An Age of Azuria Short Story
“What is that you’re reading, lady?”
Iellieth glanced up from the leather-bound tome resting in her lap. Marcon sat on the felled log beside hers, the smell of their campfire heavy on his clothes and hair as he leaned closer.
“A book of stories.” She closed the book around her finger and traced the worn, dark brown of its cover.
“Oh?” His head tilted sideways as he squinted at the remains of faded copper letters and the engraving they’d left behind. “Tales of the Forests. And how is it?”
“Curious thus far,” Iellieth answered. Mara had promised that one day she would be able to ask the trees for their own stories. But until then, perhaps this book would help her know the right questions to put forward.
She crossed her ankles and turned toward him, hefting the tome into his hands. “It’s not what I expected.” Iellieth had read countless tales that took place in forests, but she had encountered only a few where the woodland herself made up the entirety of the story.
“Here”—she flipped back to the first story about the origins of the birch tree—“look at this one.” Her fingertip traced the inlaid illustration, a starkly white tree stretched slim and tall against a gray and green forested backdrop. “The idea of the stories,” Iellieth began, “is that…”
The Birth of the Birch Tree
Each tree contained herein began as a single tree. Each branched out from the earth mother. As the earth mother’s daughters grew, they took on quirks and qualities of their own.
Beithe, one of the oldest daughters, grew tall and strong, with silver hair and pale white skin, but her eyes remained her most striking quality. Pure black, with a ring of bright green visible only to those brought into the daughter’s embrace.
She traveled far and wide in those early years of the worlds’ forests. Each night as she slept, she left a silver hair behind which, in her absence, as the world warmed, would grow to become a birch tree of its own.
The daughter was lovely, but quiet. Her silver hair captivated her fellow travelers, and Beithe rarely spent her nights alone. “Take this,” was all she would say, plucking one silver thread from her hair.
Without fail, each traveler would tie the liquid gleam around their finger or through a button hook of their coat, their hand covering the delicate bow. But no matter how carefully they cared for the thread, within the week, they would find it had continued on, following a path of its own.
Even the silver lady’s hair was prone to wander.
Beithe knew when the hair took root to form a tree of its own. With each sacrifice, each piece of her she left to a traveler, a wound appeared, a slash in her skin. When the tree drifted off, and its roots pierced the earth, the wound healed, a black burn against the glowing white of her skin.
The stories about her and the ones she left behind changed. Her remarkable black eyes appeared across the bark of the new-growth trees, dark burns said to speak of a broken heart.
This legend continues in Story Magic, the newest novella in the Age of Azuria series. Story Magic is available now!
