by James Comins
"I was sure I had it figured out now. If the Hunter heard a scream, he'd come in and take away the corpses. But if I left, without any fear, without screaming or running? If I just walked out of the Forest Depths? What then? My fear had been burned out of me. I didn't feel afraid, and after what Pata had done, I didn't feel anything else, either. So I rolled up a starchy sunshade as a megaphone, aimed it at the empty barrel, and faked the loudest scream I could.
"It was only a second later when I heard Pata say my name. And then she screamed. 'Pafaul.' Scream. It was just like that. And that--that was my Pata.
"All I wanted to do was survive, then. I knew the Hunter was coming for my mother's body. I was sure he knew exacticately where Pata was. So what I did was to lift my mother's body and pull her out of the larantine into the open air. The bats began to divebomb me, but I grabbed a bouquet of stinging ferns and held them over me and Pata. They're not easy to hold even if you have fur--when I was very young, leaving the tree was usually the only bad part of the day, 'cause you'd get stinging stickers in your fur. The pattern the bats made was just like the way the beetles formed their command chain--one after another they dove straight down at me, then flew back up, thousands of them, so there was always a V pointing down at me. That's when I knew I'd been right, that they were signalling the Hunter. But I had a plan.
"I made my way through the Forest Depths, which were silent for probably the first time ever, to a clearing where I used to play, close to a burnbog. I always used to lose toys, puffrollers and chancies, by rolling them into the bog, and once they fell in, the bog's burn-stain wouldn't never come out. I set Pata's body down next to the bog and waited, swinging the stinging ferns at the bats.
"Mists rose in the Forest Depths then, like smoke from kindling. It always does that in the early mornings. That was when the Hunter showed himself. He was a black shape in the white mists, a silhouette of deathmakin'. Four silver shines reflected from his knives. His face was cloaked in black cloth. Over his shoulder were the pelts of my family. I knew I couldn't kill him, but I hoped I could live. It was all I had left.
"As he came closer, I lifted my mother's body over my head and waded into the bog. The bats threw themselves at me, but with a flash from his blades the Hunter called them off. For nearly a quartoll we stood facing each other. He was waiting for me to give up on life.
"I found it hard to breathe, but not because of the cold or the hunger or even the bog's burn. On the other hand, I could see his breath through his cloak because it puffed the white mists aside. Then I took a deep breath and I said, 'You can have my mother if you let me go. Otherwise I'll drop her.' The Hunter looked down at the burnbog and at me all covered with the staining brown oils. His eyes were as black as the sky between stars. I only heard one word from him: 'Go.' I threw my mother's body to land and climbed out and ran. I expected him to follow, but he didn't. I guess after getting stained my pelt wasn't valuable anymore."
Pafaul took a deep breath.
"So here's how it is. I survived. I'm going to keep surviving. I don't know if I'm the last Partha in the whole world or what I am anymore. But I'm going to keep surviving. Right now I feel unsafe. I need a safe place to live, where I'll be protected from the Hunter, where no one will ever know about me. I need to know that no one is going to die on my account. I need that.
"So you Worshippers need to promise me that no one else will die here. Point those bows someplace else."
Cory heard one of the Worshippers raise his voice: "But we have to make an annual sacrifice. It's the only thing keeping the Gnarled Stonetree alive."
Loora's warm hand unclasped from Cory's. She said, "Is the life of the tree really more important than the life of your people?"
Aughra snorted in what Cory thought was an approving manner.
"The fuzzy girl should live with us," said the Worshipper child who had scolded the Great Priestess. "We could keep her safe."
"Gabebel," Brin's piercing voice said, "shoot the animal first. Its story is a lie. They are vicious creatures, Parthim, and numerous, and they chew trees from the inside out. Do you see the cavern it made inside the bark?"
"Actually, that was me," the Mystic said, not as cheerful as he'd been before Pafaul's story. "Only a little at a time, mind you, and I didn't hurt the tree."
"Great Priestess," said a Worshipper, "I don't want to shoot anybody."
"The tree is dead," Aughra said. "It cannot be replanted to be as it was before." Her voice was nasal and hoarse.
