Seven Trees of Stone

by Leo Hunt

  I move past the doorway, following Bea into the kitchen. A silent green flash illuminates the room for a moment, jade light gleaming on the pots and pans and stove. I can see my breath indoors. I wish I had two pairs of gloves. I manage to clip Bea’s leash to her collar and open the back door, pushing twice as hard as normal because of the snow piled up in front of it. The Deadside fog boils and churns beyond our wall, the fields invisible. The apple trees in our yard are bare black sketches, their branches and twigs reminding me of the insides of a diseased lung. The snow is up to Bea’s neck in some places, and she moves through it by leaping. She eventually squats by a tree, where the snow is shallower, and starts to do her business. I stand there shivering, looking up through the dead branches into the churning sky, a lid of fog set tight over the house. I can see candlelight in my bedroom window, Elza’s shadow flickering on the wall.

  For some reason I start to think about Margaux’s hands. I look at Elza’s shadow and then back up at the gray swirling ceiling of fog overhead, and as I do, it flashes blue again, a bleached-denim blue, and we’re drowning in a sea of azure fog, and as the flash hits my eyes I remember . . .

  The swans are moving again, flying backward in a circle. Their necks are snapped but they’re still flying.

  The bird-woman is speaking again. Her mask is Power. She rests her hands on my chin.

  The bird-woman’s hands are marked with curves and lines.

  I open my mouth and she reaches inside and I feel the heat of what she planted there.

  Around us the seven oak trees turn to stone.

  . . . the stone circle. I remember what happened there, or a tiny fragment of it. I nearly drop the leash. I can feel bile rising in my throat and I gasp. I remember the Apostle, a woman wearing a golden swan mask. I remember . . .

  Light, hungry light, growing from the ground. Tree is come, feast begun. The owl-man is watching, never speaking. His mask is Wisdom.

  . . . the hands of the swan-masked Apostle on my cheeks, remember her planting something in my mouth. But the most important thing I’ve remembered is this: the Apostle’s hands were tattooed, with swirls of ink and lines cutting down the back of every finger.

  Margaux’s hands.

  Margaux Hart is an Apostle of the Barrenwhite Tree. She did this. She’s inside the house right now.

  I jerk on Bea’s leash in a frenzy, rushing back through the snow to the back door. Bea yelps because I’m pulling too hard, but I can’t stop. I drag her inside and slam the door shut. Margaux, it’s her. We let her in.

  She has her tricks. Have a little faith, brother in arms.

  Hands shaking, I unclip Bea’s leash and move forward into the kitchen. I take a knife from the knife rack, hide it in my jacket pocket. I walk as calm as I can out into the hallway. Margaux is sitting where I left her, tarot cards forgotten on the floor, tattooed hands resting on her knees, watching the flames. Nobody’s moved.

  “Are you all right?” Holiday asks me.

  “Yeah,” I say, “fine. Just letting Bea out. How’s Mark?”

  “He’s resting,” Holiday says.

  “Great,” I say.

  Margaux looks at me, eyes filled with firelight. I stare back and smile unconvincingly. Does she know I know? Why is she here? Have I got it wrong? Why would she do this?

  I turn away quickly and walk back upstairs, into the shadowy landing. There’s still a seam of candlelight around the edges of my bedroom door.

  “Elza,” I say, quietly, opening the door. “Elza, we need to do something!”

  She’s sitting on the beanbag where I left her. She doesn’t look up.

  “Margaux is an Apostle! She was one of the people in masks at the bonfire! It’s her fault! All of this!”

  Elza doesn’t move. What’s she looking at? I walk quickly across the room, heart racing, and then a wave of cold comes crashing over me.

  Elza is sitting with the Book of Eight on her lap. The pages are open, and she’s turning them, her mouth moving, but no sounds coming out. My dad’s black ring is on her left hand. The pages are blank, but she’s turning them anyway; what’s written there is for her now and not for me.

