by James Comins
A nervous, shaking laugh came from the gangly creature. Rather than ceasing, Raunip's crackling laughter grew, spinning into a manic fit of uncheerful giggles. "Have you not seen the eyes, Mother? As black as night shadows, and lifeless." Raunip's long arms wrapped around his own shoulders. He walked, pacing as Aughra and Loora watched. "And there is no return from that pit. I have lived by the sea these four hundred trines past, learning the medicines of fish and shells, and the disease can be delayed only by a week or two before its final descent. Brainbane, tulip-conch, lorrin, oil of greenscale. Two weeks, with a large enough dose. No more."
"Two weeks," croaked Aughra.
"And here you are, forging glass," he sneered. "My mother. And you once lectured me about our responsibilities. Mother, you are blind."
"I've heard enough of your words," Aughra said, pointing an accusing finger. "Enough of your reproaches. Hmp! I see enough to know the importance of Cory's sight. He needs a good globe to see what needs seeing. Maybe not so useless, forging glass!"
"And where is Cory?" the imp said.
Aughra hesitated for only a moment before brushing past Raunip to the front room. She called Cory's name twice before shouting for Loora to bring the globe--very carefully--and together they sprinted, leaving home behind them.
* * *
His goal now was to avoid ripping the leaf off. There wasn't a good way to lean over the edge, and he couldn't see how far away the ground was from where he stood. It could be centrors to the bottom. Wished he were a girl. Not the first time. Wings would make this easy. Instead, one false step might mean a sticky splat.
No good chancing a walk to the tip of the leaf. Better to get to the trunk, where he could maybe climb his way down . . . or back up. There was a faint mist. Through it, he could see bark that looked like folded black bread dough, ruffled in stacked layers, as if squashed by its own immense weight. Good thing he had practice climbing to the roof and up trees to meditate. Edging closer, he could feel the thin leaf stem bouncing as he leapt--
A thousand camouflaged brown tendrils sprang from the trunk and grabbed him.
"Food for the floggs and fliers, no doubt, food for the skitters and slugs. Perhaps even a mouthful for me."
The world bent upside down and Cory was lifted aloft, sliding heavily through his clothes through the wrapping tendrils . . .
"Open for me, shake your bark, let me out, by the Sacred Spark!"
As Cory slowly rotated, captive in the grasp of the marbled umber vines, the folded layers of bark groaned and bulged, decompressing. A window appeared in the trunk, although the tree shook with the exertion of holding it open.
"Now let's taste the juices, shall we?"
A few taps on the tree from inside, and Cory found himself shoved in through the small gap. Once he was in the dark space inside, the tree relaxed, shutting the window and snapping through the camouflaged vines.
"A good day for a fine meal."
There was just enough light to see by, although it wasn't clear where it came from. The air was sweet-smelling, like a pollen-choked garden, not at all woody or leafy, and felt stiflingly warm and close. A nose nearly an armlength long uncurled and began sniffing toward Cory. The face and body behind the nose were lumpy and hidden by an inky cowl.
"Hello," Cory said.
"Tasty, yes, very tasty."
The nose didn't seem to spot him right away, even after he'd spoken. A lumbering heavy body wrapped in dark shawls began creeping forward. Standing and shaking off the snapped vines, Cory tiptoed around the room in a circle, staying out of reach of the slow-moving prehensile nose.
Cory's eyes adjusted. The interior of the tree was nearly as wide around as Aughra's house. The walls were a shiny petrified gray, lit only by a sullen-looking blue furry animal sitting in a washbasin. Blue light shone from its heart--the Light Sickness.
In a circle around a central table, a single path of floor was revealed, worn away by pacing feet. On all other surfaces were small wooden dishes filled with sap, which dripped from the ceiling in several colors and collected into hardened resins.
"A bit of flogg legs to go with our syrups, yes."
The cowled nose turned toward Cory, sniffed once, and began to lumber toward him.
Cory sprinted to the opposite side of the room and pressed himself against a wall. He was trapped and they were going to eat him.
The fuzzy blue animal picked up a wooden spoon and tapped it deliberately, rhythmically against the basin. The sound traveled resonantly through the tree, and the nose stopped and pressed against the floor, listening. The spoon tapped out some sort of code language.