"Lies. She lies to you! Kill them quickly, and we will begin the replanting process. If need be, we will plant a sapling in its place."
"Podlings," said Pafaul, "I'll make you a deal, the same way I made a deal with the Hunter of the Skeksis. Tell your Great Priestess to leave. Let me live with you. Please. I can't teach you any fancy rituals like hers, but I'll be a friend for life. We can be safe here, safe from anything that might hurt us. And happy. But there can't be any more sacrifices, not ever again. I need you to promise you'll never sacrifice another living being."
A woman's voice spoke up, blazing with heart-anger: "I gave my son to be sacrificed, Partha. I held him down in the sacrifice pit as they cut his throat. My son did not die in vain. We will kill you and replant the tree and live under its shade once more."
* * *
"Happy to see you made it out, Lemny, my friend, even if you didn't make it out in one piece." Rian gave the Crabbit a fierce grin, lifted the bug, who clung to a black hemisphere of broken shell, and set the leg clusters on his shoulder. "What are your plans now?"
"Hide me," Lemny said quickly, feeling exposed. "Take me straight outside. Then I'll run. Don't s'pose you know where the Nethercroft is? That's where they said Gobber had gone."
"The Podling? Yeah, I took him there myself. On orders, of course. Nasty place. And too dangerous to visit. I'd give him even odds not to have made it past the gears."
"Take me there."
"No point. The only entrance is down the grinder. Then it's through whirling blades, and after that, the Trashlings will pick over your corpse. They might use your shell for a hat."
"Said take me. I have to catch up with Gobber."
"If I was you, and sadly I'm not, I'd aim to meet the Trashlings in the Swamp of Sog," said Rian.
"See these legs?" Lemny flexed them. "I can't climb through the swamp with these."
"You don't need to go through it. Go under it. Here, I'll show you."
The sound of Skeksis humming to themselves came warbling up the corridor. The Crabbit dropped from Rian's shoulder and hung down his back, supported from the leather coat collar by strong claws. SkekTek came into view, looking sour even by Rian's own standards.
"Your strengthness," Rian said perfunctorily, bowing and backing against the wall without squeezing the shell-less Crabbit, but hiding him from view.
"Strengthness," grumbled skekTek to himself. "Without the light from the discharge I can't determine the--" skekTek noticed Rian, who was keeping his eyes down to avoid notice. "You."
"Just a servant of the Castle, your eminence."
SkekTek pulled close, nose-to-nose, bending slightly to make himself a comparable height, still looming nevertheless. His voice was whispers: "The Slavemaster had you drag me to the kennels," he said.
"Yessir he did."
"Why?" skekTek asked.
"None of my affair, your greatness, I don't ask. I just do my job."
"And if I were to REQUIRE you to speculate as to why he needed me taken there? Rather than simply having you steal my shattercite yourself?"
Rian's lips mooshed one way, mooshed the other. The Skeksi's breath was hot and stenching.
"Hazard me a guess, servant of the Castle," skekTek said. "You know him."
"Why didn't skekNa order me to take your crystal. Ehm. In my capacity as a slave of the Slavemaster, I'd say whatever reasons he had are probably vicious, callous, and hate-spirited."
"Was he just following the Emperor's orders,
do you think?" said skekTek closely.
"This may be trending into gossip, your mightiness, but I'd reckon the Emperor would prefer to humiliate you in person, rather than have skekNa do it privately in the kennels. The Emperor chooses not to visit the kennels. Thinks they're beneath him. They are, too. Small joke."
"So," said skekTek, sidling closer still, "you think he had another reason for sending me down there."
"Couldn't say, your wonder. But the idea is one that might occur to, shall we say, a more speculative individual than I am."
"Thank you, slave. Dismissed." SkekTek began humming to himself. It was, Rian realized, the pitch-perfect pattern of the kennel doors. The whole pattern. Standing orders were to report any incidence of the pattern appearing outside the kennel, so it could be changed quickly. Pity, Rian would've liked to see skekNa get his . . .
He turned and continued down the corridor . . .
