“I do not understand.”
“It’s a simple question.” She leaned toward me, studying me intently. “Did you make the crossing to this world to take life or to give it?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Isn’t it clear? I ask you to make a choice: life or death. Which do you worship?”
“I don’t…that is…I want…I don’t know! I don’t know what you mean!” I groped within myself but found no good answer to her question. I suddenly knew that I was in very great danger, the sort of danger that lasts not a moment but an eternity, and threatens not the body but the soul. All I wanted was to go back to my own world, to be my father’s son and live to be a soldier for my king. The answer came to me too late. I had no chance to utter a syllable.
“I shall have to find out for you, I think. Live or die, soldier’s son.”
The roots parted and the bridge opened under me. The twining tendrils did not break; they opened their network to allow me to plunge through. As they parted, I desperately lunged forward, running over roots that gave way beneath my feet, hoping against hope to reach solid ground.
I fell short. Suddenly there was nothing under my feet. My left hand scrabbled at roots that squirmed away from my touch, refusing me a grip. All the roots had fled, had opened wide a gap in their web, leaving only bare stone cliff before me. In a stupidly futile act, I jabbed my saber toward the ground, which the tip of the blade could barely reach.
It sank in, with a jolt that sent a shock up my arm, gripped unnaturally by the stone that had given way before it. It defied all physical laws I knew, and the fright of that was stunning. The tree woman gasped, in surprise or pain, I don’t know which. But I was still falling, and in foolish desperation I grabbed the blade of my saber with my left hand as my right came free of the hilt. The blade cut into my fingers, but that pain was nothing compared to the terror I felt at falling into that abyss. In an instant I’d wrapped my right hand around the blade as well. I clung there, the weight of my body suspended from my hands gripping that carefully honed edge, the toes of my boots scrabbling against the undercut cliff. I knew it would soon be over. My mind’s command to my hands to grip would either give way to pain or be futile when I’d severed my own fingers from my hands.
“Help me!” I cried, neither to the tree woman, who stood looking down at me mercilessly, nor to Dewara, who had sent me to this doom. Rather, I shouted to the uncaring universe, a desperate plea that something would take pity on this dangling bit of life.
The pain was agonizing and the blade was slippery with my own blood. I wanted to let go with one hand and try for a handhold on the bluish stone, but it was smooth and featureless. I closed my eyes, not wishing to see my fingers fall from my hands before I plunged to my doom.
“Shall I take you up?” the tree woman asked me.
“Help me! Please!” I begged suddenly, no longer caring if she was friend or foe. She was my sole chance for survival. My eyes flew open. She had come closer but was still out of reach. She stood, looking down at me curiously. I could see the fronds of ferns growing from her mossy dress.
“Please, what?” she asked me gently, implacably.
“Please help me up!” I gasped.
“Please take you up?” she asked, as if she had to be certain she had heard me correctly. “You wish to live, then? To cross the bridge and complete it?”
“Please! Take me up!” I all but shrieked the words. Blood was running down my wrists. The edge of the blade had found the joints in my fingers and was slicing through them. I feared I would faint from the pain even if my fingers did not detach.
She was implacable. “I must give you the choice. You can say you wish to die, rather than have your life taken up. If you so choose, so shall it be. But if you wish to be taken up to this life, then you must choose it clearly. The magic does not take anyone against his will. Do you choose the bridge?” She knelt at the edge of the cliff, leaning over me but still out of my reach. I could smell her odor, old woman and humus mingled in a sickening richness.
“I…choose…life!” My heart was pounding in my ears. I could barely find breath to get the words out. I could claim that I did not know what I was saying, but a part of me did. The tree woman was not speaking of death and life as I knew it; those words conveyed something else when she spoke them. I suppose I could have dangled there longer, and demanded that she explain herself. I feared I made a coward’s choice, choosing my life at some hideous expense that I could not yet comprehend. At the time, with blackness at the edges of my vision, demanding the exact terms of her bargain did not seem an option. I would live first, and then do whatever I must to make it right.
