Chương 123: The Nature of the Fetch

"Yes, what you're asking about it possible," the Eldest said, leading Miriam through the woods once more.

"We move within the Mind. But it is something we are born with - we have little control."

"Meaning?" Miriam asked.

"Your friend would experience all the worst things there are about allowing a Fetch to touch your mind," the Eldest said with a lilt of humor in its voice.

"We could not stop that process if we wanted to."

"Ah. He would never agree to that," Miriam said sadly.

"Whatever happened to him so long ago left a serious mark." The Eldest nodded.

"There are few among us still alive who remember his last visit. It has stuck with us, mainly because of the agreement he struck with the Merrow to be safe from us on his way out. That almost never happens - and we almost never grant that sort of protection." Miriam whirled.

"You were here for it? You know what happened?" The Eldest leveled its dead eyes at her.

"Of course. I was a part of it." Miriam hesitated. Should she really pry into Eoin's trauma? It would be far better if he decided to tell her himself, but she didn't have the time for him to trust her with the story. Ultán had been right about how much she was valuing propriety over her own life.

"Will you tell me what happened?" The Eldest shrugged.

"It was much like anyone who wanders into our forest. We showed him echoes of his own death, over and over again."

"So what was different this time."

"He simply did not die." The Eldest directed Miriam to turn at a fork in the path.

"If I am being honest with you Miriam, his fate among us was worse than anyone else's has ever been. For most, they see the vision of their deaths, and slowly each possibility winks out until the reality - them dead at our hands - sets in."

"And Eoin?"

"We spent months in his head, Miriam," The Eldest said without a hint of regret or apology.

"Months."

"Oh gods," Miriam breathed.

"How did he survive?"

"We don't know," the Eldest said.

"Perhaps it is related to how he's managed to live so long with so little apparent aging. Eventually he crawled his way out of the forest into the Merrow village. He was stark raving mad at that point." She shook her head.

"Ultán thinks I should try to force the issue, but after what you just told me… how could I ask him to go through that, just to help me?" The Eldest stopped for a moment, giving Miriam an odd look.

"Eoin Daithi is the most powerful Sidhe we've ever seen in these woods. A man with strength like that, with the will to endure months of our worst torture… I do not believe there is anything you could make him do if he did not wish it."

"That's true," Miriam said.

"But I feel like I've been using his strength as an excuse to treat him as if he wasn't a person. We're in a very messed up situation thanks to the Eternal King, but that isn't Eoin's fault. He doesn't owe me anything." The Eldest shrugged again.

"We are of the forest. Nothing you people talk about makes any real sense to us." Eager to change the subject Miriam gestured around her.

"I always enjoy our walks, Eldest, but why have you taken me so far out? We've never been this way before." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. The Eldest paused.

"I wanted to show you something no outsider has ever seen. Not just because you are a Rebirth Ascendant. But because you are a dryad. It may help you understand us better." Miriam was immediately intrigued. The Fetch might be terrified of her, but they were still endlessly fascinating. There was a strange ethereal quality to them that had nothing to do with their ability to become incorporeal. They were both all Mind and nearly Mindless.

"What is it you're showing me?" The Eldest seemed to ignore the question.

"Do you wonder why we do not venture out into the world?"

"Why you stick to the Fetchwoods? I suppose I assumed it was just your home. That you had no reason to want to leave."

"That is true, but there is more to it than that. These woods are not normal. Perhaps you have noticed?"

"The trees talk to me," Miriam said, running her hand over the trunk of a young yarrow tree. She felt its emotion: greeting.

"That's never happened anywhere else."" Tree," the Eldest corrected.

"The roots of the Fetchwood run far deeper than any forest I know of out in the world. But if you were to somehow follow them down through the earth you would find that they are all jumbled. Connected. Doesn't matter if it's oak, or ask, or yarrow or pine. They all shared the same root system. They are all one tree." Miriam gaped.

"That's… incredible. Is that true?" She touched the nearest tree. True. Am one, but many.

"The next part of this will help explain further," the Eldest said.

"We are here. Observe." The Eldest and Miriam stood in front of a withered old tree that must have been mighty in its heyday, but now sat dry and rotten, leaning listlessly in the soil. Miriam began to ask more questions, when she noticed the bark of the tree begin to shift. The outer layer of the soft wood started to peel away, and a shower of dry rot began to shake itself loose. Miriam gasped when a pale, nearly formless hand wrenched its way out of the wood.

Another followed, then she was horrified to see her own dead face push its way through, the tree shattering gently as a Fetch pulled itself free. It glared at Miriam and hissed, its hands reaching out. The Eldest made a loud barking sound at the Fetch and it stopped in its tracks. It looked again at Miriam with fearful uncertainty, then turned and fled into the woods.

"What… I don't understand," Miriam said.

"Fetch are born of the trees?" The Eldest gestured around itself, at the entirety of the forest.

"I will tell you what I believe. This forest is a Sacred Tree trying to be. I do not know if all the other Sacred Trees have gone about this process the same way, but this is what this one is doing. Underneath the lake the Merrow tend to the Home Root. It is the source of all these roots and trees in the forest around us."

"That's incredible!" Miriam said, touching another tree.

"You're becoming a Sacred Tree?" Doing my best!

"But how are the Fetch related? Why do they come from the dead trees?" The Eldest smiled - a ghastly sight from Miriam's own dead mouth.

"We told you before that you are what we are meant to be. We didn't mean Rebirth Ascendants - though the essence of Rebirth lives in what you are already."

"Dryads? You're supposed to be dryads?" Miriam couldn't wrap her head around anything she was being told.

"Sacred Trees produce dryads," the Eldest said, a strange, sad tone to its voice.

"We, I fear, are failures." The tree under Miriam's hand also pulsed sadly and repeated itself, but with a clearly more somber tone. Doing my best.

"It is as you are learning in your training," the Eldest said.

"No great outcomes result from perfect beginnings. It is sad for us to be less than we were supposed to be. It's also sad to us that we won't ever ourselves see the true form we were meant to be. To be born with an unreachable goal is certainly a cruelty. But that we are born at all is something to celebrate. And each new Fetch that is born grows closer and closer to what we are meant to be." Miriam shook her head, amazed.

"If there is anything I can do to help…" The Eldest showed a strange sort of half-smile.

"There might be, one day. For now it's a pleasure to know you, and to see what the future might hold for my kind." You have spoken with my sister-to-be? The tree under Miriam's hand pulsed with communicative emotions.

"To Sailleach? Yes, at the end of the last ring," Miriam replied.

"I will likely speak to her again when I move into the Third." Ask her… if I'm doing a good job. Miriam felt tears come unbidden to her eyes. This forest was doing its best, but she couldn't help but feel like it was getting so much wrong. Worse, she felt like she knew why. There were no Sacred Trees in the Outer Rings. The fórsa was simply too thin.

"I will ask. But I can tell you now, you're doing wonderfully. You just need to keep working. You will get where you need to be some day. And you know what?" she asked, thinking of her own struggles with attaining perfection.

"I will too."