The Echoed Realm

by A. J. Vrana

  “I’m impressed,” Gavran patronized.

  “With what?” asked Miya.

  The brat gave a throaty snicker. “With how difficult he is to trick.”

  “He’s a wolf,” Miya chuckled. “He’s lived in forests a long time.”

  “These forests are not those of Black Hollow,” Gavran whined.

  Kai pulled back a wiry branch, then released it once Miya was in the clear. The little shit barely ducked in time, leaves catching in his hair as the limb swept over his head.

  Miya whacked Kai’s arm as he sniggered, then said, “No, they’re not. Every forest has its own personality and its own memories. But there’s something common to all forests, no matter what world you’re in.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Gavran.

  Kai stopped where the trees opened into a glade—a yawning mouth in the black woods. As they approached, the mammoth willow’s silhouette rose, and its wispy boughs whistled their greeting as they danced in the wind. Moonlight trickled trough them like silver threads and stippled the little green blades.

  Kai smirked down at the raven wearing a corpse, his mahogany eyes glinting their triumphant red. “They don’t like it when you see with your eyes.”

  Fleeting surprise flashed across the boy’s face. “Funny,” he choked. “I recall telling a foolish detective the same.”

  Kai stiffened like a dead raccoon at the mention of foolish detectives. He’d suspected Mason Evans couldn’t untangle Black Hollow’s secrets on his own, not with his hard-on for rationalism and those wasting chicken legs. Whether the guilt-ridden doctor wanted to admit it or not, he was incapable of digging his way to the truth without an excavator—a malfunctioning one at that. From what Kai had gathered, Golden Boy hardly noticed the dipper scratching at the walls of his sanity in the form of a shit-for-brains bird.

  “You egged him on.” It wasn’t a question. Miya’s lips tugged in disapproval as she continued studying the raven-boy.

  “He was making too much noise,” hissed Gavran. His blue-black hair stood on end, his teeth cutting across his lips as the hiss devolved into a snarl. “Crunch, crunch, the twigs and leaves screamed, their bones ground to dust under his grief. Every step—crunch, crunch, snap, snap.” His eyes widened and twitched. “He grieves too loudly.”

  “We’re here.” Kai gestured flippantly toward the willow. He secretly relished Gavran’s disdain for Evans, but he wasn’t naïve enough to express his solidarity, let alone anything that stank of vulnerability.

  Gavran’s shaking shoulders stilled. “Yes, we are.”

  “Emerald Shade, huh?” Miya approached the tree. “I didn’t know it had a name.”

  “Every gate,” whispered Gavran, scratching giddily at the trunk, “must have a name.”

  “Gate?” Miya echoed. “Between worlds, you mean?”

  “Yes,” the boy said. “Every tree has veins and roots. Follow them to find the right one.”

  “Why can’t I just walk directly to the tree?” Miya asked.

  “Things aren’t always in the same place, not always aligned. This you have seen. But the roots never change. They are sturdier than the world.”

  Kai peered up at the willow. “Does this one always lead to Black Hollow?”

  “Smart puppy,” Gavran crooned. “As does mine. The Red Knot.”

  “Is that how you find your way?” asked Miya. “You know all the roots, so you know which ones to follow to get to the right tree?”

  The raven-boy only grinned, his jagged little teeth filling the entire crevice of his gargantuan smile.

  Miya crouched down and stared at the ground, her fingers tracing a line in the soil. “How do you see the roots?”

  “Look with different eyes,” Kai and Gavran advised in unison before the wolf smiled balefully at the raven.

  “Maybe you’re not needed,” he goaded.

  “Oh?” Gavran sneered. “Will you draw the map to the Grey Gnarl yourself, wolf?”

  “The fuck is a…”

  “Precisely.”

  “So, the willow is the Emerald Shade,” Miya interrupted, circling the hefty bole. “What kind of a tree is the Red Knot?”

  Gavran pouted as if disappointed that she didn’t already know. “A redwood. Tall as the sun.”

  “The Grey Gnarl, then…” she trailed off.

  Gavran’s lips slithered out. He stepped forward and poked Miya between her eyebrows. “Look with different eyes,” he repeated, his finger trailing down her nose and then sinking towards the ground.

