by A. Sparrow
Karla studied the pattern of nubs on the roof of the tunnel.
“You think by now I don’t know the look of someone who is destined for Root? Believe me, I know this when I see it. The total surrender. The dark happiness of giving up. You should know, too, the wall that goes up between the mind and the senses.”
She turned and laid her hands on the opposite wall, working her fingers between the tightly packed roots.
“And besides … I find the pills she has collected … under her mattress. And I saw that she takes some. Not enough, I don’t think, thank God she doesn’t know yet how much it takes to die.”
I tried to imagine what it was like for Karla to have a sister going through this crap. I never had a sibling, so I didn’t know what that whole deal was like, but I would never wish Root on anyone. It was a refuge only for the most desperate of souls. At least Isobel had someone looking out for her here. Unless, it was already too late.
We crossed the interspaces to the next tunnel, whose surfaces were slick and bare and just as devoid of pods as the others this close to the Reapers’ lair.
“Maybe we’re better off up-tunnel?” I said.
“We check here, first,” said Karla. “We must, just in case. Pods will be made even this close to the Reaper’s nest, but they do not last very long. We would have less time to save Isobel if she came to this place.”
We wrestled our way through to yet another tunnel. The roots in this particularly matrix were extra ornery. Weird, how each patch seemed to have its own disposition and personality. Maybe the proximity of the Reapers was making this batch cocky. I missed dealing with the more passive, compliant roots we knew from the ‘Burg.
Again, the tunnel was stripped of pods.
“Karla. I think they’re all gonna be this way down here.”
“We do not know this for sure.”
“It’s pretty clear to me. Every single one so far—“
“We will check them all!” she snapped. “This is my sister we are talking about.”
I hushed up, and went through the motions with her as we worked our way farther and farther around the ring of tunnels. Karla would not be satisfied until we had made the complete circuit.
She took my hand and squeezed it when I wasn’t expecting. That little act sent chills down my back. She looked at me funny.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just … thank you,” she said. “I am so glad that you are here ... with me. That I do not have to do this alone.”
Ripples roiled my stomach. “Um … there’s something I should have told you. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but … I got issues on the other side.”
She looked at me perplexed. “Issues? What you mean, issues?”
“Remember those drug dealers I got messed up with? I think they tracked me down at Inverness Station and I ... uh … I think there’s a bounty on my head.”
“Bounty?”
“Yeah. You know, money for bringing me in? So I’m just saying … don’t be surprised if I blink out.”
“Blink out? You mean … die?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
“You go to a train station to come to Root? Are you crazy? It should be for private.”
“I didn’t know I was gonna come here. I was just trying to get out of Inverness. And I saw him, but I wasn’t sure that’s who he was. I’m still not sure. Just … don’t be surprised if something happens to me.”
“What do you think they will do to you?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But I guarantee they’re not happy.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
“I was going under just as I realized what was going on. I couldn’t get away.”
She sighed and glanced away, her brow all crinkly. She wouldn’t let go of my hand.
“I’m sorry, Karla.”
She shrugged. “We will work something out.”
“Like … what?”
“Something! I don’t know. I can’t think about it right now.”
We stood there, starting across the pit, listening to the wheezing of the Reapers. Karla’s fingernails dug into my palm, but I didn’t mind the pain.
“This nest … are these the only Reapers we have to worry about?”
“For this set of tunnels … I believe so,” said Karla. “I hear no others. Do you?”
“Um. I guess not. But aren’t there other nests?”
“Yes, but Isobel would be in these tunnels with me. These tunnels are ours. She is my blood. Half-sister, so half-blood, but still she would be here. It is my father’s side that brings the wounded minds. So she will be here.”
A raspy sound started up in the Reapers’ nest, like suction cups giving away, blubber sticking and unsticking. Karla pulled her hand free.
“Extinguish your light!”
I made my root torch go dim. She tiptoed to the end of the tunnel and craned her neck over the rim of the pit. I came up behind her and put my hand on her shoulder to brace her.
“Hey … uh … not so close,” I whispered.
A faint, green glow emanated from the pit. I was startled to realize that it was the Reapers’ bodies that were glowing.
A slender pillar of flesh rose slowly from one of the larger blobs in the center of the pit. Its tip bent towards us like a snorkel and inhaled with a long snort. There was a pause, and then its body began to extend. Knobs and bumps formed along its length.
Karla leapt back, nearly bowling me over. “It smells us!” she hissed. “Run!”
Chapter 46: One Ring
We ran back up-tunnel to the first branching. The Reapers were awakening, first the one then two more and then a bunch in a chain reaction. They roared, bellowed and shrieked like a herd of elephants being murdered by poachers. They did not appreciate being woken up early.
The tunnel walls shuddered as the first of them hauled itself out of the pit.
“We’d better keep running,” I said.
Karla stood with her hand cupping her ear and listened. “It is not coming. Not yet.” She glanced up at a row of occupied pods.
“These pods,” said Karla. “They have holes.”
“Yeah that was me,” I said. “I was looking for you and Isobel before.”
“Really?” she said. “You were looking for Isobel … and me?”
