“Let’s go, Harold,” Mills said.
“I guess so,” Dafoe agreed.
“Let’s get out of here for good,” his wife insisted. Harold tried to smile. Her resolve seemed to get him moving a little faster.
Jackson already started to pace ahead of them, while his silent wife held back with the rest of the group. Joan walked over to Margaret Furlong and helped her to stand and join them.
They started to walk toward the surrounding forest.
Harold grunted. “Trees are farther away than I thought.”
“No, they’re not,” Mrs. Smith said from her perch between Dafoe and Mills. “The trees just aren’t getting any closer.”
“What are you talking about?” Jackson demanded from the front of the line.
“Carl?” she called to him. “Would you be willing to run on ahead to the edge of the woods? Maybe you can find an easy way in among the vines, or a trail we can take.”
“Sure,” Jackson replied with a bit of surprise. “I guess so.” He trotted on ahead, twenty, fifty, a hundred feet.
The trees seemed farther away than they had before.
“What the hell?” Jackson yelled. He broke into a run, as if he might be able to catch the forest with speed.
“Carl!” Mrs. Smith called out. “Never mind! It’s no use!” Jackson broke off his charge and turned, taking great gasps to try to force air back into his lungs.
In half a dozen steps, he made it back to the group. “What’s going on here?” he said softly.
“It’s another one of Nunn’s illusions,” Mrs. Smith replied. “I didn’t realize it until now. I think we did enter his home, after all, and we’re still there. He only fashioned the illusion of the camp to get us to relax.”
“Have us let down our guard,” Harold Dafoe added, looking quickly around as if he might catch a glimpse of what really surrounded them beneath the illusion. “Why did I listen to you? What’s Nunn going to do to us now?”
“Nothing,” Mills said. “He still isn’t here, is he? He’s left us here while he takes care of other things.”
“Take care?” another voice called to them. “Oh, Nunn will take care of you, all right. Just—” The voice broke off in a fit of coughing.
A figure stepped out of the forest before them. It was the Captain. Mills hadn’t recognized him at first. He looked like one of those emaciated famine victims you saw on the evening news. His shirt was gone, and so was his attitude. But the two scars still sat on his now sallow cheeks.
The Captain more staggered than walked as he approached. Mills half wanted to rush out and help the other man, but he imagined he’d get no closer to the Captain than he did to the trees.
The Captain looked up at the neighbors. His smile no longer held any hint of certainty. “Have to—sit,” he managed. His legs shook, and then collapsed beneath him, throwing him to the ground. He groaned.
“Oh, God,” Dafoe whispered. “This is what’s going to happen to all of us!”
Somehow the Captain pushed himself up to a sitting position. “An interesting coincidence—” he managed. “Finding you here. I imagine—you’re looking for a way out—as well.”
Mills stepped forward. As he suspected, the Captain grew no closer. Still, even if they couldn’t meet, maybe their old adversary could give them some information.
“Captain?” Mills called. “Where are we?”
“Um? Now?” A spasm of pain crossed the Captain’s face before he continued. “In a room. Just another one of Nunn’s rooms. He has so many rooms.”
“So we are in his fortress? Nunn’s castle?” Mills didn’t know what to call it.
“Just another room,” the Captain answered. “Nunn’s saving you.”
“What?” Jackson demanded. “What do you mean—saving?”
“Maybe that isn’t so bad,” Dafoe added hastily.
The Captain tried to laugh but ended up coughing. “You are kept very safe. He has uses for all of you. Just like he used me.” His head fell back as his body was racked by another spasm. “Using me. Made a little mistake. Never should shoot someone—without permission.”
Mills tried to make sense from the Captain’s ramblings. “Nunn is punishing you for shooting Sayre?”
“Never should,” the other man agreed. “Bad Captain.” His lips trembled as he tried to smile. “So I’m bringing him back.”
Constance Smith quickly asked the next question. “Bringing him back? What do you mean?”
