The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse

by Brian Farrey

  The tree moved.

  It was ever so slight, but it clearly shifted beneath her hand. Startled, Aon stepped back. The tree’s bark rippled across the slender trunk, sliding and rearranging itself. If she’d looked away, she would have missed it. But the dreadwillow had definitely moved.

  “They like to be touched.”

  Aon whirled around to face the gentle voice behind her. The woman who stood just an arm’s length away looked down on the girl with warm, familiar eyes. Her round face beamed. Though not a queen, she had a regal authority both wise and welcoming.

  “Mother.”

  For one brief, impossible moment, the Carse’s invisible talons—those that clutched Aon’s insides—withered as happiness filled Aon completely. She was about to throw herself into her mother’s arms, when the woman held her off by raising a hand.

  “I’m not your mother, Aon,” the woman said. “I’m a shade, like almost everything else you’ve seen in the Carse. I’m the piece she left behind.”

  “Left behind?” Aon thought about her first trip into the Carse for the princess. When she’d emerged, she’d felt like she’d left with less of herself. “Did she leave it on purpose?”

  “No. But if she knew, I think she’d approve.”

  Aon’s hope and joy rushed away like a flood from a broken dam. If possible, she felt even emptier than when she’d first entered the Carse. “This is cruel,” she said.

  The shade nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Aon squinted at the woman. “You’re not like the other shades. I can see through them. But you look . . . real. And you can talk to me.”

  “The other shades you’ve seen are very old. I haven’t been here as long. Over time, I’ll be as they are. I’ll start to fade away, my words will be unheard, and I’ll relive a single event over and over and over until I’m nothing more than mist off the bogs.”

  Aon recalled how the shades of King Isaar had repeated their actions: watching the siege of the castle from the balcony, shaking hands with the Architect. “Why does that happen?”

  The Mother-shade turned and walked to a nearby dreadwillow. “The pieces people leave behind relive important events. Events that changed the person forever. For me, that was right in this spot. With this tree.”

  The Mother-shade reached out. Its hand shimmered as it passed through the lowest branch of the dreadwillow. The tree shuddered. The earth at its base pushed up and out, as if a mole were burrowing below. The dreadwillow’s roots pulled the tree away just far enough to be out of the shade’s reach.

  “I thought you said they like to be touched,” Aon said.

  The Mother-shade smiled. “Not by shades. By humans, yes. It makes them feel connected. Try it. Don’t be afraid.”

  Aon approached the tree and gently placed both palms on its trunk. The branches overhead trembled. The bark swam under her hands, tickling slightly. But the tree didn’t retreat as it had when the shade touched it.

  “This is why you left, isn’t it?” Aon asked. “Something happened here. An event you’ll relive over and over.”

  The Mother-shade couldn’t take its eyes off the tree. It seemed distant and distracted. “Did she leave? It would have happened long after your mother left me behind here. It was probably for the best.”

  “How can you say that?” Aon said, anger rising. “It hurt when she left. She went knowing I could never show my pain to anyone who would understand.”

  “She left,” the Mother-shade said, turning back slowly, “knowing you would one day come here for answers. I promise it wasn’t easy for your mother to leave. Trust that, Aon. It meant so much, having someone to share her sorrow. And it hurt so deeply, knowing the burden you’d bear with or without her. Have you ever wondered why you feel sadness when no one else can? Why the same was true for your mother?”

  Aon, who still had her hands pressed to the tree, felt it lean into her touch. “I’ve wondered that every day of my life.”

  The Mother-shade knelt down, eye to eye with the girl. “It wasn’t just the two of you. Every woman in your family has felt the same thing. Most chose to ignore it. They didn’t like being different, so they pretended to be happy like everyone else. Others came to the Carse. If you search hard enough, you’ll find their shades roaming the groves as well. Although sometimes they stayed too long and paid the price.”

  She means Pirep and Tali, Aon thought. So the imps really were her distant relatives. They weren’t just a fable.

