The Ancient One

by T.A. Barron

  He won’t do it, thought Kate. It’s just sitting there, innocently sitting there. Though it was larger and lacked the same red color, it reminded her of the owl who had saved her life at the green pool.

  Her mind raced to find some way to stop the shooting without giving herself away. Then she spied a small rock by her feet, tangled in the roots of a fallen sapling.

  Jody stood still, rifle by his side. Slowly, he raised it, planting the butt of the gun against his shoulder. Motionless, he held that position for several seconds. Perspiration glistened on his cheek.

  At the same time, Kate reached for the rock. She took careful aim at the branch supporting the owl, then wound her arm like a shortstop about to fire the ball at home plate. Meanwhile, the proud bird did not move so much as a feather. It simply stared at the people below, watching them with huge round eyes.

  “Chicken heart, chicken heart,” taunted Sly.

  “Back off,” Jody retorted.

  “Chicken heart!”

  Kate released the rock just as the boy squeezed the trigger. The gun exploded, shattering the stillness of the forest. The rock whizzed past the owl’s perch, but it was too late. As she watched helplessly, the bird tumbled backward off the branch and fell with a thud to the forest floor. It landed in a craggy bed of downed branches and dead needles.

  “Took you long enough,” said Sly roughly as he took back his rifle. He strapped it over his shoulder. “I’ll try to find another one so you can get some more practice.” Grinning at his own joke, he started off into the forest.

  Jody didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the place where the owl had fallen. As Kate watched from her hiding place, he slowly approached the spot, pushing aside the stiff branches that hid the bird’s body from view.

  Bending down, he looked at the creature, whose enormous eyes were now closed. Absently, he stroked the bird’s round chest. Then, as if he were performing a small act of repentance, he lifted a large slab of moss from the wet soil at the base of the fir and started to lay it over the body of the owl when a soft hooting sound echoed out of the forest mist. Hooo-hooo. Hooo-hooo.

  Jody straightened himself, his expression grim. Then his face seemed to tighten. “Aw, who cares, anyway?” he said. “It’s just a stupid old bird.” Without looking at the owl again, he walked off in the direction of a whining chain saw.

  Taking care to avoid Jody, Kate sprang into the forest. Swerving around massive trees and leaping over fallen logs, she moved as fast as she could. The sound of the chain saw drew nearer, leading her, she knew, to the redwood grove. Some of the loggers must have passed them in the fog, as Aunt Melanie had feared. There’s no way to stop them now, she lamented. All I can possibly do is get the walking stick.

  Concentrating on following the sound, Kate did not notice the steady darkening of the forest. The fog itself grew thicker, while less light fell from the sky above the trees. Nor did she feel the forceful sweep of the wind that leaned ever more heavily against the trunks and boughs around her.

  Suddenly, she burst into the redwood grove. Just to her left was a logger sitting on a downed limb, struggling to repair his chain saw. “Mother-killing saw blade,” he grumbled, removing his hard hat and wiping his brow with the sleeve of his red plaid shirt. “I didn’t carry you all this way just so you could break down on me.”

  Kate then focused on another logger, tall and wiry, who had buried his chain saw deep into the trunk of one of the redwoods. He was sliding it up and down, back and forth, gunning the engine as sawdust sprayed in all directions. Then he pulled out the saw, set it idling on the ground, and reached his arms upward to stretch his back.

  “Hey, Dick,” he called to the man working on his saw. “Sure beats having a desk job, doesn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh,” grunted the other. “And sure beats unemployment checks.”

  “You can say that again,” agreed the first, picking up his saw once more.

  Standing deeper in the grove was Billy, wearing a red T-shirt with the Blade fire department emblem. Kate froze as she saw him yank the starter rope of his chain saw, then lift it into the air, preparing to slice into the Ancient One itself, home of the hollow where she and Aunt Melanie had quietly rested only minutes before. The chain saw screamed as he lowered it to rip into the tree’s midsection.

  At that instant, the sky flashed with an explosion of lightning. Kate looked up to see black clouds condensing above the branches. She realized the forest had grown much darker, as the tall trees started to sway under galelike winds.