"Not a flogg? Well, what is it? How's it taste, do you think? Soft? Crunchy? Slimy?"
Cory picked up a bowl of some green liquid and sniffed it. Smelled like the candied lea-li leaves that his grandmother used to make. Medicinal, but still sweet. He was tempted to taste it--
"Perfectly nutritious," a voice said. It was, in fact, the voice of the fuzzy glowing animal, gesturing with its spoon. Its voice wasn't clearly male or female.
"Excuse me? You can talk." It was, Cory decided, a dumb thing to say. "Who's that?" he added, pointing to the hooded creature with the long nose.
"I can probably convince him not to eat you," the fuzzy animal said.
"And what are you?" Cory added.
"Perfectly safe in here."
That was not, Cory decided, a useful answer to the question.
"Where am I?" Cory said, hoping the creature had something more meaningful to say.
"In here with me."
The fuzzy thing reluctantly got to its feet and leapt out of the sink and onto the floor, narrowly missing the piles of sap-filled bowls. Half its body was ultramarine, brighter than the Light Sickness, and the other half a dull brown.
"Orright, I can see you're not a complete amminal, you can talk some sense and you're not fee-rocious or trying to bite us apart." The creature began pacing around a central table with its arms thoughtfully behind its back. The dim blue light moved with it, reflecting off hundreds of colored syrups. The hooded, nosey person muttered to itself and paced in the opposite direction. Cory did his best to keep the table between both of them. "But I'm becoming concerned you're not in, let's say, the highest tier of conscious umber'standing. You're in. A tree. In Dark Wood."
"I know that," Cory said irritably. "What I want to know is, how do I get out of the tree and out of Dark Wood and back to civilization?"
"Civilized-ation, he calls it," the fuzzy creature said, sidestepping the hooded muttering thing as it circled. "People eating other people. Wars being fought because of other wars. One tribe arguing with the next for reasons they can't explain even to themselves. Yes, I remember civilized-ation."
"Can you open up the tree again? So I can get back?" Cory asked.
"Not wise to ask too much of the old bessie," the fuzzy creature said, patting a nearby wall. "She's opened up once this week already, twice might do her in. Now listen. What you have with us is a society of more enlightened beings. We're above the fray. Can't be dragged down to the level of mere 'civilized' beasts as yourself. It's our purpose to ponder the deepermost reaches of life on Thra."
"I'm kind of a ponderer myself." Cory ducked under the table as the long-nosed person came around the side again.
"Really? On the enlightenmink path?" said the fuzzy creature. "So what have you pondered, exacticately?"
"I can see the future," said Cory.
"Future, is it? He can--" the creature paused and tapped its spoon on the table. The hooded person stopped to listen.
"See the future? Who?" came muffled from under the hood.
The fuzzy animal rolled its eyes and tapped out a new message.
Two long-fingered hands lifted the cowl, revealing a bulging, misshapen head almost completely wrapped in thick black cloth. Only the nose stuck out. A hand located the end of the fabric and began unwinding. Cory was poised to run, although he didn't know where, if it turned
out to be made of teeth or dripping disease or had scabby skin or . . . something.
Something was definitely revealed.
It was a flouse, small and white and fuzzy and mostly trunk-nose, balanced on the end of the broad flat-topped nose of an ur-Mystic. The flouse unrumpled its fur and straightened its ears with pink fingers. It reeled in its enormous trunk into a spiral and hopped down to the table.
"Oh, we have visitors!" the Mystic said, clapping once and smiling at Cory. "Why didn't you say so?"
* * *
"Bit of a nice place they've got here," Lemny said aloud, swinging idly from a hook in the ceiling. It's one thing to be in a cage because that's the one place on the cart where you're not going to fall onto your vulnerable back and slide off unnoticed into the Swamp of Sog, he thought. It's another thing to be, well, in a cage. Gobber wasn't a jailer, he was . . . a bit of company on the road. And he'd done all the walking for the two of them. Never even complained, leastwise not about being the only one who had legs that reached both the ground and the cart.
Probably be a week or more until Lemny could talk his way out of here and catch up with Gobber. Lemny had hunches about these things. Meet at that one shady trailtree on the outer road. That's right where Gobber'd be. Waiting, cartless. Those thieving Skeksis.
