Daphne and the Silver Ash: A Fairy Tale Read online

  Chapter 5

  Atop the Silver Ash

  Daphne raced across the rooftops of Trevell, leaping from eaves to peaks to chimneys to gutters as she worked her way up the great hilly streets toward the square and the park and the tree. The cool morning air rippled through her feathery tresses and several times she heard a startled shout from below as she leapt across a lane, but she paid them no mind and raced on. It was hard not to think about the doctor’s words, about her fluttering heart and thin breaths, about the doom that awaited her, so she turned her thoughts to Justin and little Violet and how much she wanted to go home to them and forget that any of this had ever happened.

  Soon. Soon this will be over and I’ll be safe and sound at home. Bryn has the answers!

  At the top of the hill Daphne slowed down and made her way carefully along a hard shingled roof to the edge of the square where she could see the Silver Ash gleaming in the gray morning sunlight. The green park was empty except for a few scattered twigs and leaves that shivered in the breeze. Four soldiers stood guard around the park, two at the east gate and two at the west gate, all of them armed with battered old swords at their hips and broken old muskets in their hands.

  But Daphne wasn’t near the east or west gates. Her hiding place was on the south side of the park, and there were no guards looking in her direction.

  If I’m fast and quiet, I can leap between them. I can!

  She watched the square below, but there were no people milling about on the streets here. No children playing, no one working. Taking a deep breath, Daphne ran down the roof and leapt with all her might. She flew over the street, over the little brick wall, over the green grass, and she landed softly at the foot of the tree. Without thinking, she sprang upward a second time and found herself perched in the pale branches of the Silver Ash itself.

  For a moment she felt guilty as though she had broken an unspoken sacred rule. She had never touched the Silver Ash before, and no one had ever climbed it, at least not that she knew about. But the feeling passed and she began to climb up and up where the branches and leaves were thickest and would hide her from the guards and anyone else who happened to look up at the tree. If there had been anyone around to look.

  When she was settled deep in a crux between two thick branches, Daphne looked down at the trunk of the Silver Ash and called out softly, “Bryn? Bryn, can you hear me?”

  A moment later the willowy white figure stepped out from behind the tree as though she had simply been standing on the other side all along and Daphne watched the top of her head as the nymph paced around the tree, looking left and right for the voice calling her name.

  “Bryn, I’m up here.”

  The tree spirit did not glance up, but she did nod as she turned and walked back around the tree. And just as she vanished from sight down on the ground she stepped out of the branches beside Daphne, again as though she had been standing there all along, just waiting to come out. She sat down among the silver leaves, her pale green eyes wide with sorrow. “I’m glad they didn’t hurt you. I’m afraid, Daphne.”

  “I know you are, but I’m going to find a way to put everything right again,” Daphne said. She held up the glass box containing the doctor’s withering silver leaf. “Do you remember this?”

  Bryn nodded. “The leaf I gave to the doctor. The old doctor.”

  “That’s right. Nicodemus told me that this leaf has been alive and well in this box for three centuries, but something changed ten years ago. The leaf began to darken and shrivel up. Why? What’s happening to the Silver Ash? Are you ill? Is the tree really dying?”

  Bryn nodded as a single bright tear rolled down her cheek. “Yes, it is.”

  “What?” Daphne felt a hollow chill in her stomach. “Why didn’t you tell someone? We might have found a way to help, years ago when it first started happening.”

  The nymph sighed and shivered. “I don’t know. I was afraid. I didn’t want to believe that my tree was sick, that it was dying and that I was dying along with it. I couldn’t even say it out loud, not even to myself. So I didn’t say anything at all. I hoped it would just go away, that it would be all right, all on its own. But it didn’t go away. I’m so sorry.” She looked up into Daphne’s eyes and said, “Serafina, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”

  “No,” the phoenix whispered back. “It’s not your fault the tree is dying. And it’s not your fault for being afraid. But I wish you had told me. After all these centuries together, I wish you could have told me.”

  Bryn nodded. “Did you know, Daphne, that before I met Serafina I was just a little ash tree? I was immortal and I could speak to those who came to sit beneath my branches, but nothing more. And then a golden goose came to rest in my shade and we began to talk. We were both tired of always being the same, living the same day over and over again. So together, we discovered a way to grow and change.”

