The Wolf Tree

by John Claude Bemis

  Renamex was not unfriendly, but she was not warm either. She held her head stiff and tall before the strangers. Sally noticed that although their eyes flickered cautiously—or maybe it was curiously—to the pack surrounding them, Conker and Jolie faced the nata without fear.

  Conker took something from a bag. Sally could not see what he showed Renamex, but whatever it was had a visible effect on Mangoron. “The head of John Henry’s hammer!”

  “I am his son,” Conker said. “We set out from the banks of the Mississippi three weeks ago. The handle has guided us. A glowing that has increased the further west we have come. The night before, it flashed a great light.”

  “When the Tree returned to us,” Mangoron said to his nata.

  “The wood from the handle comes from the Great Tree,” Renamex said to Conker. “They are linked. That is how it has led you to us.”

  “The handle has been broken,” Conker said. “I’ve come to ask your help in fashioning a new handle and restoring the hammer’s powers.”

  Mangoron stepped closer, his tail rising. “I remember when your father made the Nine Pound Hammer, many years ago. We went together up the Great Tree. I helped him find the branch, and together we finished the weapon. Am I right to assume that your father is dead?”

  “Yes. And I could tell you about it, if you want to hear.”

  “We do,” Renamex said. “But not now. It is late and you must be tired from your journey. The decision to allow a human to cross onto the Great Tree is never taken lightly. Nor is the decision up to me solely. The pack will discuss this request. Be assured, we respected your father. We will show you every courtesy. Tell us your names.”

  “I am Conker, and my companion is Jolie.” Jolie nodded after Conker spoke, and as she acknowledged the other rougarou around her, her gaze fell on Sally and Hethy. Jolie’s eyes widened with curiosity, but then she looked away.

  “Welcome, Conker, and welcome, Jolie,” Renamex said in a kinder tone. “We have food, if you are hungry. Or a fire, for you to sleep. Be patient. We will have an answer for you tomorrow.” Renamex turned, and Mangoron followed her. Oultren came forward from the pack and spoke with Conker and Jolie, acting as their attendant much as Coer had done for Sally and Hethy.

  Hethy joined Sally as the circle of rougarou broke. “He’s the one you told me about, ain’t he? He’s the one you said died on that train.”

  “So he says.” Sally narrowed her eyes. “It’s very strange, Hethy. Why haven’t they gone to Shuckstack? Why have they been keeping what happened to them a secret all this time? It’s suspicious, if you ask me. We must keep quiet about who I am. And about the rabbit’s foot. At least until we get to know them better. Will you do that?”

  Hethy’s face was impassive, her expression withdrawn. “Sure, Yote. I’ll do like you ask.”

  “Thank you, Hethy. You’re such a good friend. I’m glad I can trust you.” She hugged Hethy and then took her by the hand, looking her in the face. “You don’t look good, Hethy. Are you all right?”

  “Feeling poorly,” she said, stifling a cough. “Yote. I’m scared that pod Granny Sip gave me ain’t working no more.”

  Sally frowned, feeling her heart thud with concern for her friend and with guilt at how she’d treated Hethy.

  “We should sleep. You need to rest. You’ve been through so much. Come back to our fire.”

  The girls got under the blanket. Hethy coughed off and on for a time, but soon Sally could hear her breathing relax with sleep. Sally lay with her eyes closed, unable to sleep. After a time, she heard Jolie and Conker approach the fire.

  “Who are the girls?” she heard Conker whisper.

  Jolie answered in a hushed voice, “Oultren says they were lost on the prairie, and that one of the rougarou rescued them. Poor things.”

  “What’s going to happen to them?”

  “I suppose the rougarou will help them get back to a town. They could not be in better hands. These rougarou seem kind enough.”

  Sally cracked her eyelids and saw Conker and Jolie lie on the ground on the far side of the fire.

  “Yes,” Conker said, cocking his arms behind his head and taking a deep breath. “Yes, I expect they are. But just ’cause they’re kind don’t mean they’ll help us.”

