The Tree of Sorrows did not grant them peace, but it offered a profound kind of absolution. Its chiming lullaby, woven from the thread of Mara's grief, did not erase the pain but held it, honored it, and made it part of the forest's greater music. For the first time, Mara slept without the taut, ready-for-combat rigidity that had been her default state. She slept deeply, and if her dreams were sad, they were also quiet.
She woke to the smell of something sweet and earthy. Corvin was tending a small, smokeless fire over which he roasted knobbly tubers he'd dug up at the tree's roots. "They resonate at a frequency complementary to our basal metabolism," he said by way of greeting, his tone almost cheerful. The scholar in him was delighted by a new puzzle. "It's not nutrition. It's… harmonic sustenance."
