn't escape either of us, and his jaw tightened around a wince he tried and failed to hide.

His eyes went to the tree, and whatever pain he was pushing down got shoved further under the surface, replaced by the same recognition that had already hit both of us. "That's the one. From the dream."

"You've had it too? The same tree?" Amber asked, glancing between the three of us like she was only now realizing how much all of this had apparently been converging on us separately for weeks without any of us saying a word about it.

"Apparently we're all having the same nightmare lately." Orias's attempt at a grin came out strained around the edges, more grimace than smile. "Family bonding, I suppose. Shame none of us thought to mention it sooner."

"We were a little busy," I said. "With everything else."

"Fair point."

I didn't have much patience left for jokes with him still bleeding in front of me, ribs clearly worse than he was letting on, but I let it go, because pushing him on it here wasn't going to help anyone and he'd only dig his heels in harder if I tried. Amber's hand found mine again without either of us discussing it, and together we stepped toward the tree, the whispers rising to fill the whole clearing the moment we closed the last of the distance between us and the trunk.

"Do you feel that?" she whispered, her voice unsteady.

"Yeah." My eyes stayed fixed on the bark, on the way it seemed to shift subtly at the edges of my vision even when nothing was actually moving when I looked straight at it. "Feels like it's been waiting."

Together we reached out. My hand tightened around hers as our fingers brushed the rough bark at the same moment, and the second we made contact the whispers cut off entirely, the whole clearing dropping into a silence so total I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

Then the tree moved.

The bark groaned, splitting slow down its center, peeling back like a door held shut for longer than any of us had been alive. Behind it sat a passage leading down into the earth, air drifting out cool but not cold, carrying the scent of damp soil and fallen leaves, and underneath that, faint but unmistakable, the smell of autumn itself — spice and woodsmoke and something achingly familiar I couldn't quite place.

Amber glanced at me, wonder and fear tangled together on her face in equal measure. I squeezed her hand and managed something close to a smile.

"We've come this far," I said. "Walking into a magic tree isn't any less insane than the rest of tonight's already been."

She huffed something that might have been a laugh under better circumstances, and together we stepped through the opening, Orias falling in close behind us, one hand still pressed hard to his ribs, breathing shallow enough that I made a mental note to check on him properly the second we got a spare minute.

The stairs wound down narrow and steep, cut from something that felt more like packed earth than proper stone, worn smooth in the center like generations of feet had walked this exact path before us. The dark down here sat differently than it had above ground. Calmer. The kind of quiet that came from a space that had been sealed off a long time, undisturbed, holding whatever secrets it had been built to hold.

When we reached the bottom, the space opened up into something none of us were remotely prepared for.

A room. Warm, lived-in, lined floor to ceiling with books whose spines had gone soft and worn with age, the kind of collection that took decades to build rather than money to buy all at once. A fireplace sat cold and unlit against the far wall, though the whole room smelled faintly of woodsmoke anyway, mixed with cinnamon and something sweeter underneath that reminded me, uncomfortably, of Halloway's Hearth on a slow morning. A scattering of mismatched couches and low wooden tables filled the rest of the space, rugs layered haphazardly across the floor, everything arranged like whoever lived here had cared more about comfort than any kind of matching set.

"What is this place?" Amber asked, turning in a slow circle, disbelief written across every line of her face. "It looks like someone's living room. Underground. Inside a tree."

I didn't have an answer for her. Orias didn't either, judging by the silence beside me, both of us too busy trying to reconcile a cozy reading nook with the six shadow-things that had nearly killed us above ground twenty minutes earlier.

Before either of us could offer even a guess, a voice cut through the quiet. Coming from somewhere further into the room, past where the low light hadn't quite reached yet.

"Amber?" It said, as we all froze.

Chapter Seventeen