Rootbound

“He will get over you. But you have to let him go. You have to make him see you will not change your mind.” Peta pressed the side of her face against my cheek, rubbing gently.

She was right, and it was time I cut him loose. Told him to go his own way, find his own life and his own love, and forget about me and any foolish dreams he had of making a relationship work between us.

There would be no home for me, not like he meant. I would return to the Rim, always. But my feet no longer needed the feel of the forest under them. Not the way the other Terralings did. With Spirit running through my veins, the world was open to me. I was not bound to one place as the other elementals were.

I drew in the breath to say the words that would send Cactus away. Hard words that made me pause as they rested on the tip of my tongue.

A crack of lightning over our heads lit up the air with electricity, and the treetops seemed to shudder in fear. My hair rose, floating on the breeze around my face, and I immediately tapped into the earth, grounding me solidly.

Power flooded me, pushing away thoughts of Cactus. I sank my feet into the soil, and held myself steady. There was no way some errant Sylph was going to rip me from the ground and bat me around like a kitty toy.

Another crack of lightning followed by a boom of thunder kept me where I was, hanging onto the earth, prepping myself for a fight. But no Sylph appeared.

“Perhaps we should take shelter,” Cactus said over the rising wind. He had no idea I’d even tapped into the earth. That was a gift only I had: the ability to see when other elementals were about to use their power.

Slowly I let go of the power beneath my feet. It probably said something that I immediately thought the storm was elemental-made, and designed to kick my ass, when in fact, it was nothing more than a bad storm.

Clouds rolled as though they boiled, and the lightning picked up speed along with the thunder. Each boom shook my body, echoing inside my chest like a mighty drum. The smell of ozone filled the air, teasing my nose with its acrid scent.

Cactus trotted ahead of me, straight for a driveway that wound through the trees, stopping when he waved at a human’s cabin sitting on the edge of a ravine, facing west, the direction the storm rolled from.

I say cabin, but the place was closer to a mansion. Two stories, the entire front of the house was windows and a large deck wrapped around the whole thing. I followed, slowly, while the wind whipped around me, tugging at my clothes and limbs. The gale came sharply, the wind smacked and pulled me sideways.

The windows of the house blinked like oversized eyes as they caught the shadows and light of the clouds rolling by, malignant and evil, the deck like a strange wooden mouth waiting to snare me when I stepped onto it.

The past haunts you. You know that. The voice was my own, no other. But of a saner me, a kinder me. The girl I’d left behind when I’d stepped out of the oubliette the first time. A girl I wasn’t sure even existed, it had been so long since I’d heard her voice. Certainly not after my second round in the oubliette. Punishment for helping Rylee save a child from a shadow walker. I shook my head. The world was far from fair. I knew that.

But just once, I’d like it to swing in my favor.

Peta leapt from my shoulder and shifted into her snow leopard form. Hurrying ahead of me, she was on the steps of the porch before she paused and looked back.

“Lark.”

“I’m not going in there.” I angled toward the space under the large deck. Cactus laughed and I ignored him. The very thought of stuffing myself into a man-made house sent my heart rate skyrocketing like a hummingbird’s.

The space between the bottom of the deck and earth was about three feet high. Big enough for me to slip in and find a pillar of wood to put my back against. I ducked under, wiping away the cobwebs that brushed across my face, and the smell of small animals that had used the space as a shelter. I settled down, sinking my feet and ass into the loose dirt as an anchor in case the wind managed to tug on me.

Peta crept in with me, her eyes worried, but she said nothing, only lay at my side and put her head onto my lap. A soft purr rumbled through her. I placed my hand on her back, her presence soothing me.

“I missed you so very much, my friend,” I whispered.

She flipped a big paw over my thigh. “Never again, Lark. Where you go, I go, no matter the consequences. I cannot live with my heart missing from me. I will not do it again.”

I closed my eyes, leaned forward, and pressed my face into the back of her neck. “Let it be so.”

A tiny trill of agreement tripped out of her. I sat up, opened my eyes, and fought not to grab my spear.

Cactus peered over the lip of the deck, hanging upside down, smiling. But the smile looked like a frown, a death mask with his white teeth grinning and his hair stuck up all over. I sucked in a sharp breath as he reached out for me.

“Come inside, Lark. There are beds and the walls keep the wind out.”

Beds. Did he think I was going to fall into his arms and strip off my clothes? Idiot.

“No.”

“You’re just being stubborn again. You don’t need to. I know you’re tough. I know you are strong and beautiful. You don’t need to prove anything to me.” He dropped over the edge, flipping in the air so he landed in a crouch. He rubbed his hands into the soil, and a trickle of green ran down his arms.

“Making me flowers isn’t going to change my mind,” I said.

He startled. “How did you know?”

I shrugged. “A gift.”

He smiled. “So not a surprise, but you deserve it anyway.” A multitude of flowers erupted from the soil on long stalks, blooming around me in a matter of seconds. In under a minute the tiny space was full of every spring flower, every color, every scent from lavender to rose. Some I’d seen and some I’d not, some I had no idea what they were, which was impressive.