"Incidentally," the Skeksi remarked, turning one last time to face Rian, "I--wait, slave. Isn't that my insect?"
* * *
"Replant your tree," Loora shouted. "Kill all your citizens. Do anything you want. But let us go so that we can find a cure to the Light Sickness. Why do we matter to you? Believe whatever you want. We'll happily leave you alone again to practice your craz--your religion the way you want to. But why can't we just leave the way we came?"
"Saboteurs," Brin hissed. "They'll be back as soon as we replant it. They desire only its destruction."
"I have had enough of you!" Loora shouted. "You know what she admitted to me, you Worshippers? You know what she said? She told me that she's infected with an evil spirit, and the evil spirit inside her makes her want to control people. She invented a whole set of bizarre rules for you to follow just to make sure you never leave the village. But there's a whole world full of people out there, and I bet that if you didn't have these made-up rules to follow, you'd like to explore that world. Wouldn't you? And you!"
Pointing an accusing finger, Loora brushed past Cory and in the thin twilight marched away from Brin toward the Worshipper who had sacrificed her son.
"Maybe your son did die for nothing! Maybe it was all lies. Maybe you really did destroy a--a life--for absolutely nothing--"
The woman drew her spearbolt back, smiling a smile of absolute hatred. "I'll do it, Great Priestess. I'll fix this."
Stepping forward beside Loora, bracing a tentative four-fingered hand in front of him, was Cory. He passed her, stumbling toward the hateful Worshipper woman's voice. Loora touched his shoulder, but he didn't stop. He found his way to the Worshipper, blindly facing the wrong angle, and spoke.
"It's okay, miss. You can shoot us if you need to. I understand. But please make sure you shoot me first, so I don't have to hear my friends die."
Cory couldn't see the spearbolt bow swinging to him and then lowering, Loora knew. He couldn't see the shame rise on the small gray-green face of the hateful Worshipper, or the instant rage on Brin's face. He didn't know that he wasn't going to die.
"Jevlin," said the gossipy guard Gabebel, "let's let everybody live."
"Cory," hissed Loora, "I know you're being brave, but come over here and be brave where I can hold your hand and lead you around."
As Cory made his way to her, the shame-faced woman called Jevlin followed him. She permitted the bow to fall from her hand, but stalked after the boy over the spade-riven garden, practically breathing down his neck. He faced her with pure black eyes: iris and pupil and sclera.
"Gelfling," the Pod woman called Jevlin said, "how old are you?" Her voice had an edge in it so sharp it seemed to cut. Loora wondered whether Cory could feel it too.
"Fourteen, miss."
"My son." The woman rested two hands on Cory's face, and Loora was ready to spring to defend him, but the woman merely looked over the face, as if it contained deep new mysteries. "My son would be nearly that. He helped the tree grow as tall as it did." A slow wandering trail of weeping coursed her face without sound. "I would the tree had grown taller."
"Me too. My father is a gardener, miss--"
"Jevlin," she corrected. "You may call me Jevlin."
"My father is a gardener, Jevlin. He specializes in grafting. He's a genius with plants. He can probably save the tree--part of it, at least. But he has the Light Sickness. If we can find the cure, I promise I'll bring him here and he'll show you how to replant it. Um, thank you for not shooting me."
"I'm ashamed of my words. They were hasty." She exhaled, and tears tracked down her neck. "My son would be happy to know we did everything we could to save the tree. And he'd be happy to know you are risking your life to save your father. Be welcome now, find your cure, and return with your father."
"I will."
The circle of deadly points lowered. The tension seemed to sift away until there was no longer a fear of death in the clearing. Loora relaxed and looked around.
Shovels lay scattered like fallen branches. A vast black stone stump remained, while the distant fallen upper block of the tree was an oval wall that blocked out the evening. From the night, stars. Out of nowhere, lanterns of nut-oil in translucent seed-wrappers came alight. Worshippers drifted back to the circle after tending the lanterns.
