Seven Trees of Stone

by Leo Hunt

  No time seems to have passed. It’s so weird. We spent days in here, trapped in Dunbarrow, and in the outside world nobody noticed we were gone.

  “What do you mean you’re at Stonehenge?” Holiday gasps. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, Luke’s just with me now,” Elza says. “We’re up at his mum’s boyfriend’s house, remember? Yeah, I didn’t think there’d be reception there either —”

  “Well, OK,” Holiday says, “you’re right, if you can see a sign saying Stonehenge, it probably is Stonehenge. You don’t have to be so sarcastic with me. I’ve been really worried about you!”

  I melt through the wall of the tent. My body is in a bad way. Eyes open, staring at the ceiling. My legs are broken, blood soaking my jacket. There are big, awful teeth marks on my shoulder, my forearm. I’m not sure if I’m breathing.

  I bend down beside myself. I know I can fix this. I don’t need a sigil to do magic, don’t need Berkley’s book either. I can read the language of the world, can see the letters the flames form as they flicker over the coals. A chapter of a book without end, being written before my eyes. I catch a flame in the palm of my hand and plunge it into my body’s chest, letting the warmth spread, willing bones to knit and blood to flow. My body’s eyes flicker, opening and closing rapidly. I place the flame inside my still heart and will it to beat. There’s a gasp, and then a breath. I withdraw my hand and fall back into myself.

  Holiday’s still on the phone outside. I walk through the snow, my breath making clouds in the dark air, footsteps crunching in the snow, and grab Elza around the waist, kissing her neck. She laughs.

  “You’re OK?” she says. “It worked?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. No need to mention I brought myself back to life. “We need to get back to Mum and Darren.”

  “Where do you think they are?”

  “Hopefully they’re still at Darren’s place. They’ll have been outside, away from all of this. We need to get back there and check for them there first.”

  “How are we going to get back there? It’s miles away.”

  “I can move us there.”

  “How?”

  “I just can. I understand how things fit together. If we want to go there, we can go there.”

  Elza looks at me hard.

  “What really happened to you?” she whispers. “When you closed the gateway, I’ve never seen anything like that. Your body was torn to shreds and now it’s fine. How can you do things like this?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think I went . . . wherever magic comes from. I don’t have to think about it anymore. I can change the world if I want to.”

  Holiday hangs up the phone. “Alice ended up at Stonehenge,” she says. “You know, that big stone circle on Salisbury Plain? She said something took her out of the gray forest she was lost in and pushed her through the stones.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “sorry I put her so far away. It was really hard to aim.”

  “You did that, too?” Elza asks.

  “Like I said. It’s hard to explain. Listen,” I say to Holiday, “we need to get back to my mum. I don’t know what happened to her. Can you find some way of getting word to Mark and Kirk? They’ll need an ambulance. Maybe don’t call it to the actual house, though? People would ask questions.”

  “Yeah,” Holiday says, “of course.”

  “We have to go,” Elza says. “But, like, maybe I’ll see you later?”

  “I’d like that,” Holiday says. “Sure. Give me a call.”

  “All right. We’ll do coffee or something.”

  They hug, and then we’re walking again, back up through the snowy bank to the forest, to the standing stones. Holiday watches us go. Bea runs beside us, pushing her way through brambles.

  “This really is a night of magic,” I say.

  “What do you mean?” Elza asks.

  “You just made a friend!”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “I’m serious,” I say. “That’s cool.”

  “We were always friends,” Elza says. “We just forgot that for a while.”

  The woods grow thicker, steeper. We scramble up the track, snow dampening the cuffs of my jeans, and cross into the ring of oak trees, coming again to the three standing stones, the largest a blade of dark rock stuck down into the snow. Margaux is leaning against it, red hair tumbling over her shoulders, wrapped in her dark gray robe. She looks at us blearily as we approach.

  “This is a dream, isn’t it?” she asks me.

  “Of course,” I say.

  “Do you know who we are?” Elza asks Margaux. Bea runs up and sniffs at her.

