The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  “The One will come,” Dama hissed. “The One will find you and torment you forever for this.”

  “Listen to me,” Rowen said, sinking into a crouch beside her. “I’m sorry to cause you pain, but I can’t let you harm anyone else. I’m going to tell you now what will happen to you. You’ll return to the place you came from. The place everything comes from. It’s called the Weaving. It’s where we give back what we’ve been given.”

  Dama was up to her waist now and sinking faster. Her wings were caught next. They shivered but were held fast as terrified sobs wracked her body.

  “No, no, no,” she cried, clawing at the earth. “Let me live. I will serve you. I will worship you.”

  “You’ll come back from the Weaving,” Rowen went on. “Everyone does, in new bodies that have been woven for them. Nothing ever really ends. I know that now. You’ll come back, but you won’t have to be what you were. You won’t have to serve this nightmare anymore. We all have a choice, every one of us. You can choose another way to be.”

  Dama had gone silent. The grass swallowed up her outstretched arms, and as it reached her neck and then her mouth, her eyes still burned into Rowen’s, though with fear, hate or hope Will could not tell.

  In another moment the green earth had closed over her head and she was gone.

  Will stared in shock and wonder at the place where the harrower had been. Then from behind him he heard a sigh like a great rush of wind.

  “Will,” Morrigan said, and he turned and saw the giant form of the wolf lying at the edge of the hollow, his mighty sides heaving, his dark fur matted and glistening with blood. The torn and mangled bodies of harrowers lay all around him, but there were none still standing.

  Will cried his friend’s name. The wolf stirred and slowly raised his head.

  “Shade?” Will said again, this time as a question. The wolf’s eyes still burned with a red fire and his jaws hung open, with gobbets of blood and slaver hanging from them. Then he struggled to his feet, but instead of coming closer he began to limp away, the ground shuddering again with each of his great footfalls.

  “Shade!” Will cried. “Don’t go! You’ve saved us. Let us help you.”

  The wolf didn’t seem to hear. Without looking back, he climbed the slope and vanished into the wreckage of the green wall.

  “Let him go, Will,” Rowen said, sitting up. “There is almost nothing left in him of the Shade we knew.”

  “But what will happen to him?”

  Rowen didn’t answer. She stood slowly, ignoring Will’s attempt to help her.

  “How long?” she asked. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Three days,” Morrigan said.

  “Three days,” Rowen echoed. She gazed around. “I’m so thirsty.”

  Will gave her the water bottle he had filled at the pool on the second day. She took a few sips. Morrigan was watching her, too, and Will saw that the Shee woman also wasn’t sure what to think of what had just happened, or of the strange way Rowen was acting.

  “What of the Night King, Rowen?” the Shee woman asked. “The harrowers may have been killed or driven away, but he will come for us, that is certain.”

  Rowen shot Morrigan a strange look, as if unsure whom she was speaking of. She was about to answer, it appeared, when she glanced away as though she’d heard a sound. Will and Morrigan went still, and then they heard it, too: a low hum, the same sound Will had heard on the second night of his vigil under the tree.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “I heard it as well, when I was searching for you,” Morrigan said. “Whatever it is, it is coming this way. We must leave here.”

  But Rowen showed no sign of concern. She stood calmly and waited, and so they stayed beside her.

  The humming grew louder, rising to a heavy drone that reverberated in their ears. Then it was a roaring, almost a shrieking, that seemed to arrive from every direction at once.

  The gaps in the green wall darkened even further, but with a trembling, crawling agitation, as if filled with countless tiny flecks of ash churning over and over through the air. Then Will remembered Rowen’s vision of the defeat of the Fair Folk, how they had been swallowed up in a cloud of tiny black creatures, and he knew that same cloud had come for them. A living darkness that churned and boiled in the hedge’s gaps but came no farther into the Silence.

  Will braced himself for what might happen next, but Rowen appeared unafraid. She stepped forward and raised a hand.

