A Grave Tree

by Jennifer Ellis

  Sandy. His half-sister.

  Mark suppressed an urge to turn around and bolt into the trees on the other side of the river.

  8. Our Common Future

  The streets were filled with the shadows of dusk when Abbey arrived to find Caleb waiting outside Abbott’s Apothecary, just like older Caleb had suggested he would be. He was alone, his freckled face clouded with irritation, Ian nowhere in sight.

  Caleb clutched her arm almost painfully. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

  “Looking for you,” Abbey said. “Where’s Ian?”

  Caleb shook his head, an angry jerk. “He hasn’t showed.”

  “How did you get away?”

  “Anna helped me. She works for Salvador Systems as a geneticist. They scanned us when we went in for treatment. Our genes, I mean, and apparently mine came back as already taken, which would make sense if this has become my future. My genes would be taken by me—an older me. Anyway, it raised a whole bunch of alarm bells. Anna came in, recognized me and smoothed it over, said it was just a glitch in their new scanners. Honestly, I’m not totally sure what happened. It’s creepy that they scanned us though.”

  Abbey looked over her shoulder, wondering who was watching them. “A lot of things about this future are creepy,” she said. “I think we should go home. We need to find Mark. I hope he headed back to Sylvain’s cabin.”

  Caleb raised his hands in the air in a gesture of uncharacteristic helplessness. “How do we get home without Ian though? We don’t have a key to the tunnels, and I’m not sure if we can get to the swamp over land. Do you think the stones on Coventry Hill are even still there? If Sylvain destroyed them in our present, how could they still have been there when we used them a few months ago, if this is the future? Shouldn’t they have been gone?”

  Abbey shook her head. “I think they’re gone now. I think the timelines are entangled, so if something happens in our present to change the future, the future just resets. Everything has changed since the last time we were here.”

  The future is not set in stone, her mother had said to her a few months ago after they first used the stones to rescue the witches from Nowhere. Now that seemed like a colossal mistake. There were too many people pulling too many threads, and it felt like the tapestry was starting to unravel. The future is crumbling…

  “Yeah, Anna doesn’t even own Abbott’s anymore. She works for Sylvain,” Caleb said.

  Abbey peered all around them, into the corners and alleyways between buildings. The streets seemed far emptier than the last time she had been here, like a pall had fallen over the entire city, or perhaps the entire future. “Well, where’s Ian? He was supposed to meet us here?”

  Caleb drew his shoulders up in a shrug.

  Abbey clutched Caleb’s arm. “Are those sirens getting closer?”

  Ian burst around the corner, his eyes wide, the lapels of his turquoise and magenta shirt flapping out of his jumpsuit.

  “Run!” he called. “To the library! We’ll have to go through the yards and drop down into the tunnel on Fifth Street.”

  Abbey and Caleb stared at the small man.

  “Now! Get into that alley before they see you!” Ian yelled, snatching Abbey into the small opening between Abbott’s and the domed store next to it. Caleb followed. Flashing blue and red lights appeared on the walls of the buildings in the direction from which Ian came, and a full cavalcade of police cars poured around the corner, their sirens wailing.

  In the front car, leaning forward, his fuzzy hair a cloud of white and his silvery-clawed artificial hand resting on the dash, sat Dr. Ford.

  *****

  Sandy had Mark in some sort of thrall. He felt rooted to the spot while she went on about how worried everyone had been about him and peppered him with questions about where he had been and what he had been doing in the river. Mark grunted responses about looking for contour lines and isogons, while Digby, perched just behind Mark’s head, dug his claws deeper and deeper into his neck.

  Sandy seemed disappointed with his answers and looked meaningfully past Mark at the dam.

  He examined her face more closely, something he did not like to do, but he felt that in this case an exception was necessary. Her blond hair still formed the same shape that he remembered, but her cheekbones seemed more prominent, and a fine web of lines surrounded her eyes. He would have sworn she was older than when he last saw her, and it occurred to him that this was future Sandy.

