by Leo Hunt
Elza nods.
“I mean, I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t just ditched you. We were eleven. We weren’t grown-ups. We’re not even grown-ups now. It was hard to talk about stuff like that.”
“No,” Elza says, “that’s fair. We are different people. I guess if I had more friends, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much.” She reaches out with a gloved hand, knocks a lump of snow from a car’s side mirror as we pass by. “I don’t know if we’ll make it to the Barrenwhite Tree. I certainly don’t know if we’ll make it back. It doesn’t seem likely. This seemed like my last chance to ask you about any of it.”
“It’s OK,” Holiday says. “For what it’s worth, I think Alice and the others were really horrible to you. I never wanted to — It’s hard, you know. To tell people not to be like that. I wasn’t brave enough.”
“Yeah, well,” Elza says, “Alice is . . .”
“She might find her way back,” I say.
“She’s not a bad person,” Holiday says. “She’s got problems at home and stuff. Like, she’s really unhappy.”
I think Alice has problems period if she’s lost out there in Deadside, but I decide not to say that. It’s not as if Holiday doesn’t know. We’re at the gates to Dunbarrow High, I realize. They’re locked, with a gleaming padlock and chain. This is more or less the first place I spoke to Elza, that day when she was smoking by these gates. Bea slips underneath, her snout cutting through the snow like a plow. She watches us through the bars, ears cocked, as if asking, Well?
“Come on,” I say, and we climb the school gates again, more awkwardly in my case, as Kirk’s sword rattles and bangs against the cold bars. Holiday nearly falls off the top, but steadies herself and drops down next to me. The trees seem thicker, like a forest. Fog moves between their trunks in slow waves.
Up past the high school, through the staff parking lot, into the far yard where I used to play soccer before class with Mark and Kirk. Three quick flashes in the sky illuminate the fog, the buildings, green blue green, and I see the school is coated with gray ivy, the windows broken, the front yard knee high in colorless grass. Fresh snow spirals in the air, and frost gleams on brickwork. The place is derelict, a hollow shell of a school. Everything is falling apart. The longer this lasts, the longer Dunbarrow is sunk into the swirling chaos of Deadside. Like a sand castle collapsing at high tide, the harder it’ll be to put everything back like it was. We’ve broken the bones of the world.
We need the third stone from Margaux’s mouth. We find her, take it from her, and shut the gateway. This can still be mended. That’s what I tell myself.
The playing fields are a frozen waste, unkempt and tangled, being reclaimed by forest. It’s barely recognizable as the same place me and Elza ran across earlier tonight. Bea sniffs the air and growls. Her ears go back against her head.
“Something’s coming,” I tell Elza and Holiday. I expected this sooner or later. Elza unsheathes her witch blade. I draw out Kirk’s sword, feeling heat in my hand where the sigil rests, the Book of Eight held in my coat’s breast pocket, a pressure against my heart. Holiday has the wyrdstone held in her right hand. We’re as ready as we could be.
Heavy footsteps. The clank of armor plating. Two bulky shapes emerge from the fog, walking with slow purpose. The Knights of the Tree.
“And what is this that we find?” Titus calls to Dumachus. He halts, knocking at the frozen earth with one hoof. It looks like the Tree did heal his wounds, because his lame leg seems perfectly functional. “Did I not say to you that we shall eat tonight?”
“They be armed,” Dumachus says doubtfully. “The blade that bit us before and more besides. The sorcerer bears his sigil now.”
“They do hold to the old ways, this be true,” Titus agrees. “But do we not hold terrible form, Dumachus? Is our shape not powerful? Are we not true Knights, armor forged in the fires of Tartarus?”
“You don’t even have thumbs,” I tell them.
“What are you saying?” Holiday hisses to me. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s spirit language,” I say. “I’m insulting them.”
“Oh my god! Guys and your macho bullshit! Just tell them to go away!”
“We have business with your master,” I tell the spirits, staring them down. “Let us through.”
