The sky should not be blue this morning, she thought, but cloudy, dark, and ominous. She stirred the embers of the fire and sat beside it, reluctant to face what was to come. One by one, the others woke, stood, and stretched, until only Desdemona Cork still lay on the ground, curled around herself like a puppy. She raised her head. “I am sore afraid,” she said. “For myself, for Grayling, for us all. This is nothing I can enchant away.” Auld Nancy dropped creakily down beside Desdemona Cork and took her hand. “What if she does not succeed?” Desdemona Cork asked. “What if we all are rooted? I can almost feel my skin harden into bark.” She shuddered. It proved the seriousness of their plight, thought Grayling—the bold and bossy Auld Nancy, who mistrusted enchanters, bringing a measure of comfort to Desdemona Cork, no longer arrogant and assured but doubtful and in need of solace. Grayling inhaled deeply. She would do what she could—for her mother, for the other rooted folk, for all those in peril.
