The first torch appeared between the cabins just as Apollo’s fingers began to glow.
Betsy covered her newborn’s hand with her own. The amber light shone through the gaps between her fingers.
Felix saw the villagers coming and lowered himself in front of her. His body was made of bark and living roots, taller than any man in the village. Children had been taught to fear the light in his eyes. Tonight, those eyes were fixed on the iron axe in the magistrate’s hands.
“The torches are for us,” Felix said.
“They believe Apollo poisoned the harvest.”
“The sickness began before he was born.”
Betsy knew that. She had watched the first row of wheat blacken while Apollo was still moving inside her. She had seen dead fish in the stream upstream from the village, where no child had ever played and Felix rarely went.
The magistrate had blamed the forest anyway.
Six villagers stopped at the edge of the meadow. Behind the magistrate stood the mill owner, Orrin, holding a sealed barrel of water. Betsy recognized it from the mill yard. While everyone else drew from wells that smelled faintly of metal, Orrin kept his own supply behind a locked door.
“Step away from the creature,” the magistrate called.
Felix remained where he was.
The magistrate pointed his axe toward Apollo. “Show them the child’s hands.”
Betsy pulled her shawl around her son. “Tell them when the crops first failed.”
A farmer near the back lowered his torch. “My field went bad before the baby came.”
“You saw what his hands can do,” the magistrate replied. “The forest put its mark on him.”
Apollo began to fuss. A branch above them turned slowly toward his voice. Its leaves were dark at the tips, poisoned like the wheat, but as Apollo cried, green spread outward from the stem.
The villagers saw it.
Orrin tightened his grip on the barrel.
Betsy looked at the farmer. “He isn’t making the trees sick.”
The magistrate took a step forward. Felix lifted one wooden hand, and a root rose gently between them. It did not touch the man. It marked a boundary.
“The forest remembers where the black water came from,” Felix said.
The magistrate raised his axe. “Wood has no memory.”
“Then why did you build your mill over its oldest spring?”
No one answered.
Generations ago, the village had survived by taking timber from the forest’s outer edge. In recent years, Orrin had cut deeper and dug beneath the new mill for stone. Betsy found the excavation when she followed a foul smell past the waterwheel. Black mineral dust coated the floorboards. It also lined the stream that fed the village wells.
The magistrate said the dust was harmless.
Betsy stepped beside Felix. “Open the barrel.”
Orrin shook his head. “It’s drinking water for my workers.”
“Then they can drink it in front of us.”
He glanced at the magistrate.
Felix turned toward the forest. The ground beneath the meadow stirred. Fine roots surfaced, carrying damp earth and a dark stain. They ran from the village well toward the mill, tracing a path everyone could see.
The farmer crouched beside one. Black liquid clung to his fingertip.
“That’s what came out of my pump,” he said.
The magistrate brought his axe down on the root. It split, but more rose around it.
“Take the child,” he ordered.
Nobody moved.
Apollo’s crying stopped. He stared toward the mill, his tiny fingers glowing beneath the shawl. The branches above the meadow leaned in the same direction.
Betsy understood then what Felix had meant when he said the forest accepted him. Apollo could feel the old roots. Through them, he could sense the water that had once kept the trees and fields alive.
“Can you show them the spring?” she asked Felix.
“I can lead them there. They must choose to look.”
The farmer stood. “I’ll come.”
Two others followed him. The magistrate tried to order them back, but they walked past.
At the mill, Orrin’s workers had nailed fresh boards across a cellar entrance. The nails were still bright. The farmer pulled one board free while another villager held up a torch.
Beneath it was a narrow shaft. Black liquid glistened around its edges. Empty mining carts stood beside a pile of dark stone.
Orrin set down his barrel.
“We found a seam under the spring,” he said. “The runoff was supposed to stay below the mill.”
“Did you know it reached our wells?” Betsy asked.
He looked away.
The farmer pried open the barrel. Inside was clear water.
The magistrate lunged for its lid. “We kept a clean supply in case the village needed it.”
“In case you needed it,” the farmer said. “You told us every well was safe.”
Felix knelt beside the shaft. His roots spread across the floor, then drew back sharply from the black water. Even he could not heal the spring while the mining waste continued to seep into it.
Apollo reached a glowing hand toward the cellar.
For one hopeful moment, a small shoot emerged between the boards. It grew two green leaves, then stopped.
“He can help what’s living,” Felix said. “He cannot make the poison disappear.”
Betsy held Apollo close. “Then we stop it here.”
The villagers extinguished the mill’s fire and halted the waterwheel. Orrin showed them where the waste had been stored, and the farmer sent riders to the neighboring valley for clean water and help. By morning, the village wells were closed. Families carried what remained in the mill’s barrel to the children and the sick.
The magistrate was kept away from the records while the villagers searched his office. There they found an order authorizing the mining, signed before the first field failed. He had known the dates. He had blamed Apollo anyway.
At sunrise, Betsy returned to the meadow.
The wheat beyond it was still black. The stream was still unsafe. Healing would take more than a single night.
But nobody carried a torch toward her son.
The farmer came to stand beside her. In his hands was a small wooden sign he had removed from the village well. It read: CURSED BY THE FOREST.
“What should it say instead?” he asked.
Betsy looked at Felix, already working among the damaged trees. Apollo reached toward him, and a patch of leaves brightened overhead.
“Tell them where the water went bad,” she said. “Then help us make it clean.”
