The bright red spell hit the trunk directly above me, causing an explosion of fiery wood and bark. I covered my head protectively, and when I looked again, the tree was thrashing and creaking and groaning, probably because of the blaze now glowing inside a hole in its trunk, like a fiery heart. It let me go, the root that had encircled me abruptly releasing and pulling back, because it was needed for other things.

I lay there, amidst a group of staring fey, half suffocated because the wooden embrace hadn’t allowed my chest to expand. But I would have been breathless anyway. Because the tree suddenly got up and moved off, the soil churning around its thrashing roots, while its limb-like arms flailed like a wounded man’s.

It went barreling through the forest, moving fast, and causing a distressed shuffling among the other trees it passed, as if they were trying to move away from the sparks it was shedding. I stared after it, easily able to track its progress by the fire that had now spread to its branches. And by the terrible groaning that was coming from the wood, as if a hurricane was whipping its limbs back and forth, and sighing through the spaces in the leaves.

It threw me, more than anything I’d seen so far, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I could accept beautiful cities in the clouds, or great flying creatures with noble bearings, or even mobile castles, because all of those went into the crazy dream category in my head, or the fey-will-be-fey category, or—in extreme cases—the I’ll-think-about-this-tomorrow category, which was then never opened again. But the mundaneness of this, of a perfectly normal-looking oak tree, just slightly bigger than those found on Earth, lifting up its skirts like a startled maiden and taking off through the forest…

My brain just sort of broke. It didn’t have a category for that; it just didn’t. Which was why, instead of trying to escape like an intelligent person, I just sat there, staring.

Judging by the Svarestri’s expressions, they were equally freaked out. Several of them looked around at the forest, as if seeing it through new eyes, and one made a small sound that didn’t translate. But they weren’t distressed enough to forget about me, when I finally got to my hands and knees and then tried to run.

Only to be brought down all of a second later, by all three fey piling on top of me.

And then Faerie grabbed me again, because I guessed I didn’t have enough problems.