Seven Trees of Stone

by Leo Hunt

  “Samson —” Larktongue says.

  “Sit down!” Holiday shouts. “Luke’s a good person.”

  Bald Samson glares at us. “Magician and his consort. Come to bind some spirit to your Host, or am I wrong? Well, you will not take any of us for your slaves!”

  “Look,” I say, getting to my feet, “can I just explain one thing?”

  “Speak not unto me! You treat with the Black Goat!”

  His staff is pointed right at me. Bald Samson’s eyes are wide and white in his face.

  “He tricked me,” I say slowly. “It’s not like you think. I don’t want a Host. I don’t want anything like that. We’re just lost is all.”

  “Does he speak true?” Larktongue asks the veiled woman.

  “He does,” she says.

  I’m looking from her to Bald Samson and back again, trying to figure them out. Is he going to attack me? Holiday has the wyrdstone, but I still don’t know how much that can help us.

  “I really can explain,” I say.

  “Luke’s not lying,” Holiday says.

  “It sounds like a tale,” Larktongue says. “I am prepared to hear it, if my companions are.” He says this with light amusement, as if Bald Samson isn’t poised to leap at me and bash my skull in with his staff. After a moment the giant lowers his weapon and shrugs. The chains around his body clink as he seats himself by the fire once more.

  I take that as my cue to begin. I tell them the story of my dad and Berkley, how I came into my power without knowing what it was I had accepted. I tell them about my own journey to the Shrouded Lake and what I saw there, and about what’s happened to Dunbarrow that we’ve found ourselves wandering by the banks of the Styx on New Year’s Eve.

  “To think you have looked upon the Lake,” Larktongue whispers when I’m finished. “You truly spoke to those powers that sleep beneath it?”

  “I really did,” I say.

  “A tall tale,” Bald Samson says, but he doesn’t outright accuse me of lying. The woman says nothing. There’s something about her, I’ve realized. I feel like I’ve met her before, but I can’t place her, and it’s difficult to recognize someone when their whole face is covered like that. Holiday shifts beside me.

  “Are we going to sit here to hear everyone’s life story?” she asks me in a low voice. “We need to get back.”

  She’s not wrong. We do need to find some way back to Dunbarrow, to Wormwood Drive.

  “Do you know of a crossing?” I ask the pilgrims. “We’re trying to find a way across the river.”

  “We do not,” Bald Samson says. “None have mapped the course of the Styx, and fewer than none have bridged its expanse.”

  “Well, it’s the Brackrun we need to cross,” Holiday says. “We need to find a way back to our town.”

  Larktongue and Bald Samson give each other a look.

  “You may find that difficult,” Larktongue says gently. “Those who cross over into the spirit world often find that return is frustrating and elusive.”

  “Still,” Holiday says. “We have to try.”

  “Naturally,” he replies. “Well, I believe we have rested our burdens long enough. What say you, Samson? My lady? Shall we accompany these young travelers?”

  Bald Samson shrugs. “I cannot see as they will walk slower than you, Larktongue.”

  The small man laughs, a high silvery sound. He leaps to his feet, lurching strangely as the chain tightens around his chest. “Onward, then!” he says. “Onward. With each step our journey shrinks in length, my friends.”

  The gray-veiled woman gets to her feet. She lifts her small black rock of sin and holds it in her arms like a child, and it’s in this gesture that I recognize her: the first time I ever saw her, she was carrying a baby.

  The Oracle.

  I never thought I’d meet her again. I can’t believe it’s her. She went through the doorway with the rest of my Host, back when I banished them. Her clothes are different, but I’m certain it’s her. I knew I recognized her voice. What’s she doing out here? I suppose that explains how she knew I was a sorcerer.

  And didn’t Ash tell me my father’s Oracle was another Ahlgren?