  “You will come no farther,” she said. “I rule here now. You know this to be true. You cannot harm me without harming yourselves.”

  Dread shot through Will at Rowen’s words. What had happened to her while she slept? Fear clutched at him that she was not the Rowen he knew anymore, that she had become a creature of the Shadow Realm, and he recalled the terrified words of the other Will he’d met in the Weaving: She’s found me …

  The cloud of darkness shivered violently like a single creature, and many voices issued from it now, all speaking as one, with a sound that was both a whisper and a roar of rage.

  You are nothing. You will be devoured and forgotten.

  “That will not happen,” Rowen said, and then she turned to Will.

  “Do you still have Grandmother’s thread?”

  He nodded. He was about to take the ball from his pocket and hand it to her, but he hesitated. What if the golden thread was all she needed to become another Malabron? What if his older self had made the same mistake, and this is what led to him running and hiding for years until he was trapped at the ending of all the stories?

  “Will?” Rowen said, and for the first time since she’d woken up, a look of concern crossed her face. “Give me the thread. It’s all right.”

  He had to trust her. She had ended Dama and she could have destroyed him and Morrigan, too, if she’d wanted to. No, this was still Rowen.

  He held out the ball of thread. She took it and set it in her palm, touching it softly with a finger, as if reassuring herself that it was really there. Then she held it up toward the seething darkness at the hollow’s edge.

  “I could destroy you with this,” Rowen said in a loud voice. “So listen to me now. You creatures of the Shadow Realm, you’ve hidden the truth from yourselves for so long, but you’ve always known it, deep in your hearts. Lotan, the Angel, knew. He looked into the emptiness every time he came here, and he knew. He was afraid, and he served the lie and let it rule him, as you all did. For all the harm you’ve done in the name of this lie, I should destroy you.”

  You must not do this, the many voices roared. Spare us and we will bow before you. We will serve you.

  “No one is going to bow to anyone anymore,” Rowen said. “I’m opening a door for you. A door for everyone. I’m going to set you free. I’m going to set us all free.”

  “Rowen, what are you thinking?” Morrigan said in a low voice. “These are beings who have never known anything but hunting and killing the innocent. You cannot let them loose on the other realms. If you have the power to end them, do it.”

  “This story was their prison, Morrigan. Ours, too. No creature should ever have to live like that, inside a lie.”

  “If you free them,” Will cried, “Malabron will be free, too. He’ll take over everything.”

  “He can’t, Will. Don’t you see? The truth has been right in front of us all this time: there is no Night King. There is no Malabron.”

  “What are you talking about?” Will said. “He came after me. After you. I saw his eyes in the mirror shard. He sent those armies to the Bourne—”

  Rowen lifted her arms. “All of this,” she said, “is Malabron. This place is the heart of the Shadow Realm. When I was asleep, I became part of the nightmare, Will, and I saw. Now I’ve woken up and I have to wake others, too. The Night King is a story, Will. We’re inside that story. We’ve become part of it, and we can’t end it with hatred and killing because that only makes it stronger. All those armies fighting over Fable now
were drawn there by the power of this story. We’ve all been telling it, and we’re being told by it. A story that turns everything into this. Into more nightmare.”

  Will shook his head slowly.

  “What about the Stewards?” he said, struggling to understand. “They fought Malabron a long time ago. Your people were there, Morrigan. The Night King was real then, wasn’t he?”

  “We do not forget the destruction of our city, Rowen,” Morrigan said, her eyes burning. “We do not forget the one who drove us onto a road of pain and sorrow.”

  “This story is older than anyone knows, Morrigan,” Rowen said. “Who can say how it began? I think the story we call Malabron has had many names, in many realms. This—all of this horror and hate—is a story woven from fear. The Stewards first helped it to grow. They didn’t mean to. I think they loved all the stories so much they were afraid to lose them. They wanted to keep the Realm whole and perfect for all time, and their fear became another story, a story they hadn’t meant to weave. And the harder they tried to unweave it, the stronger it grew. The story became like a living thing with one purpose: to go on living. To be the only story, forever.”

