Day 457
After spending the morning in consultation with other healers and the Blaze ghosts, our plan of attack on the Withering Curse becomes clear:
- Create a lure (intense summer song contained within…something - a gem? Piece of ripe fruit? Grove wood structure?)
- Small batch clinical trials of volunteer young mystics and wildlings. Use the lure and create a magical bridge for the curse to traverse away from them. Continue refining as needed. Assuming success, proceed:
- Andstella and Jerun to finish the Grove Sap curative by seeking winter fae willing to help their seasonal siblings. If necessary, point out that this is the best shot of having these people remain seasonal rather than dying, losing seasonal songs, or something drastic which may involve a shift to day and night.
- Administer Grove Sap to riskier candidates (order of priority: all wizards, elder scoundrels and mercenaries, young scoundrels and mercenaries)
- Perform the luring magic for all remaining who need it.
Crafting the song is as easy as I'd hoped - there are several vibrantly summer Blaze ghosts and all have reams of memories of summer lives. In the shade of the ziggurat on this bright summer day we weave together a song that might force the seasons to change of their own accord. It is bold, bright, warm and sunny, full of major chords and grand passages to the towering growth of trees and lush fields of sun-warmed grass.
When I first use it to draw the curse out of a cohort of young mystics it works even better than expected. By the end of the day we have refined the process and managed to cure all of the young mystics and wildlings, as well as some of the older ones. I feel like I'm starting to understand the curse better, predict how it will move and what it will cling to.
We have plenty of time - Torrick has sent word that they are delaying the wedding by ten days to give people time to grieve before letting them rejoice in something. Still, I think tomorrow we'll be able to cure all of the young fae afflicted by the curse.
Day 458
The next day of work is even better than I could have hoped. By the end of the day every summer fae below the age of 5 has been cured and all of the mystics as well. They're still weakened, of course, and are able to return to the grove for more restorative healing. Andstella and Jerun have returned from the North and brought plenty of curatives and healing brews along with them. It's such a relief to see them safe and sound (and with winter fae to help us).
What's more is that the process of curing over 150 fae of this curse has brought me to an understanding of how it works. The curse in its raw form is not something I'm interested in wielding but...the way it attacks a particular aspect of the host is new and unique. It's the sort of property I might be able to weave into something else more useful, like if I had been able to reverse it and attack the curse itself instead of having to draw it out. Or it could be a way to seek and find something specific in a more organic way than arcane search-and-find magic.
The day concludes with a boisterous dinner. I get to laugh with Andstella over the fate of the poor sod who took off my wing (I show her the flight feathers I took from his own dead wings) and see Jerun staring in wonder at the trees of Day and Night that have taken over the heart of the Grove around the ziggurat. He tells me that he can hear them singing faintly, unlike the trees in the North.
Before he sleeps he wants to talk to some of the other fae about what it feels like to transition from a fae of seasons to a fae of day and night. Camellia, in particular, he says. She wasn't part of the Vanguard but she transitioned anyway and she strikes him as a wise person.
She said we would have tea together. The way she said it sounded like it was special.
I'm glad to see him fitting in. He seems happy and content, even hopeful that he might connect to magic this time around. He said he's observed that the fae of day and night seem to be more potent in our time magic than the fae of seasons are with their seasonal magic.
I fully intend to take him with me when we head South towards his old grove. I'm very pleased that he seems just as eager to travel together!
Day 459
On the last day of work I manage to remove the curse from everyone. 22 of the most difficult patients need to shift to winter before I can work on them but we get them all. The transition is strange - after drinking the sap mixture they sleep for 8 hours and wake as winter but many don't shift gender or skill set. Those that do shift skills end up adjacent - mercenaries becoming wildlings, wildlings becoming mystics, etc. All of them feel like winter but they're a bit jumbled and disconnected, not fully anchored to how the season would normally manifest.
Regardless, they're safe. All the summer fae are two days from sleeping and the winter fae are all eagerly awaiting their own sleep and proper transition later in the year.
I steal away to the top of the ziggurat after it's finished. Three days of being surrounded by people I need to save has been draining and I want nothing more than to lie on the top of this sacred stone structure and feel the cool wind. Instead, I pull out the parchment Uncle left me and set to work figuring out how to send him a song. Lyssa manifests at one point with food and a blanket but it is dawn before I finish my work and manage to send him a message that I hope finds him. It's a fragment of the lure song, victorious, with the message that our summer fae are safe.
Day 460
It is past noon when I wake in my own bed, snugly tucked in and with pastries nearby. There is cheerful faint music outside but I am alone. It happens so rarely that I take advantage, letting myself sink back into sleep so I can find Nal in the Dreaming.
It takes only seconds to traverse the distance to the Celestial Grove and I'm greeted with a warm hug and concern for my wellbeing as I tell her about the events of the last few weeks. The curse in particular, I am eager to share.
You defeated the magic of one of the elders?
At this I hasten to clarify - I addressed something cast from a scroll that I'm sure originated from Galfen. I certainly didn't face him directly and I have no intention of doing so. I do show her how I lured it out and got rid of it though. Poring over my work (of which I'm quite proud) with a similarly academic fae is thrilling. And as we go over it she turns to me excitedly and says we should visit the library.
For a moment I'm aghast that she has a
library and hasn't thought to show me until now. But the feeling evaporates to be replaced with delight when she brings me to a soaring tree encircled by a spiral structure supported by beams of light in all the Celestial colours. The books inside contain songs and notes, a repository of shared knowledge from generations of Celestial fae from what they've learned in their waking lives and here in the Dreaming. Before the Pruning, Nal tells me, fae were always learning from one another.
The book she remembers is one with records of something learned from an ancient fae of day and night. The transcription is rough - the Celestial fae who recorded it didn't entirely understand the details but after we spend some time with it I can see what it does. It's a piece of magic in which you sing a fragment of a song and draw nearby fae of day and night into the memory, allowing them to share in it. I have no idea if it would work with other fae or anyone other than fae! I'm eager to experiment with it!
And Nal is too - she wants illusions of all the things happening in the waking world, the wedding and coronation, the people I'm with, all of it. I'm happy to oblige next time I visit. For now, I slip back into the waking world and out to investigate the growing music outside my cottage. It doesn't take me long to find a party in full swing in the heart of the grove.
Our summer fae are preparing to sleep and all are celebrating the transition and the success of our cure.
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