by Brandon Mull
Showing no indication of pain, Nedwin rooted out the tiny patch of moss just above his wrist. By the next day, it had not only grown back, but the greenery had spread. Moss that had been trimmed the day before had also returned and multiplied. The untouched patches had spread as well.
The moss inflicted no pain. When Jason stroked the fuzzy circle on his neck, the moss seemed to belong there as much as the surrounding hairs. But who knew what would happen as it continued to spread? At best, he would become a mossy freak. At worst, the moss would overwhelm his body, causing harm or death.
A couple of days later, Jason watched Nia munching on a large, glossy leaf as she walked. Scarcely a few weeks had passed since meeting her, but as promised, she already looked older. When they had met she had looked thirteen or fourteen. Now she looked sixteen or seventeen. She was a few inches taller, having surpassed both Rachel and Tark.
For the past week, the delegation had mostly eaten unusual fruit and vegetables foraged by Nedwin. But Io and Nia claimed food whenever they wanted it. “This jungle must look like one big salad to you,” Jason said.
“I’m a growing girl,” she replied, taking another bite. “Think I’ll pass you up?”
“I doubt it, since your dad was shorter than me.” He unconsciously rubbed his hand against the lush moss now covering most of the side and back of his neck. It had become a habit.
“How much does the moss bother you?” she asked.
“I kind of like the texture,” he admitted, realizing that he had been stroking it again. “But it’s gross how it keeps spreading. It’s really weird to think of it covering my face.”
“There must be a way to stop it,” Nia said.
Jason shrugged. “Nedwin knows more about these jungles than just about anyone. He has no idea what this moss is or what might cure it. I just hope it doesn’t start controlling us, like the goma worms.”
“What would moss want you to do?” Nia giggled. “Go sit on a rock by a stream?”
“What if I turn into a plant?” Jason asked, trying to keep his voice casual, although he was voicing a deep concern.
“I’ll make sure you get sunlight and water,” Nia said.
Jason tried to smile at the joke.
“It only seems to coat the surface,” Nia pointed out, her tone more consoling.
“After it covers everything, the moss might grow inward.”
“Hopefully, we can get help at the temple,” Drake said from behind. A dart had hit the side of his jaw, and the resultant greenery had spread into half a mossy beard. “The oracle and her people have dwelled in the jungle for a long time.”
They continued in silence for some time.
“Too bad Io couldn’t grow any moss,” Nia said. “He’d have a portable snack.”
Jason forced a chuckle. She was trying to lighten the mood. The effort made him think of her adaptability. She no longer had an accent, and had picked up on the nuances of how he and Rachel spoke and kidded. Under other circumstances, her comments would have amused him more. But the worry of parasitic moss slowly claiming his body was hard to shake. Still, she was trying, so he might as well meet her halfway. “He can always have some of my surplus.”
Nia scrunched her nose. “This jungle gets hot. What if your moss inherits your body odor?”
“You guys eat dead rats,” Jason said.
“We have to draw the line somewhere.”
At the front of the group, Nedwin raised a hand. “Hear that?” he asked.
“What?” Galloran replied.
“A high whine,” Nedwin described. “Perhaps a whistle. Faint. At the edge of hearing.”
Jason heard nothing. But he noticed the vines at his feet had begun to writhe. The entire forest floor came to life at once, inert vines suddenly thrashing like bullwhips. With alarming speed and accuracy, the vines began to curl around legs, arms, and torsos. A strange smell suffused the air, and the ground suddenly seemed to tilt and undulate.
Jason tried to draw his sword, but was too late. He was already on the ground, arms pinioned to his sides. From his position on the ground, Jason watched Galloran, blindfold discarded, slicing vines with his torivorian blade. The vines lashed at him from all directions, but he pivoted and slashed with flawless skill and timing, slowly carving a path away from the road.
Jason felt like the ground was rocking and spinning. Galloran began to stagger drunkenly, not from the onslaught of vines, but apparently in reaction to whatever odor had made Jason unsteady. Finally the tendrils caught hold of Galloran and dragged him down.
Jason struggled against the vines. They tightened painfully as he resisted, then slackened a degree when he relaxed.
“Rachel?” Farfalee asked.
“I can’t,” she replied. “I tried. Edomic won’t work. The commands won’t stick.”
Jason closed his eyes. He had never felt this dizzy. It was like the ground was whirling on multiple axes, not just spinning but flipping and rocking in every possible combination. Eyes open or closed made no difference. The sensation made him nauseated, but before he could throw up, Jason lost consciousness.
Jason awoke, dangling from a horizontal pole by his arms and legs. The pole was in motion, probably being carried between two people. He was bound in place at his wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. The position was neither comfortable nor intolerable. His eyes were blindfolded.
“Hello?” Jason called.
A blunt object, probably a stick, thumped painfully against his side. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to speak.
“We’re here,” answered Drake. Jason heard a few meaty thumps, presumably the punishment for the reply.
Jason dangled in silence for some time. At least he wasn’t dizzy, and at least he wasn’t dead. They had been captured, probably by the same guys who had shot them with darts. Jason supposed it was better than being strangled and devoured by vines.
