Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  Pete got down on his hands and knees in front of the sweeper, assuring himself it was completely inert. “Let’s put it halfway between us,” he said, gingerly positioning the egg and then leaning back to assess whether it was exactly in the middle.

  “That’s good,” Lucy told him, mostly so he would stop fussing. She wished Pete had something similar that would protect them against any humans who might be out in the forest at night—outlaws worried her far more than ghosts did.

  “All right, then,” Pete said at last. He relaxed enough to lie down and pull a blanket over him. Soon Lucy could hear his breath turn regular and deep.

  She spent a long time staring out at the orange light, until it was late and her eyes were bleary with sleep. But the light stayed where it was. Whoever it belonged to was keeping a vigil just like she was.

  • • •

  They walked all the next day, and her feet blistered and hurt. Lucy’s skin was chafed from her stiff denim pants, and she felt like her pack straps were gouging into her shoulders. But she wouldn’t ask to stop and she didn’t say a word about her aching toes.

  Every now and then she caught a sound, behind them, that made her turn. And once, when they were going uphill, she’d looked over her shoulder and thought she’d seen something moving through the trees below.

  Whatever it was, it kept its distance.

  By late afternoon, long streamers of fog unfurled through the trees. They came to a place where the kodoks grew sparse above a pale, spindly grass. Looming just ahead of them were three Lupine poles, crooked and tilted with age. From the distance they looked drunk, like men holding one another up as they stumbled out of a saloon. And as Lucy and Pete approached these three guardians, the thought persisted that they saw, were more than wood, even though the faces on them were rubbed out with age and lumpy as candle stubs.

  “I suppose we’re on Lupine land now,” Pete said in a low voice, keeping one eye on the poles as he passed under their watchful gaze.

  They crossed the invisible boundary, walking more carefully now, not saying anything to each other. Though the land looked the same, they felt different.

  After a while they stopped and Pete again brought out his compass. Not to be outdone, Lucy consulted the map she’d taken with her at the start of her trip. They had veered a little from the west.

  Pete glanced uneasily at the sky. While they were stopped a raven flew by, then wheeled around for a second look. It settled into the nearest tree, cocking its head to examine them. Apparently they presented a fascinating sight—two children huddled over a map—for the bird hopped lower, and Lucy had the funniest feeling it was trying to see what they were looking at. Pete noticed and scowled.

  “Go on,” Pete said to it. “Get out of here!” His voice sounded loud as a thunder crack.

  The raven shifted on its sleek black legs, reluctant.

  Finally, Pete threw a stone into the tree, careful to get close but not hit the bird. Rather huffily the raven shook out its feathers and then flew off.

  “What did you do that for?” Lucy asked, watching the bird circle into the sky.

  “They say the Lupines use birds to spy on their land.” Pete clutched the shoulder straps of his pack unhappily.

  “I met a Lupine girl on the train coming up,” Lucy said, wanting Pete to know she wasn’t afraid of Lupines. “She was quite nice.”

  Pete rolled his eyes at her naïveté. “I’ll be sure to tell them that before they put a hex on us. Or turn us into rabbits or something.”

  She thought this was a bit much. “Don’t be silly. They’re just . . . people.” But then she remembered the lumberjacks on the train. Lupine witch, they’d called Niwa.

  Maybe Pete heard the hesitation in her voice.

  He faced her with wide eyes, convinced of what he knew about Lupines. “Oh, they’re anything but that. Do you know in the settler wars, when there was fighting all up and down this coast, the Lupines won every time?”

  Lucy shrugged.

  “They did that through magic,” he said, leaning close to tell her this in an awed whisper. “In battle, their men could turn into wolves, the fiercest, cruelest animals ever seen. They’d rip out the throat of any man that stood against them. Well, you can believe faced with that, the settlers turned and ran.”

  “Good for the Lupines,” she said, straightening herself as much as she could under her heavy pack. “Why shouldn’t they defend their land?”

