Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  “He wasn’t a bad person,” Lucy said. She fingered a tear in the soft leather of her tunic, now covered with streaks of dirt and scratches. “Even if he did take my vitometer. I guess.”

  Pete’s eyes were full of feeling. “You know, if someone offered me a whole log of dreamwood right now I wouldn’t take it.” He gestured to the forest around them. “I’d walk right on by, and consider myself lucky. Nothing is worth this.”

  Pete had come along for dreamwood. Finding her father was never his quest. Lucy wouldn’t blame him at all if he decided to leave. In fact, she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had wanted to leave days ago, after first realizing he couldn’t bring dreamwood back.

  And how were they to continue anyway? They had no more food. And their bottle of anti-dreaming drops was nearly empty. There were three, maybe four, drops left.

  “You should leave,” she said suddenly. “Get out of here while you still can.” Now that she said it she couldn’t imagine why it had taken her this long to figure it out.

  Pete looked as surprised as if she’d slugged him. “I’m not going to leave. What are you talking about?”

  “I never should have let you come.” Lucy shook her head in distress. “It’s all my fault. Silas and Cranbull and Jank. And you . . . I just wanted . . .” She stopped, her feelings getting bigger like snowballs. There was too much to say.

  “What?” He moved closer to her, was looking at her so intently, she felt even more jumbled inside.

  She had wanted him to come. She’d wanted his strength and his freckles and the way he laughed. And she’d wanted to prove herself to him. What had she wanted to hear? Jiminy, if it hadn’t been for you, Lucy, we would have been sunk.

  She looked up at him, cringing from embarrassment at the roil in her thoughts. “Nothing,” she said and turned away.

  The wolf snarled to warn them its patience at this delay was wearing thin, and for once Lucy was happy to have a reason to get moving again.

  After leaving Silas they walked steadily west, toward the tip of the Thumb. They didn’t speak. Pete even left off protesting that he was never going to leave and now he marched along in dull silence. Sometimes Lucy got a glimpse of the ocean through the trees, curving around the tip like a fingernail. It couldn’t be far now, could it? From time to time she glanced at the wolf. Its presence had become familiar, comforting even. But it still hurried them along. The ground ran mostly downhill below them and the kodoks had thinned, giving way to hardy spruce, which could take the punishing wind and salt spray of the coast. At one rise they stood with the wind licking their sweaty faces and looked ahead. A dark gray stripe grew across the landscape, cutting off the very tip of the Thumb. From a distance, it looked like an enormous fuzzy caterpillar.

  “What is that?” Pete asked, breaking the silence of several hours.

  Lucy had no idea. She was running out of answers; it seemed she had only questions left. As they walked, scraps of thoughts, sentences from her father’s diary entries, kept running through her head: The key lies in uncovering the past. And what had she found out about the past?

  He killed them all.

  She thought of standing next to Niwa in the grove of the wolf woman among the giant trees. His-sey-ak saved us, Niwa had said. He’ll save us again.

  I’m sorry, Niwa, she thought while she stumbled over the uneven ground. His-sey-ak isn’t going to save anyone. Jank was right, your father was right. He is the Devil of Devil’s Thumb.

  “Are you crying?” Pete asked suddenly.

  “No.” Lucy hid her face from his scrutiny. She didn’t think she was. But she was just so tired and discouraged she didn’t know what she was doing anymore. She closed her eyes, but dizziness immediately overtook her.

  Pete was watching her sway. “You can’t keep going like this, you know,” he said. He caught her by the forearms and steadied her. “You’ve got me worried.”

  “We have to keep going,” she murmured. It was the only thing left to do—even when it was meaningless. What was the Darrington motto? Onward.

  She laughed grimly to herself.

  “No.” Pete’s chestnut hair hung in his eyes. He tried to brush it away, but it immediately sprang back. “I really think you should rest.” He cocked his head over his shoulder. “Looks like we’ve got to stop now anyway.”

