Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  “Lucy . . . ” Pete said in a voice of quiet horror. He’d stepped up to the open doors and looked inside. “I found them.”

  Light spoked through the dark interior, crisscrossing the space in golden lines.

  On the ground amid piles of rotten sawdust were tangled heaps of fabric and shoes and . . . sticks? It took Lucy a few disbelieving moments to realize they were skeletons. The people of the lost settlement were here, huddled together in death.

  Fear and nausea rose up in her. She clapped her hands to her mouth while her heart hammered in her chest.

  “Some of them have branches stuck in them,” Pete whispered. “Like Jank.” He stepped forward to investigate one of the frail skeletons, which lay curled in a fetal position. “And this one has an ax like Angus had. It’s got a black blade.”

  With difficulty Lucy got her breathing under control enough so she could speak. “They must have come here to make a last stand,” she said. It was impossible not to think of the fear and panic these people must have felt here, in their last moments, and she felt her own throat tighten in response. The trees attacked the town and drove everyone to take shelter. And then the wood from the walls turned on them. “They were trying to protect themselves.”

  “Didn’t do them much good,” Pete said. Lucy thought of the last time she’d checked the vitometer—the counter of Odic force spinning crazily into the thousands. She’d thought the device wasn’t working properly because nothing could have that much energy. Looking at the destruction around her she realized she’d been wrong.

  Add it to the list of things she’d been wrong about.

  She bit her lip. “Now we know what happened to the lost settlement.” She flicked a glance at Pete. For some reason she thought of the moment in Ulfric’s cottage when she’d sat kicking her feet and drinking dreamwood tea. Ulfric had tried to warn her, she supposed. But even if he’d told her the dreamwood spirit was capable of destroying an entire settlement—killing men, women, children—she might not have believed him. The tea had caused hope and courage to surge inside her. Those feelings seemed foolhardy now.

  “Whatever they did to get on His-sey-ak’s bad side, I don’t want to make the same mistake.” Pete had new gravity in his face; the hollows in his cheeks were stark slashes in the barn’s dim light.

  “We should go.” Lucy had no idea what time it was, but intuition told her they had stayed here too long. Sinking into her was a kind of spreading hopelessness. The longer they stayed in this evil barn, the worse it would be.

  She took his hand, pulling him along. They staggered out into the late afternoon light, shielding their eyes. Her legs felt rubbery, and she leaned against Pete; somehow, without her even realizing it, this had become something that felt natural.

  In the tall grass across from the barn a shadow stirred.

  Watching them, almost as if it had been waiting for them, was a wolf.

  Lucy’s first instinct when she saw the wolf was to turn and run back through the ruined town.

  But something stopped her. There was a strange intelligence in the wolf’s yellow eyes, and Lucy felt, as she looked at it, that it was trying to communicate with her. And (she rapidly thought back) they hadn’t broken any of the Thumb’s commandments—lately.

  Like the other wolves they’d seen on the Thumb, this one was massive: a gray-black boulder of muscle, sinew, and fur. It could tear them both apart in an instant if it wanted to. But it wasn’t frightening like the others. It had a strange, almost melancholy aspect to it that made Lucy feel they weren’t in any danger. It took a few steps and looked back over its shoulder at them.

  Lucy dropped Pete’s hand and went toward it cautiously.

  “What are you doing?” Pete hissed. “Are you crazy?”

  She’d sensed when the wolves had chased them to the tree circle on their first day on the Thumb that she and Pete were safe as long as they abided by the forest’s mysterious rules. Now she was certain of it. “I think it wants us to follow it.”

  The wolf went on ahead and then stopped again, waiting. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth in a doggish grin.

  “See,” Lucy said hopefully. “It’s friendly.”

  “I think you’re making a big leap to go from not eating us immediately to friendly.” Pete watched it with obvious suspicion. But Lucy had already made up her mind to trust it.

