Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  This was what she wanted to hear—so much so she got flustered. She chanced a quick glance at his profile. Then she allowed herself a longer look. After all, she had saved his life.

  Lucy Darrington saves the day. She grinned to herself as she looked out at the trees. The stark faces were still there, but now she saw them as a trick of light and shadow. Nothing to be frightened of.

  Perhaps she should have been suspicious when the next day dawned gloriously.

  Lucy woke up to see golden shafts of light breaking through the forest canopy. Butterflies the size of crows fluttered across the clearing. Curling tree orchids flashed in purple spirals from niches in the kodok bark.

  That was when she remembered the faces in the trees. But in the morning light the trees appeared normal. She got to her feet and wandered over to the nearest kodok, studying it. There wasn’t an actual face in its trunk. Just regular knots and bark and moss that happened to resemble faces, if you looked at them a certain way . . . if the shadows came at them just right.

  The forest turns deadly at night, her father had written.

  But was the forest deadly? Or was it simply scary, and fear was what made it dangerous? Was it a distinction that made any difference?

  It was hard to think of it as dangerous at all right now; it was as if the forest was putting on a display just for her. Blue jays flitted among the branches, a dragonfly the size of her hand flew by, shimmering like a rainbow. The Thumb was beautiful.

  Behind her, she could hear Pete wake up.

  “Morning,” he mumbled, brushing kodok needles out of his hair. He peered curiously around the grove. “How much of last night was a dream?”

  “The faces in the trees were an illusion,” she said. “I think they only appear when the light hits them a certain way.”

  But then Lucy looked down and saw the vial of antimorpheus solution on the ground where she’d let it fall. If the hungry forest was merely a trick of the light, why did they need anti-dreaming drops to see through it? The faces had been real until she’d taken the remedy.

  “That’s a relief.” Pete started packing his things, not realizing his hair was mussed into peaks like meringue and he had kodok needles hanging in a fringe off his shirt. “I was afraid all the trees here ate people.”

  “Oh, ha,” Lucy replied, still puzzling over how dreams worked on the Thumb.

  She was staring absently in Pete’s direction when he looked up. Staring at him again, she thought, and flushed—but then she saw his expression change.

  His sea-glass eyes were huge, fixated on something in the shadows just ahead. Lucy blinked and felt her own eyes grow wide. A bull elk emerged from the opposite side of the glade, bigger than imagining, and on his head were antlers of a hundred tines or more, shining with velvet.

  It was as if the elk carried his own forest upon his head. Light gleamed around him like a soft coating of gold.

  The elk was the most beautiful thing Lucy had ever seen. A feeling of joy and wonder expanded inside her as she watched it go past.

  Its soft wet eyes flicked to them fearlessly. And then the reef of antlers slowly receded into the forest’s gloom.

  She stared after it, trying to soak up the magic that seemed to float in its wake.

  “Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing an evil spirit would keep in his forest,” Pete said. He got up from where he’d been kneeling.

  “Nature spirit,” she corrected him automatically. But inside, her thoughts churned in confusion. The elk had radiated nothing but good, the same as the dreamwood tea she’d had in Ulfric’s cottage.

  His-sey-ak saved us, Niwa had said. Dreamwood heals, she told herself.

  It killed them all.

  Which was true?

  • • •

  In the space of a few days, Lucy had adapted to the rigors of camping and hiking and become much hardier. She could lift her pack easily now and walk for several hours without complaint.

  In the afternoon the landscape grew steep and hilly. The trees thinned out, giving way to great moon-faced boulders, jumbled precariously atop one another like giant sculptures. Scrub oak grew among the rocks, clinging with sinewy roots to the smallest fold or cranny. Without the forest’s shelter, Lucy and Pete were soon hot and thirsty.

  At last they came to a deep gorge that cut between two hillsides. Lucy brought out the vitometer and watched, disheartened, as its spidery needle danced across the ivory to point directly ahead. They had to go across.