The Captain spasmed again, but when he spoke this time, his voice was stronger.
“I know about all of you. You stood by while they did those things to me.”
“What things?” Rose Dafoe asked. “I don’t understand.”
The Captain’s voice rose to a shriek. “Not a single one of you cared about what happened to my lawn!”
“His lawn?” Jackson called back in disbelief.
“My lawn!” the Captain continued at the same fever pitch. “All these years of work! But did you care? I knew you were laughing behind my back.” He pushed himself off the ground and rose unsteadily. “I’ll show you what happens to people who laugh at me!” He shook his fists as he swayed before them. “A bunch of scum, bringing the neighborhood down!”
“That’s Hyram.” Constance Smith softly confirmed what they all were thinking. “Hyram Sayre.”
Rose Dafoe looked at the older woman. “You mean he isn’t dead?”
Her husband laughed nervously. “I think he’s worse than dead.”
“I’m coming to get all of you!” the Captain screamed.
Mills looked at the others. “Not if we can get out of here first.”
“Nunn did this!” Dafoe shouted, working himself to a state close to the Captain’s. “He’s going to make us all like that!”
“As long as we’re here,” Mills replied, “all we’ll see is Nunn’s work.”
“Then we have to leave,” Mrs. Smith said firmly from where she still sat in the men’s arms.
“How?” Dafoe demanded. “When Nunn can twist everything we see.”
“We’ll simply leave without using our eyes,” Mrs. Smith replied. “Or our feet. I might be able to do something, now that I know about the nature of this place. But not by anything as simple as walking, my, no. Dear, you should put me down. I must be getting heavy.”
Mills and Dafoe carried her back to the bench, a half dozen steps away.
“I’ll have to think a minute,” Mrs. Smith admitted once she was back on her bench. “This is all a bit too new to me.”
“All right,” Rose Dafoe agreed, looking almost as nervous as her husband. “But please hurry, would you, Constance?”
“My lawn!” the Captain howled. He reached his hands out toward the neighbors as he stumbled forward.
“Maybe there’s some other way we can help Constance,” Mills said as he studied the forest. “Nunn’s done his best to scare us, then left us to look at this illusion.” He turned back to look at the confused faces of the neighbors. “And then there’s this—thing in front of us—this fellow who may or may not be the Captain. Do you believe he just stumbled in here? I don’t think so. This is all supposed to scare us.” He waved back at the surrounding woods. “I wonder if this stuff around us is kept up by our fear?”
“What kind of line are you trying to feed us now?” Jackson demanded.
“Maybe,” Mills persisted, “if we were to stop being afraid, this fake forest would disappear. We could simply walk out of this place.”
“An interesting theory,” another man’s voice said behind Mills. “Pity it is wrong.”
Mills turned around. Nunn had returned.
The Captain started to laugh, a rasping sound that again degenerated into a coughing fit.
Harold Dafoe made a noise like something was caught in his throat. “We didn’t mean anything!” he shouted. “We were just trying to—to— “
“Escape,” Nunn replied calmly. “I don’t particularly blame you. I haven�
��t exactly been the perfect host. And, while you may not entirely agree with my methods, you don’t have enough information to realize that what lies beyond these walls can be so much worse.”
The forest faded away as he spoke, replaced by bare stone walls.
Margaret Furlong pushed herself forward. “Worse? What could be worse than what you did to Leo?”
That only made Nunn smile. The dark orbs where his eyes should be opened wide with innocence. “Really? What did I do to Leo?”
He shuddered slightly. When he spoke again, it was with a different voice.
“Margaret? Can you hear me?”
Margaret stared at the wizard’s mouth. “No,” she said. “Margaret,” the unmistakably nasal tones of Leo Furlong continued. “I’m sorry we fought so much. Having this happen to me has made me see things so much differently.”
As Nunn talked, his face changed. It was rounder, the severe cheekbones replaced by pudgier circles of flesh, his nose no longer straight but slightly crooked, just like Leo’s.
