Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  Then she made her way downstairs.

  The three Knightlys were at the dining room table. The morning light revealed wallpaper that was faded and peeling in places and a threadbare carpet. The general air of shabbiness was relieved only by a nosegay of freshly cut flowers on the table.

  “Good morning,” Lucy said brightly, “I’d like to go into town today to conduct an investigation. Could I have a ride, please?”

  She caught a quick glimpse of Gordon’s grimace before he flung the newspaper up in front of him like a shield.

  Dot looked even more startled and nervous than she had last night. Her bulging eyes darted this way and that before settling on the jam jar. She began to spoon jam onto her bread with utmost concentration.

  Lucy’s shoulders slumped and she looked at Pete.

  “I’m going fishing with Nibs,” he protested, caught in mid-chew. There were crumbs on his chin, and a half-eaten slice of toast in his hand.

  Gordon flicked down the edge of his paper. “I can’t take her. I’m riding out with the tree doctor to take a look at the, erm, problem.”

  Dot’s eyes widened in alarm. “My nerves are far too frayed already. I can’t take the bustle of town.”

  “All right.” Lucy crossed her arms. “I’ll walk then.”

  “No, no,” Gordon huffed. He seemed to realize they needed to show some decency. “Dodd is running an errand. Pete can take you.”

  “But I’m going fishing!” Pete said again—again with his mouth full of toast.

  Gordon waved his hand as if shooing away an insect. “You’ll take her and that’s that.” The newspaper sprang up a final time.

  After that warm reception, Lucy hardly felt like eating with them. She wandered down the hall in search of the kitchen.

  She found a cozy, stone-floored room at the east end of the house. There was a large fire warming the hearth and a long plank-wood table on which were laid out a loaf of bread and creamy pats of butter in a bowl, along with a jar of jam. It looked like blueberry.

  That would do nicely. Lucy took up a knife and sawed herself a chunk of bread.

  From the pantry, just out of sight, came a noise of great clatterings and cursings. Then a woman’s voice erupted.

  “That pie tin was just here! Where has it run off to?”

  A large woman came through the door. She was tan, muscled, and apple-cheeked, with a long brown braid of hair wound in a circle around her head. She looked strong and fierce minded, and Lucy took a quick step toward the door, hiding her stolen breakfast behind her back.

  The woman’s sharp eyes darted to the mangled loaf of bread; they narrowed. Lucy stiffened. There was a large crock of wooden spoons nearby, and Lucy’s knuckles ached reflexively at the sight of it; they’d been rapped several times in the last year by the Miss Bentley’s School cook, a creature who was possibly part ogre.

  “Don’t worry, child, I’m not in the habit of starving the hungry.” The woman clanked two enormous roasting pans into a large stone sink and sat down heavily on one of the wooden benches. “I like to know where my handiwork is going, is all. You must be Lucy.”

  Lucy relaxed slightly. “Did you make the spice cake I ate last night?”

  The woman smiled slyly as if quite aware of the quality of her spice cake. “I did indeed. Now, what will you be having with that lump of bread you’re hiding: tea, coffee, or chocolate?”

  “Chocolate, please,” Lucy said eagerly. Miss Bentley girls were never allowed sweets except on holidays.

  “You sit down.” The woman gestured. “I may as well toast it for you, so hand it over.”

  Lucy did, and the cook popped it onto a metal rack that was suspended above the fire. “My name’s Anya. Ask Missus Dot—I’ve never bitten anyone yet.” She reached into the fireplace and turned the bread just as it turned golden brown. A toasty, vanilla smell spread through the kitchen. “Course I’ve heard a lot about you already.”

  “You have?”

  Anya deftly picked up the toast and slid it onto a plate. She stirred a saucepan of milk and chocolate while Lucy applied heaps of butter to her bread and spooned gobs of blueberry jam onto it.

  “I knew your father. He used to come here. Sit right where you are now.”

  Lucy put down her toast. “He’s missing.”

