Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds

by Jeremy Lachlan

  ‘So pretty …’

  The further we go, the wilder the forest becomes. Greyish vines hang from the branches. We clamber over piles of moss-covered rubble. Fallen chunks of ceiling. Go past gaping holes in the walls and floor that open onto other overgrown corridors and halls, the stone torn apart by tree roots. The forest seems to have spread just like the snow.

  We move on instinct alone, as if we’ve walked this path before. A voice, my voice, buzzes through the back of my mind, telling me to slow down, go back, get out, find a different path, but it’s drowned out by a feeling, a desire, a different voice that tells me to keep going. Every breath fills my body like a warm mist that smokes the evil wasps away. I’m not even worried when we come to a dead end. Neither is Hickory. We just grab the branches of a tree growing through a hole in the floor and start climbing down.

  The air’s even sweeter down here. A bolt of energy crackles through my body and I feel like I could take on every Tin-skin and Leatherhead all by myself. Their leader, too.

  ‘Hey, Hickory,’ I say. ‘Tell me about Roth.’

  ‘Boss,’ he says, watching a spore dance over the back of his hand. ‘Bad guy.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but what’s he like?’ We turn a corner. I splay the pretty, red leaves with my fingers. ‘You’ve seen him, right? Is he tall? Do you reckon I could take him? If I had to fight him, I mean.’ Hickory tells me to relax, so I tell him I am relaxed – I really, really am. ‘Still want to know, though. What does he look like?’

  ‘You want a face to hate. Think it’ll make it easier, but it won’t. Not this face.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask. And then a bit louder – but not too loud, no, never, because this place is so peaceful and the air’s so nice I could marry it – ‘Hickory, why not?’

  He throws me something from his knapsack. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  It’s a mask. No, a half-mask – the bottom half – carved from a strange white stone so smooth and shiny it almost feels like glass. A big crack runs across the nose at the top of the mask and down the left cheek. There’s a thin slit between the lips for breathing. Buckles and leather straps hang from its edges, jingle-jangle. The underside’s thick and bulbous in places, as if the half-mask’s not meant to just fit over someone’s face, but in it too. Like it’s meant to plug some holes. A missing nose and a lower jaw.

  I was wrong. It isn’t a mask at all.

  ‘It’s a prosthemni –’ My tongue fumbles the word. A chuckle swells in my belly but I swallow it back, lick my lips, try again. ‘Prosh – pr – prosthetic! It’s a prosthetic face.’

  Hickory nods. Is he swaying or is it me? Maybe it’s the trees.

  I shake my head to lose the dizzy, but the dizzy don’t go.

  ‘It’s his breath,’ Hickory almost-shouts. He stuffs the half-face back into his knapsack, but when he swings it over his shoulder the cheeky pack slips from his hand whoopsie-daisy, disappears down a hole. ‘Oh. Not good. Needed that.’

  I can’t bury the chuckle this time. It shudders up my gut and out my gob so hard I have to steady myself on a nearby tree. ‘S’okay, Hickemy. We’ll come back later!’

  The red leaves go flappy now, which is weird coz there’s no breeze, but there must be a breeze coz the spores are swirly too. We stumble down the forested hallway and that mozzie in my head tells me to stop again, go back, why was Hickory hiding Roth’s face in a bag anyway?

  ‘Hey Mickory, what’d you mean it’s his breath?’

  ‘Rotted his face away! Tha’s why Leatherdeads and Tin-shins cover ’emselves up. Wrap ’emselves in dead skin and scrap metal. Roth’s breath burns ’em!’

  ‘His breath is poisonous?’ We leap over a big, big tree root. ‘How can anyone live with poisonous-est breath?’

  ‘He’s immortal, tha’s how.’

  ‘You mean he can’t die? Ever?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say, ‘but that’s – that’s impossible,’ and Hicky spreads his arms out at the forest, wide like a big bird, as if to say What do you call all this, then? I tell him he makes a marvellous point. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before, though? It’s, like, info, you know?’

  ‘Didn’t want to scare you. Are you scared?’

  ‘Bah! Scared in a place like this? But hey, listen – immortal, huh? What if someone swung a sword at his neck?’ I swing an imaginary sword, sha-wing!

  ‘Broken blade.’

  ‘What if – hey – what if they pushed him off a really high cliff?’