“Yeah. I checked all these out. She’s not here.”
She kept her eyes glued to the pods as we moved beneath them.
“You realize that Isobel does not look much like me?”
“Oh?”
“She has … a different mother. She is blonde.”
“Good to know,” I said. “But she’s definitely not here. It was older people mostly, not much interested in getting away from Reapers.”
Another thud shook the tunnels, indicating that another Reaper had emerged from the pit. A long moan echoed down the tunnel.
“Have you been back to the ‘Burg?” she asked.
“Nah,” I said. “Not since I broke out Lille and Bern.”
“What do you mean ‘break them out?’”
“That’s right, you weren’t here. Luther closed off the ‘Burg. Wouldn’t let anyone out. He was punishing them because he caught us trespassing. By the way, why didn’t you tell me he was your grandfather?”
Karla looked down at the tunnel floor. “It was nothing to be proud of. Arthur is a nasty man.” She glanced up at me. “Where are they now? Bern and Lille?”
“They have this little cabin in a cave. Bern wasn’t doing so hot. Harvald kind of busted him up.”
“Take me there. They can help us. The more souls we have looking, the better.”
***
The glow marks that Bern had me blaze my trail with made it pretty easy to find our way back to the cabin. I blinked each one out as we passed to keep anything unfriendly from tracking us.
Bern and Lille had their ceiling aglow in simulation of the midday sun when we entered their cavern. Bern was laid o
n a blanket outside the cabin while Lille worked on his leg with what looked like a pair of crochet hooks. His skin was flayed open and his calf muscle peeled back, exposing the bone.
I cringed at the sight, but Bern acted like someone like he was just getting a massage. There was little blood, and he gave no indication that he was in pain.
“Oh my goodness!” said Lille. “You found her!” She dropped her tools and rose, slapping her palm over her heart as we approached.
“Um … we kind of found each other,” I said, hanging back, leery of Bern’s exposure.
“Lille … for Heaven’s sake … close me up first. Don’t leave my flesh hanging out in front of our friends.”
Lille knelt back down and flopped Bern’s calf muscle back in place. She sealed up his wound with a pinching motion. Her fingers were smeared with blood, but not nearly as much as one would expect.
I looked on, both amazed and repulsed.
“Can you believe it?” said Lille. “The poor man was hobbling around on a fracture all that time?”
“You do … surgery?”
“I don’t pretend to be a doctor,” she said. “But here, it’s more like knitting, actually. One just needs to take care not to breach any major vessels. Some capillaries will tear, there’s not much to be done about that. But one nice thing we discovered, is that there are no bacteria here to worry about. Nothing harmful, anyway. So there’s no risk of infection.”
Bern rose to his feet and winced. “Still aches like a bugger. Stable, though. Doesn’t feel like it’s about to snap with every step.”
“The darn nerve endings can be hard to calm down,” said Lille. “Oh well, what are you going to do? He-heh! They have a mind of their own.”
She rushed over to Karla and hugged her tight. Bern strode over and joined the scrum.
“Any word on your sister?”
“Not yet,” said Karla. “I suppose it is possible she has not yet entered Root. But I cannot know this for sure. I worry … I have a feeling … that she is already here. Somewhere.”
There came a distant roar, followed by rumbles much like thunder, but spaced more regularly, like a drum corps for a slow funeral dirge, as the Reapers dispersed from their lair en masse. The sound of them reverberated through the walls of the cavern.
“Sort of early for Reapers, don’t you think?” said Bern.
“I can’t stay!” said Karla. “They are coming!” She sprinted down the length of the cavern, disappearing into the darkest recesses. I took off after her.
“Hang on,” said Lille, grabbing her shoulder bag. “We’re coming with you.”
***
We stayed together, keeping one step ahead of the Reapers, working down one tunnel, through the matrix and up the next. The tunnel system was so massive, I knew there was no way we could reach every pod before the Reapers did, no matter how quickly we worked. Karla probably realized this, but she didn’t let the futility of the task dissuade her.
We had no choice but to cede one tunnel to a disgusting, belching monster, hanging back in the interspaces and let it do its thing while we hunkered down and kept silent.
The walls shuddered. Roots twisted and swayed like a forest in a hurricane as the thing slurped and crunched its way along the passage like some grisly street sweeper.
It was a terrible thing, listening to the shrieks and whimpers from those in the pods, but we were helpless to intervene.
When the beast had moved on, we poked our heads into the reeking tunnel. It had harvested every pod that had hung there.
Karla’s face blanched. Nobody said a word. We resumed the hunt for Isobel, fully realizing that it might already be too late to save her.
It took a while to find a tunnel that actually had pods, but when we did we didn’t dilly-dally. We got together and combined our weaving skills to bust them open without permission or warning from the occupants, rudely dumping them onto the tunnel floor whether they wanted to be free or not.
Most souls were apathetic or resentful, but one guy was just ecstatic to see us. That made it all worthwhile.
He was in his thirties and balding, but he had these big, spooky, child-like eyes. He had been struggling to get out of his pod even before we showed up, his knuckles raw from tussling with the roots.