  “Come on. We don’t know how else we’re going to get there, do we? We’ll be wandering in circles if we try to go on our own.”

  Pete brought out his compass anyway—she could tell it pained him to consider following the wolf. But she could see the needle spinning uselessly. “Still busted,” he said, discouraged.

  They had barely any food and they were running low on antimorpheus; they couldn’t afford to waste time getting lost. Lucy put on her most convincing face as she turned to Pete. “We’ve got to try this.”

  “Because it couldn’t possibly be dangerous,” he muttered.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucy said. It had been a while since she had felt this hopeful. After the horror of the lost settlement, something had shifted. They were getting help. Who was helping them and why . . . well, those were questions that could wait.

  They followed the wolf as it passed in and out of the afternoon’s shadows. It would stop every so often to make sure they hadn’t fallen too far behind.

  But after a few hours of marching at a brutal pace to keep up with it, the novelty of the situation had quite worn off.

  “I don’t like this,” Pete said, stopping to catch his breath. He was bent down, elbows on his thighs, and there was a slick patch of sweat down the back of his shirt. “What if it’s trying to get us somewhere where it can eat us?” The wolf, several yards away, watched them silently. Lucy knew if they stopped too long it would bare its teeth and growl at them until they moved again. That had happened a few times already; if they went too slowly for its liking it quickly became irritable—and this had been so terrifying they had run in panic, which only made them more exhausted in the end.

  “Since when do wolves get their prey to chase after them?” Lucy was hot and tired. And the fact that they hadn’t eaten in almost a day was beginning to affect her. She would have to rest soon, and not just for the minute here or there the wolf allowed. She groaned and put her hands on her hips. Sweat was trickling down her neck. Why was it in such a hurry?

  The wolf’s lips curled into a snarl. Even from several yards away Lucy could easily see the curved yellow points of its teeth—they were so long they were practically tusks. Fang tusks. She shook her head as she hoisted her pack onto her shoulders once more. Why did everything in Saarthe have to be so much bigger and badder than anywhere else?

  “We’re coming,” she told it. Wearily she set off after it again. A moment later, Pete followed.

  Sunset was no more than an hour away when they finally saw where the wolf was leading them. Lucy stopped in disappointment, exhaustion thrumming through her legs, and looked at the circle of kodoks ahead, their low-hanging branches knit together almost as if the trees were joining hands. Everything about the grove was familiar—it was even the same time of day, early evening, as when they’d encountered the other two devil groves. Inside the circle, Lucy knew the shadows would be lengthening, the tree faces emerging from the bark.

  “But we already know about this,” she protested to the wolf. “We’ve seen it, twice.” Lucy had hoped so fervently that the wolf was bringing them someplace important; she’d expected it in fact to lead them straight to the dreamwood and her father. Now she felt near tears. And she couldn’t look at Pete—she could feel the anger rising off him. They’d raced through the forest for this?

  The great beast pawed the ground and its yellow eyes narrowed. Apparently, it wasn’t happy with them, either. It tossed its head, waving them toward the grove. Then, as a last resort, it came forward and butted L
ucy’s arm. Her fingers touched the thick rough fur and she felt a spark of something wild and strange—a connection—pass between them.

  “All right, if that’s what you want,” Lucy told it. Surreptitiously she examined her fingertips—perhaps she’d imagined the strange sensation. All she wanted was to sit down and rest her aching feet. But she forced herself to go on, ducking under the tightly woven branches and walking into the unnatural stillness of the devil grove. The wolf padded before her, silent and majestic, turning its head to watch her with its uncanny yellow eyes. She followed it to the center of the circle, where it stopped.

  As she expected, the tree faces emerged from the wood. Even though by now she was almost used to them, she still hunched her shoulders, feeling small and helpless under their accusatory gaze.

  “What is so important about this place?” She turned to the wolf, but its animal eyes were deep and impassive. It had brought her here, but she would have to figure things out for herself.