  ‘He’d hit the bottom. Climb back up. Track ’em down.’

  ‘What if they shot him in the head? No – the eye!’

  ‘Shoot him anywhere. Wouldn’t change a thing.’

  ‘No fighting. Got it. We’ll just have to – hey, Dickory – we’ll just have to sneak in and out of his fortress. Quiet-like. We could even dress up! In disguises! Nobody’ll ever suspect a couple of trees to stage a prison break, will they? No way! Know why?’ I pull a tree branch down as I pass it, let it flick back up behind me. ‘Everybody loves trees!’

  We come to a spiral stairwell that’s all slippery with tree roots and moss. It smells so sweet down there it’s crazy, which is why we throw ourselves in, go wheeeeeeeeee all the way down, round and round. When it’s over I want to do it again but I can’t coz I’m laughing too much.

  We move through this new bit of forest arm in arm, singing and skipping through the trees. We’re both singing different songs, but I love it coz I’m singing one I made up ages ago called ‘The Coconut Song’ and it’s one of Dad’s favourites, and Hizzory’s is a song about seeing some girl called Farrow again. The mozzie in my head yells at me. Stuff about the fake face and the trees. It tells me to turn around, run away, but if we do that we won’t get where we’re going and it’s beautiful down here, it really is. S’more a swamp than a forest now and the ground’s all smooshy-wet, sticky too, and the glowing spores are everywh– cough – I think I just swallowed one. I clear my throat, and the mozzie shouts Oi! Jane! The face! Why was Hickory hiding the face, idiot? So I think, Fine, already!

  ‘Why’d you – hey, Lickory. Hate to interrupt your Farrow song – lovely voice, by the way – but why’d you have Roth’s face in your bag?’

  ‘Can’t tell,’ Hicky sighs loudly. ‘Big secret. You’ll hate me if I tell you!’

  ‘Couldn’t hate you, Hickemy. You’re my best friend. Always have been. Except for Violet, o’course, but she’s a kid. Does that still count? Yes! You’re my second-best friend!’

  ‘Bad second-best friend. And you let me keep your boots and errything!’

  ‘Okay.’ I clap my hands, bang! Trip on a tree root, keep walking. ‘Tell you what. I’ll tell you one of my secrets, and you tell me yours. Same time, like.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘M’kay.’

  ‘On three. One, two, four!’

  We shout our secrets out at the very same time, and it’s so great it’s wonderful, it sounds like, ‘I’ve – I’m – never been – kidnapping – kissed – you.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say. ‘See? That wasn’t too hard, was it? Bit of a load off, really. I’ve never been kissed and you’re – wait, what’d you say again?’

  ‘I’m kidnapping you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Warning bells ding-a-ling, ding-dong. ‘You’re kidnapping me?’

  ‘Uh-huh, ’fraid so. Leading you into a trap. Turning you in!’

  ‘But what about my dad?’

  ‘Lied. He’s probably dead already! That mask I had. Remember that? It’s like a calling card. Proof of allegiance and all. Means I’m a bounty hunter. For Roth.’

  ‘Roth? That guy?’ I shake my head, swipe a branch. ‘But the Tin-shins. The Leathermeds. You blew ’em up!’

  ‘Couldn’t let them take you in. Take all the credit then don’t get mine! After the trap, I thought, “Why drag Jane kickin’ and screamin’ if I can get her to come along easy,” see?’

  I dunno what t
o say. I look at Hickory and Hickory looks at me and I want to run away from this traitor-guy, from Roth, from that smell that don’t seem so sweet no more, but then the leaves flip-flap again, a thousand red flags waving, and my body feels light but heavy at the same time, like I’m floating in a dream. I want to rest, that’s what I want. The mozzie goes, Run, idiot! Fight! Get away! But I can’t run, too tired, and I can’t stay mad at Hickory either. He’s my second-best friend, and it’s nice down here, it really is.

  All I need is a nap.

  ‘Got no choice,’ Hicky yawns. We float side by side, sludgy-trudgy. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘S’okay.’

  ‘Roth wants the key. I gotta give it. Gotta keep my promise.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘Promise is a promise!’ And I laugh, because it really is funny when you think about it. I’m being kidnapped and I really don’t give a damn.

  THE FLOWER IN THE DELL

  The floor’s different now. Our feet sink ankle-deep in dark red sludge. I trip on a rib cage, go splash, slop and tingle. I want to rest, need to sleep, but no, no, no, not yet.