“You have no business with our lady,” Titus hisses. “Do not presume to give us instructions, sorcerer. We have devoured far greater souls than yours. You have found your magic ring, I see? I have the measure of the strength there. It is not enough.”
While Titus is speaking, Dumachus is moving slowly around to our right, eyes locked on my sword. He’s trying to get behind us. I know Bea’s noticed, at least. I hope Elza has as well.
“If you don’t let us through, I’ll destroy you both,” I say. “This is your last chance.”
“We cannot allow you to reach the gateway,” Titus says.
I release the golden light from my sigil, and the Knights howl, but they don’t shrink back from it like the crowd of worshippers around my house did. Instead they shut their eyes and trample toward us, snapping their jaws. Without eyesight their aim is bad, and we stumble backward, Bea barking crazily, trying to keep out of their reach.
“Luke!” Elza screams. “What can we do?”
“It’s not enough! I need more power!” I shout. My sigil is burning as bright as I can make it, but it doesn’t stop the Knights. Dumachus is very close to me now, rearing up on his hind legs, striking at the air wildly.
“You think to blind us with your tricks?” he snarls.
I feel Holiday grab my arm. Fresh heat surges through my sigil.
“I know you can do it!” she shouts.
Dumachus, hearing her voice, lunges at us.
I strike back with the full strength of my will, directing my anger and hatred at the creature, drawing deeply from Holiday’s spirit. Golden fire erupts from the sigil ring, a surge of heat that engulfs Dumachus, and the knight bellows in terror, not expecting this power. Flames sear into his face, into his muscular shoulders and legs, the thick plates of armor no protection against my attack. The Knight falls back, stumbling in the snow, screaming with pain. I unleash another golden lash of heat so bright, I can’t stand to look at it, and when the light has faded, Dumachus is nothing but a horse-shaped cloud of mist and ash, drifting to the ground. I burst into laughter, raising the glowing ring above my head. Titus rears and wails.
“Oh! You have destroyed him! Noble Dumachus! Oh! Oh!”
“Yeah, tell me again how you have the measure of our strength!” I scream at him.
“My friend! My love! No!” The monster is crying now, pounding the earth with his hooves.
Elza is shouting something that I can’t hear. The ringing in my ears is too loud. I don’t care. I channel Holiday’s spirit through my sigil again, and a blast of golden flame courses over Titus’s body. These Knights are nothing; they’re weak —
The spirit screams and thrashes as the fire consumes him. I gather my will for the killing blow.
“Luke!” Elza shrieks. “Stop!”
She grabs my arm, tipping me off balance. I lose my concentration. The cloud of fire around my sigil evaporates.
“Holiday,” she’s saying. “Holiday!”
I look behind us to see Holiday collapsed in the snow, eyes open, not moving. I didn’t notice. I hadn’t even noticed when she let go of my hand.
“What —”
“You took too much from her — Luke! No!”
Elza screams and a shock of pain runs through my body as I fly into the air. I land with a crunch on the earth, searing pain running through my torso, my right leg. I think it’s broken. I dropped the sword when the Knight hit me. I try to use my sigil again, but the power I felt a moment ago isn’t there anymore. I hurt too much. I can’t concentrate. The power’s far out of reach, faded away.
What did I do to Holiday?
Titus looms over me. The Knight’s awful colorless eyes run with t
ears.
“My oldest friend,” he says in a whisper. “Dumachus was worth ten of you.”
“Told you to let us pass . . .” I say.
Titus bends down and sinks his jaws into my left leg, the one that isn’t broken. I scream. This is the worst pain that I’ve ever felt, worse than anything that’s ever happened to me. Being stabbed hurt less than this. The Knight lifts my entire body into the air, and I’m upside down, suspended by my leg from his jaws, my hair brushing the cold crust of snow over the playing fields. Titus shakes me, a terrier with a rat, and then flings me into the air, and I’m tumbling over and over as the world flashes green and gray and green again, a jade wall of fog above me and the ground —
I hit the earth and shriek. Everything hurts. My body is a searing map of pain. I have pain highways running down my back, pain cities buzzing in my hand and face and legs and my stomach; there’s blood running down my face —
Titus comes stalking out of the fog again. I can barely move, I’m trying to get up, and I can’t move, and all I can think about is getting away, it’s all going to end here . . .
