Rich Shapero

by Too Far

  Safety filtered through the shade.

  "I've got a secret, too," Robbie said.

  "What?"

  "I wasn't brave before."

  "Oh—" She gave a dismissing huff.

  "No, really. Things always scared me." He thought about that. "They still scare me, I guess. But I do them anyway. I'm brave because of you."

  She saw the deep feeling in his eyes and kissed his lips.

  "Let's do it now," Robbie said.

  Fristeen made a confused face.

  "You know—" Robbie touched her hand. "What we talked about."

  Fristeen looked down.

  He didn't want to embarrass her, so he whispered in her ear.

  "You—" She shoved his shoulder.

  "I'm not afraid," he said.

  "Yes you are."

  "I'm not," he laughed. He stood on his knees and fumbled for his zipper.

  Fristeen shrieked.

  Robbie couldn't get his pants undone. His hands were trembling.

  "Don't," Fristeen cried.

  The cloth parted.

  "Stop, stop—" She was hiding her face.

  Robbie closed his eyes and pulled his pants down. "Can you see?"

  "Take your hand away, silly."

  Robbie held his breath. "Well?" He let a little light between his lids.

  Fristeen was staring, stunned.

  He felt instantly self-conscious. "What's wrong?" he said, pulling his pants up.

  She was still staring. "He moved."

  Robbie shrugged and knelt before her.

  Fristeen shook her head. "Does he do what you say?"

  "Sure," Robbie said. "He's not like us."

  That made her laugh. Robbie laughed too. They laughed until they calmed down.

  "Now you," he said.

  Fristeen stared at him for a long moment. Then she reached under her dress.

  Robbie stooped. It was hard to see in the dim tent. "A little pocket," he whispered.

  Fristeen nodded. Then she drew her panties up and looked away.

  Robbie waited. Her breathing was long and deep.

  "I want to leave," she said.

  They crawled out of the Safe Tree and stood in the sun at the edge of the Great Place.

  Robbie faced her, but neither spoke.

  "Can we hug?" he asked.

  She didn't reply. He could see the anguish in her eyes.

  Robbie swallowed. "What's wrong? Did I—" It was like a stroke of bright watercolor on a wet page. Doubt bled in all directions.

  Fristeen made an angry face. "We aren't married."

  Robbie's heart rose. "I love you," he said, reaching out.

  Her distress burst like a bubble and she fell forward, limp and gasping.

  Robbie held her close. "Nothing's changed."

  Fristeen clung to him, unable to speak.

  He stood there, rocking her gently. It was brave to have said that, he thought. I love you— A vast unknown had opened between them, and he'd crossed it with a single breath.

  After a while, Fristeen's self-possession returned. When she was ready, they turned their backs on the Great grove and started through the high brush, climbing. She didn't say anything, but Robbie had never felt so close to her. Maybe the revelations beneath the Safe Tree had changed them. They moved with a new fluency, holding the boughs back for each other, one in the lead and then the other, as if testing a deeper trust.

  The web loosened. The litter shimmied, fooling their feet. Then the way leveled, and they stepped through jade-leaved willows bursting with wool. They came upon a log that was rotting. Its thick trunk lay intact on the soil, but its arms were gone and its bark was blanketed with dogwood crosses. "It's not a tree," Robbie said. "But it used to be." So that's what they called it.

  They headed to the left, and as Used-to-Be disappeared behind and below them, a ridge rose up. On the crest, a pair of aspens were silhouetted against the sky. As they approached, Robbie could see that the aspens were wrapped around each other. He glanced back. The view spread out: a choppy descent, a line of hills lifting up, and a river of leaves flowing between—trees beyond counting, every shade of green.

  When they reached the top, there were a couple of surprises. The two aspens had sprung from the same mass of roots.

  "Like us," Fristeen said.

  "The Two-Tree." Robbie put his fingers in the crevice between the boles. And then he froze. A ghostly landscape met their eyes—shot with bright colors, but ravaged and gloomy— No crowns or green canopies. The trees were all black—spindly and pointed, as far as you could see. Robbie remembered the islands they'd glimpsed from the Hiding Hole's rim.

  "Where are we?" Fristeen drew closer.

