Today, September 10th, 2023, Rachel Griffin meets two people who will go on to change the course of her life (in the case of one of them, literally.)
Here is how it begins:
The Tree rose, a vast gray-black and knobbly wall of bark. Rachel eagerly breathed in a sweet smell. The air was filled with a perfume like wild flowers mingled with the most aromatic of spices. The scent was glorious.
Then she felt it again, only ten times stronger. The hush; the anticipation; the undercurrent of rising excitement, like an electrical charge searing the air.
The Folk of the Forest were near.
Every nerve alert, Rachel slowly moved her bristleless forward. Her gaze flickered here and there, taking in everything. She replayed her memory constantly, to be sure her senses were not ensorcelled. The farther she went, the stronger grew the presence of fey. Never, even near the dryad who lived in the old oak behind Gryphon Park, had she felt anything like this.
Something amazing was near. Amazing or terrifying.
Huge roots stretched from the bottom of the tree, big snaking lengths of wood as high as her knee. Near where they met the trunk, they rose even higher than her head. Between these living fences grew herbs—though not in rows, like a human garden—meandering, wild.
Rachel’s hands tightened on the handlebars. She recognized the plant with the frosty pattern on its lacy, moon-pale leaves. It was manahrim. Only in the secret Compendium of Arcane Wisdom her grandfather had kept hidden, even in his private library, had she seen mention of it. She flew lower, peering at the herbs. There was mavričin koren, also called rainbow root, whose existence was debated, even among the most learned scholars, and. . .
Her brow furrowed as she looked at the plants. She did not know that one.
Or that one.
Or. . .
Floating over great wall-like roots, Rachel gazed across the gardens. Dozens of plants bloomed here that she had never seen—not in all the encyclopedias and botany books she had perused in the many libraries she had visited, not even in her grandfather’s secret compendiums.
What did this mean?
Everything was so lush, so alive. As Rachel breathed in again, exhilaration rushed through her trembling limbs. She felt wide awake and, yet, as if she were dreaming. Walking through the dreamlands with Zoë Forrest had felt a bit like this. Happiness burst within her like a fountain. What manner of wonderland had they stumbled upon?
Then she froze.
In the Tree was a hollow.
Not a little crack, like the den where she had left the toffee, this crevice sank deep into the Tree. It was nine feet tall, its edges rounded with thick bark. Rachel hooked her feet onto the brass footholds on the back of her steeplechaser, and darted back a good ten feet.
If all tree hollows were home to the fey, what lived in this one?
“Siggy! Nastasia! Come quickly!” she shouted in great excitement.
“Coming!” Sigfried’s voice echoed in the distance.
Out from the giant hollow stepped a being. Its face was turned away, but the shell-like ears that poked through the long fern-green hair ended in delicate points.
An elf.
But not any earthly elf.
Read more in The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel