Codex Born (8 page)

By the time I flipped on the lights out back, Lena was heading for the garden she had planted two months ago. Rosebushes walled the garden, all save an archway in the front. The branches and thorns were strong enough to repel deer and other creatures. Two varieties were in bloom, one a deep, smoky purple, the other yellow. Most of the flowers were as large as my hand.

In the very back, protected by climbing rose vines, Lena’s oak stood on the boundary between my yard and the woods beyond. The leaves were thicker than any of the surrounding trees, and smaller branches shone with new bark where they had sprouted in the past months. I followed her outside and ducked through the arch of thorns, stepping carefully between the corn and the red peppers.

Lena reached for me with her free hand. Taking mine in hers, she pressed my palm to the rough bark, avoiding the rose thorns that could have pierced my hand. Lena’s fingertips slipped between mine, sinking into the bark as if it were soft clay. “What do you feel?”

Most days, I couldn’t distinguish between Lena’s tree and any other. My magic simply wasn’t strong enough. Few Porters had that kind of power, which was why libriomancy had spread so quickly. Books gave us a crutch, allowing us to draw on the belief and will of others to supplement our own power.

Today was different. I was raw and exposed from my spells in Tamarack. My barriers were down, meaning I was better able to feel and manipulate magic.

I felt her connection to the oak, the sense of stability and timelessness. The roots ran deep, and while the tree might sway
with the wind, it was so much stronger than any human. Much like Lena herself.

This wasn’t the first time I had felt the magic of Lena’s tree, but never before had I wanted so badly to pull away. An itching sensation spread through my skin, as if something were squirming and burrowing through my muscles. I fought the urge to scratch until I bled. If it was this unpleasant for me, what was Lena feeling?

She swore and yanked her hand back. Her fingertips were bleeding. I spotted tiny metal pincers snapping from a small hole in the wood, but the insect retreated before I could get a closer look.

“Whatever they are, they’re killing my tree.”

Frank Dearing was not a good man, but my years with him made me happy.

I loved his fields almost as much as I loved him. I was stronger than his other hands, able to work longer without breaks. I gave strength to the plants that needed it, and I rooted out those dying from rot or insects before they contaminated the rest. Frank’s family had lived on this farm for three generations, but I knew the crops in a way he never could.

I seduced him for the first time in early March, a month after I had stumbled onto his farm. Snow melted beneath my bare feet as I hauled bales of hay from the barn. The cold didn’t bother me, and I enjoyed the crisp wind on my skin. I had taken to wearing shorts and old T-shirts, hand-me-downs from one of the other hands. They were too small, but I liked the way they hugged my flesh.

When I finished spreading the hay, I returned to fetch the ax and hose. The water trough had frozen over again.

I felt Frank watching as I swung the ax through the ice. I glanced over to see him standing on the porch, sipping his coffee. His desire warmed my body in a way sunlight never could. I pretended not to notice, but adjusted my stance to better display the
curves of my legs and ass. When I hauled broken chunks of ice from the trough, I allowed the water to drip down my chest. My nipples tightened, blurring the line between pain and pleasure.

I used the hose to rinse away the hay that clung to my skin, then slicked my blonde hair back. I could feel the hem of my shirt stiffening from the cold, which surprised me. With the heat surging through my blood, I half expected to see steam rising from my body.

I smiled at the sound of his boots as they crunched through the snow. I would have known him by his footsteps alone, strong and solid.

“What the hell are you doing, girl?” he asked gruffly. “Get into the barn and change into some dry clothes before you freeze to death.”

“But I haven’t drained the hose yet,” I said innocently. A delighted giggle escaped my lips when he blushed beneath his beard. I could
feel
his desire. It had followed me from the very first time he saw me. Instinctively, I pulled that desire into myself, twined it into my own, and sent it back, strong enough to make him gasp.

“I’ll take care of that. You get yourself inside.” He slapped my ass to send me on my way, and the pleasure of that sharp blow made me gasp and bite my lip. I blew him a kiss and scurried away.

I stripped off the T-shirt and pulled on a too-large red flannel, shivering as the heavy fabric brushed my skin. I had only fastened the third button when I heard Frank enter the barn behind me. I moistened my lips with my tongue and smiled, but didn’t turn around until his arms encircled me, his rough hands tugging the shirt away to grab my breasts. I breathed in the smell of coffee and cigarettes as he kissed my neck.

I was home.

W
E WERE STILL STANDING in the garden when I heard Nidhi pull up on the motorcycle. Lena’s leather jacket hung loosely on her shoulders as she
ran into the backyard to join us. I brought her up to speed while Lena paced circles around her tree.

“How many of these things are inside of her?” Nidhi asked.

“Twenty-eight.” Lena shuddered. “I’ve tried to crush them, to seal the bark around their bodies, but nothing works. I’ve hardened the core of the tree the best I can, and they’re not strong enough to get there yet, but they burrow through the bark and the outer layers of wood like it’s made of balsa. And when I try to enter the tree myself…” She held up her hands. Blood welled from tiny cuts and gouges on her palm and fingers.