  “I’m supposed to be on the beach,” she says.

  “Luke,” Elza says, “what are we going to do with her?”

  “We’re going to find Darren and Mum,” I say.

  “How? We haven’t seen them since she . . . since the Tree took hold of us. How do we know where they are?”

  “I can get us there,” I say. “Believe me. Just hold on.”

  “I was looking at the eclipse,” Margaux says, as if nobody had interrupted her. “And I heard a voice saying it loved me and asking if I loved it, too. And now I’m here.”

  “That’s all right,” I say. “This is going to be fine. It’s just a dream.”

  “It’s so cold —”

  “Take my hand?” I ask Margaux, in a kind but insistent tone. I hold out my right hand to her, and she tentatively takes hold of me, her skin clammy and warm despite the bitter chill of the night. I lead them into the middle of the three standing stones.

  “How are we going to get back?” Elza asks.

  “Just keep hold of me. And grab Bea, too.”

  Elza does as I say, slipping her free hand underneath Bea’s collar. I close my eyes and turn my mind inward, trying to see the pattern again, to read the language written below the world’s skin. There are veins of power in the earth, and where they converge, they make passing places. I can feel them pulsing under our feet, shimmering like the trails the stars leave as they travel. Mum and Darren. Let us get back to them. I don’t want to be here. I want us to be there. Deliver us.

  Elza lets out a sharp cry, and her hand tightens around mine. There’s a ringing noise and a rushing sound, like a storm wind blowing inside my head, but I keep my eyes closed, focusing on Mum’s smiling face. We’re coming back to her. The ground under my feet shifts and shudders, bucking like an animal’s back.

  The earth seems to sigh, and then it quiets. I open my eyes.

  We’re still standing in a forest at nighttime, but there isn’t any snow underfoot. There’s firelight between the trees, and I can see the side of a stone cottage covered in ivy. Darren’s place. I let go of Margaux’s hand.

  “We’re safe,” I say. “It’s OK.”

  “Luke,” Elza says, “how is this possible? What did you do?”

  “Mr. Berkley, when he wanted something to happen, it would happen. You don’t need his Book, not if you can already speak the language it was teaching you. You don’t need a sigil. I just understand it now.”

  “That’s a little scary, Luke.”

  “Yeah. I suppose it is. I think the things he gave me, the rings and the Book, they open the path, but only a little way. The rest you have to find yourself.”

  I’m not frightened, exactly. Just surprised at how easy this was. I wanted us to travel here and we did. Could I have done this all along? Can everyone do this? Maybe as we’re born we still know how, still remember the language the stars spoke as we rose from the depths of the Lake, and the moment we take our first breath we forget. Maybe that’s the power necromancers really use; the strength of the first magic that’s inside every spirit, whether they remember it or not.

  “Luke?” I hear Mum’s voice, away in the trees. I let go of Elza’s hand.

  “Here!” I shout. “Over here!”

  Elza lets go of Bea. The dog rushes off through the forest, barking delightedly. I follow her.

  Mum is
standing by the bonfire, wrapped in her poncho, staring at us with confusion. I realize suddenly that me and Elza are both wearing different clothes than we had on when we vanished, but hopefully nobody will think to ask about this.

  “Luke, where on earth have you been?” Mum asks. “I’ve been worried sick!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve been looking for you for an hour! Where did you go?”

  “Where did you go? Last I saw you, you were walking away from me!”

  Mum looks at me for a moment, then starts crying again.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  After everything that’s happened, I don’t know why I’m arguing with her. What’s wrong with me?

  “No,” I say. “I’m sorry, Mum. We saw Bea in the forest. We had to go get her.”

  “You saw —” Mum looks at Bea and her tears dry up. “What is she doing out here? She was locked up in our house! How did she come all the way up here?”

  “I dunno. She must’ve gotten out.”

  “She was locked in! I did it myself!”

  “It’s a mystery.”

  Darren comes around the side of the house, holding a flashlight.