  “Rebirth?” Daphne asked.

  “Yes. Each time, we have both grown larger and stronger. My beautiful tree was soon four times as tall and all shining silver, and in time I learned to take this human form. Serafina grew as well and became the mistress of both air and fire. People came, and the city of Trevell grew up around us, and it too shared in our renewal each century.” Bryn shivered. “But as each century ended, we both faded, becoming weaker. And now, we need our rebirth not just to grow but to survive as well. We may no longer even be truly immortal anymore. Daphne, I’m so afraid.”

  Daphne took the nymph’s white hand in her own golden one and said, “Bryn, why is your tree dying? Maybe we can still stop this. Did something happen ten years ago to cause this?”

  “Something came,” Bryn said, nodding. “Something very old and very powerful. A great spirit, greater than Serafina, greater than me.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. It lives deep in the earth, deep down beneath my roots. I felt it come. I heard it moving through the earth. I had hoped it would keep moving, that it would go away, but it didn’t. It stayed there. It’s down there right now.”

  Daphne glanced down at the green grass as though she might stare down through the earth and see whatever was lurking underground. “Then the first thing we need to do is find this spirit and make it leave.”

  The phoenix asked, “How do we look for something underground?”

  “There are tunnels,” Bryn said. “There are ancient tunnels running under the city, all through the hill from one end to the other. The first people of Trevell buried their dead in those tunnels, but they stopped using them long ago, walled them up, and forgot they were there. If you go to the west side of the city, all the way to the outer wall, you will find an old cherry tree standing in the hard clay. There should be a small opening in the ground there, a hole. It will take you into the tunnels.”

  Daphne peered out of the tree branches at the distant western wall of the city. “How do you know all this? I thought you lived here, in the ash tree, always.”

  “I do,” the nymph said. “I’ve never strayed more than a few paces from the Silver Ash. But I can see from every high leaf in her branches, and I can feel with every root sunk deep underground. I know every growing thing in Trevell, every tree and flower and vine. I can feel them drinking up the water and stretching high and low through the air and earth. I’ve known the old cherry tree by the western wall since before your grandmother was born.”

  Daphne wondered for a moment what that might feel like, to be friends with the all the green growing things throughout an entire city, but she couldn’t begin to imagine it. And with her heart pattering away in her chest, she found it hard to focus on anything at all. “All right then. I’ll go down into the tunnels and I’ll find the spirit that’s hurting the Silver Ash. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. Everything will be all right soon. I promise.”

  Bryn nodded. And as Daphne stood up, the little nymph leapt up and threw her pale arms around the golden woman. Daphne held her close, realizin
g for the first time that this ancient spirit was so small, so fragile, like a child.

  Like Violet.

  The realization made her want to stay and hold her all the more, to be the mother or sister or friend that this poor creature needed. But she knew she had to leave. She had to hurry.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Daphne promised. She slipped away to the end of a long branch and looked down at the guards by the western gate of the park. Their backs were turned, but that could change very quickly, she knew. As quiet as a cat, she dropped down to the soft green grass and walked toward the backs of the guards. Beyond the two men, the rooftops beckoned to her with the promise of safety. Daphne crouched in the grass, just behind the gate, and then leapt high in the air, sailing far across the square and landing gently on the hard shingles of a small house. But her foot slipped and she fell to one knee and cried out as her shin struck the roof.

  The guards down at the gate shouted and she heard their ancient muskets clattering in their hands. Without pausing to look back, Daphne dashed away along the peak of the roof and vaulted off the crumbling stone chimney to the next house, and the next, and the next. She didn’t stop running until she had crossed four streets and could no longer hear the men shouting at all and she found herself in a strange part of the city she had never visited before.

  Nineteen years and she had only seen half of Trevell, or maybe less than half. It had never occurred to her as a child to go exploring because there had never seemed to be anything worth discovering. Whenever she had ventured more than a few streets away from her home, she had found only more aging houses, more busy people, and more grime plastered into every nook and cranny. No friend had ever come running around to tell her in excited whispers about a mysterious person or place that needed to be seen or investigated. And none of the fairy tales her mother told her ever described secret passages or cellars full of treasure in any place resembling a city. So while her dreams and songs took her far away on sailing ships to desert palaces and wintry mountains where princes and barbarians fought valiant battles, she never thought to find anything in Trevell but crumbling stones and tired faces.