  21

  ASCENDING THE WOLF TREE

  CONKER WOKE TO JOLIE TOUCHING HIS SHOULDER. “I need to find water,” she whispered. “There’s a stream nearby. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Okay,” he mumbled. After she left, he could not go back to sleep. With the dawn still half an hour away, he rose and stirred the fire.

  The two young girls were sleeping next to one another, and Conker wondered what they thought of the strange creatures who had rescued them. Talking wolves. He had seen strange things in his life, but these rougarou were the most fantastic.

  What was this place where the rougarou lived? Conker had never seen landforms such as these. He had not noticed them last night. They were not mountains or hills, but canyons eroded from the ocean of grass. Like the world was beginning to dissolve here. Where the land was washed away most, it made sharp spires and jagged pinnacles. It was a twisted land, beautiful and desolate.

  Oultren came over. “The pack wishes to hear from you.”

  Conker followed her over to the circle of rougarou. Renamex nodded to him as he stood at their center. “Tell us more about your purpose in wanting to restore your father’s hammer.”

  The pack listened carefully as Conker chronicled the life and death of his father and how the medicine show had defeated the Gog but not his Machine. And he explained as best he could how vital the Nine Pound Hammer was to destroying the Machine.

  When he was finished, Oultren led him back to the campfire. “We will have our answer soon. Be certain that we are wise. If the pack decides not to allow you to cross, there will be a just reason. Are you hungry?”

  Conker shook his head. He had no appetite. Oultren bowed her head to him and trotted back to her brethren.

  Conker hoped he had conveyed the urgency of their task. But he worried: what could the evils of the Machine mean to these beings? After a time, he heard the girls talking. They were awake, and he walked over to them. “Morning.”

  “Good morning,” the girls answered together.

  “Sorry if we woke you last night,” Conker said. “Awful late to show up as we did.”

  “That’s okay,” the black girl answered. “My name’s Hethy and this here’s—”

  “Coyote,” the other girl said quickly. “Hethy likes to call me Yote, but you can call me either.”

  “Well, nice to meet you.” Conker’s gaze lingered a moment on Hethy. Her skin had a strange gray tint, and her hair looked like an old woman’s, silver and white. “Y’all got lost out here, I heard.”

  “Yeah,” Coyote answered. She was a jittery girl, her speech rapid and clipped. “We just lost our way is all. Not hard to do on the prairie.”

  “Where you come from?”

  “Oh, it’s a town,” Coyote answered vaguely. “Springville. Just up to the north a little ways. Where are you from?”

  Conker thought about the question. “Nowhere, I suppose. I never really had a set home. I worked for a time with a traveling show. Home was a train. But that was a long time ago.”

  They were quiet, Conker squatting before the fire, the girls making a breakfast from the remains of a roasted bird and eyeing Conker curiously.

  Conker poked at the coals with the end of his club. “Have you seen the Wolf Tree?”

  “Wolf Tree?” Hethy asked. “You mean the Great Tree.”

  “That’s what the rougarou call it,” Coyote added. Then she paused before saying, “It’s right over there. Haven’t you … don’t you see it?”

  Conker looked to where the girl was pointing. All he saw were the strange landforms. “Where? There?”

  “You can’t see it, can you?” Coyote asked.

  Hethy shook her head. “Them rougarou said only
those been blessed by the pack could see it. I guess they ain’t going to bless you ’less they going to let you climb up.”

  Conker frowned. “But they blessed you?”

  The girls looked anxiously at one another. “Well, I suppose we’re just kids,” Coyote answered. “They must have figured it wouldn’t matter if we saw it.”

  Conker suspected this was a lie. He continued prodding at the fire, his face placid, while the girls ate their breakfast and then left to wander the canyon’s walls.

  Soon Jolie returned. “Have they decided?” she asked, her hair still dripping.

  Conker looked over to where the rougarou were clustered. “No.”

  “Where are those two girls?”

  “I don’t know. Last I seen, they were playing down in one of the gullies.”

  “You have not eaten, have you? Let me get you something.” A roasted bird, caught by the rougarou for the guests, sat untouched on a spit. Jolie took out her knife to cut away some of the meat.

