It’s not a big hole—just enough. I use my trowel at first, but soon I’m clawing with my bare hands, dirt caked under my fingernails. My palms sting, but I don’t stop.
When it’s deep enough, I pull my father’s seed journal from my satchel.
It’s old and soft at the edges now, corners frayed from years of being held too tightly. The pages still smell like him—peppermint and loam and faded ink. I press it to my chest one last time and whisper, “He believed in things no one else did.”
My throat tightens.
“And now I do too.”
I set the journal in the earth, spine facing up like a spine of some long-dead forest creature—and I bury it.
Slowly.
Carefully.
One handful of dirt at a time.
I don’t rush. I don’t cry.
Not this time.
This isn’t grief.
It’sa vow.
When I’m done, I sit back on my heels, brushing the dirt from my lap, and reach into my pocket. I pull out a single leaf.
Not just any leaf.
A cutting I’d taken from a vine Thorn once taught me to coax from stone—sharp-edged, green as envy, and old enough to remember the first spell ever whispered here.
I press the stem into the soil above the journal.
A leaf and a promise.
“That’s yours now,” I whisper. “Ours.”
The wind doesn’t stir.
But for the first time in days, I swear the Grove is listening again.
I sit in the quiet not expecting or hoping for anything.
But then the moss stirs beneath my knees.
The soil hums, soft at first—like a tuning fork beneath the skin. The roots below shift, gently, like stretching after a long sleep. I flinch, hands bracing on the ground.
Then the leaf I planted begins to glow.
A soft, warm green at first, like bioluminescence.
Then brighter.
It pulses once.
Twice.
And the light spreads—ribbons of magic uncoiling from the soil, weaving through the roots like silver veins. Flowers burst open where no flowers should grow. Vines coil up the sacred tree in thick braids, blooming wildly in shades I don’t have names for.
