Ariana walks through the dark forest, alone.

She left the house barefoot, and wet grass sticks to her heels. The moon overhead is full and luminous. It’s the kind of night where nothing can hide in the shadows.

It makes no difference. The woodlands could be rife with shadows, and still, Ariana would not be afraid. The worst has already happened to her. Nothing that follows could outdo it.

There will always be an empty place in her heart. A place where Will’s missing note should sing. A place where unforgiving silence has now taken up permanent residence.

Her skirts swish around her ankles. Were she spotted, she might be mistaken for a witch. Walking with purpose through the vast forest, alone, at night. Her hair undone, tresses falling down her back.

She knows that she is unusual, and not solely because of her magic. It’s in her nature, though some seem to think it can be ironed out of her.

She’s overheard chatter amongst the men. Ways that they might tame her, if they snared her.

I’d give her silk slippers. Only silk slippers, and take away her other shoes. She can’t go running through town in those. Not without bleeding those pretty little feet.

Or slippers of rubber, like they wear in the madhouse. That ought to hold her.

Will never spoke of Ariana like that, never sought to reign her in or smother her spirit.

For months, she’d seen his bright green eyes following her, whenever she was running to save someone. That was not so unusual. Everyone stops to watch, when she does that. She’s begrudgingly accepted as the town oddity. People hold their tongues, but only because of her father’s position at the mill.

They still talk, when they think she can’t hear them.

But not Will. Never Will.

He spoke to Ariana, not of her. He watched her run like he wanted to take off and sprint at her side. He would see her returning from a rescue, mud all over her dress, her hair half unpinned - and he’d smile.

She misses his smile. It’s already starting to lose its shape in her head. Human memory is cursedly short. Her father had softened just enough to gift her the Memoriam locket, then returned to his usual miserly ways when it came to having a portrait done.

But Ariana remembers what Will sounded like. Both his soul, and his voice.

The last words he spoke to her.

Ari, I found a way. We won’t have to wait much longer, my love. I promise.

Ariana comes to a wide, shallow creek. White blue magic sparks in her eyes, and she steps into the air. She walks a foot or so above the water, touches down easily on the other side, and keeps walking.

She does not expect to return to town tonight, which means she will not be there to rescue any floundering souls.

Please, let no one find themselves in harm’s way tonight. And if harm does come, let it not threaten their life.

As was the case with the last suffering that Ariana had tried to prevent. A girl in town had used impure castor oil to darken her lashes. Ariana hadn’t made it in time to stop her.

The girl was blinded, but at least Ariana does not have to add one more name to the list of lost souls she keeps in her head.

A shivering cloud overpasses the moon. Ariana pauses to watch it, her bare feet sinking into the grass. It’s a massive storm cloud, thick and dark, twisting like a living, angry thing. The wind picks up, swaying the trees.

“Pity the sailors,” she murmurs, and sets off again.

Another woman might have crossed herself or spoken a prayer, but Ariana is technically a heretic. A practitioner of magic. Prayers have always felt false in her mouth.

The cloud swallows up the moonlight, and Ariana’s eyes glisten with magic again. She opens her hand and turns out a few small, shining globes of light. Some follow after her, trailing in her wake. Some rush off before her, to light the way ahead.

There is no path. This is the thickest part of the forest, dense and untouched by the timber men.

The thought takes Ariana’s mind right back to Will. She remembers watching him from afar, when he first came to town and took his place on the beat crew.

She watched him balance on the felled trees as they swept down the river. The grace with which he leapt from one to another. Leaf-green eyes focused and exhilarated, and brave.

The river is too narrow for rafts, and the beat crew men are forced to do the drives with the bundles of logs completely unhitched. She’d watched Will guide timber around boulders and over rapids, seen him crack pile-ups. He was nimble and quick, always spotting the jam before it could fully form, springing towards it without fear. You'd think that if he lost his footing, he wouldn't fall, but fly.

It’s a dangerous job, but Will was a man of agility and strength. He had a natural talent for it.

Sometimes he would not even look, before the leap.