  For a moment I’m too numb to do anything. I crouch down in front of her, staring into her eyes. She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the Book. Elza, what have you done? How could you do this? How could I not have seen this coming? I shouldn’t have left you alone with the Book. What was I thinking? I shake her, shouting her name, but nothing. I can’t snap her out of this, and I don’t know how long she’ll be reading these pages. They go on forever. It could be days, weeks, a lifetime. How could she —

  No. There’s no time for this. Margaux is in the house, and who knows what she wants, what she’s capable of. I have to do something. I take the witch blade from the floor and tuck it into my jacket, alongside the kitchen knife. I’m about to race downstairs, then realize how it’ll look if I run into the living room. I have to try and be casual, act like nothing’s wrong. I need to speak to Holiday without Margaux working out what’s going on.

  I walk in, smiling, trying my best to look convincing, though there’s nothing much to smile about. I step around Margaux, feeling like I’m trying to disassemble a bomb. If she’s responsible for breaking open the gateway between Liveside and Deadside, then she’s the most powerful magician I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know how a fight between us would go, but I don’t have any reason to think it’d turn out well for me. Her long red hair seems like a jellyfish, reaching tendrils out toward me.

  I lean down to Holiday.

  “Come to the kitchen in two minutes,” I whisper. “Important.”

  I then say, much louder, “Elza’s working on something upstairs, so let’s give her a bit of time.”

  “What could she be doing?” Margaux says, almost to herself.

  “We’re trying to work out what’s up with the sky,” I say.

  Maybe she knows we’ve got the Book of Eight here. Maybe that’s what she’s after. I turn and quickly make my way to the kitchen. If I’m in there another moment, I’m going to blow it. I pace the dark tiles, head boiling. I rest my forehead against the cold door of the refrigerator.

  “Luke?” Holiday says behind me. I turn.

  “Come closer,” I whisper.

  “What’s wrong?” Holiday asks.

  I press the kitchen knife into her hand. “You’ve still got the wyrdstone, right?” I ask. She looks at the knife in blank confusion.

  “What are you doing? Is Elza all right? What’s happening?”

  “Holiday! Do you have it?”

  “Yes, I’ve still got the stone! It’s around my neck now. Why?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I say, then, “Margaux is — I think she’s the one behind all of this.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I should have known. She doesn’t fit. How could she have ended up in Dunbarrow unless she was involved? Why hasn’t she gone crazy like all the others? Trust me, Holiday, she was the one who started whatever’s happening here.”

  Holiday’s hand tightens around the hilt of the knife.

  “So what can we do?” she whispers.

  “We’ll have to fight her,” I say. “I’m telling you first because you have the wyrdstone. Kirk has his sword, but I don’t know how much use that’ll be. And Mark and Alice don’t seem like they can help us at all.”

  “What are we going to do? You want me to stab her?” Holiday asks, wide-eyed. “I don’t . . . I don’t know if I can do that, Luke. I mean, we aren’t even sure it’s her who’s behind this!”

  “Look, let me worry about that. I’ve fought people before.” I remember Ash on the shores of the Shrouded Lake, plunging the witch blade into her chest, and wince. “But we have to do something, OK? We need to find out why Margaux came here —”

  There’s movement behind us. I look over Holiday’s shoulder and see a girl’s shape in the doorway. She comes closer, into the glow of the candle, and I see short red hai
r, a sour expression. Alice Waltham is on her feet again.

  “Alice,” I say, “how are you feeling?”

  “We think Margaux is dangerous,” Holiday whispers.

  Alice doesn’t say anything. She stares at both of us, eyes shiny like coins, her hands clasping and tensing by her waist. She seems to be shivering.

  “Alice,” I begin, “are you — What’s wrong —”

  “Oh my god!” Holidays shrieks.