  “There he is!” he says. “Margaux with you?”

  “I’m here!” she says. “Darren!”

  “All right, Sis?”

  “Where are we?” she asks him. “I thought we were on the beach!”

  “Sis, did you take something and not tell me?”

  Margaux looks at us with wide eyes. “Who are these people? Why are we here? That boy told me this was a dream, but I think he was lying —”

  Darren wraps a comforting arm around her. “How about you come lie down inside for a bit? Maybe chill out a little?”

  Mum looks at me hard. “Is everything really all right, Luke?”

  “Fine,” I say. “It’s OK. We just saw Bea in the woods. She kept running off. Darren said he’d gone to get you and talk with you. We didn’t realize how long we’d been gone out there.”

  “We’re very sorry, Persephone,” Elza says. “I don’t know what we were thinking.”

  Mum’s face softens a little. “That’s all right, Elza,” she says. “I’m glad you got hold of Beatrice. How she escaped and got up here . . .”

  “Dogs have very good homing instincts,” Elza says.

  “This isn’t her home,” I say. Elza shoots me a stop undermining our excuses look.

  “Well,” Mum says, scooping Bea up into her arms, “I’m glad you’re all safe, at least. But we all missed midnight, Luke! We’ve missed New Year’s!”

  “Well, we’re here now,” I say. Darren’s taken Margaux indoors, and it’s just me and Mum and Elza out by the bonfire. “Happy New Year.”

  “Do you want a drink of something, love?” Mum asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Elza closes her eyes, breathes in deeply.

  “I’d like a very large drink, please,” she says.

  Mum brings out a bottle of champagne and pours it into some tea mugs. “We forgot the glasses,” she explains, holding a mug out. “I hope this is all right.”

  I take a sip. It fizzes on my tongue. What’ll happen tomorrow, I don’t know. Will anyone in Dunbarrow remember what happened? How will they explain the blizzard that covered one town in the northeast at the exact moment the new year arrived? What’s Mum going to say when she finds our window broken and the living room covered in blood? I have no idea. But somehow, after everything else we’ve just been through, they seem like manageable problems. The gateway is closed, and Deadside has faded away. Berkley’s gone, finished, crushed in my hand until there was nothing left. The Barrenwhite Tree is banished, back to whatever void it haunts, outside the world. I’m still here, and so are the people I care about.

  Elza slips her arm around my waist. She balances up on tiptoes and kisses me, and her lips fizz with champagne. The kiss tastes of victory. Stars burn in the blackness overhead, constellations, galaxies, secret alphabets.

  I wake up on Darren’s floor, winter sunlight falling in a razor-thin line through a gap in the curtains. Morning, January first. Bea grumbles in her sleep beside me. I sit up. Elza’s on the sofa, wrapped in a sleeping bag.

  After what feels like three days’ worth of fog and darkness, I’m desperate to see the sun. I get up as quietly as I can and head around the side of the cottage, back to the bonfire, and find Darren and Mum sitting out there, wrapped up warm against the winter cold.

  “Sleep all right?” Darren asks me as I approach.

  “Yeah,” I say. “My neck’s a bit stiff.”

  He prods at the ashes with a stick. There’s more heat in the remains of the fire than I first thought; I can see red embers among the white ash.

  “Well,” Darren says, “I’ll go and see about the house.”

  He gets up, brushing his hands off, and walks away around the side of his cottage. I sit down next to Mum.

  “He’s worried about his sister,” she says. “She was awfully strange last night. Did she say anything to you and Elza? That she might’ve . . . taken anything?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, I think he’s going to drive her over to Brackford today.”

  “Are you OK?” I ask her.

  “A bit headachy,” she says.

  “Not like —”

  “No.” She smiles thinly. “Not like they used to be. Don’t worry. No fireflies or flashes. I just drank too much.”

  “I’m really sorry about last night,” I say.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she replies. “I got too worked up, love. I’m sorry.”

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did. About Dad.”

