Page 45 of Between Soul and Vessel
Down below, the great expanse of rolling hills gave way to a lush, densely packed forest. Towering trees, unfathomably large, shot up hundreds of feet into the air. Their branches were full of so much foliage it was impossible to see through them. It was almost like a blanket of green clouds, covering that part of the world and keeping it closed off to outsiders.
When we reached the tallest one, the vuleerie left the current she had been riding, and we dropped like a lead weight, plunging toward the dense canopy below.
“Wait!” I shouted, my eyes widening as I braced for impact.
As if the tree had spotted us coming, dozens of branches moved like stiff, creaky arms. They swayed apart, allowing us a small section to pass through. In some ways, it felt maternal, like a mother welcoming a child into her embrace.
. . . A child.
Sadness brimmed, dragging me down into its dark depths.
But I had little time to sit in the feeling because thousands of eyeless sockets were fixed on us. Vuleeries upon vuleeries perched in the giant tree. I could not even begin to guess how many there were. If they all were to take to the sky, it would look like a sea of black. They watched us as we descended past them, their heads lowering as we made our way further down through the never-ending branches.
While the leaves of the tree were lush and green, the bark was smooth and completely black.
“This is Hollow Tree, and it is our home,” the vuleerie told me.
“It’s huge,” I marveled. “How many of you live here?”
“There are about ten thousand of us,” she replied.
I swallowed at that, digesting the information.
That wasa lotof vuleeries.
It took us a while just to fly through the branches, and we weren’t going at a slow speed. When we finally reached the last of them, we continued to descend beside the trunk, which was so large, there was no way I could see around it. It was a mountain in itself. I imagined it would take quite a while to walk around the entire thing.
I looked down at the mossy forest floor, my brows knitting together—
Below, two females stood, peering up at us.
The one had dark-brown hair falling in lush, sultry waves. Her features were strong, her eyes wise and kind. She was beautiful. Her nose was a bit prominent, curving downward ever so slightly at the end, but it suited her face.She wore a white, gauzy chiton fastened with a gold brooch on her shoulder, the color complementing her light-brown skin tone.
Standing beside her was another female.
A female who looked a bit like . . .
Me.
Her eyes were as blue as a winter sky, crisp and bright. Her hair, the color of white moonlight, was styled in braids, falling well past her waist. On her skin, there were intricate blue markings that glowed with a constant, steady thrum. She stood proud, a warrior. Strong. Her clothing looked to be crafted from boiled leather, formed perfectly to her body, portraying the same message.
My feet contacted the ground.
“This is where I leave you,” the vuleerie said, her talons lifting from my shoulders.
I was too stunned by the female standing across from me to say anything. Too stunned to thank the vuleerie for rescuing me as she began her ascent. Too stunned to speak a single word. All I could do was stare.
Slowly, the rusty cogs of my mind started to turn before they supplied a name. One I knew I had not spoken in my past lifetime, nor the one that came before it, which meant that it had been known to me a very long, long time ago.
“Artemesia?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Hello, sister,” she answered softly, tears forming on her lower lash line.
One second, we were standing there, and by the next,we were both running toward each other. Crashing together, we embraced in a desperate hug, full of so much longing it made my heart ache. My fingers curled into her clothing as I held her tightly to me.
The voices from our past began to speak, circling around us like swirls of magic—the late-night laughter that made our bellies hurt and the sisterly fights where both of us were too stubborn to back down. Although I could not match them to a memory, I could hear the same message repeated strongly throughout—
Ofhow muchwe loved one another.