  Lucy blinked. She’d been walking in a daze, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other. She’d trailed behind Pete—her only goal was to keep him in sight—and so she’d lost track of their guide. To her surprise she saw the wolf had stopped, and she didn’t think it was going anywhere.

  It stood in front of a billowing wall of fog. Now she understood the fuzzy line across the Thumb that she’d seen earlier. It wasn’t a hedge, it was a barrier of fog—about ten or twelve feet high, and so thick it looked solid. But it seethed like a living thing. Runners of it unspooled, and then rolled back in, the way curls of wave foam race up and down the sand with the tide. Only these tendrils of fog had a sinister air to them; even the wolf kept well away. And there was a chill, malevolent sense to the place. It was a feeling she’d had before—and for a moment her thoughts were back on those long-ago basement stairs, watching the dance of the Hanged Man’s legs. This was far, far stronger.

  It felt like a scarf of ice had settled around her neck as she realized what she was seeing.

  “Pete,” she said, “I think I know where all the ghosts went.”

  The ghost sweeper in Lucy’s pack was shuddering so hard, Lucy worried it would damage itself. Lucy knew from long experience that ghosts, when they showed themselves, were often pale and misty. But she’d never seen ghosts like this: Somehow the spirits had become embodied in the fog—Lucy could sometimes make out faces and expressions—but they were trapped in it, too. An immense power held the fog in place, so that it tumbled and undulated, but never moved more than a few feet in any direction. And even with the sun climbing higher, it showed no sign of burning off.

  Now that it had brought them to this final barrier, the wolf could no longer help them. After one last look from its yellow eyes, it bounded away into the forest, leaving them alone.

  “Let’s see if there’s a way around it,” Pete suggested. Even though the two of them were nearly dead on their feet, it was still preferable to walk beside the fog than to attempt to go through it.

  Dejected, they followed it all the way to a sudden drop. They’d reached the Thumb’s northern edge, and the way before them ended in a cliff. A steep path led down to a narrow beach, but the ghostly barrier extended all the way to the water.

  Pete followed the cliff-side path a ways to get a better view, but the ground crumbled beneath him and with a sudden shout, he lost his footing. He tumbled out of sight.

  “Pete!” Lucy screamed. She scrambled after him, sliding on the loose rock and grasping at tree roots and scrub plants to steady herself on the steep slope.

  He was about halfway down, sitting in the middle of the steep path. When she reached him she saw his face was shiny and worried as he held his left leg.

  “I think my ankle’s sprained or broken,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I can’t walk on it.”

  Lucy looked up the way they had come. She couldn’t imagine how she could help him back to the top if he couldn’t walk. Still, she bent down beside him so she could lift him up.

  As if he knew what she was thinking he grasped her arm. “I can’t go with you,” he said. His eyes were green with pain.

  “I can’t leave you,” she replied tearfully. She put her hands under his arms, but Pete shifted away, dislodging a few small rocks, which fell to the beach below them.

  Pete shook his head and said forcefully, “I’ll be all right. Look, I’m no use to you now. But you can still do it.”

  “I can’t get through that fog.” She hung her head.

  A look of determin
ation crossed his face, and he squirmed, reaching into his pocket to bring out the protection stone. “Take this,” Pete said, pressing it into her hand. “Anya always said it was the best remedy against haunts. And you’ve got your ghost sweeper. So with the two of them together, you’re set. I’ll scoot my way down to the beach, and wait for you there.”

  Lucy closed her fingers around the black stone. It was warm from being in Pete’s pocket. Perhaps because it was his, it felt strong, like him, and somehow friendly. She closed her eyes. Pete was making it easy on her. He knew she would never forgive herself if she didn’t make every effort to find her father.

  But she couldn’t leave Pete without supplies. Lucy reached into her pack and found the precious vial of antimorpheus. There was a lump in her throat as she pressed it on Pete. “Here—there’s just enough of this to get you through . . . in case, in case I’m not back by dark.”

  “I don’t want it,” Pete said. He looked at her with a grim expression that Lucy realized was a farewell. She ducked her head quickly before she cried.