  But now as she stood tall on a strange roof in a strange quarter of the city, she began to wish she had been more curious, or mischievous, or suspicious. Anything at all that might have given her a glimpse of these streets and houses before she found herself crowned in ruby feathers high on an old chimney with the wind whispering in her ear.

  With only the sun for her guide, Daphne walked along the roofs of Trevell, skipping across the alleys and streets and seeing nothing of interest aside from the occasional dog or covered well or rattling tinker’s cart. It took her most of an hour but she eventually reached the western wall of the city and began padding along its rough and ragged top, peering down at the hard dry earth in search of Bryn’s cherry tree. It was now early autumn and she knew she would see no cherry blossoms and perhaps not even any cherries if the ravens had found them. Still she hoped to glimpse a few dark red spots in the shadows below and not have to rely on her fuzzy memory of what a cherry tree leaf looked like.

  After treading the top of the western wall for half an hour, with the sun nearing its midday zenith somewhere high beyond the iron gray clouds blanketing the sky, Daphne looked down and saw a single glimmer of red among a few green leaves below her. She hopped down from the wall and landed on a lumpy slope of hard earth where no grass grew and she found a small, stunted cherry tree huddled just beside the wall, its thin and crooked branches stretched eastward to catch what few rays of sunlight fell upon that place.

  “And now for the cave, or tunnel, or whatever it is.” Daphne crouched down and frowned at the ground. It looked solid enough from left to right and clear down to the wall itself. Only a handful of small stones poked up through the dirt.

  “Hey.” It was a small voice, a young voice, very far away.

  Daphne turned to see a little girl staring at her. She was hiding behind the corner of a house and peeking out at the golden lady by the old cherry tree. “Hello.” Daphne smiled and waved.

  The little girl vanished around the corner of the house and Daphne sighed as she resumed staring at the hard clay at her feet, searching for the opening to Bryn’s tunnels. She was still searching when she heard a tumult of voices and she looked up just in time to see two, three, four soldiers in faded red uniforms run around the edge of the distant house. The little girl was with them, and she pointed at Daphne.

  “Oh no,” Serafina whispered.

  “How did they find us so fast?” Daphne watched the men break into a sprint, running straight for her. They were still very far off, nearly half a minute away even running as fast as they were, and she knew now that she could leap away to the safety of the rooftops at the very last moment. Unless they tried to use their old muskets, they could not touch her.

  “They must be the guards from the western gate of the city,” the phoenix said.

  Daphne nodded and looked back down at the earth. There were only a few moments remaining but still she stayed, searching, searching for the hidden entrance to the tunnel. But there was nothing there. No mossy overhang, no sharp depression, no mysterious ring of mushrooms. It was just a gentle slope of hard, unbroken clay and stone.

  With a great weight in her heart, Daphne backed away toward the little cherry tree and the wall, readying herself for her next escape across the roofs, when her heel caught on a root of the old tree and she fell back on her rear end right against the western wall. And there, back in the shadows, right under the tangled and exposed roots of the cherry tree, she saw the hole.

  Her heart fluttering with panic, she looked up to see that the soldiers were nearly there, nearly on top of her. She had only a few seconds left, barely enough time to jump to safety and no time at all to wriggle into a narrow gap in the earth. A picture flashed through her mind, the image of herself struggling to crawl into the hole and the soldiers grabbing her legs and pulling her back out again.

  No, no, it isn’t fair! I’ve found it! And if I run away now, they might leave a guard here at the tree just because I came here. This is my only chance. It has to be now!

  Daphne shoved herself headfirst down into the dark gap in the earth. The cherry tree’s roots clawed and pricked her back and legs and she grabbed the cold, smooth clay and pulled, pulled, pulled herself forward and down into the darkness. She kicked her feet, fearing the moment when a hand would grab her ankle and she would be caught, but no hand caught her and she slid down into the shadows, skidding down a cold smooth slope of earth and stone into darkness.