  The Mother-shade sighed. “And a few—a very small number—did what your mother did and left the Monarchy. But not before they’d made it here, to the heart of the Carse.”

  “But what did they see?” Aon asked. “What did you learn that was so terrible, it made you leave me?”

  For the first time, the Mother-shade seemed unable to speak. It stared off into space as if the darkness held the words it so desperately needed. “I want you to think about your mother, Aon. Really think about her. She told you many secrets. But she didn’t tell you everything. She had one secret she couldn’t explain. Because she didn’t understand it herself.

  “The sadness that travels through our family’s women affects everyone differently. Your mother . . . I . . . felt it more deeply. It was more than just sorrow. It took control of me. Of all the lost, secret words I knew, there were none for what was happening inside me. There were days—oh, those awful days—when it felt like drowning and choking and falling all at once. You must remember times when I acted . . . strangely.”

  At first, Aon thought the shade was lying. She remembered her mother just fine. A kind woman. A gentle woman. Loved and admired by all, none more than by Aon and her father.

  But.

  When Aon pressed back through her memories . . . There were times when her mother remained in bed all day. Aon’s father had blamed the flu. But Aon could remember hearing her mother crying softly behind the bedroom door. Yes, there were days when the sadness seemed stronger. When Mother couldn’t care for herself. Or Father. Or Aon.

  How could I have known? Aon wondered. I should have helped her. I should have—

  The Mother-shade smiled. “You’re not to blame, Aon. Don’t ever think that. Your mother left because of what she saw here in the heart of the Carse. Her despair kept her from understanding she could take you, too.”

  Aon pushed the back of her hand across her cheeks, fending off the unwanted tears. There was much, it seemed, that she didn’t understand about how deep her mother’s sadness ran. She couldn’t imagine that kind of sorrow, but she could see it was real. So she knew why her mother had left her behind. One razor-edged question remained unanswered.

  “Tell me. What did she see? What made her want to leave the Monarchy?”

  The dreadwillow shifted under her hands again. Aon looked up to find the trunk of the tree had turned nearly all the way around. She was now staring into three misshapen knotholes in the center of the trunk. Two of the knotholes, side by side, narrowed as she watched. The third, just below the two, curved slightly with its ends pointing upward. Almost like a smile. In all, it looked just like . . .

  A face.

  Gasping, Aon stepped back. She looked around quickly and discovered that all the dreadwillows had turned toward her. All, to some degree or another, had faces. Some were made from knotholes, others from darker shades of bark. Every single one was twisted with agony.

  Aon stumbled. When she backed into a dreadwillow, she spun around. It was very young. Branches had only just started to sprout from the top of the trunk. But the branches weren’t the same dark gray color as the bark at the roots of the tree. They were paler. Pinkish beige.

  They looked like flesh.

  “The trees are people,” Aon said, horrified. “People who wandered into the Carse . . .”

  The Mother-shade appeared at her side. “No one enters the Carse of their own will. You know that.”

  “Then . . . these are my ancestors? The ones who came to the Carse for relief?”
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  “You’ve met Pirep and Tali,” the Mother-shade said. “You know what happened to those unlucky few.”

  “Who are they, then?” Aon pulled her hand across the face of the tree before her, as though brushing someone’s cheek. The tree shuddered, and Aon understood it was grateful for her touch.

  Aon once again heard the dirge. The sad, haunting waltz had never stopped, but its presence had faded while she spoke with the shade. Aon held out her lantern, searching for the source. The Mother-shade had vanished. Aon was about to call out for it when, just ahead, she spotted two silhouettes kneeling at the base of a dreadwillow.

  “You!” she cried out, racing across the clearing. But once she got close enough for her light to illuminate the pair, she froze in place.

  The duo, their faces hidden by crimson hoods, tended to the tree before them. One pulled weeds from near the dreadwillow’s roots while the other poured murky water from a rusty pail onto the base of the tree.