  “And here’s the flare.” She took the stick with its pitchy coating and gave it to Pete. “If anyone makes it off the Thumb, it should be you,” she told him, her voice brimming with emotion. “If I’m not back by dark, use the flare, signal a boat.”

  Pete grunted with the effort of speaking. “I’ll hang on to this,” he said, “but I’m not leaving without you. So . . . just . . . hurry.”

  Lucy didn’t trust herself to speak more. She gave Pete a quick embrace, and then, with tears running down her cheeks, she climbed back to the top of the cliff.

  • • •

  The ghost fog was thick and gray. A chill came off it, so that even standing in the sunshine, Lucy felt cold. She had never heard of ghosts forming a wall before. She had never heard of ghosts acting together—here was another demonstration of His-sey-ak’s power, she supposed.

  The ghost sweeper, still in Pete’s sock, kicked and struggled at her side. She knew she had to let it free so it could try to clear the fog, but she kept delaying the moment.

  “It’s almost pretty in its own way,” a voice said behind her. She jumped and saw Angus Murrain emerging from the trees.

  He sauntered toward her on his long legs. His blue chambray shirt was crisp and clean, his moleskin trousers still luxurious. Flecks of sunlight shone in his glossy hair. He looked impossibly triumphant.

  “Though I wouldn’t stare at it too long. You’ll see faces in it after a while.”

  Lucy’s heart felt raw on seeing him. People who hurt other people so badly ought to know about it and be sorry. But Angus did not look like a man with a troubled conscience. He was as straight and commanding a presence as ever, with windswept hair and piercing eyes. Only now he wore her vitometer around his neck. He didn’t bother to try to cover it up.

  “You’re not surprised to see me?” she asked, hoping to shame him for the way he’d run. Darringtons had their faults, but she knew her father never would have done such a thing.

  He came and stood beside her, studying the fog. “No,” he said evenly. “I’ve always known you were clever. I wouldn’t have chosen you as my partner otherwise.”

  It galled Lucy to hear him call her partner—the word that had once made her feel so proud and special.

  She gestured at the vitometer quivering like a frightened bird against his chest. “Why did you steal it?” she asked. “I would have led you here anyway.”

  “Lucy,” he said, sounding like a fond parent whose child has asked an endearing but silly question. “I couldn’t take the chance that you would turn against me. Your father, if he isn’t already dead, hasn’t cleared away whatever haunts this place. But I intend to do so. I will cut down that tree.” He lifted a hand to the ax he carried on his back. “I told you he stood in the way of progress—once you realized he and I held opposite views, I expected you to try to stop me.”

  “You’ll only make Rust worse,” Lucy said, trying not to sound like she was pleading with him. “I was wrong. You can’t cure it by bringing dreamwood back. Cutting dreamwood is what caused it in the first place.”

  Lucy saw surprise in his deep brown eyes. “Interesting,” the timber baron said, sparing a look at the majestic trees around them. “I suppose that’s why your father hasn’t cut it down himself. Well, it matters little to me. You see, bringing back dreamwood may not cure Rust, but it will make me very, very rich.”

  He was forgetting one thing, though—and she hoped it would stop him just as it had stopped her. “How are you going to get through the ghosts?” She tightened her grip on the ghost sweeper, just in case he thought of stealing that, too.

  “It’s just fog, Lucy. Nothing more.” He faced the seething ghost wall, his shoulders squared. “I shall walk through it.”

  Even though Lucy wanted nothing but revenge on Angus, she still couldn’t let him think this was a simple fog. A lifetime of knowing the right answer made her blurt, “But these are the ghosts of the lost settlement. Don’t you think you need to understand why they’re here?”

  “No, I don’t.” He paused and faced her, bending down slightly in the posture of someone about to impart a very valuable lesson. “I’m afraid, Lucy, that life comes down to two paths. You can choose the way of mystery or mastery. If you’d rather wonder why or how, by all means go ahead. Meanwhile, I will already have won. I think a more important question is how you intend to get through.” He looked at the ghost sweeper, still fighting Pete’s sock; his expression said good luck. “You don’t trust yourself to make it through, even with that.”