  “So I heard.” Something on Anya’s face told Lucy the cook had her own opinion about the matter. She poured Lucy a cup of steaming hot chocolate, but Lucy’s appetite had disappeared.

  “Anya, did he say anything to you? About leaving?”

  The cook gave her a thoughtful glance. She floured part of the table and brought out a bread bowl. Lucy watched as she punched into the pillow of risen dough; with quick and practiced movements Anya began to knead.

  “I think he may have gone off chasing after something that he shouldn’t have.”

  “Well. He’s always chasing after something.” Lucy tried to sound light.

  Anya sighed as if wanting to get something off her chest. “You know your pa was interested in all the old tales. Used to come sit with me to hear my stories.” Anya kneaded and the table creaked. “I told him all my good ones. All about shifters and magic trees. The black boats and the Devil’s Thumb.”

  Lucy felt the back of her neck tickle pleasantly. She could just imagine her father at the table, his eyes shining with excitement. How many times had she seen him with First Peoples or theosophists, inventors, Chinese doctors, peddlers, and wanderers? Her father wanted to talk to them all. If any had a story he thought would further his research, he pursued it single-mindedly. He’d encountered such a story here, Lucy guessed.

  “Anya, in any of your stories is there an uncanny place? Are there graveyards where people see ghosts, hollows where people hear voices even when no one’s around?”

  “Oh ho.” Anya chuckled. “There’s stories like that a penny a pound in Saarthe.” And Lucy’s face fell.

  The cook continued. “But the stories he most wanted to hear were all about the Thumb.”

  Lucy frowned at this. “What’s that?” How could there be any good stories about a place named after a finger?

  Anya pressed her floury hand onto the table. “This here’s Saarthe. She pointed to her palm and fingers. “And this is Devil’s Thumb.”

  The cook’s broad brown knuckle jutted out into the snowy white flour. A memory stirred in Lucy: the peninsula she’d seen from the train when it stopped to let Niwa on.

  “Why is it the Devil’s?” Lucy asked. She remembered the fierce guardian poles at that place and the way the lumberjacks grew quiet and uneasy.

  Anya wiped her hands. Her eyes held Lucy’s. “Because it’s cursed.”

  Lucy swallowed. In the course of her short, strange life she met plenty of grown-ups who liked to scare children. Her father had given her good advice: Get scared on your own evidence.

  They’d been in Nebraska, when she was frightened of a man with pale eyes who spoke about voices in the cornfields. She had nightmares about it.

  Her father took her with him into the cornfields at night—a night of the full moon, no less—and she listened to the vast rustling earth. But the corn didn’t speak, she was pleased to tell the pale-eyed man next time she saw him. There were no voices in its green world. And she had the evidence: a wax cylinder recording she’d made. Her father was proud of her, if a little disappointed there was no message from the cornstalks.

  So now Lucy asked the obvious question: “Cursed how?”

  Anya looked at her pityingly. “No one’s ever come back from it to say.”

  “Oh,” Lucy said quietly. She took a small bite of toast. Just because he wanted to hear stories about it didn’t mean he went there, she told herself.

  “But he wouldn’t have gone there,” Anya said, “not for all that he was fascinated with it.”

  “Why
not?” She looked up hopefully at the cook’s broad, friendly face.

  “Well, he wouldn’t have left you, would he?” Anya said. Then, distractedly, she clapped the flour off her hands and poured more chocolate into Lucy’s cup, though Lucy had only taken a few sips.

  The door opened and Pete came in, his hair brushed and sleek, looking like a young master. He leaned casually against the table, crossing his arms. He was a boy beginning to get broad and take up space. Trying on gestures too big for him, Lucy thought.

  “There you are.” Pete glanced only briefly at Lucy. “I’m ready if you are.”

  “Ready? Aren’t you going fishing?” Anya asked. She leaned against the kitchen sink. “I packed a lunch for you and made a lemon custard.”

  “Can’t,” Pete replied with a heavy sigh. “We’re going into town instead.”

  “Well, take some pie with you,” Anya said, bustling again.