  Pete was disgusted. “Bah. You don’t get it. We’ve got to be on our guard. They’re sorcerers and witches, and that bird was probably a warlock in disguise.”

  “A waste of its time if it was,” Lucy said. “I’m sure we’re no threat.”

  Pete readjusted his bandanna so it hung more rakishly around his neck. “Any Lupine we meet is going to have to reckon with me.”

  “For their sakes, I hope we don’t meet any.” She leaned forward again, trying in vain to ease the pressure on her shoulders.

  “They can’t be trusted,” he said, shaking his head. Then he stalked off without waiting for her to put away the map. She had to run to catch up.

  • • •

  When at last they reached the coast, they found themselves at a vista high above the beach. There was a notch in the cliff edge and Lucy and Pete squeezed onto it, overlooking the sparkling water below. Laid out in front of them was the Thumb, as formidable as a fortress. A deep, dark green, it was bordered on all sides by iron-gray cliffs and rose high out of the water like a battleship. Above it flew dark birds of enormous size.

  “How do we get onto it?” Lucy asked, staring over the cliff with a sick sense of vertigo.

  On maps the Thumb was a peninsula. But in reality, a channel of water separated it from the mainland.

  A wide channel.

  Lucy groaned and pulled on the straps of her pack. She was sweaty and felt the beginnings of a sunburn. She wasn’t at all prepared for an obstacle like this.

  “Maybe we can swim across?” Pete said, squinting into the sea breeze. He didn’t sound happy about the prospect.

  Lucy had been studying the water with a sinking feeling. She did not want to admit to Pete that she was a weak—as in terrible—swimmer.

  But maybe they wouldn’t have to swim after all. “Look!” she said, pulling him over to her vantage point.

  Half uncovered by the waves, a narrow bridge of sea rock stretched like a ribbon from the beach to the Thumb. It was thinnest at the middle, suggesting somehow that the Thumb was breaking away—by inches—making a centuries-long escape.

  “The tide’s coming in,” Pete observed after watching the waves.

  Lucy forgot that she was tired and her feet ached. “Then let’s hurry.”

  They scrambled down the slope, slipping and crashing, until they reached the small, curved beach that the Thumb sheltered from the full force of the sea.

  All that separated them from their goal were about two hundred feet of ocean-slicked rock and tide pools.

  They started across. In the afternoon sunlight, the black rock looked almost beautiful. Sprays of mist wreathed the sea bridge with rainbows. Starfish, anemones, and mussels were bright spots of color at their feet. The weakened tide groaned as it splashed and sucked through the pools. Above them loomed the grim cliffs of the Thumb, but Lucy was too concerned with where she put her feet to notice.

  They were not quite halfway across when they reached a sheer expanse of rock, slippery as ice. Ahead, Lucy could see the bridge narrow to a sliver, in some places less than a foot wide. On either side, the sea chopped eagerly against the rock, breaking over the top and pulling at their feet. Lucy shuddered. She was having trouble in her smooth-soled boots.

  “What’s the matter?” Pete asked, straddling a gap in the rock. Somehow he was able to keep his balance on the slick, green-black sea algae that covered the bridge.
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  She pressed her lips together tightly, never taking her eyes off her feet. “I can’t swim.”

  Pete started picking his way back toward her. “That’s why I recommend staying on the rock.”

  “Good advice.” She tried to laugh.

  A second later she slipped and went down on one knee. One hand splashed into the sea and suddenly her arm was in the water to her elbow. Her heavy pack twisted. She could feel its weight working to topple her sideways into the chilly waves, when Pete grabbed her other arm and pulled her up. Her blood was pounding.

  “All right?” he asked. His green-gray eyes stared into hers, but for the moment she couldn’t speak; she was too shaken. She stared fixedly at the cliffs ahead and tried to calm her racing heart.

  “I’ll help you across, okay?” He sounded calm and confident.

  She nodded gratefully.

  Pete started off.

  She had just caught her breath when the arrow hit.