  One by one, the chain saws went silent, as lightning flashes grew more frequent. The howling wind brought an enormous limb crashing to the ground near Kate, and one man cried out in pain as another falling branch clipped his leg.

  “Make a run for it,” shouted one logger.

  “Let’s dust this place,” called another. “Get back to the trucks and we’ll wait out the storm.”

  Lightning sizzled across the sky, punctuated by earsplitting blasts of thunder. Branches waved wildly, and some splintered off and came tearing down from the higher canopies. Hail the size of golf balls pounded the trees and the forest floor. The great redwoods swayed back and forth in the wind, creaking and groaning like wrathful beasts.

  For a moment, Kate stood paralyzed. Then she dashed toward the Ancient One and threw herself into the shelter of its hollow. Hailstones pounded the trunk, and some rolled harmlessly through the entrance. She sighed, knowing she was safe, as were the trees, at least for the moment. She spotted Aunt Melanie’s walking stick, leaning against the inner wall of the hollow.

  A person moving outside the entrance caught her attention. It was Jody, loping past in an effort to escape the raging storm. Just then, a branch as broad as an anvil came crashing down directly on his shoulder. He was flattened by the weight, his jacket torn open. He lay motionless on the ground outside the hollow.

  Without thinking, Kate bolted out and rushed to his side. With a heave, she managed to pry the heavy limb off of him. Hailstones bounced off her head, arms, and back as she worked to lift him to his feet. He was semiconscious, but too limp to stand. Pummeled by hail, she grabbed him under his armpits and dragged him over the ground and into the hollow of the great tree.

  She propped him up against the wall, trying her best to make him comfortable. His shoulder was bloody, but there was no way to tell if any bones had been broken. He leaned his head back against the cavern wall and moaned painfully.

  Jody then opened his eyes. A look of confusion and fear filled his face as he saw Kate bending over him in the dark cavern. He rolled to the side and tried to wriggle away from her. Before she could restrain him, he was already halfway out of the hollow. Hailstones pounded him, but still he tried to crawl away.

  “Let me go,” he cried, half delirious. He kicked his legs wildly to break free of her grip.

  “I’m just trying to help you,” protested Kate, struggling to pull him back inside.

  “Let me go,” he shouted. At that instant, he caught sight of two loggers running past the tree. “Harry,” he called to one of them. “Harry!”

  Kate’s mind raced. If the loggers found him they would find her as well. And if they found her, they would also find the walking stick. With great effort, she caught hold of his leg and dragged him back into the hollow.

  Desperately, she tried to pin him to the earthen floor. Yet despite his wounded shoulder, he was too strong for her and soon wriggled free. She jumped him again, trying to clasp both her arms around his waist. Jody grabbed her left arm above the elbow and rolled over, throwing her to the ground. He crawled madly toward the entrance, but before he reached it Kate reared back with both feet and kicked him as hard as she could in the ribs.

  He flipped over, smacking his head full force against the wall of the hollow. With a groan, he slumped into unconsciousness and lay limp on the earthen floor.

  Meanwhile the logger, hearing Jody call his name, stopped in his tracks and wheeled around. He seized th
e other man by the sleeve and gestured toward the tree. “It’s the orphan kid,” he declared, raising his voice to be heard over the clattering hailstones and crashing thunder. “He’s in some kind of trouble.”

  “Let’s get him before this mother-killing storm kills us all,” shouted his companion.

  The two loggers approached the redwood. Her sore hand throbbing, Kate pulled Jody’s body back into the far extreme of the hollow. She cowered there in the darkness, trying desperately to breathe quietly. She could see the leather boots of one of the men planted just inches away from the entrance.

  “Where the hell is he?” demanded a husky voice. “I know I heard him calling.”

  “Maybe you just thought you heard him,” answered the other man. “He ain’t here now, that’s for sure.”

  A bright flash of lightning illuminated the grove, and for an instant, the inside of the hollow. The first logger laid his hand against the entrance, wrapping his callused fingers around the edge.

  “Just let’s check out this little cave,” he called as he bent lower to look inside.

