Searching for the Tree of Life

by Adelise M Cullens

  Cherry blood leaks down over his tattooed flesh. The clouds are gone from his eyes. He stares at me. Eyes wide with the pain.

  ‘M’lady,’ says Raven as he grips at his chest.

  I cannot move. What have I done?

  Raven slowly sides off my sword and begins to fall to the deck. I try to catch him, throwing my sword away.

  I cradle his head in my hands. Tears stream out of his eyes and mine. ‘Raven!’ I cry as I watch any residual lightning fade from his stormy eyes.

  The feathers from his cloak blow away in one last breeze, swirling around me in a black torrent. I reach into the air and pluck one. I grip the soft black feather in my hand as his swirling tattoos slow and fade away, leaving his skin pallid as the moon.

  Part 5

  Laughter fills the void around me.

  ‘Poor little Ellie. Did you kill your only friend?’ He laughs.

  I close Raven’s eyes and tuck his feather into my watery dress. I watch it sink in.

  I stand up as the Silent Lady begins to sway under my feet.

  The sea around me froths and foams. I turn around.

  I wipe the tears from my face and grit my teeth.

  Steam fills the air, mixing with the smoke. I can see Him.

  With a swipe of my hand I send out a surge of steam that clears the smoke. I can see the tree of life. And another ship. A ship made of smoke and stone and bodies of the dead, a ship of death and destruction. It ploughs into the tree, creating great wounds in its side. Dead things drink up the green blood pouring from the tree, changing, screaming. It has already begun.

  I start walking towards him.

  ‘What? Did I make you angry?’ he asks.

  I start to run. I grab my sword off the deck and keep running. Power and anger builds inside me, rushing forward like a tidal wave. My skin tingles and burns and I watch it change. It turns red. The texture turns rocky. I feel my body growing. My sight changes and I can see him, even in his darkness.

  ‘Now, now, Ellie. Do we really want to resort to this? We could do this … together? You could be my … my queen?’ he says and I can hear the fear in his voice.

  Water comes up over the sides of the ship, rushing up behind me. Pain swells up my legs as they split and tear. Bones dissolve and are replaced with muscle. I grow and grow. The lower half of my body is a thrashing mass of giant tentacles. I have transformed. I am half Kraken.

  Waves rise high around the ship.

  He takes a step back as my water reaches his feet. It churns up his body, holding him fast. Anchored. ‘You wanna play this way? You wanna play rough?’ he smiles, all teeth. ‘I like to play rough.’

  His skin turns black and leathery. Huge wings sprout from his arms. His eyes double in size and his teeth grow longer. His ears extend and become pointed. He is bigger, but he is no match for my size.

  I remember. And I know his name. And that is power.

  ‘Tenebris!’ I yell at him and he snarls. I smile. ‘I hope you like pain too.’

  I jump for him, wrapping my tentacles around his body. He claws at me cutting into my new flesh. I can taste him with my suckers, taste the dirty, smoky grime of him. One of his wings gets free and he takes a swipe at my face. I feel his filthy claws dig deep into my skin, burning through my right eye. I recoil in agony and all my tentacles let go of him, just for a moment. Long enough for him to get off the ground. The bat-like creature he has transformed into flaps its wings and flies towards his corpse ship.

  Red clouds the vision in my injured eye, but I can still see the outline of the giant tree through the smoke, it sways under each blow from the other ship. The cries for help are more desperate now. I must stop him.

  I can feel the blood running down my face from my injured eye. I look over at Raven’s body. I crawl down to him on my new body, I can really feel every sucker, every tentacle. I know what each is doing. One tentacle tears off a long strip of the material left over from Raven’s cloak.

  I wipe the blood from my face as my tentacles tie the black strip around my head, covering the useless eye.

  I look down at my love as the Silent Lady tosses through the growing waves. I touch his face.

  ‘I will come back for you,’ I whisper as I kiss his cold lips one last time.

  I go to the edge of the Lady and put my hands on the railing. ‘Look after him girl. It’s about to get rough.’

  I dive into the water. Into the silence.

  I push my waves against the Lady and send her away. I watch as the hull disappears through the sea.

