This is really a crappy little thing, but it wouldn't get out of my head until I wrote it down. I honestly am not that fond of Gemala, but I like how she's very loyal to her siblings and her father. I wish she was a little less two-dimensional, but she is a practice-dryad, one I will either improve upon or scrap. If I draw I picture of her, I'll post the link.
I wrote this with a map, and the link to that map is on my profile. This is probably easier to get if you see the map; Gemala crossed at very narrow parts of the river.
I'm sorry that I'm not all happy, so please just enjoy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, which is really a shame because I would give Mr. Tumnus a good home.
In the East-most regions of the Western Woods, quite South of the Rock Bridge, there are a great many large, old trees. There are several billion shades of green in this forest, from the greenish-white of mint to the green-black of deep lakes. The tendrils and vines hang from a thick, muggy canopy, filled with the clatter of silence and the trill of strange, beautiful birds.
The air here is hot, thick, and moist with the shade of the canopy and the heady water vapors from the black, rich soil. It is here that you will find a special breed of tree, if you are to find it anywhere.
Sentient trees have never been common, in Spare Oom or in Narnia. This is not, however, to say that they do not exist in either place.
Old Ned of the Glade was the Living Tree of the East-Western Woods. He had one daughter, born when Ned first opened his eyes to the world of Narnia and communed with the Earth Mother, giving birth to a dryad. Although all dryads are born of trees, they are unable to move away from their trees. Old Ned's child could move from her father's tree, since she was always with her mother. Her name was Gemala.
Gemala lived within her father, never walking too far along in the forest. Her long, wispy, leafy green hair was tangled in what could've been a fetching hairstyle if it hadn't been so full of thorns, wasn't a haven for insects, didn't shrivel in fall, or didn't ooze green water whenever a bit of it fell apart. Her face was dark, dark brown and hard, like the bark her father had. Instead of feet, she had two strong wooden roots that turned up at the ends and her large hands had long, slender fingers with knobby, gnarled knuckles. Her eyes were pink, like a cherry blossom. The color, her father claimed, was from one of her mother's other children. Gemala wore a dress held up by vines and turned into various shrubs whenever she felt frightened.
Gemala was obedient and calm, if boring and quiet and humorless. She rarely smiled and knew nothing outside the world of her father's protection. Outside of her father, she loved no one else but her younger brothers and sisters, who hung in her father's branches, mere seeds. Moving through her father, she would gently touch each of her siblings, feeling a rush of joy and protectiveness toward each one. Privately, she named them and watched them from when they were tiny bumps that surprised her until they were almost ready to let go.
She would miss them, but when they let go, she would come out and stay with them until they grew. Gemala swore to always protect them, much to the pride and amusement of her father.
Ned had been in Narnia since Aslan sang him into being. He had woken up four hundred Narnian years after that, and his roots were long and agile. With them, Ned could sense distress or any change in the course of Nature. He could find the vibrations of a storm or find a single acorn dropped from an oak in another forest.
And so it was that he found something was terribly amiss one day. He couldn't understand all of the sudden silences in the North. Strong trees he had communicated with were silent, almost as if they were shriveled or…frozen. As more and more of these silences spread, he began to register feelings of terrible cold, all coming with a fierce swiftness.
It was the middle of summer, and Ned began to worry. When the Coldnesses started crawling down from the Lantern Waste, he called on his daughter to quickly weave a blanket. Obediently, Gemala did so.
"Father," said she, "what is wrong?"
"My child," Ned replied, "I will send down my seeds to you and you are to catch them in your blanket and run as far away as you can." The Coldnesses were coming to the Lamppost that Gregory had brought at the beginning of Narnia. Turning his leaves, Ned let go of his seeds so that they fell down to his daughter, whose arms were outstretched.
"Father, where shall I run to?" Gemala asked quietly, wrapping up her siblings and pulling them against her chest.
"Go east, my child. Go to the Stone Table and protect your siblings, where Aslan will save you. Do not let the Coldnesses overtake you." A single seed still hung in Ned's branches, and Gemala stared at it, her pink eyes blank and void of emotion as she coddled the blanket of her siblings. "This last seed is my refuge. If you must drop any your sisters or brothers, drop me instead. Protect yourself, my darling."
"I shall, Father," Gemala said, staring into her father's woody face. His dark, hollow eyes slowly stretched apart and his leafy eyebrows, beard, and mustache broke into separate leaves as he dropped the seed. His bark nose and mouth disappeared as if erased. " I love you, Father."
Reaching up, Gemala caught the seed holding her father, scooping it out of the air in a fist so tight that, when she looked at the seed again, it had melt into her wooden hand, sitting within her.