  “What about the fetches?” Will asked. “And the harrowers? If there’s no Night King, then who’s telling them what to do?”

  “No one is, Will,” Rowen said. “They’re like … characters in a book who always do the same thing, no matter how many times you read it. The fetches are marching on Fable because that’s how it must be in the story.”

  “Then my people …” Morrigan said, and for the first time Will saw tears in the Shee woman’s eyes. “If the story can end, they may return someday. They need not remain fetches forever.”

  “No, they need not. You may see them again one day.”

  “But what happened to the First Ones?” the Shee woman asked. “Why did they fail against something they themselves created?”

  “The Stewards tried to contain the story of fear,” Rowen said. “They made the black river to seal it off from everything else, but it kept growing and weaving itself back into the Realm. Soon there was fear everywhere. Folk who fled from it gave it names. Malabron. Master of Fetches. The Night King. The Story-eater. And those names only made it stronger. The story wove itself into the tales and legends of the Fair Folk, and the Night King became your great enemy. You believed in him, even though you’d never seen him. The story was now so deeply woven into everything that the war to destroy it tore the Realm apart. That was the Great Unweaving. The Stewards gave up their bodies then. They became water and tree and stone, to hold the weave together from within.”

  “And the story of the Night King didn’t die,” Will said.

  “Its threads were torn and scattered, like so much was in those days, but it was never completely forgotten. The threads were still there and they were added to, and slowly the story regained its power. We all kept it alive and helped it to grow. All of us.”

  “We all wove it, like the images in my tapestries,” Morrigan breathed. “We told it to ourselves, time and again, and now it is telling us.”

  Then you cannot end us, the voices roared even louder than before. We are one with you and you cannot end us without destroying yourselves.

  “No, we can’t,” Rowen said. “No one can. The battle for Fable will end one way or another, but even if the Nightbane are defeated, the knot of darkness in the Weaving will keep growing. There are Storyfolk and Nightbane still coming to the Bourne, from stories so far away and so strange we can hardly imagine them. Some who will join the fight haven’t been born yet. The war will grow beyond the borders of the Bourne, and into your world, too, Will, if it hasn’t already.”

  “Then what can you do?” Will asked. “What can anyone do?”

  “We have to wake up,” Rowen said. “All of us. We have the power to leave this story and make a new one. Together. It will take time, but it’s the only way. We’re all storyweavers, Will. The fathomless fire is in all of us. I’m going to help people see that.”

  While they had been speaking, the roar of the cloud of darkness had slowly fallen silent. Now they looked up and saw that the cloud had shrunk into a manlike shape that reflected no light at all but instead seemed to swallow it, as if it were not so much a presence as a hole into absolute darkness.

  What will happen to us? cried a hollow voice that was emptiness and fear given speech. If you leave there will be nothing for us. We will be hungry forever in the darkness. We will be alone.

  “You will not be alone,” Rowen said, “because I will stay with you.”

  “Rowen, no!” Will cried. “What are you saying?”

  “Will, so much is going to change. The black river will dry up and the walls of the Shadow Realm will fall. Not tomorrow and maybe not for a long time, but when that happens, folk will no longer fear this place. Some will come to help heal, to rebuild, but many will come for vengeance, and they will hunt these beings and kill them. That mustn’t happen, or the nightmare will only grow stronger again. I have to stay and protect them.”

  “Protect things like Dirge and Gibbet?” Will said. “They’re monsters, Rowen. They’re evil. Think of what they’ve done.”

