The Last Stand of Daronwy

by Clint Talbert

  I’m with her, Lightningbolt said.

  Eaglewing nodded and motioned for Naranthor to lead. They walked uphill, picking their way over the fallen stones. They made a small camp, ate some of the last of their rations, and tried to sleep. When they awoke, Naranthor was missing.

  “Where’s Naranthor?” asked Lightningbolt.

  Eaglewing looked about. “I don’t know.” He drew his sword quietly. “I’ll head down back toward the ravine. You and Kavarine head up the passage, but don’t use too much light.”

  Lightningbolt and Kavarine crept up the broken tunnel, taking care to not step on loose rocks. A steady drip fell somewhere in the dim shadows. Something scurried across their path. Kavarine almost incinerated it.

  Just a rat. Lightningbolt shrugged.

  I hate rats.

  A light scattered the shadows ahead; someone was coming. Take the right side of the tunnel. I’ll take the left. Hurry. Steady footfalls echoed through the cavern and the light grew brighter. The wizards waited. Lightningbolt prepared a spell of ice, the quietest thing he could think of. The intruder’s light crept toward them. Lightningbolt’s hands sweated and he exhaled a long sigh to calm his mind.

  Naranthor stepped around the corner and froze. The light intensified to illuminate the two wizards waiting in ambush. Kavarine sighed.

  What are you two doing?

  We could ask you the same question, said Lightningbolt.

  I was checking on my magical wards to be certain the tunnel had remained undiscovered.

  Lightningbolt glanced at Kavarine, and even in the gloom he could see her raised eyebrows. Isn’t it dangerous to leave wards down here, this close to Kronshar?

  Naranthor waved a hand in the air, walking past them. Nonsense, these have been here since I started sneaking into this castle. He’s accustomed to them now. He probably thinks that they were here when he first took over Khazim. “What’s for breakfast?” he said aloud.

  Surprised by Naranthor’s sudden lack of caution, Lightningbolt glanced at Kavarine.

  She crafted a thought only he could hear. Something is not right.

  He’s been acting odd since Hrad’din fell.

  “Maybe it’s just stress,” Jeremy said in his Kavarine voice, shrugging.

  “I don’t know about this. It seems weird.”

  “Think about it. Naranthor was the only survivor from the last time he broke into Khazim. And he was the one that wanted us to stand and fight at Hrad’din too, and you know how that went.”

  Daniel nodded, switching to his Lightningbolt voice. “Naranthor, I think we should contact Niritan, see if he’s been able to make a new Stone.”

  Jeremy mimed looking for breakfast in an imaginary backpack. He stood, whirling toward Daniel. “Are you out of your mind? If you contact Niritan now, then Kronshar will certainly feel it! It’d be far better to wait. Wait until we get closer. Wait until we are nearly to Kronshar.”

  Daniel cocked his head, opening his mouth to say something.

  “Boys!” Mrs. McClain stood on the back porch. “It’s getting dark. Y’all need to come inside.”

  The blue doors opened to a dismal hall decorated with orange and black bulletin boards that had been populated with ghosts and pumpkins. The cliques gathered in front of each classroom chattering endlessly about nothing. Daniel glided to one of them, sitting down and taking out a deck of cards to show off a magic trick he learned from his brother. Jeremy slunk along the wall until he came to Mrs. Livingston’s room. He kept his head low, but his eyes scanned the hallway for any sign of Josh. He sat outside the classroom, opening Return of the King. He kept reading the same sentence over and over, because his eyes darted up each time someone walked past.

  “Hey, Jeremy.”

  It was Mira’s voice, but he didn’t look up. He didn’t even move the book. “Hey.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” He glanced down the hall for Josh.

  “Hey.” She knelt, pushing the book aside with a gentle hand. He had held that hand once. Josh had probably held her hand too. Had Josh kissed her? He tried to look away, but the blood rose in his face, throbbing around his eye. “Does it hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” Where was Josh? He wasn’t in the hall. If he caught them… Jeremy shuddered. He met Mira’s eyes. “What do you care, anyway?”