  The climb down was slow and treacherous. As they neared the bottom of the gorge, they heard a strange squorking cry.

  A flight of birds came toward them, sailing lazily on thermals. Only they weren’t normal birds. They were much too large.

  Lucy watched in growing disbelief as they got closer, their wings casting gigantic shadows, like clouds blocking the sun.

  “They look like vultures, but those wings must be twenty feet across,” Pete said, scrunching his eyes against the sun.

  Lucy sprang up on her toes. “I read that the First Peoples on the coast used to talk about something called a thunderbird. You can see them on totems from here to California. They’re bigger than condors.”

  Pete didn’t even have to think about this to dismiss it. “Naw, it can’t be. Those are extinct.”

  “Just like dreamwood’s supposed to be extinct?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Well, I don’t think they’re thunderbirds,” he said, starting to walk again. “They’re just some big, ugly buzzard.”

  Called a thunderbird, she thought in annoyance.

  She was just about to start after him when she spotted a fat black feather on the dusty ground. It had drifted down the long corridor of air, into the gorge, to land before her. A thunderbird feather.

  When she got back from the Thumb she’d take it to a natural history museum. In fact, she’d probably be famous for having discovered it. Lucy bent down and picked it up. Then she put it in her pack and ran after Pete.

  • • •

  They continued their descent until the walls of the gorge softened into pink bluffs bordering a wide dry riverbed. A muddy trickle of water threaded down the middle.

  The sun angled down harshly, and they were sweating as they scrambled to the sandy bottom.

  “Where’s all the water?” Pete glared at the damp sand as if it had cheated him. “I could go for a swim about now.”

  If there’d been water in the river, the Lucy of just a few weeks ago would have stripped down to her underclothes and run straight into it. But now she stopped in her tracks, unsure whether she was glad or disappointed the river was dry.

  She realized Pete was talking to her. “What?”

  “I said, any reason you’re still just standing there?” Without the prospect of a swim, he was ready to move on.

  Lucy was startled out of her trance. “Nope.” She ran after him, her boots kicking up little puffs of dust. Large skeins of tangled wood and briar—taller than a man’s height—were scattered about the dry riverbed like abandoned balls of yarn.

  Insects droned, the pink sand pulled at her boots. And Lucy felt more tired and thirsty than she could bear. At last they reached the center where the little trickle of water shone brightly, reflecting gold in the sun. Just across the bank, the beach was lined with shattered timber.

  “Huh.” Pete stopped and stared at the damp ground. “Look at that.”

  Lucy wiped the sweat from her eyes. The sand glinted strangely. It couldn’t be . . .

  She bent down and brushed the sand with her fingertips. When she held them up to the light, she gasped.

  “Gold,” Pete said in a strangled voice. He fell to his knees and began rooting in the sand.

  “Look,” Lucy cried. She’d found a gold nugget the size of a pea. A moment later she tossed it aside; she’d found one the size of an al
mond.

  There was a crazy grin on Pete’s face. “We’re rich!”

  All weariness and thirst disappeared. Lucy poured sand through her hands, laughing. They could pick chunks of gold all day long and still not have it all. The entire beach was gold.

  Pete was scooping big armfuls of sand to himself.

  And then it was a game: She wanted only the most symmetrical bits, or only the largest. She sorted them like a child playing with marbles. There was a fortune here. More than a fortune!

  She grasped handfuls of gold to her chest. A shadow passed above, darkening the sun for just a moment.

  Lucy sat up, feeling lazy, warm, and content. Now she saw what had caused the shadow. A large black bird sat huddled on one of the driftwood tumbleweeds, its bald head crooked like the top of a cane.

  That was an ugly bird for such a pleasant place, Lucy thought, as it regarded her with a black and beady eye. And why was it looking at her like that?