  “I can’t forget it. When I first woke up I wanted to use the golden thread to seal this place up forever and let its creatures devour one another until none was left. I wanted to hurt them the way they hurt me. But if I did that, I would only be like Lotan or Dama. In time I’d become the new Master of the Fetches, and the war would go on. Then one day I would be hunting down my own friends. Even you. The beings that live here need someone to watch over them—to keep them from causing more harm and to keep others from harming them—until the day we’ve all learned what fear and hate make us become. Then there will be no need for walls. That’s why I have to stay.”

  “No, not you, Rowen,” Morrigan said. “When the shrowde and I came to this realm, we already knew we would never leave it, because we have nothing to return to. We will stay and watch over the Shadow Realm.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Morrigan,” Rowen said, shaking her head. “I’m the one who started this. I have to see it through.”

  “Rowen, this is no place for you. You are still young and your life is just beginning. You are right that this nightmare around us will not change in a single day … it will be a realm of shadow and terror for a long time to come. I do not have your vision, but I can see that much. This place would sap the life and hope from you in time. You know that. And you have many duties now, too, not just to this place but to all the Realm.”

  Rowen was about to speak again, but her voice faltered. She wiped away tears.

  “They will call you the Shadow Queen,” she said to Morrigan at last. “They’ll fear you at first. But you’ll learn the names of all these beings and walk with them. You’ll share their fear and pain. One day you will lead them out of the nightmare.”

  The lightless shape spoke again from the hollow’s rim. We will accept this, it said. We will have Morrigan of the Tain Shee to rule here and protect us.

  The hole in the shape of a man began to contract further, drawing the dust around it into itself as it did so. In another moment it had closed over and vanished.

  Rowen stepped away from Will and Morrigan, and again she held the golden thread up in her palm. Then she knelt and, with great care and tenderness, let the ball slide off her palm and onto the grass. As it rolled away from her the thread began to unravel. A golden filament so narrow it was almost invisible started to wind out from the ball, like the finest of spider’s silk. And at almost the same time it appeared, it began to branch into many threads, each as fine and brilliant as the first. The branching, multiplying threads wound and wove and darted through the grass. Soon the ball itself had unrolled completely and there was only this growing, multiplying network of threads spreading out across the entire hollow and beyond.

  And then, as swiftly as they had appeared, the threads began to vanish, sinking into the grass or draw
ing out so fine that they seemed at last to thin into nothing at all. But somehow Will knew that they weren’t truly disappearing; they were merging with everything. He could feel the threads all around him, under him, and then within him. He put a hand to his heart and gasped as awareness flooded through him, a seeing that was strange and yet utterly familiar, as if it had always been there, waiting for him to discover it. For one moment there was nothing between him and everything else. There was no beginning and no ending to what he was. What they all were.

  Then he came back.

  He was himself again, though something had changed. He felt that he was standing before a door that led to a new and unknown world. But the door was also himself.

  “What did you do?” he asked Rowen.

  “Grandmother’s gift was not meant to bind anything,” she said. “It was meant to unbind. You showed me that, Will, when you freed Shade, but I didn’t understand then. I had to become the nightmare in order to see the truth. I couldn’t destroy Malabron’s story by sealing it away forever, because I’m inside it. I had to find a path out of it. A path for everyone.”

  Then he became aware that the light in the hollow had grown warmer, and he looked up and saw that the tree was no longer dead. Great sprays of yellow-green leaves had burst from its branches on one side of the trunk and had spread over their heads like a canopy. The other side of the tree was still ashen and bare.

  “What happens now?” Will asked Rowen. “Will the war end?”

  She did not answer him right away, but rose from where she’d been kneeling and gazed up at the cloven tree. Its pale leaves stirred and shimmered in the sunlight that now filled the hollow through the widening gap in the vault of dust.

  “We must return home,” Rowen said. “The battle … it’s like a boulder rolling downhill. It won’t stop because of what I’ve done here. Fable is still in danger.”

  “How will you get there in time?” Morrigan asked. “The border of the Shadow Realm is days away.”

  “By the way we came, yes. But there’s another path now.”