Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  But it was terribly hard not to give in to fear as she watched the churning fog struggle to reach her. And was it her imagination or was the little hollow she stood in shrinking? It felt smaller than it had a few moments ago. Lucy cast a worried glance at the egg. This was more sweeping than it had ever been called on to do. What if it was no match for the Thumb’s ghosts? What if there were so many the fog stretched on and on? They’d never make it. The egg took a few more steps and blasted again.

  This time the blast was tentative. Something was wrong. The ghost sweeper was hardly clearing any space at all. The ghosts were overpowering it.

  Her pulse drummed in her ears, she felt like someone trapped in a flooded room, slowly watching the water rise. Don’t panic, she told herself. But it was impossible not to. If only she could figure out a way to run, or knew how much farther she had to go, perhaps she could just barrel through. But she did not want to risk getting turned around, trapped in the fog, and running in blind panic as Angus had. That way was sure death.

  Please keep going.

  And then the sweeper blasted and only a few inches around it cleared: just a small circle, like a halo.

  Lucy watched in horror as the mist slowly descended into the cleared space. The world was going gray. She dropped to her knees, getting close to the egg. It was shaking.

  They were doomed.

  She bent down and covered her head, knowing it would make no difference—the ghosts would soon disrupt the electrical pulses in her brain. Next would come the hallucinations, then seizures.

  She was plunged into childhood again, and the Hanged Man was coming for her on his dancing legs. Only this time there was no father to rescue her.

  Pain in her chest made her gasp. Her heart was stumbling like a lame horse. She was going to have a heart attack at age twelve.

  Her hand touched something metal. It was freezing cold: her sweeper, facedown, finished.

  Spasms shook her body. She could feel her heart beat erratically, losing its rhythm. Sparks flew through her brain and then faded like fireworks.

  Think, she desperately needed to think.

  While she could still control her fingers, she brought out Pete’s protection stone. It still retained a little warmth—from Pete, she thought, although she’d left him hours ago. She clutched it desperately, even though she had little hope it would do anything.

  The black stone grew warmer in her fingers. She could feel something shift, a lessening of the attack. Her heart regained its beat. She gasped for breath, her eyes squeezed shut.

  And then the fog slowly lifted and pulled back.

  She was in a sunny green meadow. A few feet from her the ghost sweeper lay flat on its stomach. Slowly she got to her hands and knees, then for a few moments simply sat quietly and breathed, feeling the sun warm her. The black stone in her hand was actually hot.

  There was the whirring drone of insect wings as a giant dragonfly flew past, shining with iridescent green, blue, and gold. Butterflies as big as birds took delicate sips from bright pink wildflowers. It was as if she’d emerged from the deathly gray fog into a world supersaturated with color, with life. Slowly she got to her feet. A lacy waterfall shimmered with rainbows in the distance.

  And ahead of her was an ancient and gnarled golden tree.

  Huge guardian spruce grew around it, protecting it from the fury of the Pacific Coast. Lucy felt an alert intelligence in the way its leaves shimmered in the air, turning toward her like antennae. It was a dreamwood—the last dreamwood—as big and broad as a mighty oak.

  The mapmakers of the lost settlement were all wrong. It wasn’t a spider. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  • • •

  A breeze from the sea made the tree’s silvery green leaves sparkle like coins. Its bark was smooth like a skin and shone with a soft, pale gold: the precious gold of angels in old paintings. The tree glimmered softly in the sunlight, presiding over an enchanted clearing of soft mossy ground. Its branches were twisted and thick, growing out parallel to the ground for a long while, like arms that longed to embrace her. It would be a simply perfect tree for climbing, Lucy thought. The branches were so wide and gently sloping; there were so many of them. It was almost as if there were a network of dozens of secret pathways inside its canopy. She could climb inside and lose herself there, never having to come out, living off sunshine and dewdrops the dragonflies would bring her.

  Lucy walked forward as if in a dream.