  “Dams are such fascinating places, aren’t they?” Sandy said. “It would be great if we could explore it together, don’t you think? What did you find in the dam? Can you show me?” she asked with a tinkling voice.

  Mark grasped for something, anything, to say. He clutched the straps of his backpack. “I would really like to see the penstock and the generators. That is what I came for. The Granton Dam was constructed in 1965 and at its peak before the expansion had a generating capacity of 140 megawatts. The 2012 expansion added 120 megawatts of capacity, making it the largest dam in the Coventry region. The United States generates forty-nine percent of its power through hydroelectric dams.”

  “Mark!” Sandy’s voice cut into his thoughts and his soliloquy (he had been about to start talking about the turbines). “I need you to start being straight with me, because I think you’ve been lying, and it’s not right to lie to family, Mark. To your sister.”

  Mark opened his mouth to say something to clarify that she was his half-sister, but she swept on without allowing him to interject.

  “I know you’ve done a very bad thing. You’ve gone into a secret room and you could be in a lot of trouble. You saw those men with the guns. If you tell me the truth and show me where you went, I might be able to help you.”

  Mark felt his jaw go a little slack as he assessed her words and the prospect of the return of the men with guns. He knew he was not good at nuance, but her statements and behavior all seemed wrong somehow. A wave of stress crept up his neck, and he glanced up at the top of the dam to see if he could see anyone.

  She turned her lips into the smile that she usually gave Caleb (which seemed to have the effect of making Caleb very obedient) and patted Mark’s arm, sending Digby burrowing into the backpack. “Just show me, Mark.”

  Mark turned as if to wade back into the river, and then all of a sudden his legs were moving as fast as he could move them through the water (which was more strenuous than he thought), heading toward the other bank, away from Sandy.

  The men were on him as soon as he exited the water. They threw him roughly to the ground and pressed cold gun barrels into his neck. They wore jumpsuits like the one he had been forced to wear in the future with the maps and the library, except theirs were red. Mark yelped and started to cry. His chest, already hurting from the exertions of the day, heaved in big painful sobs.

  “Roll him over,” Sandy ordered.

  Mark’s body was dutifully rolled like a log, and he opened his eyes to see Sandy’s face frighteningly close to his own. She still wore the same smile. And if he were to match it up with his little yellow cards with the expressions on them, he would say she was happy. But the smile had a funny stiffness around the edges.

  “Mark, I just don’t think you understand. I’m trying to help Peter and Marian. Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Beckham.” (She said this slowly as if Mark might mistake the identity of the people to whom she was referring.) “They need our help. You just need to show me where you went. Mom will be very disappointed with you if you don’t.”

  The mention of his mother—the mother that he and Sandy shared—caused a painful twist in Mark’s heart. What had happened to his mother? Was she trapped somewhere too, hoping that Mark would rescue her? Surely she, more than anyone, would know that his challenges would make it difficult for him to rescue anyone. It was clear that Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Beckham did need help, but Sandy was frightening him, and he was not very good at helping people who frightened him. So he closed
his eyes and pressed his hands against his ears and started to emit a low continuous scream.

  The sweetness dropped out of Sandy’s voice. “This is ridiculous. I’ve had enough. You three,” she called, gesturing to a trio of men in furs and animal skins, much like the ones Mark had seen before in this future when they had hiked up the hill to the lookout. “Take him to the cell with Jake. We know where the room is now. We don’t need his help. Elliot and Leo, you’re with me.”

  By the time Mark had been returned (not too gently) to his feet and prodded forward, Sandy and two men in jumpsuits were down in the river by the door into the dam.

  The men who now surrounded Mark with guns were the ones in animal skins. They were looking at him and whispering among themselves. Their eyes were a bit wide and their movements jerky. They did not have guns.