“That shouldn’t even be possible.” I knew it was a stupid complaint as soon as the words left my mouth. Possible or not, it was happening. But Lena wasn’t physically shoving her hands and body into the oak like a butterfly crawling back into a cocoon; she
became
the tree. Her physical body was something she doffed and donned again as she entered and left her oak. How the hell could these things attack her within her own tree?

Unless it was an attack on the tree itself, one which somehow translated into wounds of the flesh? I didn’t understand enough about how Lena’s bond with her tree worked. “If they’re mostly hiding below the bark, what if we peeled the bark back to get to them?”

“Skin me alive, you mean?” Lena asked, her tone deceptively mild.

I winced. “Sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s all right.” She moved her hand over the tree. Bits of bark fell away as the insects burrowed through the wood to follow. “They’re too quick anyway. They’d just move to another spot.”

“What else have you tried?” Nidhi asked.

“We haven’t,” I admitted. “Without knowing what they’re made of, it’s hard to know what weapons would work best. They looked metal, which means there’s a chance a magnetic blast might affect them. I could also try to strengthen the tree itself.”

Lena frowned. “Strengthen it how?”

I waved a hand toward the house. “Tamora Pierce’s
Circle of Magic
series has characters who can empower plants and make them grow at ridiculous speeds. If I can tap into that book like I did with the Asimov story—”

“Then you could char another book and knock yourself into a coma,” Lena finished.

“Not to mention the question of control.” Nidhi moved to stand between me and the tree, her arms folded. “You have no idea what that would do to Lena’s oak. To
her
.”

“I could call Nicola Pallas and request an automaton.” Gutenberg had constructed his magical golems as bodyguards five centuries ago, armoring them in spells and metal keys from his printing press, essentially turning them into living books. Among their various powers, they had the ability to drain magic from others. I was certain they could kill these insects, but I had no idea what such an attack would do to Lena’s tree.

“No automatons,” Lena said firmly.

“Why attack Lena’s tree like this, and why now?” Nidhi asked. “They could have waited in the branches and swarmed down as she approached, or let her enter the tree then burrowed in after her.”

“Please don’t give the magical dryad-eating bugs any ideas,” Lena said.

They hadn’t just attacked Lena’s tree. After burrowing into my house, they had also attacked my computer, which had layer upon layer of Porter spells protecting it. My e-reader probably had a lingering taste of magic as well, thanks to Jeneta using it to pull raisins from a poem. “They’re drawn to magic. Like overgrown, spell-sucking mosquitoes.” Which meant magic might lure them out of Lena’s oak.

I turned toward the house, but Nidhi was faster, stepping into the garden’s archway and blocking my path. “How much magic will it take to draw them to you? What do you intend to do to them once they’re out? Lena had to carry you out of the woods earlier today because you burned yourself out with your time-travel spell.”

“Time-viewing spell.”

She ignored my correction. “If you blow your mental fuses trying to pull those things from Lena’s tree, you’ll only make things worse for all of us.”

“Stop derailing my plans with logic and reason,” I snapped. If I could track down a children’s book with one of those cartoonishly powerful supermagnets, I might be able to rip the bugs out of Lena’s tree, but it would probably tear up the wood in the process. Not to mention I’d need a trip to the library or bookstore. My collection didn’t include many books for that age group.

Not many, but there
was
one that might work. And it had the bonus of being awesome. “When the Porters need to shut down electronics, they use a book to generate an electromagnetic pulse. You don’t have to manipulate the energy like I did with the chronoscope, and energy is actually easier to create than matter.”

“We don’t know that these things are electronic,” Nidhi said.

“Different kind of energy.” I gave up on trying not to grin. “We think they’re metal, right? Ever see what happens when you put silverware in a microwave?”

I ran into the house and grabbed
Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day
. We’d still need to get them to poke their heads out of the tree, but once they did, microwave radiation should be as effective as a bug zapper.

As I turned to leave, Smudge raced down my arm, every step like a droplet of boiling water on my skin. He jumped onto the side of the shelves and sprinted toward the ceiling. Once there, he clung to the plaster and crept forward, his attention fixed on a pencil-sized hole.

“Be careful.” I opened the book and skimmed the section that explained how a metal-rimmed plate could do very bad things to your microwave pizza. If there were stragglers in the roof, this was the perfect opportunity for a test run.

Smudge crawled back and forth, never stepping directly over the opening as he laid down one gossamer strand after another.

“You were there when those things drilled through metal
and glass, right?” Spider silk was strong, and Smudge was laying it on pretty thick, but—

Three insects shot out of the hole, tearing through the web as if it weren’t even there. The first was a ladybug the size of an almond nut, with what looked like brass rivets for spots. It cleared the way for the rest, but at a cost. Webbing tangled its wings, causing it to fly erratically back to the ceiling. Delicate legs gripped the edge of the hole as it scraped its wings together, trying to rid itself of web.

The second was built like a dragonfly. The third, more waspish in shape, flew for the back door.

I tracked the dragonfly, touched the book’s magic, and pointed the pages at the ceiling.

The magic wasn’t as spectacular as I had hoped, but results were what mattered. The insect flashed orange, like a tiny light bulb burning out, then dropped to the floor.

I turned to get the ladybug, but Smudge was too close. He circled the struggling insect, like a predator playing with his meal.