“Leo?” Margaret asked softly. “But I thought—”
“That I was dead?” Leo laughed, a dry sound. “So did I, for a while. But this isn’t death. It’s something much stranger. And it may be wonderful.” His voice rose, both wistful and excited at the same time. “I wish I could explain it to you. Margaret, I wish I could explain so many things.”
Didn’t she realize that Nunn was trying to confuse them? To demoralize them?
“Margaret!” Mills called. “Don’t be fooled. It couldn’t be!”
“No, Evan,” Constance Smith said solemnly. “Actually, somehow it could. Every new feeling in me tells me that voice does belong to Leo.
Somehow he’s now a part of Nunn.”
The Leo-thing smiled. “Thank you, Constance. I knew you’d understand.”
Margaret began to cry again.
“What are we going to do?” Joan asked.
“Yes, what are you to do?” the Captain called from the far corner of the room. “No matter what you try, you will pay!” He took three steps toward the others, steps that seemed to bring him nearer at last. Nunn, his face suddenly his own, glanced at the emaciated soldier. The Captain froze, mid-step.
“Sorry for this inconvenience,” the wizard remarked with a gracious smile. “Even for someone like me, there will be an occasional loose end. But I, too, believe it’s time for a decision. Will you work with me”—he paused, his smile fading slightly— “or not?”
Jackson sneered at everyone, as if there was only one choice. “We’ve got to join him. Look at his power. He can get us anything we want.”
“You heard him,” Harold Dafoe agreed. “If we don’t join him, he’s going to kill us, do whatever he did to Leo.”
“Leo,” Margaret said in a voice that was little more than a monotone. “What am I going to do without Leo? People thought we fought all the time. Oh, nobody understood!”
“I would like to consider my options,” Mrs. Smith remarked coolly.
Nunn’s smile grew even broader. “And give you a chance to get away? I think the time for your little surprises is over.”
“What can we do?” Dafoe asked those around him. “He’s strong enough to kill us all.”
Evan Mills stepped forward from the group. “I think, then, that we should get ready to die.”
“No, Evan!” Mrs. Smith called. “I can do what we talked about.”
“You’re not doing anything,” Nunn said. Small lights danced in his dark eye sockets. “I’ve had enough interference from a pitiful old crone.”
“What?” Mrs. Smith called. “Keep away!” She swatted at the air around her, as if surrounded by insects. Her body shook. The wrinkles on her face and hands grew into spider webs of age. Her cheeks hollowed, her teeth retreated into her gums, until her skin was no more than a thin parchment coating over her skull. She was withering away to nothing.
“Why are you hurting her?” Dafoe demanded. “We’ll stay! We’ll do whatever you want!”
“Of course we will,” Jackson agreed. “We’ll work together, just like you said!”
Margaret looked guiltily at the others around her. “I’m staying with him, too. I have to stay—for Leo.”
Mrs. Smith’s eyes had sunken deep into their sockets. Worms crawled from the empty holes.
“No!” Mills screamed. “I won’t let this happen!”
Constance Smith raised her hand to brush at her face. She stood, her legs unsteady at first. She took a deep breath and stood up straight as a soldier. “We will not let this happen, Evan.”
“You will not let anything happen, crone,” Nunn retorted, “once you’re dead.”
Mrs. Smith cried out.
Mills couldn’t stand this anymore. He rushed toward the wizard.
“Evan!” Joan Blake called out as Mills ran headlong for Nunn. Everything was moving faster and faster.
The Captain groaned and shook himself. He was no longer frozen. He put his foot down, one step closer. The crazy glaze in his eyes had been replaced by anger.
“I will not be taken over by someone else!” He spoke between clenched teeth as he, too, headed for Nunn. “If I’m going to die, let it be as a soldier!”
Nunn’s hands, both stretched out toward Constance Smith, began to shake.