  Kate scanned the hollow cavern for something—anything—she could use as a weapon. Her eyes fell upon the walking stick. The intricately carved markings on the shaft seemed to be glowing dimly, apparently reflecting the lightning outside. Strangely, the stick was vibrating, twitching, as it leaned against the wall.

  Must be the vibration from the storm, thought Kate, as she reached to grasp it. Just then the face of the logger came into view. He searched the interior, his eyes adjusting to the dark.

  Suddenly, a powerful energy flowed into Kate’s hand holding the walking stick. It coursed through her whole body, a rising river of electricity. Without willing herself to do so, she struck the head of the stick hard against the wall of the cavern. The sound reverberated as though she were inside a bass drum. Then she struck it a second time, and a third.

  A burst of white light filled the hollow. Pulsing bands of electricity leaped outward from the trunk, encircling it with fire, as if the tree had been struck by lightning. The logger fell back, stunned.

  When the afterglow had faded away, both Kate and Jody had vanished. No sign of them remained, but for a small stain of blood mixing with the soil and hailstones at the base of the Ancient One.

  PART TWO

  Into the Island

  10

  maidenhair

  KATE awoke in darkness. Was it all just a dream, a terrible dream? Had she never left the comfortable bed in the cottage?

  She rolled to one side and felt a piercing pain in her left hand. Pulling the hand to her chest, she could see the dark ribbing of the hollow trunk surrounding her. Opposite, still unconscious, lay the boy Jody, blood smeared over the shoulder of his jacket. He looked more pitiful than hateful right now, but still Kate detested him. Then she felt the shaft of the walking stick resting against her thigh.

  It was no dream. She struggled to kneel, grabbing the stick. At least it’s safe, she congratulated herself. Aunt Melanie will be relieved. Then she noticed something curious about the cavern. It seemed smaller, more cramped somehow than she remembered.

  In a flash, she thought of the logger who had almost found her—and the stick as well. Thank heaven lightning had struck the tree at just that moment. She chuckled at the memory of the big man, wide-eyed and fearful at the sudden flash of light. Peering out the entrance, she could see no sign of him or his companions. Scared off by the storm, probably. Her grin evaporated as she realized they would soon be coming back.

  She looked again at Jody, slumped against the cavern wall. He’ll survive, she told herself. That shoulder will be plenty sore, but he deserves it, every bit. He didn’t really want to shoot that poor owl, that was clear. So why did he do it? A stupid dare, that’s why. Probably stole the envelope on a dare too.

  Dutifully, she reached over and wrapped the torn edge of his jacket over his injured shoulder, arranging his arm in the most comfortable position. Then she crawled out of the hollow.

  She was surprised to see no hailstones on the ground. It seemed very odd, until she realized that she must have been unconscious for quite a while. Maybe the loggers had given up and gone back to town. In that case, Aunt Melanie might be somewhere near.

  She called Aunt Melanie’s name, but heard no answer. She must be back at the loggers’ new road. It might take some time to find her again in the fog, but now that Kate had the stick it didn’t really matter. She stretched stiffly, reaching first to the sky and then to her feet, then headed for the far side of the redwood grove. As she walked, she couldn’t banish the feeling that something about the grove felt different than before. What exactly had changed, she didn’t know, but the strange feeling nagged at her nonetheless. She stepped across a fallen branch and into the thick forest beyond the grove.

  Soon her worries disappeared, as the Hidden Forest felt as dense and alive as ever. Nothing here had changed. In fact, it hadn’t changed for thousands and thousands of years. It must have been her imagination, or the shock of the lightning bolt.

  Hopping over a tangle of ferns growing from a long, cylindrical mound of earth that she guessed was the remains of a decomposed trunk, she tried to recall how Aunt Melanie had led her out to the rim. Fog shrouded everything as before, even obscuring the lower branches of the mammoth firs and cedars and hemlocks that surrounded her.

  For the moment, she put the loggers out of her mind and moved silently through the misty woods. Stay as quiet as a Halami, Aunt Melanie had said. Kate began to pretend she was a young Halami, padding across the soft forest floor, stalking an elk or a deer. The walking stick became a spear, her sneakers disappeared, and she was barefoot. The land around her felt full of life, awesome, mystical, sacred.