  She rocked back on her heels. “I… I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  “You should be.” Twin Hills is burning and Mira doesn’t even care, he thought. She was too busy chasing after people like Josh. It serves her right. “You never talked to me after we found the Old Man. After that night.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “We sat out on my dad’s truck, remember? But you never really cared did you? You never cared. It’s about your Pink Ladies now, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The bell rang. Everyone grabbed their backpacks and swarmed toward their classrooms.

  “I gotta go.” Jeremy stood, shouldered his pack, and glanced down the hall one last time.

  Mira grabbed his wrist. “Look, I said I’m sorry.”

  “Who cares?” He ripped his hand away and marched into the classroom.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  After days of enduring the screams of the dying while their bark melted away, after weeks of the brethren’s fear permeating the wind, Daronwy relished the full moon. The white-blue light sprouted through the grove with silver-trimmed shadows. A cold wind nuzzled against the tree’s bare twigs, coaxing Daronwy into a blissful, unaware sleep. And so when the intruders’ rubber-shod feet cracked the fallen branches, Daronwy turned his full anger against them. He wove the coldness of the wind and the haunting power of the full moon with his hatred and the plaintive song of the dying. Daronwy hurled that dark magic toward the humans who stood on the broken plain of uprooted life that mere weeks ago had been part of his forest.

  “Did you hear that?” Roland said.

  Loren shivered. “No.”

  “I never liked coming out here at night, man.”

  “Dude, don’t wuss out on me now.”

  Another frigid wind rattled amidst the dead brethren in a chuckle of branch scratching on bark. Both of the human saplings stared at one another. Their fear transpired into the ether, ascending from their auras like a heavy, ice-burdened cloud. Daronwy wove that fear into his next spell as they shook their primitive bodies and marched toward the beasts of blade and steel. Daronwy’s energy awakened the brethren.

  Destroy them, they said.

  Hold for a moment. What do they have in mind?

  The trees watched, silent in the darkness, bringing a stillness to the night that only occurs before a storm. That storm was what Daronwy held back in his branches, awaiting one more short-sighted, short-lived decision before unleashing his full fury. The saplings clambered around the steel beasts, putting tubers into the pipes, gashing the beasts’ rubber feet with their own steel. The brethren’s fear abated. They laughed, relishing the destruction. At least this time, the saplings were inflicting their sadism on beasts of their own making, leaving Daronwy’s charges safe. Another mind crackled through the emptiness. The saplings were not as alone as they thought. Daronwy recognized the mind of a predator in a lean season: cool, calculating, craving. The predator drove its own steel beast. It crept along the road, made ready to turn its bright eyes toward the saplings. They would be captured in that spotlight. Unaware, they laughed, pulling wires from within the guts of the destructive demons. The predator neared; Daronwy decided to help the saplings.

  Awake! Awake! Attack that bright-eyed beast! As the predator turned toward the saplings in their joyous debauchery, birds bombed from the trees, rushing the glass at the front of the thing, making it screech to a halt, disturbing the prowling human mind
controlling it.

  “Cops!” said Loren. He tackled Roland and they threw themselves on the ground, hidden by the dead beast’s shredded rubber foot.

  Daronwy released the stark fear that he had prepared for the saplings, tumbling that unbridled rage onto the predator. The saplings trembled as the onslaught passed over them. Daronwy felt the clash with the predator’s mind like a change in the weather. Already unsettled by the birds, the predator’s mental pattern transformed from a pompous desire for confrontation to an unacknowledged, serpentine fear of shadowed lonely places where the haughty amber of street lamps could not penetrate. The predator coaxed its beast backwards, turned west, and fled.

  Roland looked at Loren. “That was close, man.”

  “Did you feel that wind? Like a dadgum ice bucket dumped down your back, y’know?”

  “And what about those birds? Did you see them? Man, I told you we should get out of here.”