  ‘We’re here,’ Hicky says, and he’s right, we’ve arrived.

  It’s an intersection. Big one. The forest’s floor-to-ceiling thick all round, but not in the centre. All the tree roots go dippy-downy like a dell, a bowl, a big sunken bed.

  ‘Look,’ Hicky says. There’s a single flower down in the dell, lonesome-like and yellow. Unfurling. Uncurling. I want to touch it, but Hicky slips into the dell first. ‘Mine.’

  I start to follow him, but then I hear something down the next corridor. Figure I should check it out because maybe it’s another flower. I slip round to the right, swing on a branch, whoosh! But I don’t see no flowers, just some people-shaped things on the ground. I want to go back to the dell, but the warning bells are raging, ding-a-ling, DING-DONG.

  Look closer! Snap out of it!

  ‘M’kay, mozzie.’ I focus, take a breath and – ‘Oh, that’s not good.’

  The sight’s a sledgehammer, knocks the crazy from my brain. There are hundreds of them. Everywhere. Leatherheads piled in stinking heaps or strung up in the branches. Masks ripped away, jaws broken, forced open by the tree roots snaking round their necks, into their mouths, down their throats. The trees are feeding on them from the inside out.

  No, not trees. Tree. It’s one enormous plant. That’s why we haven’t seen any bodies till now. We’re at the centre. The core. We’re in the goddamn stomach.

  I cover my mouth. Back away from the grey-fleshed corpses with their beady little eyes staring blankly. Two hang to my left like sacks of meat, roots trailing from their mouths. Another’s down in the sludge to my right, wrapped in vines, but it isn’t dead yet. It blinks, twitches, makes that clicking sound in its throat. The root moves in its mouth, just an inch, going deeper. The leaves flap and flutter. I trip on a leg and topple back into the sludge. It tingles and burns. Acid. Some sort of rotting body soup oozing down into the dell where –

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  I spin around. Hickory’s in the centre of the dell. Crawling through the muck.

  Reaching for the flower.

  ‘No,’ I shout. ‘Hickory, don’t –’

  But Hickory does.

  He plucks the flower and the forest comes alive. I stumble, trip and roll down into the dell, the ground a writhing mass of tree roots and rotting corpses. Hickory’s already half-buried by the bubbling sludge, roots snaking around his chest and arms, pulling him deeper.

  He just stares at the flower in his hands, slack-jawed and dumb.

  ‘Hickory, move!’

  I throw myself into him. The roots snap. We roll through the sludge. Bile rising, eyes watering, skin tingling, turning numb. The roots wrap around my ankles, Hickory’s wrists. We’re surrounded by skeletons and gas masks and machetes. I grab one and start hacking.

  ‘Don’t hurt ’em,’ Hickory says.

  I cut him free and slap him hard, and even though it seems to break the spell I slap him again anyway because I might’ve been off with the fairies but I remember what the jerk told me a minute ago. I should leave him here – let him die – but I still need him.

  ‘Run,’ I shout, and shove another machete into his hands.

  We scramble out of the dell, cutting a swathe through a new corridor. The tree roots and branches swipe, whip and tangle. We sprint our hearts out. My machete’s lodged in a thick, swinging branch and ripped from my hands in a flash. The ground rumbles, the walls crack and crumble. We dodge rocks and boulders, duck through a hole in the wall, but the forest’s here, too. Hickory slices a swooping branch clean in half. Sap splatters like blood. With a groan, screech and crack – crack – CRACK, an enormous tree branch slams down across the corridor ahead, blocking our path. I leap from a fallen boulder. Hickory springs from another swinging branch.

  And the vines snatch us up mid-air.

  They loop and tangle round our limbs and chests. They squeeze. Hickory swings his machete but the vines take that, too. I’m flipped upside down. Blood rushes to my head. The branches stop swinging, the forest stops swaying, and all I can hear is the ka-thump, ba-dump of my heart. A tree root curls up my arm and around my neck, snaking over my chin. I grit my teeth as hard as I can, but the root prods at my lips. This is it. This is the end. Dad’s lost forever and I’m gonna die upside down, hanging next to a stupid liar who –

  ‘Help …’

  Hickory’s voice. A wheeze that becomes a choke that means a root’s sliding into his mouth too. Mine slips through the corner of my lips. I choke and gag and then I see him. A man. Running through the forest with fire blazing from his hands. Headed right for us.

