The Dreaming Root
1121 Words
Marella waited until the motel slept.
Even Isabella.
Especially Isabella.
She stood beneath the crooked frame of the back door, cloak drawn close, breath fogging in the chill. Her boots were already soaked. She hadn’t bothered to change them. Let the cold bite. Let the mud cling.
The path she took wasn’t visible to most eyes. It lay beneath the alley’s sagging bones and past rusted gates that groaned when no one touched them. She moved like she’d done this a hundred times before.
Because she had.
The last time had cost her a year of memory and the use of her left hand for three full moons.
This time, it would cost more.
Down past the crumbling church steps.
Through the iron hatch no one dared question.
And into the earth.
The catacombs beneath Duskend weren’t mapped. Weren’t blessed. They were older than any god worshipped in the city above. Their walls pulsed faintly with life that hadn’t seen sun since the first oath was broken.
She walked without light.
Marella lit no torch. She carried only a match—dipped in salt and blessed with blood. She struck it once against the stone.
The flame turned violet.
And the way opened.
Where before there had been solid wall, now there gaped a cavern of roots and bone, dripping with moss and breathless silence. The air changed—sweet and rotting at once. Like flowers laid on a grave.
She stepped inside.
Her breath hitched—but only once.
“Three years since you’ve come,” said the voice that rose from the dark. “I thought perhaps you’d finally let the girl burn.”
Marella didn’t answer right away. Her heart beat like a war drum. But her voice held steady.
“I didn’t come for riddles, Graymother.”
The creature that emerged from the shadows wasn’t human.
Not anymore.
She wore skin like parchment and eyes like moons eclipsed. Her hair hung in ropes down her spine, woven with charms—buttons, bones, baby teeth. Her feet were bare, but her presence filled the room. Power clung to her like mist on stone—unseen but impossible to ignore.
A lich-fey. Bound to root. Bound to ruin.
“You smell of grief,” Graymother said. “And guilt. Come, then. Spill it.”
Marella unfastened the clasp at her neck.
Underneath the cloak, nestled against her chest, was a locket.
Not silver. Not gold. Not any metal known aboveground.
It pulsed softly—once every few seconds. Not unlike the pendant Kael had carried. But older. Hungrier.
Graymother hissed through her teeth. “You brought it here?”
“I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
Marella stepped forward and placed the locket on the stone slab between them. Her fingers trembled. “The girl’s waking. Her blood remembers. The boy found her. The stone answered.”
“So?” Graymother circled the locket like a shark. “Let her run wild. Let the world bleed again.”
“You know why that can’t happen,” Marella snapped. “She’s unbound. Untethered. The Courts will smell her the moment she crosses the threshold of real power. They’ll cage her. Break her. Or worse—make her choose before she’s ready.”
“Then teach her to lie better.”
“She won’t lie,” Marella whispered. “Not once she knows. That’s what scares me.”
Graymother crouched low, fingers like roots caressing the locket. “And what is it you want, old friend? A shield? A blade? A thread to stitch back what time unraveled?”
“I want the seal reinforced. One last time.”
The words tasted like rust.
Silence.
Heavy.
The cave walls groaned. The moss turned inward on itself. Even the roots above them seemed to shiver.
“You’d put her back in the dark?” Graymother asked. “You’d hide her again?”
“I’d rather she live,” Marella said. “Even if she hates me for it.”
Graymother leaned in close, her breath like wet soil and candle ash.
“And what will you give me?”
Marella didn’t hesitate.
“My name.”
Graymother stilled.
“No games?”
“No riddles.”
“You’d walk nameless in the world above?”
“If it buys her time,” Marella said, “I’d walk forgotten.”
Graymother’s grin was slow and cruel. “You’ll fade. Quickly. Even she won’t recall you.”
“I know.”
“She’ll see you and not see you. Hear your voice and find it strange. She’ll feel something missing and not know it was love.”
“I know.”
Silence again.
Then: a long exhale. Like the forest breathing out.
“Done.”
The locket cracked open with a sigh like breaking bone.
A pale vine slithered out, slick with memory. It coiled midair for a moment, searching—then darted forward and pierced Marella’s wrist.
She gasped.
The pain was sharp, bright. Not physical. Soul-deep.
The vine curled around her arm, then dissolved into her skin, leaving a faint brand that shimmered for only a heartbeat before fading completely.
She stumbled back. Clutched the edge of the stone for balance.
Graymother only watched, eyes cold and ancient. “Go,” she said. “Before the rest of you forgets what you’re here for.”
Marella turned without speaking. Her feet carried her up through the root-choked tunnel, past the hatch, the church, the sagging alley.
And when she emerged beneath the pale eye of the moon, her body was whole—
—but her name was gone.
She didn’t cry.
Not until she reached the alley behind the motel, pressed her back to the crumbling brick wall, and realized she could no longer remember the lullaby she used to sing to Isabella on stormy nights.
She opened her mouth to try.
Nothing came.
Her hand still bled from where the vine entered.
But her voice?
Already dimming.
The cost was paid.
The seal was restored.
And far above, in a rented room lit by the faintest shard of moonlight, Isabella dreamed of thorns and fire and names she no longer knew. Of someone who had once braided her hair in silence. Of arms that had once held her through fever and fear.
But in the dream, the face was blank.
And the name—
Gone.
The girl stirred. Tossed once beneath the thin blanket.
The fog outside deepened.
And somewhere in the bones of the forest, something ancient turned its gaze back toward her.
The seal would hold.
For now.
But not forever.
Not against what was waking.
Not against what had never truly slept.
- Writer