"I love you, child," he father's whispery, far-off voice said through the leaves. "Now, go."
Holding the blanket tightly and stopping only to search for the sun, Gemala ran east.
The Great River was like nothing Gemala had ever seen. It was huge, violent, and very blue, all rushing from somewhere to somewhere else. If she looked North, Gemala could see a great, blinding whiteness in the distance. Frightened by the whiteness, Gemala hugged her bundle tighter and breathed in the comforting smell of leaves and the seeds.
Looking back at the river, Gemala swallowed, indecision entering her eyes for the first time. She looked back the woods, where there was comfort, delicious warmth and protection from these huge rushing beasts.
But the whiteness –her father had called it the coldness- was coming into the forest. Looking forward, Gemala gazed at the trees on the other side of the river.
'They look kind,' she thought. 'Would they mind if I used them to cross? I have no other choice.' Sticking out a hand and balancing her bundle on her left hip, Gemala forced a long, strong weed out of her hand onto one of the branches of the tree on the other side. When it touched, she quickly turned it into a vine and, taking a deep breath and gripping her siblings, swung across the river.
When she landed on the other side, she bit off the weed and kept running, silently pleased at her ability as she entered familiar forest again.
At the next river, Gemala saw a strange sight. There was a beautiful pink tree across the river, its blossoms the same shade as her eyes.
'My older sister,' Gemala thought, the idea instilling a deep, alien fondness in her. She swung across the river and looked at the tree closely, temporarily forgetting the Coldnesses.
The tree made no movement and said no word, but Gemala could see how alike they were: their bark was the same shade, to say nothing of Gemala's eyes and this tree's blossoms.
Feeling one of her rare smiles tug at her face, Gemala's eyes strayed to the North. The whiteness was much closer, and she could actually see it snaking across the land, the skies becoming gray as it sped toward where she stood.
Terrified, Gemala took to her roots and fled, clutching her siblings to her chest, desperate.
A river later, Gemala found herself in a large, empty glade. Sunlight still streamed through it, enabling her to see the Coldnesses, which were not more than a mile off. She was completely exhausted, and knew that she could not run any further.
In fact, her legs fell beneath her unexpectedly, nearing scattering the seeds. Clinging to them, she panted out oxygen and viciously tried to force her legs to move. When they did not, an idea came to her. Remembering her father, Gemala tilted her head back, opened her mouth…
…and swallowed her siblings whole, putting them in the only place she could be sure that they would be safe.
Instantly, her energy was sapped. The tiny seeds needed some form of energy, and Gemala's heat was much more satisfying than the meager heat of the leaf blanket.
Green ooze pricking at her eyes, Gemala forced herself into an Arp Rosemary and lost consciousness, her branches wrapped around her living, warm siblings, as the Coldnesses took her.
The first thing she realized was delicious, heady warmth and lots of moisture. Sighing, Gemala pried her eyes open and stared at the beautiful blue sky. She laid there for many minutes, wondering where she was and where her father was and why she felt strange and ill, as if things were moving within her.
Forcing herself into a sitting position, Gemala stood all the way up, supremely uncomfortable bending. Dizzy, she slowly recalled all that happened. The Coldnesses were definitely gone from here. Where they waiting for her outside?
Suddenly, there was a great crashing as a crowd ran through the glade, near crushing Gemala.
"The Witch is dead! The Witch is dead! Long live Aslan!" the joyous crowd of satyrs and nymphs and centaurs and talking animals chanted, running to spread the news. "The Winter is gone! Long live Aslan!"
Gemala stared in awe at the crowd as it passed, only understanding that the Coldnesses were gone, really gone. Suddenly, she felt very dizzy and ran into the forest. She coughed into a large leaf and her brothers and sisters fell from her mouth.
Surprised, glad, and a little sickened, Gemala picked up a handful of seeds and scattered them around where she stood. As soon as the seeds touched the ground, they sprang into life, and then maturity in a matter of seconds.
Gemala walked slowly through the forest, sprinkling the seeds and floating the waves of love that her siblings sent to her.
Deep in the forest, Gemala was down to the last seed and she had never been so tired. She was blind, and deaf, and could hardly feel where she was anymore, the love of her family poking her in the right direction, or so she assumed.
Pushing her finger against her palm, Gemala forced out the last seed, letting it fall to the ground as she passed out and it shot up from the ground. Catching his unconscious, near-death child up in his arms, Ned smiled quietly and took her into him.
"Well done, my child. Well done."
I don't like how this is written...I think I do more telling than showing, but I just needed to get this out of my head.
Please review.