  Lucy wished she had a biting retort, something that would make him realize that he was wrong. He was wrong about thinking it was useless to try to understand things. He was wrong about thinking the fog wasn’t dangerous. But no words came; instead she watched helplessly as Angus took out his phos globe and held it aloft.

  He walked toward the fog confidently, like someone without any care or fear. Just before he entered it, a thought apparently struck him and he turned to face her. “If you and Pete are still alive when I return we can get a boat together,” he told her. “I’m afraid you won’t get the reward—or any wood I bring back with me. Our agreement didn’t say you’d get anything if I brought back dreamwood. No hard feelings, you understand—it’s just business.”

  The fog parted and swirled behind Angus, swishing like a curtain over the black-bladed ax on his back. The phos globe’s light was strong, however, and she could see it bobbing like a will-o’-the-wisp through the fog. It moved steadily farther away. He’s actually doing it, she thought with a sinking heart. He would chop down the last dreamwood, severing His-sey-ak’s connection to the physical world. Rust would spread to all the forests. And what of her father? He was there somewhere on the other side of that barrier, she was sure. Would he try to stop the timber baron just as he’d tried to stop the railroad from dynamiting the Maran Boulder?

  Lucy’s nails dug into her palms as she watched his progress through the fog. But then the light wavered. For a few moments it darted frantically back and forth. She heard shrieks; they were muffled and sounded very far away.

  “Use the ax!” she cried, darting as close to the fog as she dared. Even though moments ago she’d been hoping for him to fail, she couldn’t stand the thought of another death.

  And then the light went out.

  Lucy stood before the ghost wall and untied Pete’s sock with trembling fingers.

  She had to act now before she lost her nerve, or before the day grew too old and she faced a night on the Thumb without antimorpheus to protect her. Angus’s disappearance left her thoroughly shaken. He’d been so cool and unruffled throughout the last few days, she’d begun to think of him as unstoppable.

  But he hadn’t believed ghosts posed any danger to him. And so even though he’d carefully threaded his way through His-sey-ak’s challenges, he’d bee
n undone at this last step. Perhaps at the last moment Angus used his ax to try to fight off the ghosts. But clearly it hadn’t worked. Obsidian was unpredictable, her father always said.

  Then again, these ghosts felt more powerful than any she’d ever encountered. She remembered the timber baron’s scathing comment about the ghost sweeper. You don’t trust yourself to make it through, even with that.

  Lucy steeled herself. She was going to prove him wrong.

  She held the stocking upside down and the ghost sweeper tumbled out. The egg was shivering—Lucy hoped it was from excitement.

  “Come on,” she told it, speaking to it as if it were a puppy. “Let’s go! Let’s sweep.”

  The egg walked flat-footed to the edge of the fog. Little eddies spun out and pooled around it. For a moment the sweeper didn’t react, and Lucy had a terrible thought that it had injured itself in its collision with the log the last time she’d let it out. But she needn’t have worried. The egg tilted forward as if into a headwind and let out a mighty blast. The fog billowed back from it, and Lucy saw the egg had cleared a hollow in its midst.

  She stepped forward, all around her feeling the icy mist, the ghosts’ seething emotions. The egg blasted again, clearing another few feet ahead. They were going to have to tunnel through it, bit by bit. Lucy went forward a few more steps into the new space it had cleared. But behind her the ghost fog swirled to close up the way she’d come.

  Immediately, claustrophobia descended. Ever since her encounter with the Maran Boulder, tight spaces had held particular horror for her. With nothing to see in any direction, surrounded by hostile spirits, Lucy’s heart raced as she tried to control her fear.

  The only way out is through.

  Another few paces.

  I won’t give in to fear.

  The ghost sweeper gave another blast and she stepped forward a few more feet.

  I know these are ghosts, but I won’t give in to fear.