Human Magic - The Rowan, Hamish, Serenity, Ellie Robinson, Adam Robinson

Humans have magic too.
The Rowan has known that since it met Serenity. Since her fingers wove together with his when they planted the tiny cutting in its new home. For the first time, the Rowan had felt the magic of human hands, mixing with its own as it grew and thrived and made itself a home for those it was bound to protect.
When a second time one of its inhabitants brought a human to its branches, the Rowan did not feel threatened. Humans had been part of every moment of its existence in this place. Adam brought joy to the house the way Serenity had.
He belonged.
When Adam took Ellie away, the Rowan felt empty, like someone had cut the leaves from its branches. Hamish and Serenity seemed emptier too. Things had changed, and for the first time in this place, the Rowan watched someone it had protected leave its world.
Such things had happened before. Part of it, the part of it that carried ancient magic across generations, knew this. But here, it was young, and the cut was as fresh and deep as if made with the blade of an axe.
But like birds in springtime, Ellie came back. Not forever, but for days and weeks. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Adam. Soon, with a small child of her own. A child who played with its leaves and laughed when the Rowan touched his hair. A child who learned to walk and run with the help of the Rowan’s branches as well as human hands.
Another loss, of another kind, shook them all like a storm the day Serenity died. The Rowan was the first to feel that she was gone, her human magic fading from the air, but trapped and remembered forever in the rings of its growth, in the print of her hands on its branches.
Nothing was quite the same, but life went on around the Rowan. The little boy, Robin, grew taller and stronger, climbing into the Rowan’s branches to see the world beyond the tiny glamoured place they all called home.
But one day, when Ellie came back, her magic was strange. Wounded, bleeding, a raw gap in it like a branch when the wind tears it away. Robin’s magic felt the same.
And when Ellie leaned her head against the thick trunk and whispered that Adam was gone, the Rowan felt her tears fall like rain.
The loss had done more than tear away something from her, it had split her heart in two like a lightning-struck trunk. The Rowan felt her fade, even as Hamish tried to save her with his magic. But what had kept Serenity with them for far longer than her failing body would have allowed was unable to save Ellie. It was not her body that was wounded, and the Rowan could feel it. It was her heart.
A row of stones grew across the Rowan’s branches, emptied from Robin’s pockets into his mother’s hands. Another tried and failed attempt to reverse the autumn change. Until one day her magic faded too, leaving only Robin and Hamish and the Rowan with its memories.
And then, in the same manner as everyone before him, Robin too brought a human to the Rowan’s doorstep. Humans meant heartbreak, Hamish had said, but the Rowan remembered that humans also meant laughter and smiles and a new kind of magic. And the boy with the funny pieces of glass on his face and the books full of words in his knapsack was magic.
As always, though, things changed. The Rowan was no stranger to loss and leaving, and this time, when Robin left its door and took his magic with him, it held onto hope. Sometimes, people came back. And the Rowan would be ready if Robin did.
Seasons turned into years, and Robin never came close to the Rowan again. Hamish faded, his magic of youth and health spent first on his wife and then on his daughter. Robin’s human, Cody, left too, saying he was going to a mythical place called a ‘library’, but coming home often enough that his magic never quite left the Rowan’s walls.
And then Hamish was gone too, and the only magic left was a human’s.
And then…Robin came home.
Just like Ellie, he was broken. Like a tree after a storm. Hurt and afraid, skittish like one of his animals that he rescues. But unlike Ellie, he healed. Or at least he started to.
And then…
And then Adam took him away.
Because the Rowan let him come home too.
Fae trees are loyal. Once they trust someone, that bond is for life. The Rowan had accepted Adam. Trusted him. And for the first time, its trust has been betrayed.
It believed in humans. Saw the good in them. Let them into its world. Let them become part of its life. Of its magic. It believed in their potential. And it saw the value in them, even in their brief lives, like the butterflies or the birds or even the tiny fireflies that found their way to its branches the moment the first blossoms unfurled. Even the fae come and go, under the watch of the trees who guard them. And all of those centuries are contained in the Rowan’s memories as surely as the life it has lived in this land.
The Rowan has seen hurt and pain and loss. But this is the first time it has seen its own magic turned against it.
And it knows that the next time it sees Adam, it will make sure that he understands one very simple thing. It may not be able to speak, but there will be no denying the point it needs to make.
The Rowan wishes it had never given him a second chance.