As it turned out, the tree clock was actually very accomodating. Amerie had just been using wrong at first.
It was a fountain of knowledge and memory. All it required was for Amerie to request what she wanted to hear. She didn’t even have to know the exact date - just a description of the people involved. Amerie wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but she figured out it was some type of archive for everything that happens in the forest. Everything that could be heard, anyway.
“Tree clock, please take me back to the time Jack met Desaraelfrun,” she asked. There was something Amerie had to be sure of. The clock whirred as the trees bobbed up and down.
“Whoa, I swear I just fell over...what’s going on?” came a boyish voice, still cracking in places. “Hey, who are you?”
“My darling child!”
Amerie rolled her eyes. Desaraelfrun hadn’t even bothered to change her script.
“Hold up, I’m not your darling anything! I don’t know you, lady. Wait, maybe...are you Amerie’s elder sister?”
For some reason Jack’s resistance to Desaraelfrun’s advances made Amerie chuckle. She couldn’t imagine that Desaraelfrun would feel particularly flattered by the comparison.
“No,” was Desaraelfrun’s strained reply, “My name is Miss Crystal. Allow me to help you.”
“Thanks, Miss. But I don’t think I need any help.”
Amerie mentally cheered Jack on, although she knew how this would eventually end.
“These woods are dangerous, and fraught with peril. The only way you can get out is with my help. I see my own -”
“Hey, did you happen to see a girl called Amerie playing here? She comes to the woods every day and lives in the cabin nearby. She’s a little shorter than me. Brown hair, brown eyes?”
“No, but I -”
Jack sighed, “I even found the tree with her name on it. Aw man, if I had brought a penknife I could’ve carved in my name too!”
Amerie was glad he hadn’t. Grandmother Lyndzei probably wouldn’t have minded but still, having two names scratched into your face was a bit much.
Desaraelfrun exhaled. Amerie felt proud of her classmate for having driven Desaraelfrun up the wall.
“I don’t think I know exactly who this ‘Amerie’ is, but I do know of some children hanging around a hollow tree...would you like me to take you there?”
“Oh, that’s where she must be! Sure, thanks!”
Amerie seethed at Desaraelfrun’s trickery. She guessed that since Jack had said he wanted to explore Shepherds Forest, he was naturally hoping she (an expert on Shepherd’s Forest) would guide him. She couldn’t imagine why else he was looking for her. Either way, Desaraelfrun had misled Jack using Amerie’s name. It gave her further incentive to save him.
She had a stroke of genius. Amerie finally understood how the tree clock could help her. At last, Amerie formulated a plan.
Making the necessary preparations, she ventured back to the entrance of the passage. The water formed a cocoon around her and took her back to the surface. Amerie emerged not quite like a butterfly but she did feel like she had wings, a way to free herself from the constraints of King Cedrych’s meticulous plot.
Amerie ran to Grandmother Lyndzei and yelled, “I have great news! A plan!”
“Oh, do you now? Well, I’m sure I don’t care one bit about it,” Grandmother Lyndzei said crossly.
“Grandma Lyndzei? Oh no, don’t tell me Desaraelfrun got to you too!”
“Of course not!” One of Grandmother Lyndzei’s branches snapped. She elaborated, “How do you think I feel Amerie, sensing that you had come into the star realm, but you don’t show up? Not five, ten, or twenty minutes later! Do you know how worried I was?”
“Oh,” Amerie faltered, “I’m so sorry, but I had to keep a promise with the lake.”
“The lake? Amerie, the lake can’t spe-”
“It took me all the way to this underground passage, where there was this cool tree clock,” interrupted Amerie excitedly.
“A what?” Grandmother Lyndzei was suddenly starting not to feel very old and wise anymore.
“A tree clock. You ask it to tell you what happens and it winds backwards to whatever it heard during that time.”
Grandmother Lyndzei was dumbfounded.
“Amerie, you can’t possibly mean...Auris Arbor?”
“I don’t know the fancy name for it, but probably. So you knew about it then? Gosh, if you had told me about this before it would have made everything so much easier!” Amerie replied brightly.
Grandmother Lyndzei didn’t have the heart to tell Amerie that the Auris Arbor dial was an ancient legend, practically a myth. Not even the magical creatures of the star realm believed that it really existed. The knots in the old oak twitched. Unlost child or not, Amerie was definitely something.
“So what’s your great plan?” asked Grandmother Lyndzei.
Amerie hesitated, “It involves confronting Cedrych at dawn.”
Another branch snapped.
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