“And thus, another Weaver is born,” whispered Bern, who still limped badly and leaned heavily on his cane, though he complained not one bit.
“What’s your name?” asked Lille.
“Jeffrey.”
“Keep close, Jeff. You’re a very lucky man to have found us, though you may not realize it just yet.”
“Oh, I realize it,” he said. “I’ve dreams about this place … nightmares, actually. I know what lurks in these tunnels.”
“Oh?” said Lille. “Did we happen to appear in any of those dreams?”
“Actually … him.” Jeff pointed at me. “He was in one of my dreams.”
“Me?”
I didn’t ask to hear the details. This place was weird and complicated enough as it was.
We crossed through the wall to seek another tunnel and found another cavern on the way. This one did not seem to have a maker. It was natural, so to speak, if anything could be considered natural in a place like Root.
A soft blue glow illuminated a pool of water at its center, its bottom bedded in a pale grit that looked like beach sand. I scooped up a handful and rubbed it between my fingers. There was no way the stuff could be made of roots. I could see the individual grains. Bits of mica made it sparkle.
“It’s … real,” I said. “Real sand.”
“Yes,” said Bern. “We run into places like this now and then. Nice to know that roots aren’t necessarily the be all and end all of everything here, eh? That there’s room for actual sand and water in this world.”
“I’ve seen stone before,” said Lille. “Actual bedrock. No idea how it got here, or how far it pervades.”
Water dripped from a sheath of dangling roots.
“Drink up. It’s sweet,” said Lille, catching the drips in her cupped palm.
Something shiny glittered in the depths of the pool. I plunged my hand into the cool water and retrieved it. It turned out to be a gold wedding band, engraved with a flowery script that I couldn’t decipher.
“What’s this?” said Bern. “One ring to rule them all?”
“My precious!” said Lille, contorting her face and voice, her fingers contorted into a claw.
I handed the ring to Karla. “It’s not an earring … but whatever.”
“Thanks,” she said, her expression flat and grim. She slid it onto her finger without as much as a smile. We could hear a Reaper lumber into the tunnel we had just left, feasting on the souls we had left strewn below their shredded pods. Jeff went pale. “Please, we need to keep looking,” said Karla.
We crossed to the other side of the pool, snipping off the sheets of root that blocked our way. Karla reached the tunnel wall first and pressed her ear against it. Satisfied, she sliced through and poked her head out into the lumen.
“There are pods here!” she said, excited, before sliding through.
This next tunnel was brighter than most, blotched with mostly static patterns of light, that shifted color when you touched them, much like a mood ring.
Karla wasted no time, ripping through the first pod before anyone could come alongside to help her. A soul crashed down, bringing half of the pod with him.
“There’s magic here…” said Jeffrey. “… in this world.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it magic,” said Bern.
“Oh, let him believe,” said Lille, patting his arm. “What’s the harm?”
An older man looked up at them from a tangle of shredded roots, closed his eyes and laid back down, completely uninterested in being rescued.
Karla was already disemboweling the next pod, and I helped her this time, unraveling the bottom, so that the woman inside slid out feet first and landed gracefully on her feet.<
br />
“Way to stick that landing,” said Bern. “Bravo!”
The freed woman stood before us, her eyes focused and calm. She was sturdily built, freckled on her chest and upper arms with large droopy breasts sporting wide, dark areolas. She was not shy at all about her nakedness.
“So this is hell?” she said. “Not exactly what I expected.”
“You’re not dead yet,” muttered Lille.
A blast of fetid air came rushing through the tunnel.
“What was that?” said Bern, looking into the darkness. The air went still and then another blast came blowing out.
“This is not Hell,” said Karla. “Not even close. Do you hear those grumbles? Those are Reapers. Inside of them, that is the real Hell.”
“Bring it on,” said the woman, folding her arms. She sighed and leaned against the tunnel wall, as if she were waiting at a bus stop.
“I would think twice, if I were you,” said Lille. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I’ve done enough thinking for a lifetime,” said the woman. “If you want to help someone, help the girl in that nest thing behind mine. The poor thing can’t seem to stop whinging.”
Karla’s eyes popped wide and she made her way down to the third pod. Its occupant dangled calm and motionless. Another blast of foul wind came rolling up the passage, its stink more intense, and this time it was accompanied by the sound of claws ripping into roots.
“Karla … uh … I think we’d better be going,” I said.
“Wait!” said Karla, swirling her finger and loosening a hole in the tightly knitted pod.
A slender wrist flopped out and dangled free. Delicate, but calloused fingers, curled and uncurled reflexively.
Karla reached up and touched the small hand.
“It is her! This is Isobel!”
Chapter 47: Her Special Place
A curious mixture of relief and panic replaced the bleak resolve that had gripped Karla from the moment I glimpsed her at the Reapers’ den. I caught her eye and she graced me with a fleeting smile. But there was work to be done.
She peeled away at the unusually tight knots enclosing her sister while I focused my will on the stalk, unwinding it partially and then snapping it off completely. The entire pod fell to the floor of the tunnel, bounced and split open, unfolding like a flower.