  Then she heard a voice, a small, lilting voice. Someone was singing, not far ahead. She knew at once it was Aunt Melanie, singing to guide her through the fog. All must be well, or she would not be making such lovely music.

  Still the Halami, Kate resisted the urge to cry out and run to her. No, she would steal even closer, silent as the flowing fog. She would surprise her, leaping out from behind a tree at the last possible instant.

  Stealthily, Kate approached. The singing grew clearer, stronger. She recognized it as one of the old Halami chants that Aunt Melanie often sang while working in her garden. A woodpecker battered against the trunk above, almost in time to the rhythm.

  The music was now just a few feet away, behind a curtain of fog. Kate moved slowly, placing her feet with great care so as not to make any sound. Then her arm brushed against a protruding branch and a twig snapped sharply. The singing stopped.

  Kate strode forward, holding the walking stick high. A diminutive figure, bending over a clump of maidenhair fern, stood up to greet her. Two dark eyes opened wide when she stepped into view.

  Kate’s eyes, too, opened wide. She was standing face to face not with Aunt Melanie, but with a girl dressed like no one she had ever met before.

  The girl, high cheeked and round faced, looked at Kate fearfully, as if she were confronting a ghost. Three vertical black lines marked her chin. Upon her head rested a bowl-shaped hat, woven from reeds like a basket, decorated with a geometric design. Her black hair, tied in two ropes with simple strands of cedar bark wrapped around the ends, fell over her shoulders and almost to her waist. One hand clutched a small, straight-sided basket without a handle that was filled with fronds and stems of maidenhair. A square leather bib hung over her chest, dangling above the loose skirt made from strips of reddish-brown bark. She wore nothing on her feet.

  With a shriek, the girl dropped her basket of ferns and ran like a frightened deer into the forest. Kate hesitated for a moment, then ran after her.

  “Hey, come back!” she shouted, leaping over fallen limbs and dodging trees. “I won’t hurt you. Come back.”

  But the girl didn’t stop. She tore through the forest, leaving Kate farther and farther behind. Soon the gap was great enough that she could no longer be s
een or heard through the fog, and Kate slowed her pace. Giving up the chase at last, she was preparing to halt when, without warning, the ground gave way beneath her.

  She screamed, plunging downward, until she landed with a thud on a floor of packed dirt. Her hand throbbed painfully, and the back of her neck stung when she lifted her head. Clambering to her feet, she brushed a chunk of mud off her jeans and anxiously surveyed her surroundings.

  A pit, she realized in disbelief. I’ve fallen into a pit. Despite the pain in her neck, she craned her head upward. The pit was about ten feet deep, vertically walled, with a steep overhang near the top to prevent anyone who was trapped from climbing out. Above, she saw the fog filtering through canopies of branches. Escape was impossible without help.

  “Aunt Melanie,” she cried, mortified. “I’m in this pit. Can you hear me? Aunt Melanie, please hear me!”

  No answer came but the gentle swishing of branches in a light wind. Again she tried calling, again without success. Dejectedly, she sat down on the dirt floor of the pit, arms around her knees, her head bowed. She kicked the walking stick away from her foot.

  Then she heard a snarling sound above her. Looking up with a start, she saw the face of what looked like a coyote, brown ears erect, peering down on her. Teeth bared, the animal growled viciously as though getting ready to spring.

  Kate’s heart pounded. She scuttled to the far side of the pit, but the snarling beast could still see her. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the walking stick and held it like a baseball bat.

  “Stay away from me, you,” she said fiercely. “Or I’ll make a home run out of you.”

  At the sight of the stick, the animal ceased growling, dropped back its ears, then retreated out of sight. An instant later, another face appeared in the same place. It belonged to the girl. She studied Kate apprehensively, her brow beneath the basketry hat wrinkled in fear.

  There was a bark, then the girl turned and said something unintelligible. Another bark, this time softer. The girl again stared into the pit. At once, Kate realized that the coyote-like creature must be her pet, a scruffy sort of dog.