"Worshippers," announced Aughra in a carrying, wounded, honking nasal voice. She still pressed the bandages to her face, and Loora still found it hard to look at the flat, skull-like, bleeding nose without wincing. "Podlings, you may stay here. You may go! You may do precisely what you like. You may worship the tree. You may travel the world. You can stand on your head, if that's what you want to do. But," the strange purple-haired woman said, "you must see who it is you have been worshipping. Mystic! Come here."
The Herbalist shuffled forward, his six limbs embarrassed, his long brown beak moist with tears of his own, his bright and foolish eyes mournful.
"Sing with me," Aughra told him.
The tone began low, a single note sung by two voices. The two voices rose together, touching each note briefly, permitting the sounds to arise and depart. Loora closed her eyes and squeezed Cory's palm, which was cold in hers. The song returned to the same three notes several times, recursive. The ground beneath Loora's feet began to hum the three notes, down up over, down up over, again and again.
A tragic scream. A shattered split.
Two things happened at once, in tune with the song. Opening her eyes, Loora saw Great Priestess Brin caught in the lanternlight, her feet a tror above the ground, held aloft. Levitating. The wrinkly Podling body writhed, thrashed, and the line of her back twisted and bent. White sparks began to play across Brin's hands and shine through her robes.
At the same time, the black stone stump of the Gnarled Stonetree cracked. The same white sparks draw a white vertical line down the opening fissure. Deep inside the stone trunk shone a line of living green, a hidden vein of the Gnarled Stonetree.
Brin writhed. The tree split. The three tones rang.
The Mystic continued the song. Aughra let it depart her, and spoke: "You worship the tree, Pressela? Hmp! Prove it. If you really want the tree to come back to life, reinforce it with your essence. Or don't! Let the tree die and show everyone how much it means to you. Either way, let the dream go. Push it out of your two bodies. Send it back to the stars. One body and one mind are enough for you."
The voice was nothing but screams: "I will not go," came strangled from Brin's body.
The Worshippers stared. Pafaul crouched on the still-singing ground. The flouse cheeped.
"I don't want to go."
Blue liquid poured from Brin's mouth, snaking forward until no more than a single strand connected it to the old Podling body, which shook violently. Then the strand snapped. The body dropped lifeless to the ground. Pafaul curled herself up in a tangle of paws, moaning something about no more killing.
"Give the dream inside you to the tree, Pressela. It is not you," said Aughra.
The scream continued, a blazing scream, a wind-wild scream.
"Gi
ve me one more day. Give me one more second. One more second as queen of everything. Just one more moment. Just one more. I want another chance. Another chance to be worshipped."
The floating ball of blue liquid began to bubble and shake like a lake in a storm. Aughra resumed singing, and the three repeating notes made the blue liquid take three squirming shapes: twisted spiky stretched, twisted spiky stretched.
"Put the dream in a place it cannot harm you anymore."
"One more--"
One last great scream. A blast of light shot from the ball of liquid and funneled into the gaping wound in the stump of the Gnarled Stonetree. The blue liquid stopped writhing and became clear. White sparks shot out from the Stonetree, and the black stone fell away to either side. From the bright green stem that remained, a pair of broad leaves unfolded, striped in fiery and insane new colors. Frightening colors spattered with insidious meaning.
"Thus," said Aughra, "it is renewed." She closed her eyes and exhaled. The Mystic's voice released the song, and the clearing grew still. In the light of the burning nut-oil, the clear blue liquid landed placidly on the turned soil.
"Go home, simple Pressela. Return to the sea," said Aughra.
The liquid sank into the land and was gone.
* * *
"Not much use to me escaped, are you?" skekTek said, gripping the insect by the thorax.
"Ew," the Gelfling guard exclaimed, "was there a bug on me this whole time?"
"My bug."
Claws detached from the collar, one two three four.
"I'll bring it down to the lab for you, your pride," the guard said.
SkekTek did not respond to this. What he said was, "I have not adequately examined my golden object. Not that it's real gold, is it, gullible insect?" No response. "Lucky you found me, aren't you? The Chamberlain would simply have eaten you. Crunching each of your legs, one by one, in his beak. Or perhaps twisting them off and sucking out the morsels inside. Whereas I have an interest in prolonging your life."
The insect made sounds that were not words.