  “Oh, that reminds me, I used one of your pie plates,” Pete said. “Nibs and me were panning for gold. Hope you didn’t miss it.”

  Lucy wanted to see Anya scold Pete for using one of her tins. Instead the cook smiled at him fondly.

  “That old thing?” Anya went to the counter and gave him a few slices of pie on an enameled tin plate that she wrapped with a dishcloth. “Don’t you worry about it. Now, what’s keeping you from the river on such a gorgeous day?”

  “I’ve got to help Lucy.” His shoulders fell at this heinous chore.

  “I’ll try not to take too much of your valuable time,” Lucy told him coolly, and slid off the bench. “Thank you for breakfast, Anya.”

  She came from a family of great ladies, and though they’d tried—and failed—to make a lady of her at Miss Bentley’s, she could imitate one in a pinch. With her head held high she left the kitchen: the picture of dignity.

  She was on the other side of the door when she heard Pete say to Anya, “You’ll have to put more protection charms around the house to make sure she doesn’t bring in a bunch of bad luck like her dad.”

  The hurt was swift and pointed. It was always the most superstitious, small-minded people who blamed her father when things went wrong, not realizing he was trying to help them.

  She stayed a moment, hoping to hear more about this “bad luck” her father brought. But all she heard was Anya urging Pete to take more pie, followed by the sounds of loud, appreciative chewing—which did nothing to improve her mood.

  • • •

  Pentland was a tough and charmless town. Lucy felt sorry for the buildings, which all looked like they’d been slapped together in whatever way was fastest and cheapest. Most of them were unpainted: dreary, weathered, and gray. A few of the enormous, red-barked trees loomed over them, making the town feel small and flimsy—a toy town that might get kicked or stepped on at any moment.

  Pete drove the Knightlys’ two-seat buggy through the crowded streets, dodging wagons and street urchins and even the odd chicken, while Lucy peered skeptically at the rough saloons and lumberyards. There might be ghosts here. Mining towns, settlements, outposts were all good places for them, attracting gamblers and strivers: people who might die young and leave behind dashed hopes. But ghosts like that were often the easiest to clear. Her father had written he was on the verge of a breakthrough, his biggest discovery ever.

  Lucy stared at all the activity around her. Men stomped down the wooden sidewalks, barking out orders to tradespeople. Wagons trundled by, swaybacked under loads of timber. She saw women in simple cotton dresses trailed by freshly scrubbed children, and others carrying brown paper packages from the butcher’s or the mercantile. The people looked plain, but proud.

  Then they were at the town square, where there was a small park and bandstand. Pete tied up the horses at a hitching post amid smells of lumber and dust.

  Lucy readied herself to jump down, but her way was blocked by Pete, who held out his hands like a boy forced into a dancing lesson. She jumped and came to an ungraceful landing, clipping his shoulder as he tried to catch hold of her.

  They disentangled themselves without looking at each other.

  “We should start at the mill,” he said, moving forward without enthusiasm. “Everyone looking for work ends up there.”

  Her father wasn’t everyone. And if he needed money (which he always did) he’d look for someone who needed a ghost cleared. At least that’s what she hoped he had done. Anya’s words—the stories he most wanted to hear were all about the Thumb—echoed uneasily in her mind.

  “We should start with the saloons,” she said, straightening her skirt. There was one facing the square that looked promising. It had a near life-size carved wooden bear out front, and a sign over the door read ONE DEAD MULE SALOON. ESTABLISHED 1862 FOR THE REFRESHMENT OF REPROBATES, INCORRIGIBLES, AND HOLY TERRORS. Her father always said there was nothing like a good, persistent haunting to drive men to drink. He’d found lots of his clients in bars.

  From the saloon came the sound of a bar fight—bottles crashing and chairs smashing—and then a man came flying out the doors to land in the dust.

  Pete looked doubtfully at the man, whose struggle to rise was hampered by the fact that he was also trying to throw a bottle at whoever had thrown him out. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  Lucy put her hands on her hips and turned. “Well, which way’s the cemetery?” This was another of her father’s first stops in a new place.