  Holiday and Larktongue are looking at me strangely. I realize I’ve just been staring at the Oracle. I shake my head and grin. Bald Samson is already walking away from the campfire, his boulder riding high on his shoulders. We follow, leaving the strange gray flames to burn themselves out, if they ever will. Larktongue hobbles beside me and Holiday, walking with a strange sideways gait. His sin may be smaller than Bald Samson’s, but he’s the most obviously crippled by its presence. The Oracle walks behind us, her sins cradled to her chest. Close up I can see that the pilgrims’ black boulders are engraved with words, although the script is tiny and dense and I can’t make out the exact text.

  “Larktongue,” I say as we walk, the river flowing black and silent beside us, “have you ever heard of the Barrenwhite Tree?”

  “And what would make you speak a name like that?” the ghost asks, sharply.

  “Someone mentioned that name in our hometown,” I say. “They said there were seven trees made of stone. And an eighth made from ice and bone. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Larktongue looks at us strangely. “Now I see what the living wander the lands of Asphodel for. My sincerest apologies.”

  We keep walking.

  “What are you sorry for?” Holiday asks him.

  “It is one of the elder spirits,” Bald Samson says, without turning. I didn’t realize he was listening to our conversation.

  “But what is it?” I ask.

  “Who can say?” Larktongue replies. He stumbles and his chain bites tighter into his chest. “A great spirit from the Beginning, exiled, outcast by its brethren. That is all I know. It is all I care to know.”

  “So what does it do?” Holiday asks. “Is it that bad?”

  “The elders are not given to us to understand,” Bald Samson says. “I know the Barrenwhite Tree is a spirit of the devouring winter and is forbidden from worship, although it is sometimes honored on the night one year becomes the next. Its signs are supposedly a cold and wandering star in the sky, the gathering of swans, certain other dark and wintry omens. As my companion says, I do not wish to know more of such powers, being no sorcerer or other learned man. I am merely a pilgrim.”

  A spirit of the devouring winter. Great.

  “Is that what’s come to Dunbarrow? Is that why everything’s gone wrong like it has?” Holiday asks me.

  “I think so,” I say.

  “If this power has truly befallen your home,” Bald Samson growls, “you would do well not to return there. That is my advice for you.”

  “That’s not an option,” I say. “We’ve got people waiting for us.”

  I don’t know if Elza really is waiting for us. Maybe she’s lost like we are, wandering somewhere in Deadside. She doesn’t know this place as well as I do, not that I’m some kind of expert. I don’t know if she’d be able to get out.

  Don’t think about that. She’s alive, and you’ll find her.

  Another light passes by in the river, and this time it’s close enough to the banks for me to get a good look as it goes by. It’s a small floating craft, about the size and shape of a fruit basket, made from dark wood. There’s something burning inside the hollow of the boat, a tiny white flame. It rushes past, borne by the current of shadows, and is lost from view behind us in the mists.

  “What are those?” Holiday asks the pilgrims. “Why is it burning like that?”

  “The Styx carries freshly kindled spirits to Liveside,” Larktongue says. “Those lights you see are the unborn.”

  “But where do they come from?” Holiday asks.

  “We do not know. But it is believed they rise from the depths of the holy lake we seek.”

  Holiday gives me a strange look.

  “Are we supposed to know this?” she asks me.

  “What do you mean?” I reply.

&n
bsp; “I mean, are we supposed to be seeing all of this stuff?” She shivers. “I feel like we’ve gone backstage.”

  I shrug. “We see what we see, Holiday. We didn’t go looking for it on purpose.”

  “Still, though. When we get back, it won’t seem the same.”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  We walk on in silence, at one point stepping over the trunk of a fallen gray tree. The strange fire bowls float past in twos and threes at the most, sometimes far out into the mist, casting only a faint smudge of white light. Bald Samson grunts and shifts the weight of the rock he carries on his back. After a time Larktongue begins to sing as we walk, a chillingly beautiful sound. His voice really is like a bird’s, and the song he sings is light and delicate, one of awakening, I think, a song you’d sing in the depths of darkness to remind yourself there will be a dawn.

  The bridge emerges out of the mist like the back of a sleeping beast. It’s not the traffic bridge that leads to my house; instead this is a stone arch that could’ve been built by giants, made from slabs of gray rock that are the size of houses. Dead trees grow from the cracks between the enormous blocks. If there was ever a road that led to this bridge, it has long vanished. We stand before it, wondering what kind of creature could need a bridge so huge.