A week to talk this new Skek into letting him out.
Hours went by in silence. That arrogant Skek was in another room, messing with the glowing purple rock. Lemny's eyes were still dazzled and sparkly from the rock's light, even after all this time.
This corner room was dank even by Lemny's low standards. Water was condensing on the ceiling and the floor was unswept. There was a round fizzgig in a cage, shivering on untended filthy straw. There were a number of passageways leading to other rooms, their surfaces carved with those weird alien shapes that Skeks seemed to admire--assuming it was them who put the carvings there. There were a variety of implements that Lemny sincerely hoped weren't for use on living things. There were snacks shaped disconcertingly like people Lemny might be related to, some dried and some still alive. They didn't have much to say, however, other than a low, preintelligent cry for help. A few soothing words quieted them down. All lies, natch'rly. There was nothing soothing about being trapped with the Skeksis. Still, got to keep the spirit up, right? Something would present itself.
This was exactly the sort of tedium where Gobber'd find him some raw material to work. Amber and a coal from the fire, stone to whittle patterns into. Artistic, Lemny was. Merchanting was just on the side. Someday, with the right tools, Lemny would find himself a cave and turn it into a palace of carven stone. When the money was right and he had the time. Got to dream, you do, got to make it all lead up to something. Life's got to be important, or what's it for?
The fizzgig didn't speak any kind of sensible language. Probably responded to 'stop, boy' or 'go get 'em, boy,' but you couldn't make a conversation out of that. Be like talking to dancerflies, Lemny thought. Dancerflies'd give you a more intelligible answer, 'cos you could pretend you were talking to yourself, making up the answers. A fizzgig'd just fill the air with barking, and then where were you?
Sometime that interminable day, the Skek came in and dragged the pacified fizzgig out by the scruff of the neck and didn't bring it back.
The cage wouldn't budge. Protected him from that one persistent cragraptor, this cage did. Lasted him nearly as long as the cart. Funny to think he'd die in here. Die of starvation. Getting hungry already.
Love to have half a lea-li bush in bloom. When the flowers were past bolting and you could peel off the outer leaves and they had those green fruit pips, just a hint of sour, not yet hard and red and crunchy . . . Takes hours to get through the lot, but what a pleasant way to spend the hours! Sun out, breeze in the trees, fresh lea-li buds and maybe a chewy triluly bulb dug up from a Pod garden when they weren't looking . . . No Skeksis, nothing going fump into the Swamp of Sog, no nasty ruttidge and certainly no being separated from the outside world by his own twig house. Lemny braced his cluster of hind feet against one side of the cage and pushed as hard as he could against the other side. But if the cragraptor couldn't rip the bars open, then what chance had he got? These were titanroots, safe as sawdust an' twice as familiar. Mum's house was titanroot. Almost, wosscallit, womblike, this was. Safe.
Lemny was perfectly safe.
* * *
"Tracks. Here. Quickly, before the wind blows them away."
Loora was taking charge of the search. Holding the glass globe aloft, trying not to get distracted by all the pretty colors, she watched her feet as she sidled around the narrow tree-lined ledge outside the observatory. Dark Wood didn't seem so thick when you were right up against it. It seemed spacious, broad-leafed, and oddly hollow between the dense high canopy and the stacks of hillstones erupting with forest-floor undergrowth.
Aughra strode behind Loora, occasionally bracing a clawed hand on her shoulder, impatiently urging the girl on. Loora wasn't exactly a natural tracker, but every Gelfling had a sense of the land. Cory's tracks were slow, pacing, probably daydreamy, she figured. Here; here's where he stopped. She pressed the globe handle into Aughra's hand and dropped from a short round plateau to a ledge below the treeline. Stabilizing, she took the globe back and helped Aughra down. The gruff woman skidded on the loosened layer of scree, and Loora took her arm until she had her feet again.
"Sure-footed," Aughra said approvingly. Loora squared her shoulders and nodded.
The tracks turned into a scraped slide down the hill. It was obvious what had happened: Something had come up out of the forest and grabbed Cory. Something toothsome and predatory. He'd gone out for a walk and found himself face to face with something incredibly dangerous. With luck he'd fought it off, fashioned a weapon, found his warrior spirit and--no, he was probably monster chow. She steeled herself against this inevitability.
