Терри Брукс - Tanequil

Suddenly, he was just tired. He didn't want to think anymore. He didn't want to do anything but rest. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he had slept.

He stretched out on the ground under the limbs of the ancient tree and closed his eyes. He needed only a few minutes, just long enough to clear his thinking, and then he would go back to work.

Overhead, the tanequil's branches formed a silvery green canopy in the moonlight, its strange webbing of orange lines shimmering softly. He had the distinct impression that time was slowing down, that his own breathing had become the measure of its passing. His tension and frustration drained out of him until nothing remained but the leaden ache of his body.

He closed his eyes and slept.

As he slept, he dreamed. His dream was of home and his parents. He was back in Patch Run, and his mother was telling him that magic wasn't important, that in some ways it was a burden. His father stood close by, using the wishsong to bring the buds of flowers into bloom. All around them, the sky was green and damp, and the air smelled of rain–soaked earth and leaves. Somewhere distant, an airship flew in silhouette against the sky, and he wished he were on it, safely aloft, safely away.

The scene changed, and he was hiding in a fortress, deep within its walls, down where only torchlight could penetrate the shadows and darkness. He crouched behind a wall, listening to sounds that came from the other side. He knew what was happening behind those walls, but he couldn't bring himself to look. His aunt, the Ard Rhys, was a prisoner of creatures so terrible that even to look at them was death. They were doing things to her best left to the imagination. Those things were meant to change her, to alter her mind, to make her something she didn't want to be. She was calling his name, begging him to help her, to save her from what was happening. Her cries were desperate, unbearable, filled with pain. She was all alone in that dark place, and he was the only one who could bring her back into the light.

But he couldn't move.

He could only sit there, listening …

He came awake again, eyes opening to a sunrise brightening through the heavy canopy of the tanequil in a flush of pink light. He stared at the limbs and the sky and the light, fighting back tears and a sense of desperation that threatened to overwhelm him. He lay without moving, waiting for both to pass, waiting to regain control of his emotions, to breathe easily again.

Something stroked the skin of his arms, soft and feathery. Little fingers were touching him, fairy hands or insect legs. They moved along the backs of his hands and wrists. But their movement was circular, a stroking that suggested an attempt to soothe or ease. He grew calm. His tears dried and his heartbeat slowed. He took deep, steadying breaths.

Without moving his hands or wrists, he raised himself carefully on his elbows.

Tiny roots sprouted from the ground all around him, little nests of them, some so slender they matched the hairs on his arm. They formed a bed, poking from the earth, weaving and touching, twisting and stroking. They were everywhere, though he felt them only where his skin was exposed. In front of him, the tanequil's limbs were swaying gently and its leaves shivering in time to the movement of the bed of roots that cradled him. He watched their undulation, watched the swaying of the tree, fascinated, mesmerized.

He lay back again and closed his eyes. The touching continued, and he lost himself in its hypnotic repetition. He reached out to it with his senses, embraced it, and made it a part of himself.

Then, deep within his consciousness, down where his heart beat and his life pulsed, he heard a deep, slow whisper, and even though it came from within himself, the voice wasn't his.

— Penderrin—

A single word spoken. His name. —Penderrin— Only it wasn't spoken in the way that humans spoke. It didn't come from a mouth or even from an independent source. It came from the stroking of the tree roots against his skin, his magic extracting from that touch a communication meant solely for him.

— Penderrin

The tanequil was speaking to him. He had been wrong about how communication with the tree would happen. It wasn't up to him to initiate contact; it was only up to him to be open to it. The tree would speak to him when it chose to. Trying to reach the tanequil on his terms was not going to work.

He lay against the earth, waiting for something more. But there were no further whispers, and he realized that the tiny fingerling roots were no longer stroking him. He rose to a sitting position and looked down. They were gone, all of them. He sat on a patch of sparse grass and bare earth from which no roots protruded and no sign of the ancient tree was in evidence.

He took a few moments to accept that the situation was not going to change, and then he rose and stood looking at the tree, trying to decide what to do next. Why had it stopped trying to communicate? Did it require something more from him? He couldn't think what else he could do that would help. To allow communication, he had opened himself up to the tree, reached out with his senses, engaged the magic that was his birthright, and it had happened. What more was there for him to do?

He circled the tree, squinting in the glare of the sunrise as the light fell across his face. The forest was silent and untroubled, a vast hall in which even the smallest sound could be heard. It was a sacred place, and he was a supplicant come in search of healing and direction. He stilled his mind and opened his thoughts, reaching to make a fresh connection, his eyes on the tree as he replayed in his mind the still–fresh whisper of his name.

Nothing happened.

After a time, he sat down again, taking up a new position on the other side of the tree, with his back to the sun. He watched the way the light played over the branches and leaves, illuminating fresh parts of the tree as the sun lifted out of the mountains into the sky. He tried speaking to the tree, tried engaging it with his magic, with his thinking, even by touching the earth in the hope that he might draw out the root tendrils. He did everything he could imagine that might stimulate the tree's consciousness.

Nothing worked.

Frustration washed through him. What had he done before that he was not doing now? Why wouldn't the tanequil continue their conversation? Perhaps, he thought, it was a question of patience. Trees had infinite amounts, and for them conversations might require a much longer period of time. Perhaps one word at a time was all that it could manage, and he must wait awhile for the next.

He didn't like that conclusion. He thought there must be a better one, a more sensible one. He went back to how things had begun, how he had been sleeping, dreaming of home, of the Ard Rhys …

He caught himself. Of the Ard Rhys, in danger, threatened because he could not help her, because he was incapable of acting. And then he had come awake in the sweat of his own fear and the roots of the tanequil had been reaching out to him. Responding, perhaps, to that fear, to his need to do something to help his aunt?

He lay down again on the earth, closed his eyes, and summoned pictures of his aunt in peril, jogging his memory, even though it was painful to do so, bringing to mind fresh images, fresh fears …

Almost immediately, the feathery touching begin again, a stroking of his skin that communicated a combination of reassurance and admonition. He remained still, giving himself over to the experience, but at the same time keeping his fears for his aunt at the forefront of his thoughts, the spark that he hoped would generate something more from the tree.

Hypnotically consuming, the stroking absorbed him. Lulled and calmed, he took a chance, speaking a single word in his mind.