  “It’s OK, Luke. If you feel angry with him —”

  “I do,” I say. Then I remember him slashing the necks of the deer, letting me and Elza escape. I remember cutting into his throat with the sword, remember his warped body dissolving into fog. “But he did love us.”

  “He was a difficult person,” Mum says. “I do wish you’d known him better. I really thought there’d be time when you were older. I know it might make you upset to see me with someone else,” she continues. “But I have to have my own life.”

  “Darren’s all right,” I say. “We just have to get used to each other.”

  The last thing that happens is this: I’m sitting with Sunday-morning hair, wearing inside-out pajamas, reading a letter printed in ordinary black ink on white office paper. The letterhead reads UNIVERSITY OF CAULDGRAVE, and they’ve sent a short message congratulating me on my conditional offer to study physics. Outside, in the backyard, Bea whimpers and bats at the door. I finish my cereal and then walk over to the back door to let her in. She trots past me, alert and businesslike, shooting me an annoyed look, as if to say, What took you so long? I look through the open door at the backyard, our stone wall, sheep fields beyond that, spring apple trees with white blossom starting to show. A pale blue sky, striped with long, crumbly clouds. Dunbarrow, just as it always was.

  My name is Luke Manchett, and I’m eighteen years old. It’s been fifteen months since the mess on New Year’s Eve with the Barrenwhite Tree, more than two years since I first met Mr. Berkley and signed for Dad’s Host. The Book of Eight and my sigil are long gone, and I’ve done my best to concentrate on school, friends, Elza. The things I’m supposed to be thinking about.

  The Tree left, and the snow melted, and quite soon there was almost nothing to show it had happened at all. Nobody remembered anything, except for the six of us who lived through that whole night. The local newspaper reported on the shocking amount of vandalism during New Year’s celebrations, and people wrote letters to the editor to say it was proof we should bring back hanging, but nobody was ever charged for anything, and in the end the shop windows were repaired and everyone basically decided to forget about it. Mum replaced our broken window and got a new sofa, one without bloodstains all over it. The Devil’s Footsteps never had enough visitors for it to
be widely realized that they’ve changed.

  I hear Mum on the stairs, and before I really know what I’m doing, I rush across the kitchen and hide the university letter in my pocket. Of course I should tell her. It should be the first thing out of my mouth: They offered me a place. But I don’t say it. Instead I stand examining my orange juice as she comes in, dressed in the poncho-type thing she wears every morning, and starts clattering around, looking for eggs.

  “Morning,” I say to Mum, as though nothing unusual were happening.

  “Morning, love,” she says, half turning around, giving me a sleepy grin.

  “All right, mate?” Darren says, coming in with Bea trotting behind him.

  “All right, Darren,” I say. He proposed a few months ago now; the wedding’s in the summer. They’re having a multi-faith celebration of their bond in a mountain retreat. Elza says she’ll help me pick out a flower headdress to wear.

  Mum cracks an egg on the side of the pan. Darren loops his arm around her waist and she smiles.

  “I think it looks like a pink day,” she says, gazing out at the sky. “Don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  My phone buzzes on the table.

  It’s a message from Elza: OXFORD WANTS SOME OF THIS! FULL SCHOLARSHIP :)

  “Oh, wow,” I say. “She got in.”

  “Who did?” Darren asks.

  “Elza,” I say. “She got an offer for English at Oxford. She got that . . . the Herbert West Scholarship.”

  “Oh, Luke,” Mum says, beaming, “that’s fantastic! I know she deserves it.”

  Another message: I’M COMING OVER.

  “You heard anything yet?” Darren asks me.

  “No,” I say, “still waiting.”

  “Well,” he says, “I never went to university and I did all right for myself. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You live in the woods, mate,” I say. Darren bursts into laughter. One thing I’ve come to learn is he actually has a pretty good sense of humor about himself.

  “I’m sure he’ll hear from them any day now,” Mum says.

  “Look,” I say, giving Bea’s head a scratch, “Elza’s driving over. I’ll see you both later.”