  Alice Waltham’s face splits open like a wet paper mask, her skin running and boiling, changing into something else. I’m stepping backward, fumbling in my jacket for the witch blade. It’s not Alice. The disguise melts away completely, revealing something like an ape, a lanky predatory beast with colorless matted fur and a ravenous mouth where its face should be. The thing shrieks, an inhuman noise, lashing at me with long sharp talons. I’ve seen shape-changers like this before, in the deep forests of Asphodel. This thing has been sitting at the back of my living room, waiting for us to let our guard down. It must’ve come in with Margaux as backup, taking the form of someone we’ve lost —

  Holiday screams as the spirit takes hold of her, slamming her against the wall, long fingers clamped around her neck. The thing is strong; it is holding her with one hand, and the other strikes at my face, driving me back. I’ve gotten hold of the witch blade, and I lunge at the monster but with no effect. It knocks my arm and the witch blade tumbles out of my grasp, falling to the tiles with a clatter. Holiday is rasping and choking, stabbing the creature’s chest with the steel kitchen knife I gave her, but the spirit shows no pain despite its wounds and holds her regardless. I scrabble around in the darkness, trying to find my weapon again.

  “Holiday!” I shout. “The wyrdstone! That knife won’t be enough! Use the stone!”

  I can hear Bea barking and Kirk yelling in the other room, but he doesn’t come through to help us. I don’t know what to do. Holiday’s candle has gone out, and we’re fighting in the dark, the scene only illuminated by the strange milky light that comes from the fog itself.

  My fingers close over the hilt of the witch blade.

  Holiday has managed to grab the wyrdstone, and she thrusts it into the monster’s neck. The spirit screams when the stone touches it, and there’s a flare of white light, a tiny supernova. The faceless creature dissolves like smoke caught in a gale, flesh unraveling into gray strands of fog that race away from the point of impact.

  “Luke!” Holiday yells. “Luke!”

  “I’m here!” I shout.

  The screaming intensifies. The spirit must be strong; its body is re-forming in the middle of the kitchen. The wyrdstone alone wasn’t enough to dispel it.

  “Is that Alice?” Holiday asks me. “Is that her? Did she —”

  “No! It’s something else!”

  The monster is reknitting its flesh with awful speed. Already I can see its long hairy arms congealing out of the mist. Enough of this. I lunge forward, driving the witch blade into the spirit’s body. The creature’s hands dig into my back, trying to find purchase, but I twist the knife, and eventually I must hit something vital, some deep terrible heart, because the ghoulish thing stops struggling, and there’s a pulse of pure white light that fills the room. The clawed hands fall away from my body. The spirit slumps down onto the kitchen tiles, fading into a haze of gray mist.

  “We’re OK!” I say to Holiday. “It’s dead!”

  “What about Mark? Kirk?”

  I don’t hesitate, rushing out of the room with my knife clasped in my right hand, not sure what we’re going to find in the living room. The room’s still firelit, but the armchair Holiday was sitting in is overturned, and Kirk stands in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. His eyes are wild. Mark is somehow still asleep. Bea has her hackles raised, snarling at something on the floor.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I killed her,” Kirk says, like he doesn’t quite believe it. “She went for me. Then the dog tripped her.”

  I step around Mark’s sofa, take a look at the floor behind it. Margaux is lying there, eyes closed. Her tattooed hands are grasping her stomach, which is slick with red human blood, as is the blade of Kirk’s sword. It looks like he keeps it sharp enough, even if he did buy it online.

  “She went for you?”

  “Yeah,” he says, “with that.” Kirk points with the tip of his sword at a curved black dagger, in many ways the sibling of the white knife I’m holding, although Margaux’s weapon is longer, with a golden handle. “She tripped on your dog. Then I stabbed her and she fell down.”

  “Good girl,” I say to Bea.

  “Oh, my god,” Holiday says.

  Carefully, I bend down and pick up the curved black knife. It’s definitely another witch blade, made from a sharpened bone that’s been turned black by methods thankfully unknown to me. I pass it to Holiday.

  “Use that instead of the kitchen knife,” I say. “It’s probably magic.”

  “You think she’s dead?” Kirk asks.

  “Why, do you think she isn’t?”

  “Dunno what I think anymore,” he says, shaking his head.

  Margaux makes a gurgling noise and I jump back. Kirk raises his sword. Holiday moves around behind us, holding the black dagger and the wyrdstone.

  Margaux opens her eyes and gasps. The sound is inhuman, a wet gurgling wail. She sits up. Bea sets up a storm of barking again.