  Lucy rubbed her arms. All right then. Where should she start? Observe, her father always said. That is rule number one. Too many people simply act before observing what is.

  She stopped before the rubbery patch of mushrooms that grew at the center. For the first time, she really looked at them; previously she’d turned away in disgust. Lucy bent down. They were flaccid, slimy looking, and gave off a sickly odor that made her dizzy and nauseous. There was a slight hump in the middle of the mushroom cluster. She had a glimpse of wood. That must be what they were feeding on: an old stump.

  But why did these mushrooms grow here, and only here?

  And why did the mushrooms appear so sinister? What was so frightening about them? Lucy had encountered all manner of disgusting and revolting things in life. She had poked the swollen carcass of a dead dog to see the gases escape. She’d dissected a frog. She’d helped her father clean bones with maggots. What was she made of?

  Lucy found a twig on the ground and with it gently touched the mushroom cluster. The oily caps quivered like jelly, and she caught a glimpse of orange-colored gills. With a startling puff, they released a rust-colored cloud, and Lucy fell back with the smell of decay in her nostrils.

  Helplessly she watched the spores rise and be carried into the sky on the breeze. The air was full of the death-sweet smell of Rust—like a cake with a center of rotten meat. It came to Lucy in a sudden flash. Rust is a fungus, her father had written in his diary. She sat back on her heels, stunned.

  “What was that?” Pete asked. He’d come into the clearing and stopped to stare at the cloud.

  “This is what’s causing it.” She turned to Pete. “This is where Rust is coming from.”

  As they stood there, a flock of crows flew toward them, straight for the cloud. When they emerged on the other side, their wingtips were singed with orange.

  Lucy shuddered as she understood what she’d just seen. “And the birds are carrying it with them to the other forests.”

  Pete’s face was tight with distress. He watched the ochre cloud shift and disperse high in the sky where it disappeared in the sunset’s burnished glow. “But if Angus’s map is right, these tree circles are where dreamwood grew.”

  “Where dreamwood was cut,” she corrected, suddenly understanding. “Remember that house in the settlement with all the gold coins? They were rich from harvesting dreamwood.”

  “But . . .” Pete paced in thought. “But they’d harvested dreamwood for years.”

  “And what if they got greedy?” Lucy asked. “What if they took too many? The last dreamwood was supposed to have died out a hundred years ago—around the same time the people here disappeared. Niwa said the other dreamwoods were like his children. What if it’s taken all this time, little by little, for Rust to spread and for His-sey-ak to have his revenge?”

  He shook his head. When he looked at her his eyes were dark and wet. “You said dreamwood cured Rust.” He picked up the stick she’d used to touch the mushrooms and threw it away in disgust.

  The collar of his shirt was stained with sweat. Both of them were ragged and savage. They’d been pushed to the brink of their endurance—starved, without sleep, on edge for days. And now this.

  Lucy flapped her hands in front of her, a gesture that was almost frantic. “I don’t know.” She turned from him, looking at the tree circle as if she were trapped by it. The terrible faces seemed to laugh at her.

  Why had she believed dreamwood cured Rust? Because that’s what her father thought. But there’d been no proof. No evidence of it. And it turned out to be the very opposite.

  Lucy felt a terrible plummet in her stomach as the world shifted.

  “I think my father was wrong.” She looked Pete full in the face.

  The worst was letting people down. Pete was counting on her; she’d convinced him with her stories. She’d as good as promised Niwa that they’d find a cure and save the grove of the wolf woman. She felt sick as she thought of the spores she’d just released making their way to Saarthe’s forests. Even Cranbull, Jank, and the others: They’d died because of her.

  In despair she looked down at her moccasins, snagged and torn. “I was wrong.” It felt awful saying it, but it was also something of a relief to admit it—a first.

  Pete took a deep breath and Lucy waited in horrible expectation of what he might say.