  The arrow sank deep into Pete’s pack. Lucy was absolutely still, every sensation crystallized—her pounding heart, the tension in her legs, the vibration of the shaft.

  It was fletched with black feathers.

  Pete’s face was paper white.

  And then time unfroze. “Are you hit?” Lucy reached for him, forgetting about her precarious footing on the sea bridge. She nearly fell again before getting her balance.

  Pete shook his head. He was staring over her shoulder. She turned and followed his gaze to the shore.

  Three men stood there, capes of black feathers rippling around their shoulders. One man held a raven on his forearm. The air thickened with menace, and Lucy’s chest tightened.

  “They have guns.” She could see the long snouts of their rifles.

  “I noticed,” Pete said. He brushed his hair back from his eyes and took the deep breaths of someone consciously trying to steady himself.

  “Did they shoot an arrow just to get our attention?” She stared uneasily at the long black shaft. From where she stood, it looked like Pete had been shot in the back.

  “I’ll take it over a bullet, that’s for sure.” His jaw hardened as he faced the men.

  Lucy didn’t believe it was possible for a person to sound so casual after having an arrow shot at him. This was a side of Pete she hadn’t seen before. He sniffed and stood straighter, apparently showing the men they’d have to do better than that to ruffle him.

  While they’d been talking the men stood waiting, stern and impassive, their capes flapping in the wind. The raven man gestured with his hand.

  “They want us back on shore.” She squinted over her shoulder at the Thumb. “And we’re so close.” But not close enough to run for it, nor to jump off the bridge and swim.

  The wind tousled Pete’s hair, which shone chestnut in the sun.

  “I knew that raven was trouble,” he muttered. But there was nothing they could do about it now. Holding on to each other, Lucy and Pete made their way back across the slippery tide pools. Her legs were shakier going back, and the return journey was long and slow.

  They splashed the final yards of the channel. Lucy’s dungarees were wet to the knees, so heavy and stiff she felt as if she were walking through freezing mud. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that they’d be stopped from going to the Thumb—everything they’d heard had been about how people stayed away.

  Under their feather capes the men were muscular and compact. They wore dungarees and flannel shirts much like Pentlanders, only their flannels were beaded with designs: wolves, eagles, whales. The man who’d shot the arrow yanked it out of Pete’s pack and returned it to his quiver.

  She stood shivering as the men examined their things, dumping their packs on the wet sand. At their backs the sea bridge slowly sank under the incoming tide. Pete stood beside her, eyes glittering and jaw clamped, while the Lupines admired his knife. After some argument among them it went to the man with the raven, who appeared to be in charge. The ghost sweeper caused great interest and discussion in Lupine, which of course she couldn’t understand. Lucy was afraid they’d take it as a prize, but the men appeared reluctant to handle it. At last one of them replaced it in her pack, holding it out warily, the way one might a snake or other dangerous creature.

  “You are in Lupine territory,” the raven man said, his voice retaining the harsh accent of the Lupines.

  “We’re searching for my father,” Lucy said, fretting her hands together. She had a foolish hope the men would take pity on them.

  The man with the raven examined her while the bird hopped to his shoulder and gave a raucous caw. “You go the wrong way.”

  “No, actually, we’re on the right track. My father—”

  They didn’t listen. One of the men hiked her hands behind her and tied her wrists with leather straps. Another tried to do the same with Pete, but he resisted.

  “What do you think you’re doing? We’re from Pentland. You can’t treat us this way.” Pete tried to twist out of their grasp.

  Without a thought the man cuffed Pete hard by the ear, sending him staggering to his knees, his skin red with outrage. Behind him the waves crashed, the sea growing bigger on the tide.

  Lucy stifled a cry. The men’s eyes were hard, merciless. He might be brave, but Pete had been foolish not to see this in their expressions.

  We could be killed, she realized. No one knew where they were. Pete’s parents thought they were on a train riding south. A sickening sense of vulnerability filled her and she looked over at Pete. But he had a fierce, contained expression, as if it was taking all his strength to deal with the pain in his cheek. This time his wrists were bound without complaint.