  Uneasily she stared back. The bird had the bare, tonsured head of a vulture; its sharp yellow claws gripped the pale white driftwood tight.

  There was something wrong about the wood.

  And then she saw that the pale branches lining the river were not wood at all.

  They were bones.

  Her breath stopped. Gold spilled from her hands. What she’d thought was briar and driftwood was a weedy braid of bones: human bones, tangled among the branches.

  Lucy’s heart slithered to her feet. Her eyes traced the riverbank’s horrid tapestry: skulls and femurs, tibiae and finger bones, all woven together.

  She stood up. They were surrounded by the dead. She’d been too fixated on the gold to notice.

  The gold. Her stomach realized the truth first, going heavy as a stone. Take nothing that is not given, Able Dodd had warned her the day they’d left Pentland. Now she understood. Somehow he’d known they were going to Devil’s Thumb—and staying alive here was about more than not killing or eating anything. There was Pete kneeling in the damp sand, shoveling handfuls of it into his pack. He’d emptied his bags—his supplies were strewn about the bank—and he was filling his pack with as much river sand as it could hold.

  A dull roar sounded in her head.

  “Pete,” she said. She tottered forward. He didn’t hear her. The bird spread its wings, impatient.

  The roar grew louder, and with a sickening turn she realized it wasn’t inside her head at all. Now she understood the deep cuts on the bluffs, the smashed timber and skeletons, the growing rumble. A flash flood was coming, and they needed to get out of its path.

  “Pete!” she cried.

  He didn’t look up. He was stretched out on his stomach, both arms full of the golden sand. His pack was full to bursting, and still he piled it with gold.

  The rumbling got louder.

  “Pete, stop!”

  She reached him and tugged on his pack.

  “What are you doing?” he snarled. His eyes were crazed, and for a horrible moment she thought he would strike her.

  “Pete, it’s a flash flood. You’ve got to dump this out. Now!”

  He shook his head, still scooping and piling. “The river’s dry. It’ll never flood.”

  Could he even hear the water coming?

  “You’ve got to leave it.” She gestured wildly upriver. “Or you’ll die.”

  They would both die, because she couldn’t leave him here. The thought made her desperate.

  “Just a little more,” he said stubbornly.

  “Look at the bones, Pete,” she pleaded. She pointed to the tangled banks of branch and bone. “That’s what will happen to us.”

  The skulls were watching, alive with anticipation.

  But he couldn’t see them. “You’re just saying that because you want to keep it for yourself.”

  “The last thing I want is any of this cursed gold.” She brushed off her hands and clothes to make sure none of it clung to her. “I’m trying to get you to see what’s happening.”

  “You’re always right,” Pete said savagely, standing up at last. Golden sand poured from his pockets and filled his trouser cuffs. “You’ve always got the answer, you think you’re so much better than me. You think I’m just some small-town know-nothing.”

  This was such a stupid thing to say—maybe she’d thought that way once, but now as the river smashed its way toward them none of that mattered. She grabbed his arm.

  He wrenched away from her, but with such force that she fell back on the sand.

  She hit the ground hard. Her eyes smarted with tears.

  It’s all over, she thought.

  But then Pete was saying. “Lucy, Lucy. I’m so sorry. What’s happening?”

  When she looked up at him his gray-green eyes were frightened, like those of a person waking up in a strange place. Behind him was a wall of water, coming fast as galloping horses.

  She got to her feet. “Run,” she gasped. Pete hesitated. He tugged the straps of his pack: overflowing with golden sand, too heavy to lift.

  “Leave it!” she shouted over the onrushing flood.

  He gave one last desperate look to the gold. Then he grasped her hand, squeezing it as they ran for higher ground.

  Adrenaline propelled them up the sandy bluffs. They scrambled the last few feet just in time. The water burst through with the force of a dam breaking. Trees cracked and groaned, snapped like toothpicks, and the black buzzard circled overhead once before flying off, croaking its disappointment.

  They’d survived.