  “Who can say?” Larktongue asks himself. “Time in these gray borderlands churns and billows with the fog. Could be that we look upon the ruins of a place yet to be built.”

  “I think we ought to cross,” I tell Holiday.

  “Are you sure?”

  “We wanted to find a crossing over the river. I think this is it. I certainly don’t think we can hold out and hope to find another one.”

  “Take that path and you’ll find yourselves walking alone,” Bald Samson says. “Our pilgrimage will continue upstream.”

  Neither Larktongue nor the Oracle contradicts him. Fair enough.

  “I suppose this is good-bye, then,” I say.

  “A great shame,” Larktongue says. “Master Manchett, Miss Simmon, we are glad to have had your company on this leg of our journey.”

  “Same here,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says Holiday, smiling widely, “it was great to meet you all.”

  “Keep a strong heart,” Bald Samson says to us. “Shoulder your burdens — do not shirk from them.”

  “Thank you,” I tell the giant. “I hope you reach the Shrouded Lake.”

  “I know we shall,” he says. “If it takes a thousand thousand years, so be it.”

  There doesn’t seem much left to say. Larktongue squeezes our hands in his cold palm, then the pilgrims turn to leave, chains rattling as they tighten around their bodies once more. I step out onto the stone bridge.

  “Child.”

  The Oracle has not moved along with the two men. She looks at me through her shroud of gray cloth, sins held tight to her breast.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Listen to me closely: tree and goat no longer love one another,” she says.

  “All right,” I say.

  “The book is the knot of knots, a web that traps minds like flies. But you may unravel it as Alexander did.”

  “Thank you for your advice.”

  Holiday hasn’t said a word.

  “I met your great-nieces,” I tell the Oracle. “Ashana and Ilana.”

  “I did not know them. Magnus sent me away to serve your father before they were born.”

  “They knew about you,” I say.

  She doesn’t reply.

  “Why do you want to help me?” I ask her. “Are you helping me?”

  The Oracle reaches up with the hand that isn’t bound to her sins and loosens her veil. The gray cloth falls to one side, resting against her cheek and neck, and I see her face.

  She could have been called beautiful once, I think. She’s pale and young, with blond hair fixed behind her head with a pin. Her features are similar to Ash’s and Ilana’s, with the same Ahlgren nose and mouth, although her face is smaller than theirs, and her cheeks are fuller. What holds me, though, is the ruin of her eyes. Someone has gouged them out, and all that’s left is a pair of wet, dark wounds. Now I see why she hides her face.

  “Why are you showing me this?”

  “I saw the truth,” she says, “or part of it. And I could bear no more.”

  Holiday swallows loudly beside me.

  “I do not see the world. I see beyond. I see beyond you.”

  “What is beyond me?” I ask her.

  “An ending,” she says.

  “A good ending?” I ask. It seems too much to hope for right now, but I have to ask.

  “The end of the one who showed the truth to me. This I hope.”

  “Thank you,” I say, without really knowing how to respond. What does she mean?

  The Oracle stares back at me with her ruined eyes. It’s difficult to meet her blind, wet gaze. I have no idea what she sees, whether it pleases her, whether anything she said to me was true. Her face betrays nothing. The Styx runs silently beside us. After a long moment she reaches for her veil and rearranges it, covering her face.

  “I hope you all find that place you’re looking for,” Holiday tells her.

  The Oracle bows her head very slightly, then turns and follows the other pilgrims. Soon she’s lost in the gray fog.

  “So she was one of your dad’s ghosts?” Holiday asks me, letting out a long breath. “That was so intense. Honestly, things just get weirder and weirder tonight.”

  “Yeah, she was part of Dad’s Host. She was supposed to see the future. I never really believed her. Now I don’t know.”

  “Do you think that’s what she told you? Your future?”

  “Just now? Maybe.”

  “We should remember what she said, then.”

  “None of it made any sense.”

  “Prophecies never do,” Holiday says. “Right? You’re supposed to work them out. I feel so bad for her. Who did that to her eyes?”