How long had he been out? It was impossible to tell. He could feel the sun shining. It could be the same day or a different day. The air felt hot and humid as usual. Whoever carried them moved silently and smoothly.
Where could they be going? Jungles and blowguns made his mind wander to cannibalism and shrunken heads. Would he and his friends become the ingredients to a tribal soup?
Surely Ferrin could escape these bonds. Detach arms and legs, reattach, and he would be free. The poles were not living wood, so Rachel should be able to split them. Perhaps they were waiting for the right moment. Telepathy would be useful right now. He supposed Galloran, Corinne, and Rachel were all engaged in mental conversation. Assuming they had survived the vines.
After a long time, Jason was set down. He could feel plants and roots beneath his body. Fingers crammed paste into his mouth. It didn’t taste too bad, vaguely fruity. He drank from a wooden cup pressed to his lips. After a few minutes, the pole rose into the air, and he moved onward.
After another break, Jason began to sense the light of day fading. What would happen at sunset, when Aram grew?
Jason never got to find out. His pole tilted to a steep angle, as if his bearers were climbing a steep hill. The pole leveled for a short while. Then he was set on a floor of smooth stone tiles.
“Release them,” said a female voice with a casual air of command. “These are the wayfarers we have expected. Please forgive the impolite reception, good travelers. There are many from outside the boundaries of the jungle who mean us harm.”
Nimble fingers unbound Jason’s wrists and feet. He rose to his knees and pulled off his blindfold, finding himself surrounded by his friends at the center of a strange assemblage.
Some of the hundreds of beings around them looked like regular humans clad in fine robes, hoods cast back to reveal curious faces. Most of the figures were humanoids enshrouded by vegetation. Shaggy moss covered the majority, but ivy coated a great number as well. A few were draped so heavily in dark vines that they lost most of their shape and looked more like tall heaps of seaweed than living beings. Another m
inority were encased by twisted black wood bristling with huge thorns. None of the vegetated people wore clothes, but the plants kept them perfectly modest.
Among the crowd stood tall, white apes with fur-fringed faces and round eyes. With their slender bodies and long limbs, Jason thought they looked like gibbons, although they were much too large. The snowy primates watched the proceedings sedately, a few clutching slim rods.
They were all gathered within an immense room composed of dark gray stone. The walls slanted together at odd angles overhead, forming the inside of an irregular pyramid. The room had several openings. Through one Jason could see the sun poised to set, red rays caressing miles of exotic treetops.
“I should not remove my blindfold,” Galloran said, pushing away the hands of a robed figure who had been trying to unbind his eyes. “I am Galloran, son of Dromidus. My eyes belong to our common enemy. Have we reached Mianamon?”
“You have,” replied the woman who had ordered their release. Short and slight, the speaker wore a silky robe the color of storm clouds. A circlet of purple blossoms adorned her brow. “I am Ulani, daughter of Hispa.”
“Does the prophetess still abide here?” Galloran asked.
“She does,” Ulani answered. “Her Eminence told us weeks ago to expect you, otherwise you would have been slain long before now. Of late we seldom offer hospitality to outlanders.”
“Several of us have been infected by peculiar vegetation,” Galloran said.
“We can reverse the process,” Ulani assured him. “Attar of regent orchids will expel the invasive moss. Please forgive the inconvenience. Such measures are meant to warn and dissuade imprudent pilgrims.”
“I have been here before,” Galloran said. “When I came here last, I beheld no treefolk among you.”
“You behold them now?” Ulani asked, amused.
Galloran touched his blindfold. “I saw them coming for us when we were held fast by vines. They carried us here.”
“The people of the jungle have united against the threat of Maldor,” Ulani said. “The oracle administers to them and offers our services. In return we enjoy their cooperation and protection. Old wounds strain relations between the various tribes of treefolk, but they have agreed to consider the temple neutral ground and to stand together against the pupil of their ancient enemy from the north.”
“This is bracing news,” Galloran said. “We have traveled far at great cost in search of guidance regarding how to resist the enemy you have named.”
Ulani inclined her head slightly. “The oracle is aware of your intent. She has spent weeks preparing for her greatest prophecy. Tomorrow you will have your answer. Today she wishes to meet with you, one by one. Follow me.”
The conversation had afforded Jason some time to massage feeling back into his tingling hands. He walked with the others up some broad steps, and then into a corridor. They arrived in a trapezoidal room where tilted walls rose to a flat ceiling. Abundant furniture upholstered with the pelts of jungle cats awaited in clusters across the wide floor.
Ulani passed through a door set back in an alcove. She returned accompanied by an elderly woman. The woman wore a white robe with gold trim. Wrinkles lined her angular features. The visible tendons and bones on the back of her spotted hands made them appear fragile. Golden charms hung from sagging earlobes.
Despite her age, the woman held herself erect and walked with no difficulty. She came and stood before Jason. “I would converse with you first.”
“Me?” Jason asked.
The woman gave no reply. She pointed to Ferrin next, then Tark, Nedwin, Drake, Aram, Jasher, Nia, Farfalee, Io, Nollin, and then Corinne. She indicated Rachel second to last, and finally Galloran.
