That question, what he was offering to the Tree, stumped Mark. He’d had all these ideas of what he might offer a spirit, even a greater spirit, but now that he was faced with the opportunity to strike a bargain, everything he might offer felt paltry and insignificant. He was just an apprentice, still learning his path.

Sensing his hesitation, the Tree waited. It had no rush. This was not its problem. Nature sometimes moved quickly, but as a whole, it did not rush. There was a cycle to it, layered and complex. Plants and animals lived and moved at different paces.

Mark meditated on the feelings he was picking up from the Tree in their spirit speech. A regular tree needed sun and air and water and good soil. It needed time to heal from natural injuries and vermin, but little in this forest threatened its heart wood. A natural tree needed very little from him.

But the Tree was not just a tree. It was a spirit. It had thought and consciousness. For many years, it had contented itself to remain in a cycle of tree-thoughts, unconcerned with larger issues or words.

Humanity intruded on it and marked it with Death. The Tree did not desire to be bothered in such a way anymore.

What the Tree lacked, Mark realized, was knowledge and the ability to understand that knowledge. It was alien to them, plant and spirit and now death all mixed together, but they were equally alien to it. That wouldn’t have been an issue or priority to the Tree, except for one thing.

Riordan had made it care.

When that realization settled into him, Mark opened himself to the Tree. This was what he could offer. His knowledge as a beast of flesh and spirit. His training as a shaman. His experience understanding and comforting people in distress. Even his recent exposure to offensive and defensive combat against death mages.

He had no idea how a spirit would use such things or even how he could sum that down into a concrete offering. Perhaps lessons on psychology? Chances to see the world through his eyes? Mark didn’t know, but he offered nonetheless.

If Frankie could have seen him in that moment, she would have whooped his ass for such an open-ended offer, but Mark was caught in the moment and in the Tree’s aura. He was asking for an open-ended gift. It was only right that he made an open-ended offer, so that they could come to a deal where they exchange equal gifts.

The Tree studied Mark, inside and out. The pressure of that presence stretching his soul with its examination made Mark tremble. His naked body quivered in the dirt, but he held his stance of supplication and kept himself open to it.

This spirit opened up his soul, pouring him into its sap, tasting him, distilling him. Mark’s soul squeezed painfully. His animal instincts called him to fight, to bite and resist being so oppressed. His human intelligence despaired, caught up in this unbreakable force and feeling helpless once more, just as he hadn’t wanted.

The shaman part of him felt all of that… and then accepted it.

So what if he was helpless? He didn’t want to get hurt or die, but those were risks he was taking when dealing with powerful magic.

So what if he couldn’t control his current situation? That was only logical when dealing with a greater spirit.

So what if he didn’t have much to offer? He had so much potential. If the Tree didn’t see it for itself, then that failure was the Tree’s, not Mark’s.

His trauma didn’t vanish, nor did his anxiety or fear, but Mark felt strangely apart from it. There was peace in acceptance of one’s own weakness, he realized.

Peace was what had drawn Mark to the Tree. When he’d followed Riordan and the agents into its glade for the investigation, he hadn’t expected that feeling of peace which emanated from it and seeped into him like water on thirsty soil.

That was where he’d gone wrong, Mark realized. He was looking for peace by trying to increase his strength. Peace through force wasn’t truly peace; it was unending war. That wasn’t what Mark wanted.

He wanted to feel safe again.

Being face to face with the death mages, even on the periphery, turned that threat from a theoretical into a real one. He’d been cut and cursed by one. He’d felt their magic trying to invade his mind. He felt it in his blood. It was a physical and spiritual violation.

Entering the spirit realm with Daniel and Zeren to help Riordan against Phenalope highlighted what Mark lacked as a caster. He’d been able to exist in that realm, but the corruption of the killing tree’s spiritual representation overwhelmed him. He’d blocked it from his mind as something he couldn’t help, something far beyond him and distant from him.