  Rolling out from the dreamwood’s trunk were huge white roots, as big as marble waves. They pushed up through emerald moss, and rose twisted and gnarled as a witch’s finger, creating hidden niches and pockets. Lucy clambered among the root grottoes, wanting to get closer to that marvelous tree.

  She felt faint from lack of food, and there was a curious scent to the air—lovely and dangerous, the way that some lilies smelled of death and funerals and women’s perfume all at the same time. But she didn’t feel in any danger. Instead she felt all the hope and certainty she remembered from drinking Ulfric’s dreamwood tea. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the dreamwood’s rich and strange scent. It made her slightly lightheaded and her legs a bit wobbly, but it was simply so delicious she had to keep going forward.

  And then, as she made her way closer still, she saw him.

  William Darrington was seated in an alcove created from interwoven roots, like a king on a throne of living wood. He was sleeping; his face was calm and peaceful. There was the slender Darrington nose, the high, intelligent forehead. His glasses were balanced nearly at the tip of his nose—how many times had she seen him asleep in his armchair back home and his glasses perched just like that? He was wearing his favorite traveling sweater—the one with multiple patches at the elbows, the one he swore the moths would have to eat entirely before he stopped wearing it. His quick, nimble hands were still; there was a book in his lap. His head, tilted gently to one side, drooped slightly as if he’d just fallen asleep while reading.

  Lucy’s heart felt as if it would burst. “Papa!” she cried and began to run.

  He was here, it was really him. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she thought of all the horrors she’d passed through, all her anxieties and fears, how hard it had been to come through the ghost wall, how she’d been wrong, how Pete had been right, how worried she’d been and how much she needed him . . . And how he’d sent her away . . . how he hadn’t told her . . . how he’d meant for them to separate.

  She slowed to a walk, brimming over with emotion, until she finally stood before him.

  “Papa,” she said. “Wake up. It’s me.”

  But her father continued to sleep peacefully.

  Too peacefully.

  “Papa,” she gasped, as dread filled her like flooding water. Why didn’t he answer?

  Now she saw what she hadn’t noticed before: There were twigs in his hair, his fingernails had grown long and ragged, dust and moss had collected in the creases of his dungarees.

  No.

  With her heart thudding in her ears she reached forward and touched his face.

  He was cool, very cool, but he was alive: His chest still rose and fell softly, as if he needed very little air.

  He slept. From his appearance he looked as if he hadn’t moved in weeks.

  Lucy fought down her panic. Maybe if she helped him move he might wake up. She tried to lift one of his arms, thinking she could help him stand. But he was stuck in place. She tried to move his other arm. It was as if he’d been cemented into his seat.

  She bent down, alarm flaring through her, and peered at the place where one hand rested lightly on his throne of roots. Between his skin and the wood was a thin layer of something hard and clear, like glue.

  He was stuck to the wood by a resinous membrane. Tiny suckers spread out from it, like those found on the back of ivy creepers.

  She
tugged at one of his hands. But the membrane pinned him in place. Fear took over. Now she tugged with all her strength. She had to get him free. Where she pulled she saw the skin turn pink. She pulled harder and managed to lift the tip of a finger. Then with horror she let it fall back—the suckers were part of him, they went into him.

  He was being absorbed into the tree.

  The dreamwood was feeding on him.

  Lucy felt as if she were falling.

  She was back in Governor Arekwoy’s office, transfixed by Denis Saarthe’s strange and frightening pictures, seeing their stained-glass beauty—and the horrors they contained: the roots with the faces and hands inside them.

  Abruptly she turned and retched. But she hadn’t eaten in so long, only bile came up. Her eyes smarted with tears and she turned back to her father.

  “Why?” she cried. How had this happened? Her father, who figured out every mystery, who outsmarted every ghost, who’d made it his life’s work to understand spirits, had finally been caught.