Without another word, the aged woman withdrew from the chamber through the same portal she had entered.
“Go,” Ulani told Jason, gesturing toward the recessed door.
“Okay,” Jason said. He went to the portal and found the door ajar. He opened it further, stepped inside, and shut it behind him. Incense burned in sculpted vessels around the room.
The elderly woman sat on a cushioned chair that looked like a curving length of ribbon. She gazed at Jason with fathomless eyes, her expression neither kind nor hostile. “Come take my hand,” she invited.
“Are you the oracle?” Jason asked.
“I am. Give me your hand and relax your mind.”
Jason crossed to her and gently grasped her bony hand. She clasped his hand in both of hers and closed her eyes. Jason sensed no otherworldly powers at play. If anything, he felt a little awkward.
She released his hand and looked up at him. “Sit down.”
He sat on a low, round, cushioned stool. It might have been an ottoman.
“What do you wish to ask me?” she invited.
“You can see the future?”
“At my best.”
“How?”
She smiled. “You wish to understand. Do you think of time as sequential?”
“One thing happening after another? I guess so.”
“Do you consider space that way?”
“Space? As sequential? Not really.”
“Yet when you gaze upon the stars, you see them as they were, not as they are.”
“Okay,” Jason said, trying to make sense of the statement using some of what he knew about astronomy. “The light travels through space. The farther the light has come, the older it is. Some of the light we see tonight could be from stars that have died long ago. It just took the light a long time to get here. So we’re seeing back in time.”
She smacked her lips. “In the Beyond, you have those who gaze deep into space through lenses, who gather light and sound and particles as they seek to understand their place in the universe.”
“We have astronomers.”
“I am like an astronomer.” She said it as if she had fully explained herself.
“You have a telescope that sees through time?”
“In a sense. Time is more like space than you appreciate. You recognize time as sequence only. Beginning and end. Before and after. We dwell in a temporary state, and so this is natural. Your current state began. Your current state will end. But that which is eternal views time differently.”
This wasn’t making sense. “You’re eternal?”
“I try to touch the eternal. You and I move through time like a flame on a string. The ashes behind are the past, consumed, unreachable. The string ahead is the future. But the only moment we inhabit, the only moment where we can act, is the present, the point where the flame burns, the point where time touches eternity.”
Jason nodded. “All right.”
“To the eternal mind, the entire string is ever present, ever burning. No point is out of reach.”
“Are you trying to break my brain?”
She grinned. “Try simpler terms. Before making a particular choice, have you ever endeavored to anticipate the consequences?”
Jason thought about the dungeon at Felrook. Maldor had offered to free him in return for servitude. Jason had known that to deny him would mean long days and weeks and months of torture. He had glimpsed his future. He had also guessed what serving Maldor would mean and how it might change him.
Jason had experienced this same kind of foresight for simpler choices throughout his life. He knew generally what a bike ride with Matt would bring versus a day volunteering at the zoo. “Yes. Is that what you do? Guess at the consequences of decisions? Try to visualize them?”
“It is similar to what I do,” the oracle explained. “Like you, I am a temporal being. I was born. I will die. I am caught up in what feels like the stream of time, my body gradually aging, the seasons changing, each breath keeping me alive. But I am trying to see beyond the present, into the future and the past. I am trying to see beyond the point I currently inhabit in space and time to the infinite points I do not inhabit.”
“How?”
“By tapping into senses beyond the five most obvious,” she re
plied. “By striving to access the eternal mind. Viewing the future is more difficult than seeing the past. The past is singular, definite. The future is also singular. Something definite will happen. But since what will happen shifts with every choice made, there are kaleidoscopic possibilities when the future is viewed from the present. Instead of looking for truth through a telescope, try a kaleidoscope. It is a challenge. The farther you dare to look, the more destinies involved, the more difficult it becomes.”
“So you make educated guesses,” Jason said.
She shrugged. “Some forecasts are more certain than others. Maldor’s rise has eclipsed most possible futures. Sometimes we oracles try to see the future in order to influence it. We do our best to nudge the coming years toward prosperity and away from disaster. I searched for many years to find some way to avoid Maldor’s dominion. In all those years, scouring every reality open to my awareness, I only glimpsed a single path that might lead to his premature downfall.”
Jason felt chills. “That’s why I’m here.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
He swallowed dryly. “Have I already played my part?”
“I believe we are on the proper path. I knew that you, Rachel, and Galloran would need to come here for success to be possible. I will be sure tomorrow.”
“Why me?” Jason asked.
“Imagine standing on a mountaintop. Imagine stones scattered at your feet. Imagine you have been tasked with selecting a stone or two and then throwing them for the purpose of causing an avalanche that will devastate the surrounding wilderness.
“Simeon of the Giddy Nine came to me. I considered all of the possible stones. I elected to throw him at you and Rachel. You both impacted Galloran. I hoped that you three would in turn collide with other key targets in precisely the right way. I believe that your arrival here means I selected good stones and estimated correct trajectories. But the avalanche is just beginning. Tomorrow I will know more about the possibilities.”