"I'm going to fly down," she said. Aughra grunted assent. Scrambling down the wide-open interior of the forest, taking the globe and keeping it close to her heart, Loora shrugged her morning coat off her shoulders and flew.
Good thing Dark Wood was uninhabited. The lace of her wings buzzed softly in the filtered light, and a delicate dust of split seeds and fallen leaves spun up from the ground as she drifted past. As the forest floor grew denser, the mountain faded and she was skyly sliding between the trunks of impossible trees. Mist lit up like ghostly clouds. The track Cory and the monster had left was clearly visible; you could see how they had struggled. A lonely place for a fight. For nearly a toll of the village bell she let herself down through fog and light, and in the moist warmth of the underlevel, at the lip of a cliff, the track stopped.
Worth waiting for Aughra? Cory might be anywhere, might be eaten. Landing, Loora scanned the area for signs of--
The sight gradually resolved in her blinking eyes. Shading with a hand under her short hair, she saw--
A tree.
It filled the valley. The trunk had probably once been straight, she imagined. It had probably once been brown. It had probably, centrines upon centrines to the wildest limits of memory ago, once been a sapling grown from a sensible seed dropped by a now-long-vanished mother tree.
The tree was this way no longer.
A leaning crooked fat pillar, it impaled the sky. Grown in slow, season-spanning circles of the three suns of Thra, the bole had formed tight uneven spirals. The suns had baked the lower trunk black, which graded to gray at the middle and tree-trunk-brown at the uppermost limbs. Weight had pressurized all but the spreading canopy into something akin to stone; petrified. However, through the outer surface of the stonified colossus, fresh alive branches broke and bloomed with leaves wider across than most trees are tall. At the base of the valley, hundreds of seed pods rested, dropped spheres dotted with circular openings.
There was no sign of Cory. Nothing.
Descending further, hoping to find a track or a clue, anything, Loora heard distant music.
"Despicable, isn
't it?"
Shrieking, Loora defended herself with the globe. As she swung it, the black patterns caught her eye and she lost her momentum. The imp ducked under the impromptu attack, and Loora stumbled, and she stared at the black and sparkled pattern, and she felt her eyes cross as the dark water captured her mind.
The dark water . . .
Lost in shadow, a pit of forever, lost . . .
Loora was gone, replaced by forever . . .
A song, lost . . .
Scabby fingers closed around hers, and an anti-song rose up in her mind. Coming down to her from the farthest stellar spaces. A sound of now, of life, of celebration . . .
Her fallen morning coat appeared in the imp's hand. He tossed it, smothering the black and silver shapes that coated the bright colors of the globe. Loora returned, her eyes not quite focusing but not yet googly.
"Ought to keep such a powerful thing covered," Raunip told her. "You'll lose your mind inside it."
Lose your . . . ?
Mind. Voice. Eyes. Thought. Song.
Loora felt her mouth moving, wondered why she could hear nothing except Raunip's stellar noise. Oh, it was because she wasn't saying anything. Nobody was speaking. She was just opening and closing her mouth. The anti-song continued, and the song from the Gnarled Stonetree drifted up from the valley.
Mouth. Voice.
"Um." That was a start. That was a good start. Both her hands were wrapped around the stem of the meditation globe. Good thing the handle was wood, not glass. Her tight grip would have shattered it.
"What are you?" she said. As her mind returned to order, she saw Raunip and his mismatched eyes and said, "Oh. I didn't mean--I meant who--"
"Aughra is my mother," Raunip said. "I am her son."
"Right. What is--" She gestured to the globe.
"The water of Black River binds the mind and corrupts the thoughts. Only an already-corrupted mind can see it clearly."
"But that would mean--"
"Despicable sound," Raunip said again.
Following his gaze down the valley to the enormous black-trunked tree, Loora heard a living song coming from the roots.
"Worshippers of the Gnarled Stonetree," he said. "They think the tree is the heart of Thra. So little they know." Raunip sniffed and bared his sharp teeth, once, then turned. "If old age is the only thing to venerate, then my mother and I would be queen and prince of Thra. We aren't."