  Pete’s forehead crinkled in alarm. “Why’d you want to go there?”

  “To find out if there are any ghosts here, of course.” You could sometimes tell who was a ghost from the condition of their grave: The soil around it tended to oxidize and turn red. Lucy’s nose tickled from the dust and she coughed as another buggy tore by. “If there are ghosts here, someone might have hired him.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Pete said. He plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a shiny black stone. “See this?” From the appraising way he held it up, Lucy supposed she was meant to be impressed.

  “Yes,” she said, fussing with her gloves.

  “This is my ghost stone,” Pete said, with unmistakable pride. “So, you see, we don’t need ghost clearers around here. We know how to protect ourselves.”

  The remark she’d heard Pete make to Anya about her father and “bad luck” still rankled. Lucy took hold of the stone and examined it critically. “I’ve seen loads of these protection stones,” she said, which was perhaps a slight exaggeration. “But real ghost clearers don’t use this kind of thing. Even if this is obsidian”—she rubbed the stone as if she doubted its qualities—“it’s unreliable at best. Keep it if you think it works for you, though,” she said, handing it back to him.

  Pete stared at her with an open mouth. Then, with a rather wounded look, he took the stone back and returned it to his pocket.

  “I think I’ll start there,” Lucy said, pointing up to a grand mansion on a hill.

  She wanted to let Pete know her father was used to dealing with the highest society. And besides, behind a large fortune often lay the crimes and hurt feelings that let a ghost fester.

  She started walking, making her way past a group of men in shirtsleeves who were unloading a wagon.

  Pete bustled a few steps in front of her, as if she couldn’t be trusted to find the way on her own. “That’s Angus Murrain’s place. He’s the richest man in the territory.” From the reverential way Pete spoke the man’s name, you’d have thought he could make coins fall from the sky. “And he’s probably down at the mill. See, I told you we should start there.”

  Pete’s eyes were a bright green in the sun. Maybe he was sore at her for dismissing his stone—she had been a bit harsh. Whatever the reason, he insisted on taking charge and leading the way.

  They walked down to a large, flat-fronted building with the words PENTLAND TIMBER COMPANY painted on it. But the man in the front office tol
d them Angus Murrain was out and didn’t know when he’d be back. They walked outside again, passing by the lumberyard. A huge shed was open to the front, revealing a steel blade as tall as a two-story house. Ten men wrangled a giant red tree trunk into position and the saw began to roar.

  Lucy stopped to watch.

  “Those are kodok trees,” Pete shouted above the noise of the mill.

  “What?” she shouted back.

  “The red trees are kodoks. They’ve had to invent special saw blades big enough to cut them. They’re the biggest trees in the world!”

  Pete looked as proud as if he’d grown the trees himself.

  The great saw spun through the log, casting off a red haze of sawdust and wood chips.

  She stood watching the saw; she loved to see mechanical things at work.

  The mill workers brought in another log. The saw spun like flashing silver. But after a moment, it slowed, chugging through the wood as if moving through a sticky cake. When the wood fell apart, Lucy could see congealed red veins lacing its interior. And she could smell the rot.

  The mill workers looked at one another and began to clear away the pulpy mass. One man threw a piece of the rotten wood, and it splatted against the ground like a soggy pumpkin.

  The trees are coming down sick, Lucy remembered the porter saying. She stepped closer, and was surprised to feel Pete’s hand on her shoulder.

  He was trying to pull her back just as things were getting interesting. She shrugged out from under his hand and stepped away.

  “Hey! We should get out of here.” Pete jogged to catch up to her again.

  Men were streaming by them now, going to look at the rotten wood. Some were shouting. This felt like a protest or a march. Lucy pressed closer to the mill.

  “I want to see what’s going on.” She shouldered her way through the crowd.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Pete said in frustration. “It’s Rust, and it’ll get this bunch riled up. Do you want to get caught in something?”