She is down in the ravine, he thought suddenly. He was finally beginning to understand. The tanequil was both male and female, mother and father to the aeriads, a trunk joining limbs at one end to roots at the other. Cinnaminson was in the keeping of the latter, down in the shadowy depths they had crossed over on the bridge. Down where something huge had stirred awake on their passing.

But still whole, she was telling him. Still alive in human form.

“Cinnaminson,” he said, an idea coming to sudden life, a plan to implement it taking shape. “I need to see you again before I go. I need to say good-bye. It isn’t enough just to hear your voice. It doesn’t feel real to me. Can you take me to where you sleep?”

There was a long pause. –You cannot have me back, Pen. Mother Tanequil will not let me go. Not even if you beg–

She recognized his intentions all too well, but his mind was already made up. He was terrified of what he might find if he did it, half certain that she was already reduced to bones and dust, that her vision of herself as still being whole was a subterfuge fostered by the tree. But he couldn’t leave without knowing, no matter how devastating the truth. If there was a way to set her free again, to take her with him . . .

“I won’t do anything but make sure that you are safe,” he lied. “I just need to see you one last time.”

–This is a mistake– she trilled, her voice rising amid those of her sisters, sharp with rebuke. –You shouldn’t ask it of me–

He took a deep breath. “But I am asking.” He waited a moment. “Please, Cinnaminson.”

The voices of the aeriads hummed, a long sustained chord that matched the sound of wind whispering through the leaves of trees, soft and resilient. He forced himself to keep silent, to say nothing more, to wait.

–I am afraid for you, Pen– she said finally.

“I am afraid for myself,” he admitted.

A pause followed, and the humming died away.

–Come with me, then, if you must. If you can remember my warning–

He exhaled softly. He was not likely to forget.

On the far side of the ravine, Khyber Elessedil stood at the foot of the stone bridge, listening to the soft moan of the wind. She had been standing there for the better part of an hour, using her admittedly unskilled Druid senses to scan the forest for sign of Pen and Cinnaminson. It wasn’t the first time she had done so, but the results were the same. She might as well have been casting about the Blue Divide for a sailor lost at sea, for all the good it was doing her.