  Miya followed his motion and frowned at the leafy soil. Dropping to her knees, she brushed the dried willow leaves aside and burrowed her fingers into the earth like she was reaching for something.

  Gavran cackled, the sound sputtering in the air like a firecracker. “Too soon,” he hacked, “too soon!”

  Miya withdrew her hand, then smiled sheepishly. “Guess I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Come,” the boy beckoned. “I will take you there.”

  He pranced towards the willow, then jumped directly through the trunk and disappeared.

  “Wait!” Miya called after him. To Kai’s dismay, she followed without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Oh, sure!” Kai threw his arms up. “Just follow the creepy corpse child straight into a magical tree-portal.”

  Cursing under his breath, Kai went after his straying lamb. He half expected to break his nose against the bark, but as he braced for impact, the fossilized wrinkles gave way to a warm breeze and glaring white light. He lifted his arms to shield his eyes, then plunged forward, the world tipping until he was face-to-face with the ground. When Kai could stand again, he was on all four paws.

  Sour swamp water rushed into his nostrils as he recovered from the whirlwind fall. He glimpsed Miya following the raven through ancient cypresses, her pace languid even as Shit-for-brains barrelled onward. The trees framing the murky stream were tall as skyscrapers, disappearing into stodgy clouds. Some twisted together, their mangled trunks looming oppressively as globs of moss drooped over low-hanging branches and caressed the stale water.

  The bayou was shallow enough to pass through but deep enough to hinder Kai, and the overpowering smell of must dizzied him. Up ahead, Miya climbed over a giant, protruding root. It roiled at her touch, the drowning cypresses now crawling, closing in on her. Kai bolted forward, struggling to keep sight of the raven—now a tiny black blob hurtling through the miserable sky.

  The tape grass tugged on his legs until he stumbled and found himself submerged in putrid green. His eyes stung, and he strained to hear the distant flap of wings.

  He listened and listened, searching every frequency, until finally, he managed to pick one up. Or rather, it picked him up. A woman’s voice, soft as silk yet hard like stone, melted through his senses.

  You poor, lost, little wolf.

  The grass curled around his paws, pulling him deeper.

  Can’t even keep up with your straying lamb.

  Kai clawed at the muddy floor, but he only sank further.

  A lamb that’s collared you so tightly…

  The slender blades cut into him like wire until his elbows ached and his heart squeezed with fear.

  …choking the life from you.

  Lungs burning, Kai stopped his futile attempts to swim up and instead dove deeper, gnawing at the restraints and tearing himself free. But the voice came louder, angrier.

  She’ll strangle you with her chains!

  Legs like needles scuttled against the sparse fur around his scalp, and something crawled into his ear. Pushing off his hindquarters, Kai launched himself towards the surface. The moment the water broke, the voice plummeted into the depths and disappeared.

  With a soft whimper, Kai paddled down the river until he caught sight of land—a pea-sized island in the middle of a dark, algae-covered lake. He could see Miya there, waiting for him with Gavran at her side. Behind them lurked a lifeless elm tree, its crooked branches erupting from the bl
ackened trunk like Medusa’s snakes.

  “Did the dream dampen your senses?” Gavran mocked as the wolf hopped onto the cay. He shook himself out from head to tail, water droplets spraying the boy.

  Gavran shielded his eyes and scowled.

  “The only thing that’s damp is you and this swamp,” Kai replied as he straightened into a man. It was all he could do to keep from squealing with apprehension. It’s over, he reasoned, yet his prickling skin disagreed. Kai ran his palms over his arms, smoothing down the bumps. The dreamscape was full of unsavoury personalities—not unlike a dive bar on a Monday night. Whenever he and Miya waltzed off from their wholesome cubbyhole with its rainbow skies and hills like bejewelled ass-cracks, they could expect to meet a wayward devil or two lurking in the shrubs. Still, this felt…different.

  It knew how he felt about the tether.

  Miya huffed, grabbing Kai by the hand and tugging him towards her. “Aren’t wolves and ravens supposed to get along?”

