Reviews for Katey Hawthorne

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A forest. A gigantic, deciduous forest, as if they’d suddenly stepped onto the Appalachian trail. The canopy was so high as to be invisible, though smaller trees pushed their way towards it as if they could see the sun just fine. Everything was so dark and inviting, so peaceful.

John followed Heinlen, toes curling into the cool forest floor deliciously, into the trees. He looked to Lowell to share the moment of awe.Lowell’s nose twitched, and he frowned deeply, so deeply it creased his forehead. “Blight,” he muttered.

John’s heart, which had been soaring, crashed. Were the Terrans in danger of losing their Mother Tree again? Was that why Lowell and John had been brought here? And if so, what the hell could a Beast and an Elementalist hope to do about it? Catching a cheating spouse, sure, maybe even a serial killer. But this?

John’s toe bumped something as he walked, and he jumped, reminding himself to watch the path. It was soft, the dirt miraculously unpacked on the path, underbrush just tickling his bare ankles. But whatever he’d hit had been firm, but with a little give. John gently pushed some shrubbery aside with one toe.

“Uh. Lowell… is that a leg?” It was a strange color, almost a pale brown, like the inside of a tree, but it was definitely a leg… sort of half in and out of the ground. Like a root.

Lowell stepped up beside him and nodded. “They’re dormant.”

And then, John noticed the faces in the trees, eyes closed, at rest. He’d never seen a dormant Terran before—there were stories of entire forests where Terrans took those who, instead of dying, grew close enough to nature to become a true part of it, to meld with a plant or tree of some kind. But John had no idea it would actually be so, “Creepy.”

Heinlen had reversed his course and come back to them. “Yes, yes, it can seem so to outsiders, but I beg you to be respectful.”

“I’m so sorry,” John said immediately. “It’s also very peaceful. They look… happy.” And they did, in a serene, angelic, Botticelli kind of way that did set him at ease. Almost. Except that there were people growing into the trees, which was creepy.

Heinlen led on once more. “This is the main Garden for Boston. The Gardeners started noticing something was amiss with the ecosystem earlier this month. Of course, we’ve had problems before, but nothing the Gardeners haven’t seen and dealt with previously.

“This is another matter entirely, though. If you’ll just follow me through here…” He stepped off the path and into the underbrush.

John followed, unsettled and trying not to look too hard at the tree trunks, lest he see someone staring back at him. So far they all seemed to have their eyes closed, indistinguishable from one another, silent, content. He supposed it would be nice, especially for a Terran, to go that way. It was eternal, by all accounts, so long as the forest remained (there had been tragedies with forest fires, but Terrans knew better than to take their dormant to, say, California or the slope of an active volcano). But even trees in healthy forests couldn’t live forever, could they?

A middle-aged white guy in a Gardener’s uniform walked past them and nodded to Heinlen, who barely seemed to notice him. At first, John thought Lowell was audibly sniffing at the Gardener, but then entered a space where the forest was younger and sparser. John followed Lowell’s gaze—and gave a sudden gasp. A small patch of the forest floor and underbrush surrounding one particular tree had a sickening rusty color to it. The smell of blood muscled aside the green one. A torso and legs in the standard Mother Tree Center uniform leaned against the tree. Unfortunately, said torso was missing both arms and its head, and covered in dried, crusty blood.

John blurted, “What the—??”

Kanaan and Tilney Series

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