Page 76 of The Filigree Key

My magical perception slid into the water.

It diffused in both directions, following the twists and turns downstream easily and navigating the upstream like a salmon. In each, I felt the power Ossian had spoken of. The brutal force necessary to fight against it and the incredible drive it possessed to rush along its path.

It was . . . infinite.

My thoughts turned to the Atlantic Ocean I’d sometimes visit during the summer on Grandmother-approved outings. The tow of its tides. The depths of its seas. The sheer unfathomable vastness of it all.

I couldn’t master that vastness. I couldn’t even comprehend it. How could I understand the true essence of water if I could barely wrap my mind around it?

“Narrow it down,” I whispered. “Make it manageable.”

I was Violet’s heir. Violet, the sister to Mother Nature herself. Who knew primal magic better than them? Their knowledge was in my veins, waiting to be tapped.

And we obeyed one rule, the only rule governing Nature itself: growth.

Bending down, I cupped some water in my hands. It looked less like beer and more like the weakest of teas. Growth. This water was rich in nutrients. Even without them, it was important for every living thing on this planet.

It was nourishment. The power of life in every drop. Every molecule.

I thought back to the time in this very same forest when I’d battled the silver mallaithe tree. I had been protecting life by taking its. I had summoned the trees to absorb what water they could hold and for the rest to drain. How were my hands, my will, any different than that of a tree’s roots who drew the water out of the ground? Surely it wasn’t the water’s will to divert from whatever it was doing in the soil to be sucked up into a bean shoot or an olive tree.

Unless the power of life was its essence. Those scientists declaring life on Earth began in the water were probably doing so for a very good reason.

The water in my hands shivered, a response to the echo of the power I’d once commanded in desperation.

“Yes,” Ossian whispered.

Brow furrowed, I sought connection to the water. To that life. But it was slippery, as elusive as a fish. It didn’t manifest as something as concrete as a tree or a flame serpent. I supposed that was its nature—to evade capture and restraint and just grow—but thistle thorns if it wasn’t aggravating.

My magical perception slid around in the little pool created by my cupped palms, chasing after something I couldn’t even see. A handful of times I thought I’d grasped it, the water bubbling or rippling, but the control quickly slipped.

“C’mon,” I muttered. “C’mon.”

Life. Power. How hard were these two concepts to understand?

“I need a break,” I huffed, dropping my hands and opening my eyes.

I started when I realized the change in the angle of the sunlight. We’d been out here for hours; the sun was directly overhead. Behind me, at the top of the bank, three Brothers were asleep while Shane kept watch.

On his sycamore bench, Ossian seemed to be in the same position as when I’d closed my eyes. His large hands caged his knees, his back straight as if he were meditating. An expression of masked calm hid his disappointment.

Well, he wasn’t the only one.

“A break,” he asked, “or incentive?”

Rolling my eyes, I slogged out of the water. “I have plenty of incentive, Ossian. That portal won’t open without a charged key, and there’s that whole deadline of opening it three days before the winter solstice.”

“Perhaps it’s not enough.”

Tensing, I tracked the movement of his hand as he reached for his belt. It dipped into a smaller pouch this time and extracted a vial. Inside were what looked like immature strobili—tight cone-shaped seed pods, though these were a purplish gray in color. Unscrewing the top, he tapped three into his palm, reconsidered the count, and wiggled one back into the vial before returning it to his pouch. The two remaining strobili he threw into the water.

Then Ossian gave me a small smile that revealed nothing. Even when I lifted my eyebrows at him in a silent prompt for him to explain himself, he didn’t. Instead he bent down and retrieved one of the burlap sacks.

Well, at least this I understood. I planted my hands on my hips, mildly annoyed. “Withholding lunch won’t do it.”

“I didn’t think it would.” He stalked to the river’s edge and looked out over the churning water. “But perhaps this will.”

Ossian unknotted the ties and stuck his hand inside. With one fluid motion, he shucked the bag.