The Dryad's Sacrifice Prologue and Read Challenge

Preface

I sit with my good hand shielding my eyes from the cheerful light of the glowing lichen orbs sitting on the mage’s makeshift desk. I am too weary to feel anything beyond the steady throbbing of my broken leg as it stretches out on the bed before me.

“Eliza.”

The remembered sounds of war drown out my whisper as I stare at the blackness of my eyelids. I squeeze my eyes against the sudden tears gathering at their corners and sigh in frustration.

“Why don’t you begin at the beginning?” Jocelana says gently.

I lower my hand and stare at her a moment. Her head is still wrapped in a linen bandage, although it is smaller than the one she wore the first day we met. She looks as tired and worn with grief as I do, but she smiles her encouragement nonetheless.

For a moment, I try to speak and hear no sound. Then all at once, the words come—tumbling from my mouth like a river no longer barred by a dam and I feel a sudden freedom in my thoughts’ confession.

“I barely remember my sister’s smiling face, just the sweet scent of her green feet when she would run through the grass and leaves without sandals. I think of her often, especially when the wind cries like an injured bird among the leaves of my birth tree at twilight. Then I climb high among the boughs and sing out her name in time with the rhythm of the distant whispering pines. Sometimes the forest will call back to me, but most often the trees and breeze simply stop their ceaseless swaying for a moment out of respect for that which was lost and can never be found.

“I seek the comfort of my home in my birth oak then—merging with its core and snuggling deep beneath its protective bark all the way to the roots in search of solace. Such peace is difficult to find even when I burrow so deep. And still the echoes of her quiet laughter tease me with every rustle of my home oak’s leaves.

“It was shocking to see the lifeless state of her birth oak, and it will be more terrible still to gaze at the towering pine marking her final resting place, but I will make the pilgrimage between trees nonetheless to strengthen my resolve against our enemies. I will walk each spruce-length barefoot so that I can better remember our brief time together and tell others once again about the thrill of adventure and the fear of being hunted that early autumn day…”

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