9 FI

FI’S NEXT LESSON was a variation of the last. This time, rather than calling the plants to her, Ness instructed Fi to ask that they lift her high above the gardens. So she approached the ring of wispy larches with her question. In answer, the trees bent gladly toward her, and she hopped from one bough to the next, rising upward in a languid spiral. The view from the crown was dizzying, the islands dim shadows floating above and far below Fi’s perch.

When Ness told Fi to calm her nerves or quiet her mind, it never worked. But up in the canopy, with the wind whipping the sleeves of her stola, the tang of pine in her nose, and the rough bark beneath her bare feet, Fi’s worries slipped away. She didn’t need to go looking for the green, it was simply there, in every fluttering leaf, in the cascade of life in the gardens below, in the air that flowed through her lungs.

“Ness!”

Fi startled, crouching low to the branch beneath her and wrapping her arms around the narrow trunk. The oldest greenwitch stood below, a withered woman named Val whose veins had already begun to dim. She beckoned frantically, shouting again. “Ness, come down from there. Quick!”

Fi and Ness scurried out of the tree. When they reached the ground, Val herded them toward the boats, her face grim. “We’ve been in contact with the resistance. Soldiers have been pouring through the portal into Vinea. They burned through the wildlands and stole the children we hid on Somni—the ones we think will become greenwitches.”

“No.” It was barely above a whisper. “But how? Why?”

“We don’t know—not what the priests want from them, or how the girls were found. Maybe their veins began to glow when they returned home, and it made them easy to single out.”

Ness frowned. “And if the same happens to Fi when we take her through the portal?”

The rest of the women emerged from the gardens, encircling Val like the petals of a pine cone around its core. When two or three greenwitches stand near, the glow of their magic brightens the space between them. But when a dozen come together, the light changes—the air becomes charged like a sky split by thunder, and pale as the moment before a twister dips out of the clouds. It’s why the greenwitches were so easily hunted down when Somni invaded. It’s why Fi and the rest of the children were in such danger on Vinea, where the green pulsing through the wildlands nurtured the magic within them.

Val’s voice trembled when she spoke, but not because of fear. It was age that shook her, that rattled the truth loose. “We’re going to lose Vinea if we don’t act quickly.”

“I need more time. Fi isn’t ready.”

Val pursed her lips. “We simply don’t have it.”

“Now? We’re leaving now?” It was what Fi had longed to hear. It was all she wanted, to return home to Vinea. But— “I need to say goodbye to Griffin. I need to thank Katherine.”

“There isn’t time.”

“After everything we’ve been through, I can’t just disappear. I need to tell him that—”

“Fionna. If we had even an hour to spare, we’d use that time to teach you, to somehow prepare you for the war we’re sending you into.” Ness bit her lip, and what Fi saw on the greenwitch’s face caused a seed of worry to burrow into her.

“We give her the word to defend herself,” Val said. “Only that. And then we leave.”

Ness nodded, her eyes wide. She crouched until her eyes were level with Fi’s. “Listen, and watch.” The next time her voice sounded, it was deep in Fi’s mind.

Shield me?

Ness’s words reverberated through the gardens. The ring of stools collapsed, the vines untwining quick as writhing snakes. The vertical gardens trembled, then collapsed as, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, Ness was hidden from view.

“Ask!” Ness shouted over the whipping air.

Fi wet her lips. Shield me?

Instantly, she found herself in the eye of a second storm. The gardens were destroying themselves, bit by bit, to answer her call. Every last ounce of green in the city in the sky rushed through her. For the first time since she’d felt the green magic inside her, a thrill chased down Fi’s skin.

Maybe it didn’t matter that she didn’t know enough, that she wasn’t half as powerful as this fight needed her to be. The green was strong. So much stronger than she’d ever dared to dream.