  A sobering hum threaded through Kai’s every nerve. The warmth of Miya’s skin melted away the cold, waxy residue of whatever had touched him. For the first time since dropping through that hellish tree-hole, he felt the air fill his lungs with ease.

  “In a relationship of convenience, perhaps,” Gavran muttered as he combed his feathery hair back. “Shall we?”

  Miya approached the elm, gazing up at its misshapen limbs. “It looks so twisted up.”

  “That’s because it is,” replied Gavran, his abysmal eyes trained on Miya. “You’ve been wandering. Dangerous places, they draw you. They hurt you.”

  Miya whirled around and squinted at the landscape. “I know this place! I came here recently.”

  “Yes,” Gavran agreed.

  “I saw something. A monster.” She turned to Kai. “She wanted you to hurt me.”

  A chill coiled around Kai’s spine. Was it the voice that’d spoken to him in the water?

  “The original Dreamwalker’s voice—my predecessor’s, I guess—pulled me out. Told me to hunt them.” Miya probed Gavran, “Is the monster from my dream next?”

  “This tree—the Grey Gnarl—is the gate that will take you to the monster. The Grey Gnarl is where she re-homed herself after fleeing her birthplace. Here, she finds new victims, untainted by her past.” Gavran’s slender fingers plucked at the bark. “It will take you where you must go—to the place where she haunts the living, feeds on their sorrows, their fears, their fragile egos.” His head swivelled around like an owl’s, and he peered at Kai. “She adores weak-willed men.”

  A growl simmered in Kai’s throat. “I’m not a man,” he seethed, yet uncertainty riddled every inch of him.

  “Do we walk through the tree again?” Miya interrupted their duel. “To get to where we’re going?”

  The boy chortled. “No, sweet Dreamwalker. That would only send you to another part of the dreamscape, and you have yet to learn the winding roads of this realm.”

  “But we hopped right through the willow to get here,” Miya observed.

  “That may be how it seemed. When you find new eyes, you will see that it’s less simple.” He tilted his head to an impossible angle. “I followed the right root to get here.”

  “How do we get to the other side?” Miya asked. “Which root do we follow?”

  “You do not follow the roots to find tears in the stitching.” His hand ran over the elm’s trunk, his long nails clipping every crevice. “You lose yourself in them.”

  “Lose myself?”

  “Tangle yourself in the roots, Dreamwalker, and descend, as only you can.”

  A smile tugged at Miya’s lips. “That, I can do.”

  So that was how the DW got around—by drowning in tree guts. Kai cracked his neck and pulled her to the ground. “Any idea where this will take us?”

  “Not a goddamn clue,” Miya replied, stealing his knife and cutting her forearm with it. She dug the king of spades from her pocket and smeared him up.

  Kai figured it was Dreamwalker witchy-woo-woo. He wondered if it had any purpose or if Miya had only imbued the ritual with meaning. Either way, it seemed to bolster her ability to blur the line between worlds—like the king of spades turned her blood into some chemical destabilizer for reality. She twined her fingers with Kai’s, lay back, and clinched the card with her other hand.

  Kai hated this part. He felt like a Lego toy being dismantled. His mind went blank, and his body felt weightless like he wasn’t even real. Miya relished the challenge; every time they hopped realms, she strove to make the ride smoother, ecstatic whenever Kai managed not to puke.

  He heard her inhale and exhale as she relaxed against the earth. Normally, this part didn’t scare him, but something about the gnarled roots of the elm left him squirming. They looked like they could snuff him out if they vised around him tightly enough.

  Kai closed his eyes. Time to get wigged out, he thought.

  The air was stale and windless, the soil clammy as he felt himself sinking. Craggy bark scratched at the backs of his legs and writhed over his limbs. Kai held his breath, pushing down all the ugly things he didn’t have space for. If he didn’t try to breathe, he wouldn’t find out that he couldn’t.

  All the while, he clutched Miya’s hand—he’d shit himself if he let go—and hoped this leap of faith wouldn’t get him killed. Everything quieted, and he gradually went numb as the boundary between worlds fizzled away.