  “Yeah,” I say, feeling pretty sure that the Oracle must’ve blinded herself and deciding Holiday doesn’t need to think about that right now. “Well, let’s get across the bridge.”

  We walk. The bridge arcs high above the surface of the Styx. The fog hangs close around us, hiding the bank of the river behind us as we cross. Our footsteps echo dully on the stone. There are towers set at intervals along the bridge, fortified buildings that once had portcullises and bars across their windows, but these defenses have rusted away and collapsed, and gray ivy grows over the ruined walls of the fortifications. I’m half expecting a guardian spirit to emerge from one of the doorways as we pass by, demand some kind of toll, but nothing happens. The silence on the bridge is absolute. I don’t think anyone except us has crossed the river this way in a very long time.

  The mist thickens as we press onward, until the stones and towers are invisible, and I take Holiday’s gloved hand in mine, to make sure we don’t lose each other. We stumble forward, unable to see a thing, and I bump smack into a cold metal pole, which at first I can’t place, thinking it might be some kind of flagpole or support for a doorway. And then, groping at it with my free hand, I find a piece of plastic bolted to the pole. I look at this object, leaning so close that my nose is almost touching it, and see the words NO FOULING — MAXIMUM PENALTY £1,000. It’s a street lamp.

  “We did it,” I say. The ground beneath my feet is snow-covered cement. I can feel the wind, hear tree branches moving. “Dunbarrow.”

  “Are you sure?” Holiday asks.

  “Yeah, just look.”

  The fog thins and we can see parked cars, a snowcapped trash can, a muddy bank studded with bare trees. I was right. We’re back on the hill that leads up to Wormwood Drive. Nearly home. The enormous stone bridge is gone, and the river behind us is not the Styx but the Brackrun, the surface frozen solid and powdered with snow. I let go of Holiday’s hand.

  “We really are back,” she says.

  We head uphill. We’re so close to my house now.
The sky flares a silent green. I should have asked what the Barrenwhite Tree is supposed to do when it is worshipped, exactly. But the ghosts didn’t seem to want to talk about it, even if they did know.

  Halfway up the hill, the snow turns red. It’s soaked in blood, with scuff marks everywhere like someone has been thrashing around. I can see a cricket bat lying broken in the snow. Mark’s. He obviously hit something with it. There’s a hard lump in my throat. Did the Knights find their prey? Is this where they caught Elza and the others? I can’t see any bodies, but maybe the monsters ate them. We move faster, not speaking. I can see the trees that stand at the gates to my house now. We’re nearly there. I’ll see Elza again. . . . She’ll be waiting there for us —

  Voices. I hear voices in the fog and the clanking of armor. I pull Holiday away from the road, and she follows without a word. We push into some snow-fattened bushes and crouch there in the cold, watching the road.

  “— my fault, you say, Dumachus?”

  The Knights of the Tree emerge from the fog. I see one of them is walking strangely, unable to put any weight on his front right leg.

  “My fault that I be lamed and both of us hungry?” Titus says in the gloom.

  “If you had been swifter, we could have had all three of them,” Dumachus snarls. “Instead we have nothing. I starve, my brother in arms, and the two I chose escaped me on a cunning stair of iron. Now I join you here to find you sorely wounded and the rest of our quarry gone behind their wards. How will we catch them now?”

  We don’t make a sound. We don’t even breathe. They must be talking about Elza and the others. They got away from the Knights? Got into my house, safe behind the hazel charms? How? Titus is clearly injured on his leg, below where the armor stops.

  “She has said she will take care of them,” Titus says soothingly. “She has many thralls and other ways besides. We shall feed when she is done. She has promised us that much.”

  “And so much for her promises!” Dumachus snorts. “Her promises are thin and far as the sky! That house is warded with hazel, just as the other was. What can she do against these old charms?”

  They’re so close to us now. Will they smell us? They seem to be too busy arguing. I could almost reach out to touch Titus. I can see the wrinkles around his eyes, the snowflakes clinging to the lank gray ends of his mustache.