  “I always knew coming here was a gamble,” he said softly. There were streaks of grime on his cheeks; they covered his freckles and made him look older. His eyelashes were clumped together with sweat—or tears. He wiped one filthy hand across his sweaty cheek, adding a new smudge to his face. “I don’t blame you for it.”

  Lucy closed her eyes, her whole body going limp with relief. She thought back to the day they’d set out, when he’d taught her how to make a fire and she’d been thinking only of how much she wanted to prove herself. “I’m sorry.”

  A few birds scolded them from the circle, reminding her of where they were.

  Pete put his hands in his pockets; he looked slightly relieved that the moment for apologies was over. “I think our guide is anxious to get going.”

  She’d forgotten about the wolf. It was waiting for them now on the far side of the grove, flicking its tail as if brushing the forest with shadows.

  At last when the light was truly fading, the wolf let them stop. They’d come to a patch of ground dotted with broken hollow stumps, fairy rings.

  Lucy was so tired all she could think about was sleep, but Pete insisted she eat a small piece of jerky, maintaining that it would cure her hunger if she chewed it more than fifty times (as he was doing). He was wrong.

  She rolled over and rummaged in her pack for Arthur Lyman’s vial of antimorpheus solution. But when she took it out she saw they were dangerously low.

  “Here.” She thrust the bottle toward Pete and let him take his five drops first. He shivered violently from the taste, as he always did.

  “Brrr!” he exclaimed, shaking like a wet dog. “That’s awful.”

  Lucy was studying the level in the dropper, trying to think how they could conserve what they had. Perhaps if she took two drops instead of five she would be safe. After all, she reasoned, she was smaller than Pete and probably needed less. She took two small drops and before she could change her mind, closed the bottle tightly and stowed it away. The wolf, who’d been watching over them, gradually faded into the shadows so that only its yellow eyes were visible. And then even those disappeared as it padded off into the forest, presumably to hunt. They heard the footfalls of its soft paws and its rumbling breath as it passed by them.

  “That’s a relief,” Pete said. “I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping with . . . ” Before he could even finish his sentence he was asleep.

  But for Lucy it was an awful night. First she thought she saw fireflies. Lights blinked on and off, floating through the air like giant soap bubbles. One drifted cl
ose to Lucy, allowing her to see a tiny winged creature inside it—a fairy! It snarled, and Lucy gasped. It wasn’t a fairy but a creature with needle-like fangs.

  Lucy recoiled and burrowed deeper into her bedroll. But even when she closed her eyes she saw faces in the forest, branches that reached out to grab her with freezing-cold hands. Around her the trees seemed to move and twist in a sinister ballet.

  She dozed fitfully until early morning, and only when she heard the wolf come back was she finally able to sleep.

  • • •

  The day dawned, but Lucy woke up exhausted after her night of bad dreams. She and Pete barely spoke to each other before packing up and following the wolf onward again. Lucy retreated deep inside herself, hardly thinking. It was all she could do to keep moving. At some point she realized Pete had run ahead. She looked up to see him calling and waving to her.

  “I see something,” he said. The expression on his face told her it wasn’t good.

  She shuffled to catch up to him and saw what he was looking at: a pair of skinny shins sticking out from underneath a freshly fallen kodok.

  “It’s Silas,” Lucy said, pressing a hand to her mouth. “I recognize his boots.”

  She wanted to do something for Silas. He’d annoyed and frightened her while he was alive, but she felt nothing but pity for him now. As with Jank, there was no memorial she could think to make that wouldn’t also endanger herself.

  “Maybe we could just say a few words,” she suggested at last. Pete nodded and bowed his head.

  “Here lies Silas,” she said solemnly. She wished she had something better to say, and she wished she could let Silas know she was sorry he’d gotten involved in this misguided adventure. But she couldn’t think of the words she wanted, so in the end she cleared her throat and said, “Someone who deserved better than this.”

  Pete sniffed and kicked the ground. “He told me he just wanted to get enough to be able to buy a place of his own.”