  The two ate without speaking. Conker felt they were alike in this way, not needing to make idle conversation, and it comforted him as they waited. After a time, Oultren broke from the pack and loped over to them. “Come,” she said, with no hint as to what the pack had decided.

  Conker and Jolie followed her, and when they reached the pack, they sat across from Renamex.

  “Conker, we have great admiration for your father,” she began. “But even if you were not his kin, we can see that both you and Jolie have great destinies in this world. You are warriors and your fight is worthy.

  “The Great Tree has grave implications for humanity. It links the life in this world with a creative force that illuminates and regenerates. There is much concern among the pack for the Tree. You have come to us at a time of deep questioning. We have lost our true forms, and do not understand why. We worry what future our stewardship will take. But our task remains to protect the Great Tree at all costs.

  “We are concerned that to take from the Great Tree, to allow you to sever a branch, would profane the pathway. While we are the Tree’s stewards, we do not fully understand the workings of the Great Tree. Would taking a branch damage in some way the connection between this world and the world beyond? Some have argued that the risk outweighs the task you have before you.”

  Conker felt a vein running along his neck throb. Jolie placed her fingers on his arm.

  “Mangoron, whose opinion is held in high regard by the pack, has speculated something that the rest of us had not considered. This Machine that you intend to destroy, what if it caused the Great Tree to become lost? And what would have happened if we had not found the Great Tree again? What would have happened to humanity?

  “The Machine might still bring some ill to the Great Tree. And we now agree that we must help you, in whatever way we can, to bring about its destruction. Conker, you will be the first to ascend the Great Tree in a long time. You have the blessing of the rougarou.”

  Conker and Jolie stood as they saw the Great Tree materialize, rising from the prairie like an enormous glimmering tower.

  Mangoron stepped forward, drawing Conker from his amazement. “As I was for your father, I will be your guide also.”

  Mangoron had explained to Conker that to reach the lowest branches could take a day and part of a night. Conker would need plenty of food and water; the ascent would be strenuous. Conker built up the fire, and he and Jolie busied themselves with roasting game that the rougarou caught for them.

  Coyote approached nervously. “Quorl says it is cold up there. We have a blanket you can use.”

  Conker smiled at her as she laid it on the ground and quickly ran back to join Hethy.

  “I’ll need to rig some sort of ax,” Conker said as he and Jolie worked. “You know how to make something like that?”

  “That will not be necessary,” Jolie replied, taking out Cleoma’s shell knife.

  Conker looked at the siren weapon. “It’s just shell, not metal. Will it cut a branch?”

  Jolie lifted a thick log from the pile next to the fire. She turned the knife so the blade was facing up and sawed into the log easily. She then held the knife up to show him the back with its ridge of irregular teeth.

  “This knife is designed for hunting as well as defense. We use this edge to cut through the bones of animals. It will cut your branch.”

  “Thank you,” Conker said. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  “Of course.” Jolie smiled as she gave Conker the knife.

  Conker went to sleep before the sun set. Mangoron said he would wake Conker several hours before dawn for their departure. When he heard Mangoron’s voice whisper at his ear, Conker was awake in a moment.

  Jolie woke, and Conker left the Nine Pound Hammer’s head with her, filling the sack now with the food and water and the blanket. He looked over at the girls sleeping by the fire. The pack watched Conker silently, reverently, their blue eyes glowing.

  “Okay,” Conker said to Mangoron. “You lead the way.”

  The rougarou nodded and trotted toward the roots of the Wolf Tree. The bark made a rough stairway circling around the vast trunk. Conker stopped, one foot on the bark, the other foot still on the earth. He looked back at Jolie, her fierce eyes on him. He raised one hand and then turned to climb.

  The crude stairway did not make a perfect spiral, for the bark was broken into enormous pieces. When Mangoron and Conker came to the top of one of these pieces of bark, they had to leap onto the next piece across a gap of at least two yards. Although Conker had no difficulty with this, he realized that jumping from section to section hundreds of times—or would it be thousands of times?—would make him tired and sore.