  He gave her a mystified look. He scanned the decline and pointed. The border of the dark domain was just below. Should they go see?

  A silent "dare you" passed between them. They nodded to each other, linked hands, and started down.

  The way descended through thick viburnum, a puzzle of leaves that obscured the way forward at every step. A sudden break—the black trees were closer—then they vanished again behind the shifting green.

  "Look," Fristeen cried out.

  Ahead, the ground was splashed with color—emerald, russet, maroon and rose. She ran and knelt down in it. Robbie followed, amazed by the swells on either side. It was moss, but not like any he'd ever seen. It spread out like a giant quilt, covering everything. When you put your foot down, you sank way in.

  Fristeen screeched. She was hopping and sloshing from swell to swell. Robbie leaped after her. The moss bled, and the blood smelled like Christmas. Your feet got soaked. You sank deeper and deeper—up to your knees—but it wasn't hard to get out. More wild colors—amber and mauve, burnt lake and chartreuse—and all so bright, magically bright. There was a little wet place, and it turned into a string, a silver rill winding between. And you followed it as the quilt divided, hopping from pillow to pillow, shouting and slipping and crying out. It led right into the black trees.

  All of a sudden, the ragged spikes were around them.

  "Robbie?" Fristeen eyed him anxiously.

  "I think it's okay," he whispered. It seemed important not to speak loudly.

  The trees were silent, without leaves that clapped in the wind or hummed in the breeze. Some grew straight up, but most of them leaned. The only sound was the ringing of the rills, silver and distant. Whatever enchantment they might have felt among the aspen and birch, a far deeper spell lay over these. Robbie felt it powerfully. It wasn't a place for whimsy. You wouldn't find shade or safety. You felt only unease. Your eyes searched—and you searched your mind—for something familiar. But everything here seemed foreign: unheard-of, unthought-of, unknown.

  "I'll mark the way," he said.

  A taller tree stood in the clear a few paces forward. He sloshed over to it. The spruce was leaning badly—weak, dizzy. Or drawn by something invisible—who could say? Its arms were short and spiky, its trunk was scabbed with ashen flakes. Robbie pulled a sock from his pocket and tied it to a branch.

  Cuck. Cuck.

  A bird called in the stillness. Robbie turned. Through the black spikes, he caught the flash of calm water. He held his finger to his lips and motioned to Fristeen, and the two of them crept through the leaning trees.

  Cuck. Cuck.

  The twigs of the spruce were tangled and matted, like your hair when it's dirty and needs to be washed. Some of their arms were twisted, some broken and hanging. Were they like the trees with leaves? If you put your hand to their trunks, would you hear their thoughts? Maybe you wouldn't want to get that close. Maybe they were thoughts you didn't want to hear. They stood apart from each other, and their branches didn't touch. Maybe they didn't share their thoughts, even with other trees.

  They came upon a channel with water flashing within. It led straight toward the shore of a glowing lake. They followed it. Grass bunched up and the black trees stood back. A curtain of reeds. Robbie stepped up to it, pushed h
is fingers through and drew the reeds apart. And there was the Pool.

  It was a bowl, and the water in it was red. The hills rolled down to it, and then rolled back up on its far shore. The clouds had spun a thick basket above it, and a single wand of sun jabbed through.

  "It's a needle," Fristeen said, pointing to where the ray touched the surface.

  Robbie nodded. The Pool was a lens of blood. And in that lens was a world of secrets: turbid mud and coiling breeze, hidden hummocks where silver eels nested, while on the surface water bugs skittered and swept, scribing an alien prophecy in ciphers. On one side, the Pool's surface was rimmed by glowing platinum; on the other, by black trees growing upside down.

  At their feet, oily rainbows scalloped the mud. Fristeen knelt and so did Robbie, and they put their fingers in and made the rainbows loop and swirl.

  Cuck. Cuck.

  They jumped. The bird was ten feet away: black with a yellow eye, perched on an overhanging branch, staring at Fristeen. As they watched, its attention shifted to the reeds. Something was rattling there.

  A pair of dragonflies hovered among the shoots, wings whirring. Their long bodies glittered lemon and turquoise, beaded as if they had risen a moment before from the depths of the Pool.