  They started climbing the hill along a well-worn path that would presumably lead them to the top of the dam. Halfway up the path, one of the men fell into step next to Mark. “Where did you go? We waited through the winter. First the Light and then you. We went to Four-Valley Gap to look for you. But you weren’t there. The rest of our people are camped out near here, but Graham is worried that it’s not safe. People are coming and going. People who work for her.” The man gestured back in the direction from which they came. “But she has food. She’s feeding us in exchange for our help on the river diversion.”

  Mark tried to follow what the man was saying—the man who seemed to think they knew each other. River diversion? What was the man talking about—another dam? Or were they actually diverting the water to somewhere else (which would explain the lack of water in the river channel)?

  “Did you find the valley?” the man continued. “The place where we can plant? The people are waiting, but it’s getting close to planting season.”

  Mark shook his head. This man was looking for Warrior Mark. The Mark he had seen in the woods a few hours ago. The Mark who was clearly very different from the Mark that he was. The Mark who had emphasized the importance of finding the fifth map.

  “You didn’t find it?” The disappointment in the man’s voice was palpable, even to Mark, who had a hard time understanding things like that.

  “No, I… I don’t know…” Mark trailed off. Things were happening too fast. He needed to think. If these men knew him, perhaps they would let him go. But where was he going to go? Sandy had said Jake’s name. She had said put Mark in the cell with Jake. Maybe Jake would know what to do.

  “I need to talk to Jake,” Mark said. “In the cell. I need to go to the cell and talk to Jake.”

  The man cocked his head. The raccoon tail hat he wore on his head flopped slightly to the left. “Are you sure? That’s a bit risky. Letting you go here would be easy. But if you’re in the cell, I don’t know. We can probably still break you out, but her men have guns, and someone could get shot.”

  “I need to talk to Jake,” Mark insisted.

  The man with the raccoon hat regarded Mark with that appraising expression that Mark was used to. The expression he was pretty sure meant the person was questioning whether Mark was right in the head.

  Mark grasped for a reason, a reasonable reason. Anything. He drew in a deep breath and then looked up to make direct eye contact with the man. “He’s the one who transported the Light. He might know where the Light is.”

  The man hesitated, but shifted his gaze to the ground as if in thought. “Fine. But most of the men are working up at the diversion site. Jamie, Garth, and I are only on duty here until nine tonight, then you’re stuck with Leo and Elliot, who are her men. So you’re going to need to hustle if you want to talk to the kid and then get out. We could lose our jobs—or worse; she has a bit of a temper—so we’re going to have to make it look convincing. We’ll say you overpowered us. Doesn’t… your condition…” he said the word delicately, “mean that you can have superhuman strength if you’re angry, or something?”

  Mark was pondering what the man could possibly mean by this when they rounded a corner, and suddenly they were on the top of the dam. The view of the river and Coventry Valley was spellbinding, and Mark nearly teetered with the vertigo of it.

  Trees filled every inch of ground that was not water as far as the eye could see. No wonder the animal-skin people were having a difficult time growing food. There was no land that wasn’t treed. The mountains rose up steeply on either side of the dam, and Mark turned to look behind him at the Luna Reservoir. It was no longer the rippling expanse of blue water that he’d seen in pictures, but rather a shallow, murky pond surrounded by cracked mudflats that smelled of decay. Several sections of the reservoir looked like they’d been dug up, with mounds of dirt and rock lying in piles next to deep holes. A couple of the rocks looked a bit like tombstones, and Mark gave a shudder and had to look away.

  The men led him to a door, and they began to descend a dark stairwell into the depths of the dam. At the bottom, they set out along a dimly lit cement hallway with pipes running along the ceiling and sides, and doors leading left and right.

  “You sure everything’s okay?” the raccoon-hatted man asked. “You seem… different.” He’d been eyeballing Mark’s body.

  Mark was quite aware that Warrior Mark was much slimmer and more muscular than he was, but he hadn’t thought it was that obvious. He sucked in his stomach for a few seconds, but then had to let it out as he found it hard to breathe.

  He tried to affect a tone of authority. “I’m fine. The Light and I have just been working on preventing the great rift.”