  5

  Kai rasped for breath. Blood raged in his veins like a river of fire as sweat slicked his skin. Returning to the world he’d spent most of his life in hurt worse than getting mauled by a bus. Every damn time, his body rebelled against the limitations of the physical plane. Only when he adjusted to the jarring switch did the pain let up. Maybe that was why the change always hurt like hell here, but in the dreamscape, he shifted seamlessly between forms.

  “You okay?” Miya brushed his forearm, and his hairs stood on end. Some part of him was still spooked, and for a brief moment, he saw decaying fingers curl into his skin like a claw.

  Kai shook away the vision, reminding himself that he was supposed to be over it. He shoved his anxiety away and corked it like a bottle of rancid wine. Why dwell on it when Miya was pressed against him? The swell of her breasts and the warmth between her legs nudged him awake, and heat twisted in the pit of his stomach. It was true that the physical world slapped him around a bit, but there were two sides to that coin. Everything felt more intense—the good and the bad.

  Kai bit down on his primal impulses and sat up, his surroundings washing over him. It was humid as Satan’s balls. Everything stank like pickle juice and wet clay, the air wobbled with smog, and a choir of cicadas and mosquitos nettled his ears. He looked down to evaluate the damage.

  In the dreamscape, clothes were a projection of personal desire, and while they often transferred to the physical plane, sometimes Kai found himself lying naked in a muddy ditch with nothing but road rash on his ass. This time, he was pleased to find himself in light cargo pants and a black tank top, the lack of sleeves providing his armpits with much-needed ventilation.

  “It’s like a sauna here,” Miya groaned, wiping the sweat from her brow. She groped around for the bloodied playing card, wedged between parched blades of grass, then tucked it in her jeans. Somehow, it never suffered any damage through all their dimensional travel.

  They were on a riverbank at the edge of a massive swamp. Kai glanced westward where the orange sunset poked over the horizon and saw the outline of buildings around a sparsely populated road. It looked like a shithole, but shitholes usually had cheap bars. Dragging himself to his feet, he offered Miya a hand.

  “I’m sure we’ll find a lead in that town,” she remarked, dusting off her jeans and peeling away her mauve jacket to reveal an old grey t-shirt. Her once coltish limbs had thickened with lean muscle; it wasn’t easy running alongside a wolf. Miya pulled her hair back, several of the dark, wet strands catching her collarbone and neck. Her olive skin glistene
d with moisture, beads trickling down the side of her face.

  “Mm,” Kai mused, his eyes trailing the lines of her figure.

  She peeked at him and snickered, a knowing quirk at the corner of her mouth. “Later.”

  Kai grinned. “Not into swamp sex?”

  “Gross.”

  He gave her behind a playful smack, eliciting a surprised squeak. “Let’s go, Lambchop.”

  As he started down the slope, she swatted him back, then hooked her arm with his and laughed. It was a short walk to the two-lane state highway that led into town. They passed a shoddy welcome sign Kai suspected had once been white, the washed-out print barely legible.

  Orme’s Rest.

  Jewel of the Pearl River.

  Beneath the town name and motto was a blue flag with a dirty pelican feeding its chicks.

  “State of Louisiana,” Miya muttered the words printed under the flag.

  Kai was less concerned with their geographical location. “It had to be another small town,” he murmured.

  “Yeah,” Miya sighed. “Not exactly my favourite destination.”

  Her arm tensed as she hugged his elbow tighter. He couldn’t blame her; there was something about this place that smelled worse than the swamp water. It was the stench of Black Hollow…or at least something like it.

  “Come on,” he coaxed. “Let’s get a drink.”

  The languid town was chockfull of chestnut oaks, their long, winding branches draped in Spanish moss. Stately white mansions and old brick townhouses bordered the main road, most of them serving as storefronts for boutique shops. Colourful flower baskets hung from the terraces and lampposts. Only an occasional car whizzed by, the quaint street otherwise empty.

  “It’s so wholesome,” Kai gagged. Pulling Miya along, he turned the corner into a cobblestone alleyway. An antique sign hung from one of the few doors along the wall. It squeaked invitingly and swayed in the soupy breeze, the tavern’s name scrawled across it in black paint.

  The Mangy Spade.

  “I think we found your watering hole,” said Miya. “It’s perfect.”