  “Yeah, before he comes back.”

  The beasts of blade and steel sat there, unmoving. They had no minds; quite obviously the slaves of humans, equipped only for destruction. Daronwy doubted they were even aware of their own damage. But, their human handlers would be aware. Perhaps this would give them pause. Perhaps this might be a spark to awaken their minds to the reality of what they did to the tree-brethren, providing them with a chance to learn from their last generation’s folly. At least the saplings were learning, and Daronwy could return to rest beneath the moonlight.

  The moon was giving way to dawn when Jeremy walked down his driveway, crossed the street, and stood in the cold at the bus stop. Loren was there, looking toward the tractors with Sy at his side. An unseasonably cool frost covered the grass in white. “Hey, Jeremy.”

  “Hey, Loren.”

  Jeremy followed their gaze. “Maybe this frost will keep them away today.”

  “Shit, Roland and I almost got caught by the cops last night, dude.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “They were tearing up the tractors,” Sy said, smiling, eyes afire.

  Loren nodded, hands on his hips. “Yep.”

  “They don’t look torn up.”

  “Yeah, not from here, but dude, they got some surprises waiting for them. First, they ain’t gonna start, ‘cause we tore all these wires out of the engine. Then, they’re gonna see that we sliced up all their tires. Then, once they get all that fixed, they’re gonna start ‘em up and find out we put potatoes in the exhaust. It’s gonna explode.”

  “What about the person driving the tractor? Wouldn’t they be hurt if it exploded?”

  Loren shrugged. “So what? It’s what they deserve.”

  “I don’t think that’s right. We should take those out.”

  “Dude, don’t be stupid. It’s all the way in the engine. You can’t get it out.”

  “But I don’t want some poor person to be sitting on an exploding tractor.”

  Roland walked out of his house and stood next to them. “Y’all talking about those?” He gestured with his thumb at the tractors.

  “Yeah, little Mr. Righteous here is concerned about our tractor drivers.”

  “Nah man, don’t worry. I did this once to my uncle when we were kids. It don’t explode explode, like with fire and stuff. It’ll just blow a hole in the exhaust pipe and spit mashed potato everywhere. It’ll make a helluva noise. Scare their pants off, that’s for sure.”

  “Make them change their pants!” Loren doubled over, laughing and slapping his thigh.

  Mira and her sisters walked up, bringing Rosalyn with them. “What’s so funny?” Kelly asked, as the bus wheezed to a halt.

  “Nothin’. Come on y’all,” said Roland.

  Acrid, eye-stinging smoke penetrated the bus windows on the way home. Jeremy looked out, shocked to see so much of the bike trails were reduced to dirt. The burn piles were huge—as big as his room—smoldering with plumes of blue-gray smoke. Hadn’t Loren and Roland destroyed the tractors? The bus stopped and he got out, walking to the edge of the road. Where the road was supposed to meet the wood, it now met only dirt. He stared across the pitted, track-marked ground at two faded yellow bulldozers. They sat next to the tractors, dwarfing them. Their heavy tank treads had chewed the earth and flattened a large swath of Helter Skelter. The opossum hills were smoothed over, pushed into a towering pile of red-hot plant carcasses.

  An idea flashed through Jeremy’s mind. He spun on his heel and walked home, finding his dad in the kitchen. “Dad, isn’t it against the law to burn stuff in the city limits?”

  His dad stopped cutting vegetables. “Yes, unless you have a permit.”

  “Twin Hills is in the city limits, right?”

  “I would imagine it is. Certainly ought to be.”

  “Well, they’re burning it down and I bet they don’t have a permit. Can we call the police on them?”

  His dad chuckled and went back to chopping. “I’m pretty sure they have one.”

  “How can we find out?”

  “You could call city hall. Somebody there would know.”

  “Can we do that, please?”

  “Don’t you have homework that you need to be worrying about?”

  Jeremy sighed.