  Her eyes streaming with tears, Lucy searched for some explanation. Her glance fell on the book in his lap, and she saw it wasn’t a book he was reading, but another journal. She could see his pen now, fallen into the moss at his feet.

  With renewed strength she tugged the journal from his hand.

  She bent over it, so frantic it took her moments to steady herself enough to read what he’d written. The writing was nearly illegible, the letters formed as if by someone with barely any muscle control.

  The cure for Rust is dreamwood.

  Lucy shook her head, rubbing the tears from her eyes. She knew that wasn’t true. Her father must have known it wasn’t true. In despair she turned to the next page.

  Already it is hard for me to write. I see into his mind, a mind that is spread into every molecule—every tree and bird and beast—on the Thumb. And now I’ve become one with him. I understand everything. But too high a cost.

  Underneath this in a weak and struggling script he had written only one word:

  LUCY

  She was beyond tears now. She took the journal and, enraged, threw it at the dreamwood’s golden trunk. It bounced off harmlessly and fluttered to the ground.

  “You monster!” she screamed at it.

  Nothing happened. The silvery green leaves continued to flash, the butterflies continued to soar. She turned back to her father. He looked so peaceful sitting on his white throne. The roots curved around him, like a giant seashell.

  As she stared at him she saw a curious growth hanging from the topmost roots: a lumpy seed pod, about half a foot long. It was heavy-looking and golden, with a thick, resinous case that made it seem like something precious encased in amber. Lucy stood on her tiptoes and slowly reached out a hand to touch it.

  It felt weighty and hard and somehow warm to the touch. The roots that fed it had a pinched look, as if the creation of the seed had sucked them dry.

  It was a dreamwood seed.

  And there was only one. Suddenly she understood. The cure for Rust is dreamwood, her father had written. But not in the way she’d thought.

  The tree was taking her father’s life energy in order to create this one precious seed.

  It hung on by the thinnest of strands, almost ready to drop.

  She gave the seed pod the slightest of tugs. It came free at once, falling into her hand with a faint rattle.

  She looked at her father, sleeping peacefully in his strange dream. He was beyond her reach now. But there were others who needed her help. Pete, Niwa, the Lupines, even all the out-of-work lumberjacks on the Wanted posters in the Pentland train station.

  She supposed even a dreamwood seed was like any other: It had to be planted. Lucy walked away from the grotto the roots had made until she found a place where the ground was soft and mossy. Lucy got down on her knees and dug a small hole. She put the seed inside and piled the dirt on top of it.

  She thought of the pictures in the Codex Saarthensis. She knew what she had to do next, even if she didn’t like it. The dreamwood seed didn’t need water, it needed an offering. It needed blood.

  Lucy’s neck prickled, and she had the uncanny sense of being watched. She swallowed and took out her knife, the proper knife Pete had insisted she buy.

  Its blade glittered in the late afternoon light, almost as strong as the light from the dreamwood’s flashing, mirror-like leaves.

  Then, before she could change her mind, she drew it across the inside of her forearm. It was a sharp blade, and she made as deep and long a cut as she could stand, gritting her teeth against the pain.

  She watched the blood well up and gouts of it rush out, pulsing with the heartbeat inside her, and fall on the ground.

  The blood sank into the dirt. She had the most disturbing impression that the ground was thirsty.

  The surface rippled, as if a mole tunneled beneath it. Something down there was moving. It was coming up to meet her.

  Lucy took a step back. Like a ship’s prow crashing through a wave during a storm, something crested and burst forth from the ground. It was gold: a tiny seedling.

  She was so surprised she cried out. And as she bent closer, another gout of blood fell. The little seedling shivered hungrily, absorbing it, and then rather alarmingly, it doubled in size.

  It bent toward her, searching—like a kitten rooting for its mother. Lucy pressed Niwa’s tunic against her arm to stop the bleeding—that was all she was able to give. One last drop fell down upon it.

