Krysty ran on, feeling her lungs burn in her chest. She shouted to herself, trying to drive the maddening voice from her head. It was no use; she continued to hear it plainly.
“Nothing,” the voice shrilled, “you’ve done nothing for Gaia, but you’ve expected everything in return. Now Gaia will have her own back.”
A summer storm gathered in the orange sky above in a heartbeat. The wind picked up speed, becoming a raging vortex that sucked cankerous clouds into the area overhead that looked like a collection of bruised boils.
Ryan turned then and came running back to her. His face was a mask of concern, given darkness by his black eye patch.
Tears streamed down Krysty’s face as she reached for her lover. But a white-hot lightning bolt sizzled down to touch her with its caress. The world exploded in a bright flash of incandescence. She dropped, seemingly lifeless, to the ground, unable to control her body anymore. She felt the grass curl away beneath her, pulling back into the ground.
“Somebody help me!” Ryan shouted, kneeling beside Krysty. “Mildred!”
Mildred rushed over and grabbed Krysty’s wrist.
Krysty’s eyes remained opened. She saw everything that was going on, but she couldn’t move. And she couldn’t feel. That was the worst thing of all. She knew Ryan was holding her head in his lap, but she couldn’t feel him at all.
“She’s dead,” Mildred replied. “I’m sorry, Ryan, but she’s dead and there’s not a thing I can do about it.” Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes, then spilled down her cheeks.
“No,” Ryan said hoarsely. “She can’t be dead. I won’t let her be dead.”
“You don’t have a choice,” the Trader said, stepping up somewhere from behind the companions.
Krysty thought it was strange that she hadn’t seen the old man earlier, but she’d seen stranger things in the past few minutes.
“You take her any farther from this spot, you’d just be carrying a corpse on your back. But you aren’t going to leave here without burying her,” the Trader said. “None of those people who traveled with me are ever going to be left behind without a proper hole to be covered up in. Won’t allow it.”
Krysty watched, unable even to blink, as Ryan and the others dug a hole for her. She wanted to cry, but even that was kept from her. She prayed to Gaia to have mercy on her, but only silence greeted her prayers.
The hole was finished in short time, only things didn’t go exactly as Krysty thought they would. They put her in the grave, but they put her in it standing up, like they had dug a well instead of a gravesite.
She lay back against the side of the strange grave, looking up at the man she loved and the best friends she had ever made, listening to Doc say words over her as if she really were gone.
“I am reminded at this time,” Doc said, his white hair whipping around his face, “how we humans have a span of time between two eternities, and into that last eternity we now send reluctantly one of ours, she who was like a flame that could warm and burn and heal. May your emerald eyes light the ways of angels. Gaia keep you in her graces, dear sweet Krysty.”
Krysty tried to move, but her limbs lay leaden. She tried to shout, but her voice stayed removed from her. Then a wild burning began in her toes. They moved. At first she thought her paralysis was draining away. But that was before she felt her toes elongating and stabbing deep into the rich, dark earth. Her arms rose at her sides, reaching toward the sky above. Somehow the rain clouds had all blown away, leaving only the dreadful orange sky above.
Her skin sloughed away, revealing hard bark beneath. Ryan and the others stepped back, their faces dropping in shock at what was happening.
And Krysty continued to grow. Her arms split out and became branches that changed the course of the mild breezes blowing over the garden. Her hair became foliage festooned with bright blossoms. Mixed in with her branches, though, were whiplike, barbed appendages that coiled restlessly.