  “What the . . .” Kirk begins.

  I keep my knife held close to my body, ready to attack if I need to. Margaux laughs hoarsely. She gets to her feet. Her eyes have rolled up into her head, exposing only the whites.

  “This flesh will be restored,” she says. “I am more than you know.”

  “What are you?” I ask Margaux’s dead body. This is a different voice, nothing like the voice of Darren’s sister as I know her. This is the voice I heard from beneath the swan mask.

  “I am the Barrenwhite Tree,” Margaux’s head says. “I speak through my Apostle.”

  Margaux’s blank eyes flicker between us.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “I want to be loved.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “All love me. All dance. You do not.”

  “No,” I say, “we don’t love you. None of us do.”

  “This night will live eternal, just as I do,” the thing says. “You are lost.”

  “We’re going to beat you,” I say. “We’ve got the Book of Eight.”

  “You may try,” the thing tells me scornfully. Before I can say another word, Margaux screams and dives at me, teeth ready to tear into my throat. Holiday holds up the wyrdstone and it flares again with white light, and the possessed woman shrieks in pain and anger. Margaux comes close enough for me to feel her long hair flap against my face, and then whirls around and heads for the window, bursts through the glass, and vanishes into the snow and fog.

  “What the hell?” Kirk’s asking me. “What the hell?”

  “We just spoke to the Barrenwhite Tree,” I say.

  “That means, like, less than nothing to me, man. What are you talking about?”

  “The Tree is the spirit that’s causing this, I think,” I tell him, moving over to the window. I look out, but I can’t see any sign of the red-haired woman.

  “Why did they come here?” Holiday asks.

  “To get the Book maybe,” I say. “Perhaps just to kill us. Make sure we didn’t stop whatever’s going on here tonight.”

  “Oh my god,” Holiday says. “Oh my god . . .”

  Kirk puts an arm around her, but she shrugs it off. The room is getting colder, the freezing air leaking in through the smashed glass.

  I move out into the hallway, holding the witch blade, and push the front door open. There’s churned-up snow and blood outside the living room window and footprints leading to the front gate. I follow them, wary, keeping my eye on the darkness underneath the trees by our gate, and then there’s a silent green flash in the sky and I
stop dead.

  The house is surrounded. There are people outside in the road, pressing against the barriers, staring at me with empty eyes. People from Dunbarrow, spirits, worshippers of the Tree. They seem grayer than before, losing definition in their faces and bodies, as though they’re made of the mist around them. I can’t tell the difference between the living and the dead anymore.

  Jack, Andy, and Ryan are standing at my gate, watching me with glowing eyes.

  “Just let us in, yeah, Luke?” Andy calls. I see that he has a thin root growing from the side of his face, like someone planted a seed in his head.

  “Come on, mate.”

  “It’s not so bad out here,” Ryan calls. The roots, slim as hairs, are sprouting from his nose and his fingers.

  The crowd begins to chant as they see me.

  “Seven trees of living stone . . .”

  I don’t say a word to any of them. I check the perimeter, shivering in the cold, witch blade held in my good hand.

  “The eighth is cast of ice and bone . . .”

  No breaks, and they clearly can’t cross. We’re safe in here, at least. But I don’t know how we’ll ever get out.

  When I come back inside, stamping snow from my boots in the hallway, I find Holiday and Kirk sitting by the fire. Mark is staring up at me blearily from the sofa.

  “Got cold in here,” he says, slurring.

  “Yeah, mate,” I say.

  “Did I miss something?” he mumbles.

  “Nah,” I say. “Nothing exciting. Get some rest, yeah?”

  Kirk and Holiday don’t freak out as much as I expected when I tell them we’re surrounded. I suppose we already felt under siege in here anyway. Kirk helps me tape some cardboard over the hole in the window, which helps a bit with the draft, but not much. Our only room with a fireplace has been compromised. We stoke the fire as much as we can. Mark has fallen back asleep, breathing heavily, his eyes moving under bruise-dark eyelids. His face is still shiny with sweat. It doesn’t look good.