The Story of the Trees - Sword, Ring, and Crown Book One

Chapter Thirty-Six

I laid awake in my bed for several hours because my thoughts were in a snarl of relived kisses and arguments.

I put a pillow across my face and blushed when Ciaran's claim that I stole his virtue came to mind. I was the innocent one, but the idea that perhaps he had something happen to him for the first time was a sweet fantasy. Trees could lie though, so I doubted I had been his first. He even said that he'd had a counterpart at some point in time. I doubted he just held hands with that person.

I finally threw back the covers and rose. Sleep meant to elude me while the past few hours with that man whipped around my head. I decided to distract myself by fixing Klack.

Klick fluttered to my shoulder as I sat at the desk that faced the moonlight and the stark mountains in the distance.

I stroked Klick's feathers as it preened strands of my hair. "Hey, little buddy, I've sure got a mess on my hands."

Persimmon meowed from the corner of my room, and I jumped in my chair, startled. He padded over to my desk and sat in front of me.

"Silly Persimmon, what are you doing in my room?"

I picked him up and set him on my lap. That was one of the interesting things about my power over ghosts — not only did I see them, but I could also touch them. They became more real from my touch, in fact. The ghost friends I had in the city recalled who they were before they died after my touch. Sometimes, they passed over to the afterlife from that.

The items my birds had collected hid in a cup contained pens. I dumped the cup and spread out the little treasures that Klick and Klack had collected.

Klack laid in a drawer, injured still. I'd put him there until I had time to see how to fix him. I pulled him out of the drawer and set him on the desk before me.

After taking off his costume as carefully as possible, I looked at the damage. One of his legs had separated at the femur and fibula, plus one of the humerus bones on his wings had snapped in half. That part would be easy to fix. A little glue should do the trick, but the other part was a joint, and I would need some way to keep them together. Klack looked up at me, and I sighed. At least he'd not "died" after the accident. He'd just been stunned.

"I'm sorry, little friend. I keep putting everyone in harm's way lately."

He clicked his beak at me as if forgiving me, and I felt my eyes sting. Before I set to work, I rubbed them—no need for tears to get into the glue and possibly disrupt any of Klack's magic. As a temporary measure, I glued the broken wing back together and held it in place with some tape until it dried. The broken leg was another matter because I needed more supplies — a bit of clay to create anchors for the hinge I needed to create, and some wire. I would ask the staff in the house in the morning. I covered him with a handkerchief and patted him gently, disappointed that there wasn't more to do for him at that moment.

Nevertheless, the work had given me some time to forget about my issues for a moment. In two days, my previous desert of a love life had experienced a sudden deluge. Three men had kissed me, and Ciaran had more than kissed me. Then there was that whole crazy thing with Noc.

My face heated as a giddy thrill coursed through my body at the thought. I covered my face with my hands as embarrassment immediately followed.

"Matt, you're a hormonal idiot," I said out loud.

I looked at the roots that branched from my heart to various parts of the mansion and the world, and I blamed them. It must be because I sensed each man's emotions that I was easily unbalanced. Or, it was the crazy sense of completeness I experienced by having each of them linked to me - even Erick.