Darkness had fallen while she was still retracing the tangled paths of memory. Exhausted, Goodtree fell into a fitful sleep in which her unconscious replayed all the incidents of her cubhood with implacable clarity. Only when the rising sun illuminated the grove with a glow that was almost silvery, as if it were being filtered through clouds, did she awaken, or rather, shift consciousness, for she could scarcely feel her body now.
That was the solution! It was the flesh she wore that prevented her from communicating with Stormlight and Tanner—she wondered why she had not understood that before. If she could leave the clumsy thing behind her, perhaps she could catch up with them.
Breathing slowed and grew shallower; sight fixed on the flutter of golden leaves and then lost focus; senses shut down until Goodtree was only a point of awareness hovering in a haze of light. But it was not enough for her to lose herself, however pleasant it might be. What she was seeking lay elsewhere. Her spirit strained like a pup struggling against the birth-caul, and suddenly she felt warmth like the she-wolf's tongue dissolving the last constrictions, and she was free.
**Mother? Father?** Familiar presences flowed comfortingly around her. **Myr ... Lhu ...** Goodtree recognized the two she had known as Tanner and Stormlight.
**We are here ... we have always been with you ... could you not feel our love?**
With that answer, Goodtree received from them a totality of acceptance that healed wounds that had festered in her spirit for far too long. Freed, she sank deeper into the magic, awareness expanding to encompass it. Myr and Lhu were only part of something larger, a multiplicity of glories which she gradually recognized as the essence of the world around her, as real as the physical appearances she had known.
And as she perceived them, Goodtree named them, understanding with that act the inner truth of tree and flower and stone. She knew how the rootlets of the grasses spread through the rich soil, sensed the absorption of nutrients from the earth and the transformation of sunlight into energy, and more deeply, the cell-deep changes that made the plant grow.
But the grasses were only marginally aware. It was far more rewarding to touch the deep enduring life of a tree, its spirit encircled with rings of memory. Now, the tree's upper branches rustled and swayed in the wind, but its trunk recorded its biography. One year had been dry and hard, another so cold that heartwood cracked; lightning had scored a shapely trunk, and the tree was still slowly curling bark over the scar; floods had bared roots and torn branches away. All these things Goodtree remembered, and with them understood the internal patterning that enabled the tree to adjust to trauma and still continue to grow.
Some emptiness within her that no bond with elf or wolf had been able to fill accepted union with the trees and was satisfied. And in that knowledge she understood her own essence at last and named it.
Neme! I am Neme! And this is my true home!
Neme perceived the minimal life-processes of her own body, and understood how its elements would nourish the trees around her when the last tenuous connection between flesh and spirit faded away. Then she would be part of the grove forever. She would never again have to deal with failure or loneliness or fear.
Seeking that union, Neme's spirit quested outward. Beyond the Golden Grove, oak and beech woods whispered the same response to the rising wind. She felt their movement as if she herself were moving, sensed their leaves' adjustment as clouds dimmed the light, knew the strength that rooted them, understood even the layering of soils and the structure of underlying stone.
Ever more widely her spirit expanded. Now she perceived the roots of the mountains, where hidden earth-fires burned still. Awareness identified Acorn and Lionleaper, keeping their patient vigil beside the wolves, and felt them flinch beneath the first stinging drops of rain. Neme sensed how the land folded downward to the pass and without surprise she perceived the Wolfriders camped beside the stream.
The rain fell with a sudden fury, and the elves and wolves scurried for the dubious shelter of the bank. Neme's body was wet now as well, but that did not concern her. She was too fascinated by the way the leaves gave to the pressure of the rain, and the soil absorbed the water that fell.
Here at the top of the world, the soil was stretched as thin across the stone as the skin of a starved beast over its bones. Water soaked swiftly into what earth there was, and when the soil could contain no more, began to pool in hollows and sheet across bare stone. She rejoiced as thunderclaps shook the heavens, rock trembled, and more rain poured down.
The little stream was becoming a torrent. Water leaped from every outcropping, scoured every crevice, funneled through every fold in the stone, tugging loose pebbles, leaves, and fallen branches free and carrying them onward, at first sluggishly, and then with gathering power.
The flood grew quickly. In the time it would have taken an elf to shoot a quiverful of arrows and gather them up again, the stream had changed from trickle to torrent. Now the upper canyon roared with the rush of swirling waters. Small branches gouged at the banks and tangled in larger ones to form temporary dams until the growing force of the waters blasted both free. Collecting and bursting in stages the river rushed downward, scouring all that lay in its path, and Neme's spirit shared the explosion of raw energy.
**When the waters reach the pass, the Wolfriders will be swept away...** came the thought of her mother. The statement held neither accusation nor sorrow. It was simply an observation, leaving her own response free. Neme felt a tremor shake her spirit as emotions she thought she had left behind her with her body stirred. Why should the plight of bodied creatures move her?
**If the flood takes them they will only be transformed, and become as we are now...** she protested.
**Those who were left behind cannot survive without them,** came her father's reply. **The Wolfriders will be no more.**
In the canyon, the waters roared like a longtooth balked of prey. The communication of the elves was timeless, but the flood was growing fast.
**Isn't it better to be like this, without the anxiety of the search for food and shelter, the body's pain at wounds and the spirit's pain at loss?** Was she arguing with her parents or with herself, now?
**Or without the pleasure of tasting fresh meat, feeling the warm caress of the sun or the cool kiss of rain, without the delight of a lover's touch and the warm weight of a cub in your arms?** Emotion throbbed in her mother's thought now.
**We chose the adventure of living as physical creatures! Without that, we could not be what we are now!** her father added passionately. **If the tribe dies, all that we have suffered and learned will have been in vain!**
But it was her mother's words that struck home, as truly as one of Stormlight's spears. Memory was like a fire exploding through Goodtree's being. Vividly she remembered Lionleaper's strength and Acorn's sensitivity. Joygleam's dour fortitude and Freshet's unflagging humor; from the oldest beard to the smallest tousle-headed cub she remembered them, and as a mother loves her cub she loved them, knowing all their faults and virtues, and all at once her own fears were forgotten in a greater agony.
As if a bowstring drawn to the breaking point had been suddenly released, Goodtree's spirit snapped back to her body again. She convulsed and moaned, soaked and shaking with cold, so confused by the abruptness of her transition that for precious moments she was not sure where she was or why.
Then a fresh gust of wind sent needles of rain against her, and she pushed herself upright with a cry. The grove was a maelstrom of thrashing branches, and the wind howled louder than any wolves. She strove to focus her will, sending with all her strength to Joygleam, Chipper—any of the elves in the pass.
But they were too far, or perhaps too distracted by the storm, to hear. Gathering her strength once more, she reached outward to the peak above the valley, and was rewarded by an incredulous response from Acorn.