He’d started out on the rear crew, where the less experienced men cut their teeth. He hadn’t stayed there long. It was a dance, and Will had some innate understanding of the steps. The log would start to turn, and he would balance with his pike-pole, spinning and tapping the surface of the water. Sometimes, under his weight, the log would disappear beneath the surface. It would seem as if he was gliding down the river on the heels of his boots.

When the main drive had passed, boys from town would sneak to the river. Sons of farmers, hoping to find a straggler log on the banks that they might break apart, take home, and use. Ariana noticed that Will always looked the other way when that happened. If he did look, it was only to offer a portion of his rations to the skinniest among the boys.

“Eaten today?” he’d ask.

“Not a crust, sir,” they’d answer, and he’d break off a piece of hard bread, or toss them a candy.

Briefly lost in her memories, Ariana returns to the present and discovers that she’s reached her destination. She emerges into the clearing and stops before the Guardian Tree.

Ariana has been angry with everyone. The beat crew men, who weren’t there when Will needed them, after he’d plucked countless of their numbers from the water. The company men, who are keeping dry the details of what happened. Her father, for siding with the company. For pressuring her into silence about what she’d seen, fearing for his position at the mill.

The company men had offered Ariana the choice of words on Will’s gravestone, then acted as if doing so was generous.

What was that, to her? Nothing. Less than nothing. A slab of rock, where before there had been a flesh and blood man. A man who loved her better than she’d ever been loved before.

The bulk of Ariana’s anger was not for the company men, or her father. No, that was reserved for the Guardian Tree. For months after Will’s death, she had cursed the damnable thing, sworn to loathe it forever. It hadn’t given her enough time to save him.

But Ariana no longer blames the Guardian Tree. Blame is useless. She is only here to do what needs to be done.

She slips the knife out of her pocket.

She’d sharpened it before she left, refining the blade until it shone, until it wouldn’t even require pressure to draw blood. She stands there, gripping it tightly, looking up at the Guardian Tree. The branches, the bole, the leaves.

Ariana’s heart begins to pound. She has to think carefully about where to cut.

When she speaks, her voice echoes around the clearing.

“Will. Don’t watch this.”

She doesn’t know if he’s here, if he’s listening. She can only hear the faintest trace of his spectral energy. The truth of her terrible mistake.

She hadn’t been clear, when she asked for the magic. She was in shock, panicking.

Don’t take him away from me.

The Guardian Tree had answered by trapping Will as a spirit. One that Ariana can’t see, or speak with, or feel. He’s only here, because that's all she asked for.

She doesn’t know if Will realizes that she is the one responsible for it. She has not said as much, won’t speak the words out loud. She can’t stand the thought of him trapped here for hundreds of years, cursing her existence, despising her for what she’s done.

Ariana needs to free him, but she has no notion of how to do it. Her mother never made a ghost; she would have no advice to offer, even if she were alive to give it.

Ariana is on her own, and she has come to a dreadful realization.

She may spend her entire life trying to fix this, and still not succeed - leaving Will trapped forever.

If she can’t fix it, she needs to ensure that someone else can. She has a plan, and it is already in motion.

She will marry, and she will have children, one of whom will be chosen by the Guardian Tree. Her child may save Will, if she fails. If her child cannot do it, then her grandchild must. If not her grandchild, her great-grandchild.

Whoever it is, Ariana will see to it that they have the tools they need. Though she is young, she has spent well over a decade as her mother's student, refining and mastering her skills. She is already an accomplished hand at magic.

Everyone has their specialty. Hers is creation.

Creation requires sacrifice.

Ariana moves to the Guardian Tree and touches the tip of the knife to its bark. She feels the press of it against her own side, ready to cut.

The map is already finished. It was a tricky bit of magic. Ariana is proud of it.

The most difficult part was considering how to make it blend into its environment. Maps are always changing in style, and in another two or three generations, it will start to look old, become an oddity.

The illusion she devised makes it appear as the average of the nearest hundred other maps. It will change, if all of the other maps are replaced. She has no idea what it might look like in another fifty or hundred years. Regardless, it will always seem era-appropriate, unremarkable to anyone without the eyes to see it properly.

It shows spectral energy. Will’s is brand new, too faint to read. Ariana can’t use the map, but in the future, someone else could. She will make sure that her child knows to hand it down to their children, and so on and so forth.

