Tina was cheerful as they continued on through the forest, pointing out useful plants, her favorite flowers, and insects that she thought were either pretty or scary. (She was not a fan of either ants or wasps, but she liked honeybees and butterflies.)
“I’m glad Tata onee-chan gets to rest in the little flower house all she wants,” Tina shared as they moved along, filling their baskets with treats and treasures. “She’s tired a lot because she’s sick.”
Tina said it offhandedly, as if she thought it was common knowledge, but it was news to Demi. She had assumed that the reason Tata didn’t speak much and rarely kept eye contact was because she was painfully shy, but if she was also ill, then she surely found even being around other people exhausting.
“I didn’t know that Tata was sick,” Demi said honestly. “I hope she gets well soon.”
“She’s been sick for a looooooong time,” Tina explained, throwing her arms wide. “Since even before I was born. There’s something wrong with her trees, and that makes her sick.” Tina shook her head. “She can’t make us sick, but I still think it must hurt and make her tired. She sleeps a lot. She used to read to me and play with me more, but now she sleeps most of the time.”
This answer made Demi unconsciously tense.
She isn’t shy, she’s sick, and I forgot all about her, Demi thought, balling a small hand into a fist. I can’t believe that I forgot all about her! She was definitely there at the beginning to welcome me here, but she must have slipped away at some point. I can’t remember ever seeing her again after that until now. It’s because she’s sick. She’s been lying alone and sick while I organized the whole forest to run around and build some canal.
Demi could not escape the suffocating weight of the guilt that came from this realization.
I have got to find out more about this, she told herself. Tata hasn’t asked for my help, but the dryads are supposed to be the goddess’s children. There has to be something I can do. I hate to think of her lying there, sick and all alone. If there’s something I can do to help, then I need to do it.
“Do you know anything about it, Glimmer?” Demi asked, trying to organize her thoughts and put away her distress so she wouldn’t worry the children.
“Not really,” he confessed with a feathered shrug. “If I had to guess, it’s something to do with the blightwood to the south. The place is filled with all kinds of horrid things, including parasites and diseases.”
“Oh, then maybe if the Rosebrook can purify the forest to the south, Tata might get better,” Demi said hopefully.
Demi felt Glimmer’s grip on her shoulder tighten for a moment, but then he made a very noncommittal sound.
That doesn’t sound like a very positive prognosis, Demi thought in concern. I need to do some research about this as soon as I get back. Based on what Tina said, it sounds like Tata is getting worse.
But then Finella had found a small colony of Whispering Boletes, and this, along with a nearby patch of forest strawberries, occupied them for some time.
Demi didn’t let her concerns about Tata leave her mind, but she did her best to enjoy her time in the forest while she could. And learning about and collecting ingredients was also an important part of her work as a farm girl and a Harvest Goddess.
Given her surprising skill in pharmacology, she might even be able to make medicine with what she found here. She would have to study that possibility.
Demi added it to her endless mental list of things to do and books to read.
It was fascinating being out in this beautiful forest. It was like the woodlands of her home, and yet it was also different. It had the feeling of being an enchanted fairy forest, which she supposed made sense, since it was a forest tended by dryads. The trees were all beautiful and quite varied, diverse not only in size, age, and type, but also in color.
Of course, there were many green trees of varying hues, from deep blue greens to sprightly yellow greens, as one might expect to find in a forest. But there were also trees with pale blue foliage, pale pink, rosy pink, pale violet, white, rosy peach—and these were not trees merely bedecked in blooming flowers. It was indeed spring, and they were treated to the sight of many beautiful flowering trees, but these trees...
Some of these trees simply had pale blue leaves or pale pink ones. Or lavender, mint, peach, aquamarine. It felt whimsical and somehow absolutely natural at the same time. Whenever Demi saw a tree with powder blue leaves in the woodland, her first thought was not “how unusual!” but rather “how perfect.”
The trees were as they were, exactly how they ought to be.
And everything else was in line with the trees. There were bushes and shrubs of many healing, harmonious shades, and wildflowers and lush ground plants everywhere. More than once they found themselves on moss so wonderfully thick and plush that it felt like a carpet or a cushion, and Demi took off her shoes and danced around in it, with Dollop accompanying her. This was much to the delight of Finella (who immediately took off her own shoes) and Tina (who had not been wearing shoes in the first place). Glimmer refrained from dancing and simply sat on a nearby rock and consumed strawberries as he watched them cavort.
They made many charming discoveries during their woodland adventure and gathered many fine ingredients for cooking, for medicine making, and for alchemy. They only took what they needed, and Demi was very careful in the way she harvested everything. Much as before, she always ended up with more than she had actually taken.
They enjoyed lunch next to a massive maple tree, eating sandwiches and potato salad, and enjoying the blossoms of the nearby redbud and dogwood trees.
After lunch they climbed up some large, moss-covered boulders to get some lichen and discovered a patch of shadow violets. Finella showed Demi how to properly dig roots and tubers out of the ground without harming the plant, and Tina managed to get several downy feathers from some of the forest’s resident songbirds simply by asking them for them.
Dollop led her to a number of fine finds themselves, which made perfect sense as they had been a resident of this forest until they had become a shrine beast again.
Demi collected soil and loam and different small stones from many places in the forest, along with different dried leaves, grasses, and seedpods left over from the previous autumn. These were all valuable components for alchemy.
Every time she found a little pupa or cocoon among the leaves or in the dirt, she was careful not to disturb it, or if she had inadvertently disturbed it, she carefully settled it back where it belonged.
Even if insects were not always convenient, they were foundational species for any food web. Butterflies might be beautiful and honeybees wholesome, but all of the insects of the forest were required, even the ones that bit and stung, or chewed holes in the leaves of garden plants.
By late afternoon, they were all quite tired out. They had walked a good long way, seen many things, and collected many useful ingredients. Finella’s stamina was remarkable, because she was still going strong even after a day of hiking and gathering. Tina, however, had become quite sleepy, and when they sat down for a rest on the hike back to the farmhouse, she fell asleep in Demi’s lap.
She was quite adorable when she slept, but now they faced a problem. Tina was sleeping, and likely to be very cranky if woken up (quite understandable, Demi decided). The best thing to do was to carry her back home while she peacefully rested. The only problem was that even after days of manual labor, farming, Demi’s strength and stamina were still quite pathetic.