  I propel myself towards the corpse ship, diving deep underneath it, then pushing myself up. Jumping out of the water. I use my new limbs to drag myself up the side of the sickening boat. My stomach lurches at the tastes and sensations I receive from my new appendages, but my rage drives me forward.

  I move so fast across the ship it scares me, swiping aside the walking dead creatures of different sizes without barely noticing. I know what my limbs are doing, but only as they are doing it. As if they are each their own being.

  Tenebris the Darkness only has enough time to turn before I collect him. I roar at him as I seize his body in my trunk-sized tentacles. I slash at his face with my sword, but I cannot seem to cut into him.

  Maybe, if I can’t cut him, I can drown him.

  He struggles to get free of my grip, flapping his wings, trying to fly away. I will not allow it.

  We plummet overboard, splashing into the waves with boom. A tangle of slick bumpy skinned tentacles, leathery wings and slashing claws.

  We struggle, tossing around through the waves as we sink deeper. I drag him down into my domain. He beats his wings sluggishly, trying to surface, but I only go deeper. I am winning.

  I hold him out so I can watch him squirm. ‘You know, Tenebris. You taste good enough to eat!’ I hold him in such a way as he can see my snapping beak under my skirt of limbs. I laugh a cruel laugh. I spared Tercia, but that was a mistake … I will not make the same mistake again.

  I force my water into his body. Penetrating his piggish nose, his pointed ears, his ghastly mouth. But I feel a presence in the water with me. I turn to see the, not-so-big-now, Kraken. ‘You trader! I trusted you!’ I say. The Kraken is the same angry colour as me and I gear myself for another fight.

  Then I notice a strange blue glow around him.

  Tenebris struggles, fighting hard against the water inside him. Bubbles spew from his mouth and nose. His body returning to its natural state, his darkness fading.

  I look back at the Kraken and his skin turns a sudden shock of white. I look back to see Tenebris with tentacles of his own, black smoky ones. I recognise them. They are the ones from the eggs Tercia used to give us back our lost things. They are coming at me fast.

  The Kraken knocks Tenebris away from me with a giant slap, then moves aside to reveal a hoard of tiny blue glowing jellyfish. The jellies swarm on Tenebris. Attaching to him. And Tenebris screams. Ungodly and hellish and piercing. A banshee’s wail. Light and electricity crackles over his skin.

  I watch as the jellies drag him downwards. Deeper and deeper, until their light fades into a speck in the distance.

  Part 6

  I look into the golden eye of the Kraken. His expression is soft, morose. He reaches out to me and strokes the flesh that looks like his own. I can already feel my body retreating back to its natural state, shrinking. Finally, I am me again, small in the grip of the monstrous mollusc.

  I remember the war raging above the waves. ‘Will you help me?’ I ask. He doesn’t answer, he simply puts me on his back, behind his bulbous head. We race to the surface. The battalion of two … we need help. I know this. There are countless beings up there and I don’t know how we are going to fight them. But we have to try. Tenebris was relatively easy, he was alive at least. But how do we defeat the ones that are already dead?

  We reach the surface, surrounded by carnage.

  I look up at the tree and feel its pain. Gre
at holes bleed in its side as the dead things roll in the sticky green, trying desperately to get their life-force back.

  That is it! I don’t need to fight them. I just need to give them what they want! Their life.

  I call to the Silent Lady and board her as she comes closer to the shore. I have to retrieve Raven. If my plan works, then maybe it’ll work on him too. His body is lifeless and cold on the deck. The Lady sways under the weight of the Kraken at its edge. ‘Will you help me carry him?’ I say to the Kraken.

  He slips a slimy tentacle under Raven and picks him up, his body flopping like a ragdoll. I hold the hand of my love as he is taken off the ship and then allow his fingers to slip through my own. ‘Don’t let him go under water, okay?’

  I dive in after them and we swim through the anarchy of mindless spirits and bodies. I stare up at the tree, it reaches into the cloudless pink sky, so far that I cannot see the top. Its leaves are the size of hands, bottle green and shiny. It is covered in strange orange pods or fruit that hang fat from every branch.