The locket, Ariana sealed up with magic. No one will be able to access its contents without magic of their own. That should protect it from interference, but she fears it may be pawned or sold, if her family ever falls on hard times.

So, when she’d finished it, she went to the window that overlooks the garden. The place where Will always came to her. She does not know if he still comes to the window, in his silent, invisible, untouchable form. But she hopes.

“Will, listen to me. I will see to it that this locket makes its way to a museum upon my death. A closeby one. You must look for it there, if you ever have need of it. If you forget everything else, you cannot forget this.”

There was no answer from Will. There never is.

Tonight’s task will be more difficult than the locket and the map put together. Ariana loves finding ways to imbue objects with magical properties. She loves the process of creation. She considers herself an inventor. But this - this will hurt.

She hopes that Will listened, that he isn’t watching.

She sinks the point of the knife into the Guardian Tree. A shallow slice, but she feels it like a blade in her own gut. She gasps, sagging against the tree, and has to stop. She presses a hand to the bodice of her dress, and feels no blood.

She makes another cut. Tears spring from her eyes; she grits her teeth against the pain, hacking until a piece of the trunk comes away in her hands. A little magic makes the cutting go faster, makes a knife work for a job that needs an ax.

She works until her knuckles are bleeding, scraped by the bark, and her eyes run out of tears. When she’s finished, she has five strips of wood. She will make these into time-traveling conduits. Only the wood of the Guardian Tree holds enough power.

Ariana will use exactly one of them. She will try to prevent Will’s death from happening in the first place. If it doesn’t work, she will hand the rest down to her children. A way to undo a mistake, in the course of trying to save Will. That, along with the map and locket - it might be enough.

Her side is searing and burning. Ariana takes a step, then sinks down against the tree, pressing her fingers to her ribs. The pain is too great for her to walk. She will need to sleep here tonight, as she suspected. She settles down onto the grass, taking steadying breaths, thinking about the next step of her plan.

Choosing a new suitor. Taking a husband that isn’t Will, and having his children. The very thought hurts.

But she does have a man in mind. One who makes the thought hurt a little less.

She thinks him shy, a funny thing for such a big man. He has the build for a woodcutter or a navy man, but he’s employed as a clerk for the timber company. Ariana often sees him quit for the day with ink smeared on his forehead.

He never left an offering at her window, but he did try, once. He had approached with a handful of golden wildflowers, tied up with a bit of bookbinder’s twine. He brought a book, too. He did not see her watching.

He’d come right up to her window, and hesitated. Held out both the book and the bouquet, clearly intending to leave both on the sill.

Then he’d taken a look at the pile of blossoms already there. He turned on his heel and left, clutching the flowers and the little volume to his chest. Shaking his head, as if he thought himself a fool for even trying.

Ariana thought it sweet. She wondered what the book was, that he meant to leave for her.

“Who is that, father?” she’d asked, as they were walking through town the next day. “That man by the bookstand?”

“One of my clerks. One of the better ones, I should say.”

“Yes, but what’s his name?”

“Caleb Callahan. The boys at the mill call him Finch.”

“Finch, why?”

“Because he’s timid as a little bird, that’s why. Also a jab at his size, I presume.”

Ariana had covertly let herself get close to Finch, to see what he sounded like. He didn’t strike that perfect, serene harmony with her note like Will had. But… he didn’t strike her wrong, either. His note was gentle, and slow-moving, and thoughtful.

So far as Ariana could tell, at least. Her mother had died before she could share the proper method of untangling one note from the overall riot of noise.

It was only Will’s, that ever rose up and untangled itself.

Curled up in the grass beneath the Guardian Tree, Ariana closes her eyes. Finch is not Will. He will never fit her quite so right. But if she has to choose a different song to play alongside her own, till death do they part - well, the song of a sweet little bird doesn’t sound so bad.

She gathers up all of her pain, her sorrow, her grief, and scatters it up into the night sky. It drifts back down to her as determination. It calms and steadies her, numbing even the pain in her side. She, the inventor, will make this happen.

The map, the locket, the conduits: this is the elegy that Ariana has written for Will. She will spend her life trying to save him.

I’ll never give up on you, Will. My love will pass through all distance and time.

And if I don’t save you, I will make sure that someone else does.