The Knight’s gray face is dark with my blood.
“I will feast upon you slowly,” he pronounces. “I shall start at the feet and work up.”
Titus bares his teeth. I can see the dents and scratches on his armor, the lank hairs of his mustache. He has no smell, I realize, feeling absurd to be thinking about that right now. None of the spirits do.
“Better you had died when our master decreed. Better you had submitted then.”
He looms over me, blood drooling from his jaws.
“Better — AAAH!”
I hear Bea snarling and Titus jerks away from me, legs flailing.
“Damn beast! Begone!”
I raise my head. Bea has torn into the Knight’s back leg, her teeth finding purchase in unarmored flesh, biting deep into the thigh. He tries to stamp on her but she dances aside, snarling and snapping at the monster. Pain pulses through my broken body. Bea’s brave, but it’s only a matter of time before he catches her. She’s just a mouthful to Titus. A single snap of his jaws. She’ll die like Ham did, and not even to save me. I’m already done for.
Titus tries to bite Bea, but she’s just out of reach. He rears up for another strike, legs flailing in the air, roaring unintelligibly, and that’s when Elza appears.
She darts out of the fog, moving fast and light as a panther, the witch blade a white fang in her hands, and she strikes Titus’s flank with all her strength, sliding the blade into a chink in his armor. He roars and turns to face her, and without hesitation Elza plunges the witch blade into his exposed face, right between the eyes.
There’s a blinding flash of white light, and Titus falls to the ground, wailing. He thrashes and churns, his outlines already fading, his gray body becoming one with the gray Deadside fog as I watch. The Knight’s armor falls into a disorderly heap, snow already starting to cover it.
Elza rushes over to me. Her hair is an explosion, her breath ragged.
“Luke,” she says. “Luke . . .”
“Hey,” I say. Even speaking a single word hurts my chest.
“Can you —”
“Can’t move,” I whisper. “Got me good.”
Bea licks my face, a welcome warm tongue. I try to smile.
“Luke,” she says, “I’m sorry. It’s my fault —”
“No.”
“I distracted you! I’m sorry!”
“Holiday. Shouldn’t have . . . Is she alive?”
“Luke, you’re dying!”
“Is Holiday alive?”
“I don’t know! Everything’s gone — what am I meant to do? You’re all broken up. I . . . What can we do?”
Breathing feels like a knife in my ribs. I grimace.
“You have to shut the gateway, Elza. You and Bea.”
“I can’t leave you here!”
“I’m not gone yet,” I say. “If you do it in enough time, you might be able to get an ambulance up here for us. Get things back to normal —”
“You can’t see yourself,” Elza says. Tears glitter in her eyes. “No, don’t try and look. Just lie still, OK? You look like . . . oh, Luke. It’s like you were in a car crash. It’s bad. You’re not going to last that long.”
“I’ll be a ghost,” I say. “Give me . . . few minutes. I’ll come with you again.”
“No,” she says.
“What else is there?”
“Nothing,” Elza says. “I just . . . I don’t know. I don’t want to put Dunbarrow back together if you won’t be there with me.”
“I could be there. I’ll stay with you.”
“And you’ll still be seventeen when I’m seventy.”
“Look,” I say, my breath searing my chest like steam as I speak. I try to breathe as shallow as possible and not to grimace so Elza won’t see how much I’m hurting. “What else can we do?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’s Holiday?”
“She’s over there,” Elza says, gesturing off into the fog.
“Move her indoors. Don’t leave her in the snow.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
Bea whines.
Snow is drifting down toward my eyes. I want to close them. The sky flares emerald.
“Bring her over here at least,” I say. “Can’t leave her alone.”
“What if you —”
“I’ll hold on while you’re gone,” I tell her.
“All right,” Elza says. “I don’t see what good it’ll do, but all right.”
