I rubbed the skin on my shoulder, a red welt appearing where she’d pinched me. “That hurt.”
“At least you can still feel hurt. If you touch the petal, your skin will burn. If you hold on long enough, you’ll die.”
I blinked. “How am I supposed to gather it, then?”
“Have patience,” the fairy said in a dazed tone of voice. “That’s the biggest mistake you outsiders make when you come into The Forest. You grab, grab, grab, and you take, take, take. Maybe if you stopped for a second and smelled the foliage, you’d understand. Patience can save your life.”
I stood still. As the fairy sank into some sort of dreamlike trance, her eyes grew large. She stared into the flowers, focusing on three spokes poking out from the center disk. “It’s beautiful.”
Reaching out, I pinched the fairy around the waist and drew her back. I gave her the tiniest shake as I set her safely on her shroom a few feet back, planting myself on a nearby log. “Are you okay?”
She shook herself. “I haven’t been that close in a while.”
“Did I save your life? Why’d you go all dreamy on me?”
“No,” she said with a scowl. After a long beat, she reconsidered. “Thanks for bringing me out.”
“What is in those flowers that’s so powerful?”
“They’re called Dust of the Devil for a reason,” she said. “A long time ago, a witch from the East Isle came into The Forest and she saw the beauty in these flowers. She became entranced by them, staring straight in their centers for hours upon end until finally, she tried to gather them up and bring a bouquet home.”
“Did her skin burn?”
“Many times. That’s the thing about these flowers. They draw you back over and over again. Even when her fingers had layers of blisters on them, she came back for more.”
“Like an addiction.”
“Yes.” The fairy glanced toward the tree with reverence. “After enough failures, however, she got it right. She figured out how to harvest some of the flowers without getting burned.”
“What’d she do with them?”
“She treated them like any old flowers and made the blossoms into a bouquet. Selfishly. She took all of the blooms—every single one—and the tree withered and died. Turns out, the tree needs its flowers as much as the flowers need the tree; there is no one or the other, they are symbiotic.”
“Is this the same tree?”
“Yes, but it took hundreds of years for it to return! You see, the more blooms there are on a tree, the faster they populate. To grow that first bloom takes hundreds of years. The second takes half that time, the third a quarter of the time and so on. A tree this full has been growing for thousands of years.”
The reverence in her gaze made a bit more sense now. The sheer age of this tree gave it an aura of wisdom that commanded respect. “That’s the second part of the riddle,” I whispered. “Do not take it all.”
“I’m here to guard it.” The fairy crossed her arms. “If you can give me a good enough reason why you need a bloom, then I’ll show you how to harvest it.”
“You never did finish your story.”
“Oh, that witch...that dreadful witch, she put her bouquet on display at her kitchen table. But what she underestimated about the Dust of the Devil was its strength. She thought she’d killed the blooms by removing them from the tree, but let me tell you this: The Devil’s Dust doesn’t go down without a fight. As the flowers wilt, they release a poisonous gas.”
“If they’re going to die, they’re taking their destroyer with them.”
“Exactly. To steal these blooms is to make a deal with the devil. You’ll get a brief flash of beauty and glamour—all of the islanders crowded by this witch’s house to see her wares. Day and night, visitors flocked to her living room. But in the end, all of the guests were gone, and the witch was left to suffer the consequences. The blooms in that bouquet didn’t just go down fighting, they went down with a war.”
I shuddered, trying not to visualize any of it. “I take it she didn’t survive?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t make a bouquet anytime soon.”
“If I take just a few, is that also a deal with the devil?”
“Everything in The Forest has consequences. Taking something you don’t understand is dangerous. These plants haven’t survived thousands of years because they’re weak. Many are stronger than you.”
“What would my consequences be of taking the Dust of the Devil?”
“It depends on your intentions.”