The fight at the ritual site allowed Mark to reclaim some of his pride as a caster, throwing out charms he’d made to great effect, but it showed even more clearly that Mark was not a fighter. Being in that fight, having someone trying to kill him, that dragged his already shaken sense of safety forward and shattered it into a million pieces. The prolonged endurance in that pile of cursed berserk combatants imprinted the awareness of mortality, his and that of others, deep into him.

Nightmares kept him up, tossing and turning with memories. How close had he come to dying? How close had the others come? That fight went incredibly well for the situation at hand and they still came close to losing several of their people, himself included.

The dead bodies of cultists laid out afterwards haunted him. They had been their enemies in that moment, but Mark hadn’t wished death on them. They likely wouldn’t have fought to the death if not for the spell of one of their own side whose empathy died under death magic’s draw.

So wasteful. A life cut short before its time was wasteful.

Death itself… Mark sat with that concept for a moment, lost in whatever state of forced contemplation he’d been squeezed into. Death was complicated.

As a living creature, Mark feared death. Death was a transition state that only flowed one way. He had recent experience that told him death wasn’t the end of everything, but it was still the end of what had come before. As long as Mark held worldly attachments and regrets, he would fear death.

Were attachments so bad really? Mark knew several Asian philosophies and religions talked about desire as a root of suffering or as a thing that held back self-enlightenment. There was truth in that. Desire existed as an attachment between himself and the things he didn’t have. If he had it, there would be no need to desire it. Desire looked outward towards possibilities rather than inward towards realities.

There was no contentment if one lost one’s self to desire.

Yet, some desire drove people forward, leading to rapid developments. Competition was driven by external or internal goals, things that one desired but had not yet achieved. Mark wasn’t some enlightened monk, eschewing all interaction with the world. He was a shaman, looking to grow the happiness and well-being of his pack.

Those attachments were worth the pain they might bring. Because attachments did bring pain. Even if nothing bad happened, Frankie and Norris and Vera would all die long before Mark. And his human friends as well. He hadn’t truly felt the effects of a shifter’s long lifespan yet, but he was aware that he would lose many people to death before his own life was done.

He let that emotion fill him, sitting like a weight in his chest, making breath hard. Loss, potential or realized, was a dreadful emotion. It tore at one’s heart, threatening to harden it if one let it. Mark had seen it in others, especially older people, shifters or not. They stopped caring as much about other people, stopped putting forth the energy to invest in yet another person that they were destined to lose.

Yes, that hardness could prevent the sharp stab of loss, but it strangled the heart and soul. To be closed off and uninvested meant that one lost all the potential joys that knowing and interacting with another could give, all to avoid that last moment when it was all over and the lingering grief of no longer having it.

Could Mark become someone who could accept pain in order to live fully in joy? To never take the present for granted just because he desired something in the future? He wanted to be like that. Those emotions matched the image of a true shaman in his mind.

A shaman was one who guarded the hearts of the pack. Who defended them in hard times, yes, but those hard times were short in duration and hopefully few. More time was spent on nurturing the minds and souls of the pack, reveling in knowledge and connection and safety and peace.

Mark breathed out in a long relieving exhale, finding himself centered in that feeling. It was both present and future, for the seed of that mentality was within him. He truly was a seedling, just like the tiny vine he had planted to speak to the Tree.

Nurture life, celebrate life, live fully. And when death comes, mourn with gratitude in one’s heart. A wake, not a funeral.

All of these things were Mark and he was them and more. He was no longer some things and was becoming others. He was a seedling planted in the earth, begging to be watered so that he might grow strong.

Begging not even for himself, but for another. For a friend. To take risk for one’s own reward was common. To take risk for another, for no other reason than that they had a need, was compassion.

The Tree watched the soul that was Mark, felt this seedling and knew it. It did not understand this seedling of flesh yet, but it now knew it. This seedling was offering the Tree that understanding. It was offering knowledge over time. And in exchange, it asked for the water of strength to be poured over itself and over the ghost that sheltered in the Tree’s shade.

The Tree saw Mark and it accepted.