  "Look at their eyes," Robbie whispered.

  They were giant globes, swollen to bursting, cyan and gold in fluid swirls. But opaque, unfathomable.

  The dragonflies fixed suddenly on other business. They darted like thoughts across the scarlet water and into the black trees.

  Fristeen sighed.

  Robbie yawned and glanced around. The spot behind the reeds was flat and dry.

  She read his mind and scooted back. Then she smiled and stretched out.

  Robbie lay down beside her and they fell asleep.

  Something called Robbie back from a harrowing dream. He awoke, dizzy and muddled, eyes searching for some reassuring sight. Above him was a deep gray sky, and in its center there was a cavern of light, so dim and constricted by clouds that it might have been the moon. He shuddered and rolled over, rising to his knees.

  "Fristeen?"

  His vision was blurred, but he could see her beside him. He shuddered again, thrown back for a moment into his dream. It was a dream, wasn't it? Needles from the heavens pricked him endlessly, and a horde of dragonflies held him down while his blood fed the Pool.

  "Fristeen," Robbie whispered. He was in the present now. The cavern of light was what remained of the sun, the encircling clouds staging a gloomy dusk. He recognized the spot of grass they had bedded down on. Fristeen's eyes were opening.

  He heard a voice. Nearby or at a distance, he couldn't tell. A sigh sounded from across the Pool.

  Fristeen was staring at him. She lifted her head.

  Another exhale, sharp and urgent. Then muttering, labored, unintelligible.

  Robbie crawled forward, parting the reeds. Fristeen's face poked through beside his.

  The far shore of the Pool was marbled with shadow.

  Another sharp breath. Then something moved in the brush. Shapes, dark shapes. One had broad shoulders. It might have been a man, standing. In the dim light, his body glinted like the Pool. His chest was silhouetted above the brush. He had the tallest head Robbie had ever seen. A second shape was crawling at his feet—an animal on all fours. It had long hair, like a woman kneeling. The silhouettes were silent, and then the woman rocked and the tall-headed man groaned. As they pulled apart, Robbie saw what she was doing.

  A muffled gasp sounded beside him. Fristeen could see it too.

  Robbie felt her hand on his arm. Fristeen was trembling.

  The man began to groan again.

  Robbie's face was burning. His stomach felt sick. "She's eating it," he said. Why didn't the man fight back?

  "No. It's still there."

  The Pool turned slowly, brimming with blood. Robbie rubbed his eyes and took a breath. Fristeen was right.

  "They're gigantic." Fristeen's voice was full of portent.

  Robbie didn't understand. And then he realized: the tall-headed man was growing. And so was the woman. Their dark silhouettes rose out of the black trees, into the cold slate of the sky.

  With an insistent huff, the man stooped and laid hold of the woman. He rose, growing hugely, his chest expanding, head thrusting like a giant stovepipe. He seemed full of rage. He was lifting her up. The woman spread her arms, but they weren't arms—they were thick and broad, and they batted the air like wings. What did the man intend—to crush her in midair? Hurl her to the ground? The spectral light fell on the gap between them. Robbie felt Fristeen clutch him. She was shuddering, and he was too. They both could see what the man was going to do.

  A jagged moan rose from the impaled woman. Not a human sound. It was a beast crying out, the agony of some wounded creature.

  Robbie swung to face Fristeen. "He's killing her. We have to do something."

  She nodded with an urgent expression.

  A second cry reached them, more desperate than the first. Fristeen put her fingers in her ears. They shouldn't be watching this.

  Robbie followed suit, stopping his ears, and they turned together, hurrying back through the grass. As they burst through the shrubs, he saw wild thoughts racing in Fristeen's eyes.

  There—the silver ribbon. They followed it through the black trees as quickly as they could. When they reached the viburnums, they paused and looked back.