  The Kraken lifts us both on to land and I try to find a spot to curl up in amongst the chaos and tangled roots.

  I hold Raven’s head in my hands and I look up at the tree. I can see its palm-faced leaves curling up into fists as the creatures gnaw at its wounds.

  ‘Okay. I know you can talk to me, but I don’t know if I can talk to you,’ I say, feeling a little stupid for talking to a tree.

  The Kraken’s long limb bats away a hairy half man/half bear like dead thing that charges at us. I drag Raven and I deeper into a crevasse in the root system.

  ‘So, if you can hear me, you need to give them what they want. All they want is life. I am pretty sure that you can do that for them, right? I don’t know how you do it, but you have to be able to. You are the tree of life! You can do it, can’t you?’

  The tree is silent. Time seems to slow down. Leaves fall from above, drifting, spiralling down through the breezeless air. I look back at Raven’s pale face. He is still beautiful, even without his patterns. My hope dissipates. The dead are getting restless and the Kraken only has so many arms. I know I will have to get up and fight soon.

  I stare down at the waterlogged feather floating over my heart. I don’t want to leave him here to rot under this dying tree … ‘How will I do this without you?’ I place my head down on his forehead. ‘I’m sorry.’ I put my hand on the hilt of my sword and breathe in Raven’s fading scent one last time.

  I pull out my sword of waves and let Raven’s head rest gently in the leaf litter.

  I can hear a strange noise from above me. Crackling. Thousands of popping sounds.

  I look up.

  The heavy orange pods are opening. They split down the middle. Then there is a loud boof as millions of fluffy seeds explode from the husks. They spread out across the sky like stars, glittering in the fading pink light. A galactic milky way spreading out above me. They fall softly, like snowflakes. Everything has turned silent.

  I watch as a tiny speck of light falls gently on to Raven’s forehead. I stop breathing. My entire world stops breathing. The seed sinks into his skin. It glows brightly, spreading under the surface. Soon, Raven’s entire body is emitting light. The world around me is bright with the glow of souls.

  His skin starts to swirl and darken.

  My hair ruffles around my face.

  The wound in his bare chest begins to seal over. I lift his body up slightly, cradling his head in my hands. I can feel warmth on my fingers.

  The feather floating above my heart begins to glow with the same warm orange as Raven. My skin begins to sting as Raven’s body starts to burn, the light emanating from him blinds me. I want to drop him, but I resist. A vortex of wind swirls around the two of us, a whirlpool of wind and feathers.

  His eyes open, lightning dancing in their storm grey centres.

  His tattoos swirl over his skin like ripples in a pond.

  The place over my heart where his feather once was has stopped burning and I look down at it. It has become a tattoo, swirling and moving with life just like Raven’s. His feathers are restored to his cloak and can’t help but run my fingers through its downy softness.

  His eyes search my own. “I … thought you were dead. That frog thing … she … she tricked me,” he says.

  “Tenebris tricked both of us,” I say. “I am so sorry.”

  “What for M’lady?” he says in that way that makes my heart melt.

  He does not remember me running him through.

  “Nothing My love, my foolishness is all,” I say. What is the point of telling him things that no longer matter?

  He reaches up and touches my face and I nuzzle into his skin. He gently pulls me down to his face and kisses me. His breeze dances over my skin as he pulls me into him.

  I am coaxed out of our embrace by the sudden crack and crumble from behind us. The dark ship of death erodes before our eyes and we watch its pieces fall into the sea. All the creatures are gone, except for the Kraken whom merely floats nearby, watching the wreckage sink below the waves.

  I stand to watch the debris of Tenebris’s ship sink. Stone and smoke and death dissolve into my waves. It is a satisfying sight. Such a short adversary. It makes me feel strong. But I rein myself in. I must not feel unbeatable. Supremacy is not my goal. Restoration is my goal.

  I look back down to Raven. I offer him a hand to stand. We stand close. He places an arm around me as we watch on. The destruction of things that were themselves destructive is the ultimate pleasure.

  I step into the water, holding Raven’s hand. The Kraken turns to face his beautiful golden eye towards me. I look around, feel around in the water. Feeling for hope that my new found friend has had restoration.