  THE BOUNTY HUNTERS

  Scratch that. The worst thing about being known as the Cursed One is that when you’re just minding your own business trying to track down your missing father in a never-ending labyrinth full of shape-shifting rooms and evil, butt-ugly creatures, you can somehow end up being drugged by some spores and half-digested by a bloody tree.

  I’m covered in gunk and leaf-litter from head to toe, bruised and beaten. The bandage wrapped around my injured hand looks and smells like soiled toilet paper. My muscles ache like crazy, but my cuts don’t hurt a bit on account of the numbness – the only upside to being covered in the stomach-sludge of a carnivorous plant. Who would’ve thought?

  I’m in a cage with wheels again, but this one’s made of metal and isn’t being pulled by a horse, it’s being pulled by the biggest goddamn guy I’ve ever seen. Even his muscles have muscles. He’s shirtless and bald, and he’s so tall his head almost touches the chandeliers. His bare feet sound like claps of thunder on the stone. He hasn’t been whipped like Hickory, but another cracked prosthetic face dangles from his belt.

  I’m gonna hug the first stranger I meet who doesn’t have it in for me. I really am.

  My key is in his pocket. The jerk nicked it from mine as soon as he dumped us on safer ground and threw down his torch. I was too weak to stop him, to even lift a hand, but I saw the look on his face when he found the key. Triumph and wonder, and some kind of sadness, too. He said something to me in a different language, something soft. Even placed one of his massive hands on my shoulder and smiled.

  Then he threw us in the cage.

  Hickory’s as filthy and beat-up as I am. Shag of black hair like a bird’s nest. He tried reasoning with the bounty hunter for the first hour or so. Told him they were on the same side and everything. ‘Had the mask, but I lost it,’ he said. ‘First to be given out. You taking us to the fortress? Huh? Big place, black gate? Yes? Roth won’t be happy you stuck me in a cage. You’ll see. Was taking the girl there myself. Maybe we could take her in together, huh?’

  The bounty hunter never said a word.

  Now Hickory’s sulking in the corner, hands tied behind his back, same as mine.

  ‘Honour’s one of the few things you have left, huh?’ I whisper to him.

  ‘Don’t get pissy with me just becaus
e you trusted the wrong guy,’ he says quietly.

  He’s right, of course. I should’ve known better. Me of all people.

  ‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘Why didn’t you just take the key and leave? What does Roth want with me? I was given the key. That doesn’t mean I know anything about it. And I really was gonna give it to you when we got my dad back to Bluehaven. I wasn’t lying.’

  Hickory says nothing.

  ‘Why side with Roth anyway? How long have you been working for him? And – what – he wants it so he can find more gateways? You seriously reckon he’ll hand it over to you once he’s finished with it? He doesn’t exactly sound like the sharing type.’

  Then again, what do I know? I can’t trust anything Hickory has told me, except for the stuff in the forest, when we were both high as kites and the truth seemed like a glorious thing.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ I ask him. ‘You remember. I know you do.’

  Hickory’s staring at the bounty hunter’s back now. At Roth’s cracked and dangling half-face. ‘Wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ he says at last. He turns away, lies on his side, and maybe it’s the way he was looking at the mask, but suddenly all I can think is: what if Hickory comes from the same world as Roth?

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘But I’m getting my boots back. Soon as our hands are untied.’

  Hickory kicks them off and nudges them towards me without turning over. They look mankier than a couple of squashed toads. ‘All yours,’ he says.

  I decide to leave them be.

  The bounty hunter sticks to the main corridors. The cage is too wide to fit through any of the regular doors anyway. Hours seem to pass. We don’t run into any unfriendlies, but they’ve certainly left their marks. Scattered bones. Spent cartridge shells. Torn scraps of leather and crumpled bits of tin. Stains and claw marks on the walls and floor.

  I don’t sleep on our ‘rest’ stop. Hickory does. Passes out right away, as if his conscience is clear as water. I just sit beside him, watching the big bald guy. He’s sitting cross-legged on a threadbare mat he pulled from some sort of compartment under the cage. At first, he mumbled and hummed for a while, something soft and deep and sad. Now he’s shaving. Gliding a dry blade across the curve of his head, down his cheeks, his chin.