Another scene in the story I’m going to write someday. This came to me standing in line at a coffee shop from a song playing in the background. There are some cliches to be sure, but I think it works. I’m sure I’ll edit it another dozen times before I work it into the rest of the storyline.
Ethan watched the cloud of poison crawling toward him, dark and oily, over the plants, over rocks and grass, over his friends. It leeched the life from them, from strangers who’d rallied to him for safety. To him. And he was failing them, they were dying. He looked into Lilly’s eyes, two feet away, blazing, radiant, but there was fear there now. She knew what he knew. Nothing they’d thrown at this suffocating blight had worked, and now it would kill their people before their eyes, and then it would kill them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know…I don’t know what else…” and trailed off. Lilly made a furious double fistful of his shirt and clung to him. Ten steps away Rachel dropped to her knees, fighting the creeping death that had leaped over her like a living thing. Fighting and losing. Ethan pulled Lilly to him, pressed his forehead against her’s, felt her breath on his face, inhaled the scent of her hair. Felt the world crack around him.
“I know,” he said softly, “I know you tried.” Ethan started shaking his head, slowly, trying to ward off the thought that had come to him. The horror of what he was about to do. He looked into her eyes, three words blazing in his mind, but he could not say them. Instead,
“I know what to do.”
Ethan pushed Lilly backward slowly, away from him, and it was one of the hardest things he could ever remember having to do. The poison creeping over everything and everyone was vile to its core. It sought to make unwilling sacrifices of all it consumed. Ethan had to give it something else to stop it. Something larger. A willing sacrifice. Lilly looked a question at him, hope and confusion in her eyes. Ethan closed his own, couldn’t stand it, couldn’t watch.
He didn’t need to speak any kind of intricate incantation to spark the magic working he would cast, it was fully formed within his mind. He needed only say something out loud, to mark the moment. To make it final. He pulled a line from a song he’d always loved, loved for how much it hurt to listen to. It was nothing compared to how much it hurt to say.
“I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.”
Pain ripped through Ethan from the soles of his feet up, turned his guts to ice, his stomach to acid, and burned and choked its way up his throat to burst from between clenched teeth as a scream. Lilly’s eyes fluttered and she faltered momentarily, but she caught herself and remained standing. She’s so strong, Ethan thought.
And then the working erupted.
A great column of warm green light speared into the sky from the ground behind him, growing and spreading into a tree of pure light. It towered above them, vast, branches reaching out, forming a glowing canopy overhead for a hundred feet all around. It continued to grow higher, reaching out farther, and everywhere soft light like the dawn of creation itself fell upon friends and strangers alike. It burned away the creeping black from their skins and from their souls like it had never been.
Ethan dropped to his knees beneath the weight of it, looked up at the unspeakable beauty of what towered above him, and wept.
“Sir! Sir! The blight is receding! The tree – did you summon this?” Lilly looked at Ethan, excitement and hope in her voice. Looked at him. Like a stranger.
“What can I do?”
“Get everyone you can under the branches. The tree will protect them from the poison and remove it from anyone already affected,” Ethan croaked, looking anywhere but at Lilly. “I must remain here, by its center, but save who you can.”
Lilly nodded curtly and sprinted for the fringe of the tree’s reach, deducing in an instant where help would be most needed. She was still her, still amazing.
Just no longer his.
Rachel climbed unsteadily to her feet, like she’d aged a decade in the last few minutes. She turned a quick circle, searching, saw Ethan and stumbled to him.
“Did you do this?” She gasped, wonder on her face and in her voice, “How?” She stopped and saw him then, really saw him, and froze.
“What did you do?”
“The only thing I knew would work. The only thing I had that was big enough.”
The blood drained from her face, dread replacing it. “What did you do?!” Rachel drew the last word up into a shout, shrill and panicked. She’d known how deep the shit they’d been in was, known it was hopeless. Rachel dropped down beside Ethan and snatched up his already crumpled collar in one gloved fist.
“What did this cost?” She hissed
Ethan looked over her shoulder and Rachel followed his gaze. Lilly was at the edge of the light cast by the magnificent tree, puling victims under cover, marshaling the recovered to do the same.
“It cost us.”
Ethan felt Rachel shudder through her grip on his collar as a single sob ripped from her.
“The blight wanted sacrifices, it was designed to power up something even worse. I had to give it more than it could handle. Something even greater than it was terrible.” Ethan’s voice was a scraping whisper. “So I gave it us.”
He looked up at the tree of light, so high its branches seem to tangle in the stars. So perfect and pure there was music in the rustle of its leaves. Like crystal bells, like summer, the sound of everything he’d ever wanted pulled together into one glorious hymn sung just for him.
“This is how much she loved me,” he said.
And it broke him.