  But instead of exhilaration at being alive, Lucy felt empty and hollow.

  “Lucy,” Pete said. In his voice she could hear that he wanted to apologize. But she didn’t feel like listening.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned away and walked to the edge. She stared into the churning flood below, its destructive murk mirroring her thoughts.

  There wasn’t anything wrong with knowing things, she told herself. If she didn’t know a lot, they’d be dead right now. But then she thought back guiltily to the many times she’d called Pete superstitious in her thoughts, and the gleeful way she’d corrected him when he was wrong. She did love knowing the answers; until now she’d never thought about how that made other people feel.

  She glanced back at Pete, who was standing with his arms folded around himself as if he were cold. He looked miserable.

  “Lucy,” he said again, more pleadingly this time. She turned her back on him, not yet ready to talk.

  She walked by herself along the edge of the bluff until she found a spot where she could sit and watch the water go by. The water was as brown as earth and full of things it had ripped apart on its way through the river channel: branches, small trees . . .

  And then . . . an arm raised up suddenly from the muddy froth. It looked for a moment as if it were trying to grab hold of something. She jumped to her feet, watched its efforts with horror . . . There was a log right by it. Surely the person would feel the log and grab on?

  She waited for the person to save himself. And then she realized it was only the water making the arm move.

  She must have cried out loud.

  “What is it?” Pete rushed to her side. “Are you hurt?”

  At that moment she clearly saw a leg. All the clothing had been torn from it by the force of the flood.

  Lucy felt she would be sick. She clapped her hands to her mouth. “Those are people down there.” The broken, lifeless limbs had belonged to living bodies.

  Those were people.

  Could one of them be her father?

  Her stomach folded into knots, Lucy barely breathed. She stared fixedly at the boiling brown water until the bodies were swept out of sight.

  “Oh, those poor, poor people.” She turned to Pete; the misery and shock were physical things inside her, and if she didn�
�t get them out . . .

  She reached for his hand—she wanted to clutch something—then remembered how he felt about her . . . how spoiled things were between them. Her hands dropped to her sides and she clenched her fists instead, digging her fingernails deep enough to hurt, all the while thinking, those people are dead.

  Pete’s brows drew together, darkening his face.

  “You know what this means,” he said, leaning over the edge of the bluff.

  She thought of the many close calls they’d had since landing on the Thumb: the wolves, the nightmares, and now the flash flood. The dreamwood spirit caused them all.

  “Maybe Governor Arekwoy was right.” Lucy pulled on the fringe of her Lupine tunic. “Maybe His-sey-ak is evil.”

  “No,” Pete said grimly. “It means we’re not the only ones here.”

  Who were the bodies in the river? The question tortured Lucy through the rest of the afternoon. When she wasn’t thinking about the bodies, she heard Pete’s voice: You’re always right.

  But how shallow she was to keep thinking of herself when two people had just died.

  And on her thoughts went, running and fluttering like silly chickens. She was so miserable that she didn’t bother checking the vitometer, resulting in them wandering aimlessly over the course of several hours.

  A sudden, violent conviction caused her to stop. “It couldn’t have been my father,” she said to Pete. “We saw two bodies.”

  Pete was walking like a person whose thoughts were elsewhere, stumbling over things, not caring where his feet went.

  “So it wasn’t your father.” He sounded as if he were just agreeing with her out of habit.

  This would not do. She needed Pete to put up more of a fight so she could argue with him. If they argued, she would win, and that would make her feel better. Frustrated, she carried on the best she could.

  “He was traveling alone,” she said, taking a big step to avoid a muddy patch of ground.

  “All right,” Pete said, walking right through the mud.

  What had her father written? Even if I survive his challenges. A horrible sense expanded in her that they were up against something much bigger, more dangerous than she’d realized. The forest was full of booby traps and tests, and that diary entry had been written weeks ago. How could anyone survive weeks here?