  Raccoon-hat stopped short. “You’ve had contact with the Light?” His eyes had now shifted to a narrowed position and his eyebrows were sort of folded together. Mark was fairly sure that if he had the opportunity to compare the man’s face to his stack of yellow cards, it would be very similar to the one with the label “suspicious.”

  “The Light left me some instructions. I’ve been carrying them out,” he said, marveling at his apparent new capacity to lie. He felt Digby squirming around in his backpack.

  This appeared to satisfy the man, who resumed walking.

  At the end of the hallway, they came to a cluster of doors surrounding a small common area. The man unlocked one and gestured inside. Mark entered, and Raccoon-hat followed.

  Jake sat on a chair behind a desk in a small office room. He lurched to his feet as soon as he saw Mark. Mark tensed and tried to shake his head without shaking his head so Jake wouldn’t give them away. He turned to raccoon-hat man; he’d tried to pick up the man’s name by listening to the other men talk to him, but evidently they were not a chatty bunch. “How long do I have?”

  Raccoon-hat man looked at his companions. “I’d say about fifteen minutes or less. They’re distracted right now looking for this special room, but knowing the boss lady, they won’t be for long.”

  Mark nodded, then waited. They were going to close the door and leave him alone with Jake, weren’t they? If they didn’t, this would all have been for naught. Of course it might be for naught anyway. What was Jake going to do other than provide Mark with a tiny shred of companionship? Although right now, Mark had to admit that having an ally of sorts, other than a rat (not that he wasn’t starting to appreciate Digby), would be quite a relief.

  The man in the raccoon hat gave Mark the once-over one more time before finally drawing the door closed. “Just knock on the door when you’re done,” he instructed.

  “Where did you go?” Jake said. “Sylvain nearly lost his mind when he discovered you were gone.”

  “I wanted to see the dam,” Mark said, trying not to let his voice go all stubborn—his usual tone when having to justify his behavior. Jake didn’t think he was Mark the Warrior. Jake thought he was Mark the guy with Asperger’s who had just wandered off in the woods like a recalcitrant toddler. He took a few big gulps of air. “Where are the others?”

  “We were almost to the docks when we noticed you were missing. Sylvain convinced us we should go
back and look for you while he went to the other future to look for Abbey and Caleb. So I was going to transfer him through the futures and come back. But when we got to the docks it was like they’d been vandalized. Most of the wood had been ripped up, and they weren’t working.”

  “While we were trying to figure out what to do, some men in jumpsuits ambushed us. Russell and I held them off for as long as we could with rocks. But Sylvain wasn’t even fighting.” A muscle in Jake’s jaw twitched as he said this, and Mark noted that his facial features seemed rather tight. “Russell actually killed a guy and then vanished—just like you did a few months ago when you hit that guy with the spear. Then Sylvain ran off, leaving me alone. I was a pretty easy mark after that, so they collected me and brought me here.” Jake gestured at the door. “Do you know those guys?”

  “No,” Mark said.

  Jake arched one of his dark eyebrows.

  Mark’s head swam in a murky sea of challenges he was unused to dealing with. How was he going to convince raccoon-hat guy to let Jake out too? Or should he just abandon Jake here? And go where? What would Warrior Mark do? Unfortunately, Mark had no idea. He’d been hoping that Jake, as a person without Asperger’s, would know what to do, but now he was pretty sure that Jake was just as scared and confused as he was.

  Mark knocked on the door and waited.

  “What are you doing?” Jake asked.

  Mark ignored him and knocked again, harder this time, but nobody came to unlock the door.

  The office had a small window that looked out into the hall and common area. A turquoise blind hung shut over the window. Mark tweaked it open a bit and peeked out into the hall. Sandy stood talking to raccoon-hat man, waving her arms in the air wildly.

  Mark did not need his little yellow cards to know that her face was angry. Very angry.

  “Are they going to let us out?” Jake persisted.