“No!” Nunn shouted back at all around. “This won’t happen. I am too good for this!”
“Enough of this nonsense,” Constance said calmly. She looked over at the other neighbors, once again her sixty-year-old self. “Shall we try to leave?”
“I have only begun!” Nunn shouted back.
“Then begin with me!” Evan shouted as he jumped for the wizard. Evan’s hands went around Nunn’s throat. But they passed on through, as Evan’s forward momentum carried him into the wizard, his arms and legs first, then his torso and head disappearing within Nunn’s robes, as if Evan Mills was being sucked inside the other’s form.
“Evan?” Joan called out again.
The wizard’s eye sockets were filled with white light. Nunn screamed.
“Who is with me?” Constance Smith called. “Now!”
What was Constance saying? Joan was with her, no matter what. Nunn, and the room around him, disappeared.
Twenty-Eight
Mary Lou woke with a start. She hadn’t remembered even feeling tired.
She couldn’t have slept for long. The sun still hadn’t reached too high in the sky. It was midmorning at the latest. The last she remembered, the prince had been there with her, talking about how the People were so excited about some upcoming Ceremony that involved her, too. She had hardly thought about that Ceremony at all, though, because of the prince; her prince, who now seemed able to come whenever she called, as if she had broken through whatever spell controlled him.
Why had she slept, then? She studied the branches overhead with half-closed eyes. Exhaustion, maybe. She had only dozed the night before, especially with all that had happened with the prince.
The People had given her something to drink. More of that fruit juice from the night before. Had that put her to sleep?
Did this have anything to do with the Ceremony?
She was suddenly very wide-awake. The Ceremony, so distant in the early morning hours, seemed more real with every moment the sun climbed up in the sky.
She had no idea what the People wanted to do with these planned festivities. All sorts of things could happen with something like this. She saw how brutal the People could be with that other tribe, and how they had hurled spears and arrows at her fellow humans. Why were they being so kind to their Mary Lou?
A chorus of the People called out her name.
She pushed herself up on her elbows. The tribe stood in a circle around her sleeping place, all maybe ten feet from her. The words “a respectful distance” came into her head.
The two People who acted as healers each held one-half of the leaf cast in their hands. She looked down and saw they had taken it from her ankle. The
healing must be complete. The tribe shouted out her name three times in triumph.
Mary Lou smiled. What did she have to worry about from the People and their Ceremony? Why would they plan to harm her after going to such pains to help her heal?
The Chieftain took her hand. His skin was very warm and very dry. Where it rubbed against the skin of her own palm, it scraped ever so slightly, a bit like being licked by a cat’s tongue. The Chieftain pulled at her, calling out her singsong name again. The People responded in kind.
Mary Lou realized they wanted her to stand up.
She let the Chieftain’s strong grip pull her into a sitting position. He was very strong for one so small. Letting go of his hand {Merrilu!), she gathered her legs beneath her {Merrilu!) and carefully stood up on the platform {Merrilu! Merrilu!).
She wondered if this could be the beginning of the Ceremony the prince had told her about. The way the People celebrated her every movement, could she even tell if something special was about to happen?
When the cries died down, Mary Lou realized there was one voice crying out something completely different. Something high and quick, like words of warning.
“Lodda!” the Chieftain announced abruptly. “Dobble!” the others called back. “Lodda!”
The People moved quickly, and silently, away from her.
Before she could really wonder why, she heard another voice, calling her name as it should be called.
“Mary Lou!” The voice cracked as it shouted. “Mary Lou!” It sounded like Bobby from the neighborhood.
“Bobby!” she called back, walking to the edge of the platform. She felt no pain at all in her ankle.
“Yeah!” Bobby called. “She’s up there, all right!”
“Okay, shrimp!” a second voice said. It was Todd. He’d found her again. “Mary Lou! We want to talk to you. We understand you’re not alone. Can you convince the others that we won’t hurt you?”
Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Page 22