  She stepped back again and watched the seedling quiver. Like a peacock suddenly fanning its tail, the tree shook itself, and scores of tiny silver leaves burst out from its twiggy branches.

  There it was, a miniature of the giant tree behind it.

  With a tremble, the great tree shook itself from root to top. The mirror leaves flashed and from tiny pods a faint golden pollen rose into the air, shining like fairy dust. A group of birds swooped through, the edges of their wings coated in rich gold. They flew east, in the direction of the mainland.

  The cure had begun.

  She’d done it. And then Lucy covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  Lucy got to her feet. The breeze from the sea was colder now, and she shivered. It was time to go.

  She went to her father where he sat on his dreamwood throne. She put her hand on his, stroking the hard, waxy skin.

  “Good-bye, Papa,” she said, leaning down and kissing his cheek softly.

  It was like wrenching herself apart—the hardest thing she’d ever done, the hardest thing she could imagine doing. And then she turned to make the long walk back through the meadow. The ghost wall, still a heavy fog across the eastern horizon, didn’t worry her now. Somehow she knew it would part for her. After all, she’d given His-sey-ak the one thing he needed. After a hundred years, he had another dreamwood, a child.

  There was a faint sound behind her, a spluttering cough.

  And then a thud!

  She wheeled around to see her father getting to his feet. The roots he’d been sitting in flexed like the arms of an octopus—they’d thrown him to the ground.

  He stood before her, wild-eyed, his glasses askew, clothes in tatters, his skin scraped raw, and a clear fluid like sap oozing from his sores.

  But it was him.

  “Lucy,” he said hoarsely. His voice was breaking. “Lucy, is it really you?”

  “Papa,” she cried, running toward him.

  With a cry he caught her up into his arms.

  “Thank goodness,” he said. He was stroking her hair, and clutching her, holding her hands as if he needed to assure himself that it was truly her. Lucy buried her face in his shoulder, feeling the scratchy wool of his lucky sweater.

  “You were asleep,” she scolded him. “I tried to get you to wake up but you wouldn’t.”

  She looked over his shoul
der and saw the root throne where he’d sat. A network of faint pink suckers ran across the roots where he’d detached himself; they waved blindly in disappointment.

  “I know.” His blue eyes stared into hers, and she saw him struggling to explain. His spectacles dipped crookedly on his nose. “I’m sorry. As soon as the roots attached to me, I tried to get free. But I couldn’t . . . and then I fell asleep.” He clutched her to him again. She breathed the smell of his pipe on his sweater, as well as the unsettling sweet smell of dreamwood. She hugged him, feeling great patches where his clothes were in rags. The dreamwood’s creepers had chewed through his favorite sweater, she thought sadly.

  The sparkly mist still hovered in the air, and through it she saw pod after pod in the giant tree shudder and release new, sweet-smelling pollen.

  Her father looked at the mist in bewilderment. “And then somehow I woke up, and you’re here . . .” He removed his crooked wire-rimmed glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt. Putting them back on, he squinted into the shimmering air. “But do you see everything golden? Am I still asleep? I don’t understand why he released me, when I begged and pleaded with him in the dream.”

  Lucy took her father’s hand, being careful not to press his sores. “I think I have an idea,” she said and led him to the patch of blood-damp earth where the little dreamwood grew. It was now about a foot high, shapeless and awkward, covered with downy silver leaves, like a baby bird. In the ground Lucy could see pencil-thin roots with tiny suckers on them, hunting for every last morsel of blood. She shivered, feeling that it was beautiful and terrible at the same time.

  For a moment her father simply gaped.

  “You planted it,” he said. He turned to her with a look of wonder and smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ear. “I saw you figure it out in my dream.” He turned from the newborn tree to the glittering clouds of pollen still drifting in gauzy sheets across the meadow. In wonder he held up a hand then rubbed the glistening sheen on his fingertips. “You did it.”

  He looked at her in triumph as she turned away.