The Teacher

The Last Grove

Finn pushed the door open, an odd thing to do in a house that would cater to her every whim if she chose, to reveal a grassless, still clearing. Surrounding the clearing were racks of lumber and shelves of wooden materials and beyond those was a wall of vertical logs that had been driven into the ground. Finn frowned and stepped further into the clearing, Uriel and Gloria following slowly. There was no signs of people having been here beyond stacking the lumber except for tags that hung still in the lifeless air. Finn stopped, now in the middle of the clearing and stared at a tag a moment, trying to think what had caught her attention. When she had it she pulled her magic to her, preparing to fight.

"Uriel? Can you please confirm there are no insects here?"

"I just noticed that myself." Finn heard behind her and felt the distinctive magic that was angelic wings and an angelic sword. She knew Uriel was protecting Gloria, and stepped forward to read a tag.

"Oh sweet Persephone goddess of spring." Finn prayed and dropped the tag to look around her in shock.

"What is it?" Uriel demanded.

"It's the Last Grove." Finn whispered, taking in the lumber on its racking. "Go back in the house." She followed as Uriel backed into the house, wrapping his wings protectively around Gloria until Finn stepped into the house and closed the door behind her.

"What the fuck Finn." Uriel whispered as soon as the door was closed, but Finn held up a hand to stop him. She checked the lines of magic that she had manipulated to pull the lumber yard close to the house and winced when she realized she'd done a good job of it. There were no scars to show where she had melded the magics again. She could still banish the room back to wherever the house kept the rooms it wasn't using, and she did. Drawing a deep breath when it was done.

"I'd love to know 'what the fuck' myself." Finn whispered back to the angel.

"I'd like to know too, and also why we're whispering." Gloria whispered and Finn stared at her.

"That is a long story that has nothing to do with what all is going on right now. We'll get to this later." She forced herself to speak at a normal volume and to stand up straight. "Let's go make a date to get your stuff from your parents."

"No." Gloria stood with her arms crossed and summoned the lumber yard. Finn felt the magic of the house shudder as it reacted to the opposing wills of her and Gloria. Finn relaxed her control of the house and sighed.

"The lycan's can't use that wood. They would die."

"If they were lucky." Uriel added mutinously.

"That's not helpful Uriel." Finn snapped at the angel.

"You said it was the last grove, the last grove of what?" Gloria cracked open the door and peered through, making Finn wonder where the hell the girl had found this kind of gumption. "I don't know enough about trees to be able to tell what kind of trees those were. Are they extinct now?"

Uriel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have to go. Our Commanders have to be warned." Finn glanced at him before he shot her an apologetic look and disappeared on the scent of cinnamon and cloves.

"They have to know what? That you're housing extinct trees?" Gloria asked and Finn, finally reaching her tolerance level for the door being open, reached past the girl and closed the door. The door faded and she nodded at Gloria.

"I suppose this piece of history needs to be aired out. But not here, not with this thing attached to the house." Finn started walking back down the steadily shrinking hall, shutting rooms that weren't needed as she walked to the kitchen. "But I'm not going into details that I don't know, and you will trust me when I say to stay the hell away from that room. I'll add protections to it to keep it from just attaching itself in future, but now that it's been reattached someone somewhere is going to know it's here." She sighed and sat down, Gloria joining her with a raptly curious look on her face.

"A long time ago, there were dryads and there were druids. The Last Grove is the last grove of trees where Dryads lived. There was a war, it was short lived but it resulted in the extermination of all dryads and the druids. To this day anyone born with Druidic magic is sentenced to immediate death on detection." Gloria blinked. "Can you imagine every plant suddenly trying to kill you?"

"There was a movie about that."

"Was there?"

"The trees were releasing some sort of pollen that was making humans suicidal. Homicidal. Just -cidal in general I guess."

"Well, that could work too I suppose." Finn frowned. "Besides being told why we kill druids as soon as we find them I wasn't told details and like I've mentioned before, reading isn't really my thing. I'm sure you can find something in the Chronicles if you look. In the mean time though, that room is off limits. Can you do that?"

"I can, but what do we do about the Lycans? They need wood to build up their cabin."

Finn glanced at the clock, somewhat shocked at the time. "We will figure something out tomorrow. At the very least a lot of those clothes can go to them."

Gloria wrinkled her nose. "Are you for real right now?"

"I'll arrange for someone to take care of alterations on the clothing, but it's not being used here and they need the fabric." Finn stood and lifted the phone from it's cradle. "I'm ordering pizza, you want anything specific?"

Gloria shook her head and Finn ordered a veggie pizza with an ungodly amount of cheese. Gloria had disappeared to the library and Finn had moved back to the model room to stare at the house. She was wiped out, but not as bad as before. It just felt like she'd run a marathon on a nap rather than a good nights sleep. She saw the delivery driver pull up to the house, the little string doll waddling up the path as though it was being moved by a toddler. She had connected the front door with a warehouse close to where this restaurant was located; a hidden gem of the American south.  

She answered the door and paid with cash, making sure to tip the driver. This wasn't a good area of town and coming out here was worth more than they paid delivery drivers. She set the pizza out on the kitchen counter, got a plate, and went to eat staring at the model again. She heard Gloria come to find the food, the smell was amazing and would have drifted to her in the library whether Finn had called out to her or not. Finn couldn't honestly remember if she had. She detached the front door and watched as little string dolls of various animals approached the house. A grizzly bear, a few deer of some sort. Rodents, their dolls so much bigger than they were in real life and the only dolls that were never made to scale like everything else was. Finn smiled, remembering some of the scary stories her uncles had told her about giant rodents that would gobble her and her siblings up if they did things they weren't supposed to.

Finn fell asleep in the chair she had been watching the house from. She didn't see which doll went into the model room to cover her with a blanket, and she wouldn't be able to ask in the morning. The model didn't work that way.