Chapter 311: On Their Own
"So from here on out, we’re ’on our own’ unless something catastrophic happens," Ashlynn said, looking from Jacques to Talauia and receiving a nod from both of them.
"Jus’ keep it simple, Auntie," Jacques said. "Ain’t no need for nothing fancy. Get what you came for and we can get going home."
"That’s right, that’s right," Talauia added with a flutter of her wings as she stepped off the boat to hover in the air above them. "Pretend we’re not even here," she added, fighting every reflex she had to not focus on the places where she could hear predators moving through the water or among the trees. This was Ashlynn and Heila’s choice, their test, and she wouldn’t be caught giving them any hints. She wouldn’t, no matter how hard it was to resist.
"We understand," Ashlynn said with a smile before she turned to Heila. "Like Jacques said, our first goal is in the direction where the witch-moss glows. Heila, can you take us there?"
"Yes, my lady," Heila said with a nervous smile. Her grass-green eyes flickered around the boat, looking for any signs of disturbances on the water or anything lurking among the cypress knees that might pose a threat before she got to work.
From a small leather sheath at her waist, she withdrew an intricately carved wand, nearly ten inches in length. Building the wand had taken her an entire week, carving ancient glyphs into the tips of three soft and pliable willow branches given to her by the Ancient Willow. The hardest part had been tracing out the pattern for the glyphs, remembering that their positions would shift once she braided the three pieces of willow into her final wand and bound the ends with bands of silver.
Once she’d completed the wand, it quickly began to feel like it was a living part of her. With the slender wand held lightly between her fingers, she felt almost as though her arm had grown longer and her fingers could reach as far as her eyes could see to gather up the energy of the world and shape it as she desired.
"Like endless tides that never tire,
Let currents flow as I desire."