  Her eyes ran up the dreadwillow’s trunk. Sure enough, the bark higher up was mottled. The color faded from dark gray to pinkish beige. This dreadwillow was so young, it hadn’t sprouted any branches at all. On one side of the trunk, an arm—still very human—hung limply. On the other side, the arm had begun turning into a branch, fingers replaced with twigs, skin replaced with wood. And in the center of the trunk, a face made of bark and flesh stared back, a look of horror permanently etched across its features.

  It was the face of Aon’s father.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  JENIAH’S FIRST INSTINCT HAD BEEN TO GRAB AON’S HAND, TURN, AND run. They couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the entrance of the Carse. They could have been out in a second and sorted out any problems once they were safely on the road to Emberfell.

  But no. No, it was too easy.

  “Laius did as you instructed,” the princess said cautiously. “The time ran out on his hourglass, so he came to get me. He said you told him I’d know what to do. All I knew to do was come in here looking for you. And here you are.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jeniah,” Aon said. “It’s so brave of you to come rescue me.”

  The girl reached out, but Jeniah backed away.

  “You’re not Aon,” the princess said. “She never could bring herself to call me Jeniah.”

  Jeniah tried to bat Aon’s hand away, but her fingers passed through. The princess yelped in pain. Frost crystals formed on her fingertips, and stinging cold numbed her hand.

  “You’re a shade,” Jeniah said. “She told me about you.”

  The Aon-shade looked Jeniah up and down curiously, as if it had never seen a human before. “It’s dangerous for a princess to travel without a guard escort.”

  “I have nothing to fear from my subjects,” Jeniah replied, chin held high.

  “True,” the Aon-shade said. “And yet, the royal family keeps an army of guards. Every town has a constable. Prisons, unused for centuries, remain standing. Have you ever wondered why? What’s the point of having soldiers and prisons in a land that knows nothing but peace?”

  Jeniah wasn’t about to admit it, but she hadn’t ever wondered why. She’d always just accepted these facts. Now, the shade’s words made her see how foolish she had been never to question them.

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Jeniah said to the shade.

  The Aon-shade leaned in close and whispered, “They protect the Monarchy from you.”

  Jeniah flinched. Obviously, the shade was trying to upset her, confuse her. That was it. The shade would say anything to trick her.

  But then she thought about everything Aon had told her about the war King Isaar had stopped. Ice pinched at her neck. “Somehow, my coming here starts a war. That’s what the warning means.”

  The Aon-shade flashed a sly grin. “No, not exactly. But you’re on the right track. You’re expected, you know. Come.”

  The shade turned and walked deeper into the bog. Jeniah followed.

  “Did you think I’d be fooled?” Jeniah asked. “You don’t act anything like Aon. There’s a coldness to your eyes.”

  “Sometimes shades are who they seem,” the Aon-shade replied. “Other times, they serve as vessels.”

  Vessels? Then Jeniah realized. Vessels for the Carse. That was who—what—was speaking to her now.

  “Why do you look like her?” Jeniah asked.

  “I’m a bit of Aon that she left behind. Everyone who enters the Carse leaves a part behind.”

  “What part?”

  “Everyone hides a part of who they really are from the rest of the world,” the Aon-shade said. “But the part people leave behind here is something that needs to be seen by others.”

  “It will happen to me, too, I suppose,” Jeniah mused. “I’ll leave part of me behind when I leave, won’t I?”

  The Aon-shade smirked. “Oh, we’re counting on it.”

  Of course they were, whoever they were. The shade had said Jeniah was expected. Why? How could anyone have known she’d come here?

  The part people leave behind here is something that needs to be seen by others. Jeniah puzzled over this. If this was true, it meant she, too, would leave part of herself behind. What, she wondered, would she need others to see?

  The Aon-shade squinted back at the princess. “Weren’t you told to stay out?”

  “I was told the Monarchy would fall if I entered,” Jeniah said. “But that didn’t happen.”

  “Didn’t it?” the shade challenged. “You’re not in the Monarchy anymore, remember? You don’t know what’s happened outside the Carse. For all you know, you’ve shattered the happiness that Mad King Isaar worked so hard to give his people. When you step outside the Carse, you could find your land in ruins.”