  Then they were prodded with a rifle butt in their backs and made to walk ahead of the raven men. They marched east, going farther away from the Thumb with each step.

  “Where are you taking us?” she got up the nerve to ask. Another prod with the rifle—that was their answer.

  At a bright and stony river they crossed a covered wooden bridge, its entrance carved like a wolf’s open mouth. She shot a worried look at Pete as they stepped past the wolf’s spiked wooden teeth. But he was still closed off, dull.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered in the dark of the bridge, their echoing footsteps covering her voice.

  He grunted in reply. And then they were across the river and facing a low bank of prairie grass. Over it gray billows of fog caught, carded like wool, on totem pole spikes.

  They followed the river’s course into a valley. Ranged above them on the hillsides among the giant trunks of trees were the Lupines’ massive lodges, frowning down upon them. The buildings were rough hewn and ancient looking, each with a terrible painted face on its front, their eaves dripping with ghostly moss.

  As they went on, it became clear they were approaching no mere village, but a large settlement, perhaps the Lupine capital. It wasn’t like any town Lucy had been in before—the strange and the familiar so mixed together as to be thoroughly disorienting.

  Several times they had to stand aside for great wagons pulling logs or machinery. She hadn’t realized that the Lupines would have so much industry. A team of donkeys passed, slowly hauling a saw-toothed wheel as tall as a house. Behind them came a sight that made Lucy stop in surprise: a gleaming automobile, driving slowly on the rutted road. She’d seen horseless carriages before, but only on the streets of San Francisco.

  She stared after the automobile, only to turn to see a group of men with wolf headdresses covering their faces and bands of ammunition crisscrossing their chests. Women in elaborate beaded collars hung strips of pink fish on racks to dry in the sun. An old man in a litter of furs was pulled by two wolvish dogs in harness. (Lucy hoped they were dogs.) He cackled at them crazily and waved a long pipe, while beside him in the litter several smaller dogs popped up their heads from their nests in the fur. The litte
r went over a bump and the old man’s head lolled like a rag doll’s until he was pulled out of sight. Coming from another direction were a band of children back from foraging, carrying heaps of roots, baskets of berries, and rabbits hanging from leather straps.

  The leader of the raven men prodded Lucy to get her moving again. They passed a laundry, smelling of soap and lye. A busy general store had axes in the window and wagons out front. A schoolhouse flew two flags: The topmost was the handprint and thunderbird of the First Peoples’s Federation, while the bottom was the howling wolf of the Lupine Nation. She stayed too long looking at what appeared to be a newspaper office, with a printing press and broadsheets hung in the windows, trying to puzzle out the stories from the few English words that appeared among the Lupine.

  But then the leader pushed her again, and they went along a dark path to a massive lodge, far grander than any of the others. Three faces were painted on its front in stark white and black and red, and an aura of power came from them, almost as if living spirits were trapped in the painted forms.

  Lucy looked at Pete anxiously. She wanted to reach for his hand . . . but to her shame the presence of the raven men cowed her, and instead she put her hands into her pockets.

  They passed inside to a vast open space under a roof of giant kodok beams. Along the sides a maze of rooms and hallways were made from hanging animal skins set in wooden frames. Preparations for something important were underway, for there was bustle everywhere. Cooks were working at a stone hearth set at the very end of the lodge; in the central area others were putting out plank tables and piles of furs.

  The guards pushed them down one busy passage. Lucy gawked at mysterious glimpses of the rooms hidden behind the leather curtains: children playing, a woman braiding her hair, an old man sleeping under a striped blanket.

  From the other end of the passage a girl came toward them. Unlike the other Lupine women who wore long dresses in the settler style, she looked like a huntress, wearing a short tunic over rust-colored leggings, a knife hanging from her belt, a leather bag slung across one shoulder. A very successful huntress—the gold and bright charms she wore caught Lucy’s eyes at once. And there was something familiar in the proud tilt of her head. She was walking briskly, just about to turn a corner.