“It’s breaking free,” the sylvan said quietly.
Nest stared wordlessly at the jagged rifts in the old tree’s skin, unable to look away. The ground about the oak was dry and cracked, and there were roots exposed, the wood mottled and diseased.
“Why is this happening?” she asked in a whisper.
Pick shrugged. “Something is attacking the magic. Maybe the shift in the balance of things has weakened it. Maybe the feeders have changed their diet. I don’t know. I only know we have to find a way to stop it.”
“Can we do that?”
“Maybe. The fissures are recent. But the damage is far more extensive than I have ever seen before.” He shook his head, then glanced left and right into the trees about them. “The feeders sense it. Look at them.”
Nest followed his gaze. Feeders lurked everywhere in the shadows, hanging back in the gloom so that only their eyes were visible. There was an unmistakable eagerness in their gaze and in their furtive movements, an expectancy that was unsettling.
“What happens if the maentwrog breaks free?” she asked Pick softly, shivering with the feel of those eyes watching.
Pick cocked an eyebrow and frowned. “I don’t know. It’s been a prisoner of the tree for so long that I don’t think anyone knows. I also don’t think anyone wants to find out.”
Nest was inclined to agree. “So we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. What can I do to help?”
Pick jumped down from her shoulder to her arm, then scooted down her leg to the ground. “Bring me some salt. One of those big bags of the stuff they use in the water conditioners. Rock salt, if that’s all you can find. I’ll need a bag of compost, too. A wheelbarrow full. A bag of fertilizer or manure is okay. Pitch or tar, too. To fill in those splits.” He looked at her. “Do the best you can. I’ll stay here and work on strengthening the magic.”
Nest shook her head in dismay, looking back again at the tree. “Pick, what’s going on?”
The sylvan understood what she was asking. He tugged up his shirtsleeves angrily. “Some sort of war, I’d guess. What does it look like to you? Now get going.”
She took a deep breath and darted away through the trees. She raced down the narrow trail, heedless of the brambles and the stinging nettles that swiped at her. Even without hearing him speak the words, she could feel Pick urging her to hurry.
CHAPTER 12
Ten minutes later, she was racing up the gravel drive to Robert Heppler’s house. Cass Minter was closer, and Nest might have gone to her instead, but Robert was more likely to have what she needed. The Hepplers lived at the end of a private road off Spring Drive on three acres of woodland that bordered the park at its farthest point east, just up from the shores of the Rock River. It was an idyllic setting, a miniature park with great old hardwoods and a lawn that Robert’s dad, a chemical engineer by trade but a gardener by avocation, kept immaculate. Robert found his father’s devotion to yard work embarrassing. He was fond of saying his father was in long-term therapy to cure his morbid fascination with grass. One day he would wake up and discover he really wasn’t Mr. Green Jeans after all.
Nest reached the Heppler property by climbing a split-rail fence on the north boundary and sprinting across the yard to intercept the gravel drive on its way to the house. The house sat large and quiet in front of her, a two-story Cape Cod rambler with weathered shingle-shake sides and white trim. Patterned curtains hung in the windows, and flowers sprouted in an array of colors from wooden window boxes and planters. The bushes were neatly trimmed and the flower beds edged. The wicker porch furniture gleamed. All the gardening and yard tools were put away in the toolshed. Everything was in its place. Robert’s house looked just like a Norman Rockwell painting. Robert insisted that one day he would burn it to the ground.
But Nest spared little thought for the Heppler house today, Pick’s words and looks weighing heavily on her mind. She had seen Pick worried before, but never like this. She tried not to dwell on how sick the big oak looked, the rugged bark of its trunk split apart and oozing, its roots exposed in the dry, cracked earth, but the image was vivid and gritty in her mind. She raced up the Heppler drive, her shoes churning up the gravel in puffs of dust that hung suspended in the summer heat. Robert’s parents would be at work, both of them employed at Allied Industrial, but Robert should be home.