Page 48 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Instead, the scholar became still.

It was not the abrupt stillness of fear, nor anything obvious enough to draw Roran’s notice. Her shoulders remained loose beneath her cloak, and her expression did not change, yet the air around her seemed to tighten. Her next breath came slower than the last. The fingers resting beside the open notebook pressed lightly against the page, holding it in place though the wind had already died.

For one suspended moment, she looked at Seren as though the question had opened something between them that could not easily be closed again. Behind her, the exposed roots gave a faint creak beneath the soil. The scholar’s eyes flicked downward—only once.

When they returned to Seren, whatever had disturbed her was gone, hidden beneath a composure so carefully arranged that the effort of it became its own kind of confession.

Seren felt her suspicion sharpen. Fascination followed close behind, unwanted and considerably less useful. The woman appeared to be standing before a locked door only she could see, weighing the keys in her hand and deciding which lie would turn most smoothly. Seren understood, before she spoke, that whatever name she offered would be chosen rather than given.

At last, the scholar’s mouth curved, the expression elegant enough to resemble a smile if one did not look too closely.

“Elira Thorn,” she said, laying the name between them with deliberate care. “And you must be General Veyr.”

The rest of the afternoon dissolved into investigation. Seren walked the village with Roran, Elowen, and two scouts, collecting accounts from households where roots had appeared. The pattern worsened the more she saw: roots at thresholds, roots in cellars, roots beneath the chapel foundation, roots curling toward the well, the schoolroom, the healer’s garden, the old northern road.

In one cottage, a woman showed them scratches on the inside of her daughter’s bedroom door. In another, an elderly man admitted he had twice woken barefoot in the yard, facing the mountains. He laughed as he said it, but the laugh shook too badly to be useful. In the chapel, Seren found a crack running through the floor near the altar, pale roots filling it like stitches closing a wound.

By sunset, her notes had become a map of unease. Every report pointed north. Every dream, every sleepwalking child, every sound beneath floorboards, every root that surfaced in impossible places.

North. Toward whatever the villagers believed was singing. Seren remained near the square as dusk gathered, watching doors close one by one. Fear became more visible in lamplight. Curtains were drawn and children were called indoors too early. Men lingered at thresholds with tools in their hands and no clear idea what they meant to do with them.

A crow sat on the low wall beside the well, black and glossy against the gray stone. Wren sat beside it with charcoal on her fingers and snow melting in her hair. The child had a scrap of parchment balanced against her knees. She was drawing quickly, with the grim concentration of someone performing a duty rather than passing time. The charcoal moved in short, urgent strokes.

Seren stopped several paces away. “You’re Wren.”

The girl looked at her without alarm. “You’re the general.”

“I am.”

“You look less shiny than I thought," the girls so boldly stated.

Seren glanced down at mud on her boots, damp on her cloak, and the smear of root-soil at one cuff. “You sound disappointed.”

When the child didn’t respond, Seren crouched near the wall, leaving distance between them. “May I sit?”

Wren glanced at her, shrugged, then back at the drawing. “Generals don’t ask.”

“Only the bad ones.”

Wren considered that with the grave suspicion children reserved for adults attempting honesty. Then she shifted slightly, which Seren chose to interpret as permission.

Seren lowered beside her on the cold ground. For a while, neither of them spoke. Snow fell softly around the well. Somewhere in the village, a hammer struck wood where Roran had set soldiers to repairing a barricade that would likely be useless against roots but made everyone feel less helpless. Seren understood the need. Sometimes a person built a wall not because it would hold, but because hands needed work before fear taught them worse things.

Wren turned the drawing toward her. It showed the village square from above, the well at its center drawn too dark, the houses leaning inward as though listening. Beneath the square, tangled lines descended into a shape like an open throat. Around the throat were roots. Around the roots were small marks that might have been people, if one were feeling optimistic.

Seren was not. She kept her voice even. “Did you see this in a dream?”

Wren shook her head. “Not a dream.”

“No?”

“The pictures come when I’m awake.”

Seren’s fingers curled against her knee. “That sounds unpleasant.”

Wren shrugged one shoulder with such adult exhaustion that Seren hated the world a little more. “Sometimes they’re quiet.”

“And when they are not?”