  “Is that what’s happening?”

  The Aon-shade turned away. “I think I’ll leave that for a surprise.”

  The dirt path they followed curved sharply. By now, Jeniah’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light. She could see the path lined with dreadwillow trees on either side, forming a corridor, their branches arching overhead like a canopy made from a murder of ravens.

  “Where are you taking me?” Jeniah asked.

  “Exactly where you need to go,” the Aon-shade said, “to see exactly what you need to see.”

  As they walked between the rows of dreadwillows, a shimmer of gray light to the left drew Jeniah’s gaze. Between two trees, a glowing mist rose up out of the bog. With a faint click, the mist formed another shade, this one faded and pale.

  “King Isaar!” Jeniah said. The shade nodded solemnly in her direction. Had it heard her?

  Another flash, another click. A new shade, wan and insubstantial, appeared between the trees to the right. This one looked like Isaar’s daughter and heir, Queen Luris.

  Jeniah walked on. A sound like steady rain on a tin roof surrounded her. More and more lights quivered into existence between the trees, joining with the fog to make a legion of shades.

  “Queen Herrus . . . Queen Lithe . . . King Ravus . . .” Jeniah ticked off each name as the shades winked into view. It was like being back in the Grand Hall, surrounded by the portraits of all the monarchs. And while these shades stood perfectly still like those paintings, their mouths moved, forming unheard words. As Jeniah passed, they followed her with their eyes.

  “They’re trying to speak. Do you know what they’re saying?”

  “Yes.” The Aon-shade said no more.

  Jeniah slowed down and counted softly to herself. Forty. All forty of the land’s previous monarchs were here, standing now as echoes between the dreadwillows. Even her grandmother, the least faded of all the shades. If she listened closely, Jeniah thought she could almost make out what her grandmother was saying . . .

  “Wait,” Jeniah said. “Why are they here?”

  The Aon-shade turned, a glint in its eye as if it had been waiting for this question. “You already know the answer to that, Jeniah. You tried to dismiss it the minute you saw Isaar,
but you know . . .”

  There was only one reason they could all possibly be here. As hard as she’d been searching for the truth, she hadn’t been prepared for this.

  “They’re here,” she said softly, “because they each left a piece of themselves behind. Every monarch has been to the Carse.”

  Every monarch has defied the warning.

  And the Monarchy had never fallen. So what was the point of the warning? Why pass it on, generation after generation, if it clearly wasn’t true? All this time, Jeniah had been terrified of bringing some unknown wrath down upon her people, destroying their happiness, and laying waste to all. But it was a lie.

  “Jeniah!”

  Her head spun, searching for the familiar voice. There, at the end of the path, stood Jeniah’s mother. She could barely make the queen out in the fog, but it was clearly her.

  “Jeniah! Come here at once.”

  Jeniah moved around the Aon-shade and stumbled through the muck toward Queen Sula. Breathless, she fell to her knees at her mother’s feet.

  “Mother,” Jeniah said, panting, “you shouldn’t be here. You’re not well.”

  “I couldn’t trust you,” the queen said, seething. Jeniah had never heard this tone from her mother, a woman whose strongest rebuke was gentle if firm. “You were told to stay out of the Carse. Clearly, you’re not ready to be monarch.”

  Jeniah sobbed. It had all been a test. Just to see if she was ready. And she’d failed.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. Please, we have to get you back to Nine Towers before—”

  She felt something tickle her wrist. Then her ankle. Alarmed, she looked down and found vines of mirebramble slithering out of the ground and wrapping themselves around her arms and legs. She tried to jump up, but the vines held tight, pulling her back down.

  “Mother, help!” the princess cried, struggling against the bramble.

  The queen scowled. “This isn’t how a monarch behaves.”

  Jeniah gasped and sputtered as the mirebramble snaked around her neck and pulled her face closer and closer to a nearby pond of bubbling muck.