As Jack played Lorna’s ballad he felt as if he was slowly sinking into the earth. His limbs were becoming heavy, and he drooped like a flower wilting beneath a fierce sun. It was like the sensation of falling asleep. He swore he saw daisies blooming from his fingertips, and every time he plucked his strings the petals broke away but regrew just as swiftly. And his ankles … he couldn’t move them, the tree roots had begun to take hold of him. His hair was turning into grass, green and long and tangled, and as the song ended he struggled to remember who he was, that he was mortal, a man. Someone was coming to him, bright as a fallen star, and he felt her hands on his face, blissfully cold.
“Please,” the woman said, but not to him. She beseeched the wildflower spirit with her long dark hair and crown of vibrant gorse. “Please, this man belongs to me. You cannot claim him.”
“Why, mortal woman,” one of the pennywort lads said from the ground, his words raspy as summer hay falling to a scythe. “Why did you sit so far away from him? We thought he sang to be taken by us.”
Jack snapped out of the haze. Adaira was kneeling beside him, her hand shifting to his arm. He was stricken to see that he truly had been turning into the earth—grass, flowers, and roots. His harp clattered from his tingling hands; he struggled to breathe as he watched his body return to him.
“He is mine, and he played to bring you forth by my command,” Adaira said calmly. “I long to speak to you, spirits of the earth. If I may have your permission, Lady Whin of the Wildflowers.”
Whin regarded Adaira for a long moment. She shifted her honeysuckle eyes to the Earie Stone, an old face who also was watching Adaira.
“It is her,” Whin said, her voice light and airy.
“No, it cannot be,” the Earie Stone countered. His words were hard to discern, crunching like gravel.
“It is,” Whin persisted. “I have waited a long time for this moment.” She turned her attention back to the mortals, and Jack felt Adaira shiver.
“I’m Adaira Tamerlaine,” Adaira said, and her voice was strong in spite of her fear. “My bard has summoned you so I may ask for your help.”
“What help, mortal lady?” one of the alder maidens asked.
“Four lasses have gone missing in the east,” Adaira began. “We are desperate to find them, to reunite them with their families. I have questions that I would like to ask you.”
“We can only answer so much, Adaira of the Tamerlaines,” Whin said. “But ask, and if we may speak, we will.”
“Can you tell me where the lasses are?” Adaira said.
Whin shook her head. “No, but we can say they are all together in one place.”
Adaira’s breath caught. “They’re alive, then?”
“Yes. They live and they are hale.”
Jack felt the relief trickle through him. He hadn’t realized how afraid he had been to learn the girls were dead until that moment.
“The man who has been kidnapping them,” Adaira rushed to continue. “Who is he, and is he working alone?”
Whin glanced back to the Earie Stone. Wildflowers fluttered with her every movement. Jack watched the blossoms drift from her arms, her hair. He sensed the spirits were about to retreat; his performance had not been strong enough to hold them long in their manifest forms.
“We cannot say who he is, but he is not working alone,” Whin replied.
Adaira yearned to ask more. To make demands. Jack could see it in the clenching of her jaw and the curl of her fingers.
“Can you tell me where Orenna grows?”
A shadow of agony passed over Whin’s face. She opened her mouth, but wildflowers tumbled from her lips. At her feet, the pennywort lads began to unravel, and the alder maidens began to groan back into trees.
“Please,” Adaira cried, ragged. She removed her hand from Jack and knelt before the Earie Stone and Whin. “Please help me. Please guide me. Where can I find the lasses?”
“Oh mortal woman,” said Whin, sorrowful. Her flowers began to wilt as she faded. “I cannot tell you. My mouth is barred from speaking truth to you. You will have to find the answers elsewhere.”
“Where? In the wind?” Adaira asked, but she was never answered.
The folk of the earth transformed into trees, stones, grass, and wildflowers. A clump of heather was the only evidence the spirits had manifested, a lingering trace of Lady Whin.
Jack felt sore and bruised as he continued to sit and stare at the Earie Stone. All he could think of was Lady Whin’s statement. A statement that was nearly identical to what the water spirits had uttered …