  They climbed and leaped across the chasms, up and up. There were sections where the pathway ran almost horizontally, and other times the way was so steep that Conker had to climb with his hands. He was surprised at the ease with which Mangoron could scale the nearly vertical faces. The rougarou understood where to position his hind legs and how to pull himself with his front claws, or teeth even, when the need arose.

  In the dark of night, the Wolf Tree seemed to absorb the moon and starlight, so that the Tree itself looked luminous. Soon the night sky began to tint with the first wash of gray and deep blues of dawn’s arrival. Conker could see how truly high they had risen.

  As they rounded once more to the side facing the rougarou’s camp, Conker paused to look out at the world below. How far up were they? A mile now? He could see the pack below. He could make out Jolie and even the two girls, rousing from their sleep. How strange it was to look down on them, as if he were a bird. How small they were. Then a wave of vertigo struck him, and he fell back against the Tree.

  “Best not to look back,” Mangoron said. “It will get easier the higher we go. I know that sounds illogical, but you’ll see. That’s why I like to leave before daybreak. I’ve found that most are more fearful when they can still see the earth clearly. The first hours are the hardest. Look ahead. Look up. You won’t fall.”

  They went on, higher and higher. Conker’s thighs burned with exertion. He was sweating, even though the wind was getting cool the farther they climbed. They stopped and ate, resting for a time on a wide ledge. Birds flew past below them. At the horizon, the curvature of the earth was visible. They continued on.

  Conker did peer back on occasion. He could no longer see the pack or Jolie or the girls. Or were those tiny specks them? Mangoron had been right. It was less dizzying to look down now. Maybe it was that the distance was more abstract because of the tremendous height. How far had they climbed? Several miles surely. Conker found it harder to breathe. The air was much colder, and he draped the blanket over his shoulders.

  What was most peculiar was that when Conker looked down, the trunk became semi-transparent closer to the ground, just as the top of the Wolf Tree was fading into the sky. It was as if the portion where Conker and Mangoron climbed was solid and substantial, but from a distance, the Wolf Tree could be s
een for what it truly was. But what was that? What was it made of? Light? Spirit, maybe? Nothing material, he reckoned.

  After a while, the lowest branches begin to appear. They were still a long way off, but the branches seemed to coalesce from the sky itself, stretching out horizontally farther than they had climbed up.

  “How long will it take us to reach those branches?” Conker asked Mangoron.

  The rougarou looked out at the sun, gauging its position. “After dark, I think.”

  They rose to such a height that clouds drifted past below them, casting enormous shadows like black sailing ships across the surface of the prairie. Conker had to stop more frequently, not so much because his muscles were weary, but because he was short of breath. Mangoron waited patiently, urging him to drink more water, explaining that this would help.

  By nightfall, they were just below the lowest branches. Conker could see the trunk continuing up, seemingly infinitely, with more branches stretching out as it rose. They wound their way up until at last they stood atop a branch nearly a hundred feet thick. Mangoron suggested that they rest, even try to sleep for several hours before going on. Conker agreed, and although the air was growing bitterly cold, he covered himself in the blanket and slept a heavy, dreamless sleep.

  When they woke, it was still night, although Conker could not tell how late. They began their journey along the branch. This was much easier than the climb had been. The branch slowly narrowed, and after several hours, they came to the first split.

  “Which way do we go?” Conker asked.

  “It makes little difference as you are not crossing the pathway to reach the other world. We’ll take the narrower of the branches.”

  They went on like this: coming to where the branch divided and taking whichever branch seemed the smaller. A branch forty feet in width divided into two branches, each twenty-five feet in width. Soon the branch they were crossing was little more than eight feet across.

  Mangoron began to move more quickly, sniffing rapidly at the bark and growling with agitation. As Conker hurried after him, there was a great crack. The limb broke away beneath Mangoron’s feet. He would have plunged to his death had Conker not leaped to the edge, snatching Mangoron by the back leg. The rougarou yipped as his hip caught the brunt of his weight. Leaning over the edge, Conker watched as the enormous broken bough dropped into the howling wind and disappeared in the dark.