  Then.

  A pulse.

  Life.

  The surface of the water breaks with the bodies of Krakens. My friend’s skin ripples with colour. His arms stretch out to the family, at the pod that has returned. His tentacles caress their skin. His eyes soften. The smaller Kraken’s look confused and playful at the same time.

  I turn to Raven, his hand still tight on my lower back. I look into his stormy eyes. I had been looking for home this whole time, searching for it. Home was right here in front of me. How is it that a single person can feel like home?

  Part 7

  I patch the tree of life with moss, taking care to stem the flow of her green blood. She may provide life, but it doesn’t mean that life is endless.

  A pod of rays fly by in the sky. Whale sized creatures, with black skin and featherless wings. They float past, gracefully as if in water. I stare up at them in awe. To see something not exist and the simply spring into being… All because of … this tree. Life is precious.

  I can see my crew as they work on the Silent Lady. It is so good to actually see them again. Hear their singing. See them up in the rigging. I stand up straight and proud. And can’t help but feel responsible for their life. Everything’s life.

  Raven sits on the edge of the water washing the black grime from some of the big orange seed pods that has fallen from the Tree of Life. The flesh of the pods seems to be edible once washed of the blackness still left over from Teneris’s smog. I take a seat next to my first mate, straddling on of the roots from the giant Tree.

  ‘For you M’lady,’ he says, handing me the ripe fruit.

  I play with it in my hands. I am not hungry. I watch Raven, the man whom had been dead not an hour ago. He smiles as he washes the fruit and looks on at the pod of Kraken playing in the clean water beside us.

  ‘There is something familiar about these creatures M’lady. I don’t know what exactly it is but I feel like I knew one of them once.’ He puts a tattooed hand on my knee.

  I only smile back at him. I have a lot to tell him.

  He smiles and turns his head to the side. ‘I like this,’ he says pointing to the feather tattoo on my chest. ‘Not too sure about this though. Are you in pain M’lady?’
/>   ‘No Raven. It no longer pains me.’ I touch at the black rag I am using as an eye patch. I healed my eye like Raven did my knee back in the dreadful chasm. But it was too late. The flesh has healed, but a scar remains. The useless milky-white marble rolling around in the torn socket sees is ugly. I’d rather keep it covered. But I can’t say that it sees nothing. I have caught the flicker of lights and movement where its vision used to be. ‘I don’t mind the patch,’ I say.

  We watch as a flock of colourful birds flies overhead, squawking. Raven takes me by the hand. ‘You did well M’lady,’ he says.

  I squeeze his hand.

  Another flock of smaller, plainer birds flies over in the same direction. And then another large white ones. I narrow my eyes and look at Raven. He has the same suspicious look on his face.

  We stand and look in the direction of where the birds were flying from. I grey plume of smoke is rising in the distance. I draw my sword to look at its map.

  Raven gasps. ‘M’lady, your sword.’

  About an inch of the tip has turned a bubbling red. It is spreading slowly over my sword, oozing like lava.

  ‘No rest for the wicked,’ says Raven as he packs the fruit into a hessian sack. I take the sack from him.

  ‘I think we need some wind, Sir,’ I say.

  He takes me in his arms and kisses me deeply. Wind surges around us then he transforms and is up in the sky.

  I swim to the Silent Lady and climb the sides and start giving orders to my crew. ‘Aye, aye Cap’n,’ rings out around me as I climb through the rigging to get a better look at the smoke.

  I see the pod of Kraken’s looking on to see what all the fuss is about. The Kraken, my friend, comes to the side of the ship and reaches a tentacle up to me. ‘We might be able to use your help, but I understand if you wish to stay behind with your family,’ I say to him.

  He looks at me then to his family. He strokes my arm, suckers clasping my skin and letting go gently. ‘I understand,’ I say. ‘Go and keep them safe. I don’t know what is out there.’

  He swims back to his pod and with one last look back in my direction they disappear under the waves.

  I climb to the Crow’s nest and look out over my world. Something is yet again threatening it, but I refuse to let it hurt this world. Not again.