  “You’d better get to it. Then we can call city hall.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Two days later, Jeremy came home to a gray shade of misting rain. The bulldozers sat silent and unmoving. Jeremy ran through the woods before he went inside, knowing he wouldn’t be allowed back out in weather that threatened to turn worse. He saw that there were no new trenches, but the pond level was lower. Helter Skelter had not been cut into any further. He went to the Tree, smiled at it, and then ran home, careful to not get mud on his jeans. As he passed the Gateway Tree, he noticed something up on it. Turning, he found a “No Trespassing” sign staring at him with red letters on black metal. Jeremy laughed. As if a sign could stop him. The fools in the bulldozers were trespassing, not him. He shook his head and walked home. He took his shoes off before going inside and crossing the floor.

  “Jeremy,” said his mom. She stood across from him, eyes tearing. One hand rested on the telephone while the other wiped her eyes. Something was wrong.

  He froze. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You know how Father Pat has been real sick, right?” Jeremy nodded; everyone knew that. What was this about? “Well, this morning, Father Pat…” She looked down, wiping her eyes. She took a breath. “He passed away.”

  Jeremy’s mouth hung open, his eyes staring, unseeing, at the floor. His stomach turned upside-down. “No, Momma, that’s not right.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. It’s true.”

  Jeremy ran to his room, slammed the door, and threw himself on his knees next to his bed. He dropped his head into an angry prayer. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you killing Twin Hills and Father Pat? Why are you doing this to me? You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to me! Bring back Father Pat… ”

  His parents found him there an hour later, still kneeling, still weeping, still muttering, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Jeremy,” said his mom from the door.

  He stopped muttering, but remained facing the bed. “What?”

  “It’s ‘yes, ma’am.’”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Do you want to go to the funeral? They’ve asked that the acolytes attend.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’ll be Friday. I’ll get you out of school.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Jeremy… ”

  “Leave me alone!” He climbed into the bed and pulled the blanket over his head.

  Under the blanket, Jeremy shook with each sob, curl
ing into a ball as each wave of sorrow crashed over him. Father Pat couldn’t die. He just couldn’t. It wasn’t right. And they couldn’t bulldoze Twin Hills; it wasn’t right either. But he could see the bulldozers from his window. Maybe he had been chosen, but he’d failed them. He had failed them both.

  He wore all black on Friday. He said nothing to anyone. His mom picked him up just before lunch. They went to the church, but instead of going in and sitting in a pew, Deacon Thibodeaux organized all the acolytes. “Come on, boys. Get your robes and crosses on and let’s go into the Sunday School building.” The church was full of people draped in black, standing shoulder to shoulder. Every single pew had been extended with folding chairs and still people stood along the walls. A jet-black coffin sat at the front of the nave, just before the altar, its lid open. He wanted to run to that coffin. It had to be a mistake. It had to be. This was a dream, and he was going to wake up any minute. Then he’d be able to look at Father Pat with his laughing blue eyes once more.

  Deacon Thibodeaux marched the boys into the Sunday School building. Heavy gray clouds hung outside, bent low as though the entire world struggled to hold back tears. None of the boys said a word; the entire assembly was eerily quiet. The men that presided over them talked only in whispered Cajun French.

  They stood for what seemed like an hour and Jeremy wondered if they were actually going to attend the Mass at all or if they were going to keep them in here. Finally, the deacon said, “Boys, listen up.” The silence continued, but their eyes shifted to him. “We’re going to enter in two columns. Arrange yourselves by height. Shortest first, tallest last. The pews at the front have been reserved; you go up to the coffin.” He swallowed. “You bow, then if you’re on the left, you go left to your seat. If you’re on the right, you go right. Y’all got that?”

  The boys nodded.

  “When the Mass is over, file out of the pews and walk straight back to the front foyer of the church. We’ll have a van there to take you to the graveyard.” He coughed, choking on the word. “When we get there, we’ll tell you what to do, okay? After that service, we’ll get back in the van and come back here. Everyone stay close together, and no one leave with anyone else. Y’all understand?”