  The giant silhouettes had billowed, edges furred and backlit like roiling clouds. And they continued to inflate, bulbing and rising and changing their shapes. Creatures from another world—spectral and behemoth—met in this hidden place to perform some rite. Something strange and unsuspected, unmeant for human eyes. Why this Pool? Had they found their way over land? Did they live in the black trees? No, they came from the skies, and into the skies they were rising—black cumuli bent around the cavernous sun. The giant man grew monstrous, head mushroomed on top, body bristling with horns, while the woman was torn into ashen plumes, feathers set loose and scattered by the wind. Her moan reached them again—crazed, but this time strangely jubilant, as if some triumph had been won. The sound drifted as they listened, trailing down from the heavens and settling in the black trees.

  Fristeen turned and cocked her head with a puzzled look.

  Something terrible has happened, Robbie thought. And then he saw in that cavern of light that hung between the perpetrator and the victim, a mind that knew what the giants were doing, and why. Robbie recognized its glimmer—the hints of life within. And from the depths of dream, an indelible voice reached him: "Look into my eye."

  They faced the viburnum slope and started up it. By the time they reached the top, they were breathing hard. They didn't stop again till they reached the Two-Tree. They circled it once, then turned to look back.

  The Pool was clearly visible, but the giants had vanished. The sky was cloudless, leaden gray around the bowl of sun.

  They regarded each other, wondering.

  "Maybe it just happened in our minds," Fristeen said.

  But they knew it was real.

  "What was wrong with his head?" Robbie gave her a disbelieving look.

  "I feel sorry for her," Fristeen said.

  "He killed her."

  Fristeen nodded. "That's what she wanted."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Didn't you hear? The last time she screamed?"

  Robbie could hardly forget. But—

  Fristeen shook her head. "That's what she wanted. I'm pretty sure."

  Full of foreboding, Robbie's gaze returned to the black trees.

  "The strangest place," Fristeen muttered.

  Robbie nodded. "Too Far."

  "Remember what He Knows said," Fristeen reminded him.

  The oracle had warned them not to stay late, and it would be evening soon. There was no time to waste.

  They descended to Used-to-Be, traversed the Great Place, crossed Trickle and passed beneath the Jigglies. It was there
that they felt the first icy drafts. They shivered and traded dark looks, and the looks grew still darker when they reached the Needle Patch. A thin mist was drifting over the Perfect Place. They squirmed through the tunnel, and when they emerged on the far side, they let the scratches go untended and hurried across the meadow. But the mist was thick around the Dot Trees, and Robbie couldn't find the sock.

  The chill cut through them. Fristeen's hands began to shake. They were feeling through the branches, looking for the marker. Through an aperture between two alder clumps, Shivers' milky eye appeared, glazed and bulging.

  "Where are the birds?" Shivers whispered. He wheezed over them, giant brow curdling, cheeks sagging behind. "And the bugs? There's not a click or a buzz—" He spoke as if to himself. "Is it Shivers they fear?"

  Robbie held his breath. Fristeen stood motionless beside him. Shivers seemed not to see them. Then the dripping nose shifted, the bulging eyes fixed on them, bloated lips leering.

  "Is it Shivers?" he hissed. And then he was tittering.

  Robbie felt the cold spittle prickling his face.

  "Your marker is lost," Shivers observed. "What now?"

  Robbie didn't reply.

  "You could close your eyes and climb into the fog." Shivers' stringy chin coiled around a Dot Tree.

  Robbie remained mute.

  "Or you could wait for—conditions to improve?" Shivers sniggered. His chin snaked through the leaves, circling Fristeen.

  Robbie's chest spasmed with chills. Fristeen's lips were turning blue.

  "Poor children." A greasy tongue wagged out of the reeking maw.

  "Poor you," Fristeen barked at him.

  Shivers' sigh was like a freezer door opening. "I have no tears, so . . . rain must do."

  Gray billows were sliding down the slopes toward them. You could hear the drops rattling the leaves. The billows rolled over them, and the rain came pelting down.

  "There," Robbie cried. Through the battered alders was a flapping sock.

  They scrambled amid the downpour, clinging to the Dot Tree branches, sliding on the wet slope, instantly drenched. A stiff wind blasted over them, numbing them both, but the wind cleared the mist, and again Robbie cried out.

  "The ridge—" He clambered up on hands and knees, and Fristeen did the same. They got their feet beneath them and burrowed through the branches, threading up the incline toward Where You Can See. The crest was swimming in fog.