She gets up and runs off into the fog. Bea stays beside me. I breathe in and then out. The agony orchestra is playing a symphony inside me. The full repertoire: the molten-hot pain of broken bones, the cold pain of my skin against the snow, the dull pain of defeat. I didn’t think I’d die right here, on the school playing fields. I told Elza I’d stay with her, but will I even remember her? Not all ghosts remember their lives. I hope I will, but what if I don’t?
Someone is coming through the fog. I can hear light footsteps, the crunch as snow compacts under shoes. Bea pricks up her ears and growls. What now? Did something get to Elza and Holiday? Is it Margaux? Something worse?
The mist flares sapphire blue along with the sky. I see a tall shape approaching us, a man walking with a confident, carefree stride.
Is that . . . ?
Him.
I should have known.
The figure becomes clearer, emerging from the fog, a tall, honey-tanned man with a neat white beard and white hair that’s slicked back from his forehead. He’s wearing a wolf-gray suit, an open-collared shirt that’s midnight blue. Shiny black shoes and a snakeskin belt with a golden buckle. Eyes the color of summer skies, and a warm, welcoming smile.
“I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time,” Mr. Berkley says cheerfully.
A flame emerges newborn from his line-less palm, like the yolk from a cracked egg, dropping onto the ground beside me and Bea, where it becomes a small bonfire, spreading warmth over my tired, broken body. Bea growls louder and yelps as Berkley moves close to me.
“And who is this?” Berkley asks.
“Beatrice. Bea. Mum got her this summer,” I say.
“Charmed to meet you, Beatrice,” he says with a honeyed tone. He reaches a long finger out to her snout, and she sniffs his hand and her fear seems to fade away. She grumbles contentedly and settles down beside my head, like a living pillow. Berkley’s charm won her over already. We’re indoors now, I realize, inside a tent that seems to be made from animal skins and long wooden poles, the kind of tent you can imagine the first people living in. I’m lying on a bed of dried grass, with bare earth underneath that. The snow is gone.
“Where is this?” I whisper.
“We haven’t moved. I merely thought you could do with some shelter from this awful weather. This was the first shape that came to mind. Horses’ hide for walls. I thought you might appreciate that detail.”
“I know you’ve come because of my debt —”
“Let’s not worry about all that right now,” Berkley says, waving his hand. “How are you feeling, Luke? How is life treating you?”
I try to laugh and can’t.
“Bad,” I say.
“I have seen you in better days, it pains me to admit.”
The shadow Berkley casts on the wall of the tent is not the shape of a man. His teeth gleam in the firelight.
“Everything’s —” I cough. “Everything hurts. It’s all gone wrong.”
“I know,” he says soothingly. “Bodies. Sometimes I wonder what they were thinking when they housed you all inside these crude sheaths of flesh — anyway, no matter. What’s done is done, whatever some might wish for.”
“Dunbarrow,” I say. “It’s all gone crazy. We were trying to fix it.”
“Yes,” Mr. Berkley says. He sits down opposite me, crossing his legs. “I know.”
“Did you . . . ?”
“I can assure you, Luke, nothing that has happened to your home is any fault of mine. I take no pleasure in making the living into thralls by force, nor do I have much interest in breaking open gateways between our realms. I walk where I will; this has always been true.”
“The Barrenwhite Tree.”
“Yes,” Berkley says, grinning. “You really are very clever, Luke. Have I said that before? Terribly impressive. Setting off to beat back one of the great spirits from the Beginning armed with a sigil and a small dog!”
He chuckles.
“Look . . .”
“I do not mock you, Luke Manchett. It is impressive. If you knew how many would tremble at the mere mention of that name, how many would bow rather than fight. . . . At every turn you prove my initial impression of you correct.”
“What was that?” I ask. Pain bites into my sides as I breathe.
“That you are remarkable,” he says.
“This really hurts,” I say. “My body hurts.”
“Yes, well,” Berkley says. “It’ll have to hurt for a little while longer, I’m afraid. Let the pain sharpen your wits, like a bracing draft of flame. You have choices to make.”
There’s no pity in those blue eyes at all.
