by N. D. Wilson
“What are the frames for?” Trudie asked quietly. “The doorways?”
Granlea laughed. “Selling! An old woman’s feeble craft, all made from lightning trees—novelty frames and doors and cupboards. You think I’ve been opening ways? Even my brother failed at that craft, and he nearly beat death itself. My husband died playing with Isaac’s toys. Why would I try such a thing?”
“Boredom,” Trudie said. “Loneliness.”
“Insanity,” Albert added.
Granlea sputtered loud frustration. “Why should I put up with this?”
“Because you have to. Where does an old woman find lightning trees?” Albert asked.
The old woman laughed.
“You haven’t seen Mad Isaac’s forest? Come with me.”
Hyacinth heard footsteps moving toward the back of the house. She heard a screen door squeal and then thump shut against soft rotting wood. Throwing off her blanket, she jumped up and tiptoed quickly around the stairwell past the bedroom doors toward the bathroom—the only room upstairs without a board over its window.
Cold tile tightened the balls of Hyacinth’s feet as she moved through the darkness to the glowing wisp of curtain that covered the high window. Standing tall and leaning forward, she moved the curtain just enough to make room for her eyes.
The glass pane was rippled and pearly white from years of blowing sand, allowing nothing but hazy moonlight through. No longer caring about stealth, Hyacinth pulled the curtain aside and felt for a latch. Her fingers found it, and the window slid up with a shove.
Cold sea air billowed into the bathroom around her, floating the curtain through her hair, sharpening her senses and sending a wave of goose bumps up her arms and down her back. Hyacinth leaned her head and shoulders out the window. An army of twisted and charred trees ran up the sloped valley behind the house. Vast trunks without canopies, candy striped with lightning scars and gouged by fire, lined with shattered limbs and crowned with dead splintered shards instead of towering life.
Even in the moonlight, Hyacinth recognized the silvery skin of eucalyptus, the sinews of cedar, and the bark and bulk of redwood. These had all been great trees once, she knew, kings and queens of their own groves. Now they slouched in aboveground graves, disfigured and dead—centuries wrapped up in each of them, centuries gathered into a rotting forest. Mad Isaac’s forest.
Below her, Hyacinth heard voices. Human shadows moved among the monstrous shadows of trees, and she saw her father rest a hand on a cedar trunk while her mother hung back, turning slowly.
Behind them both, Granlea Quarles was ignoring the trees. Her face was turned back toward the house, and her white hair, fluttering in the breeze, was brighter even than the moon that lit it. She was looking up at the open bathroom window. She was staring at Hyacinth.
Hyacinth flinched when she found the old woman’s eyes, ducking quickly back into the bathroom darkness. How long had the old woman been watching? How had she known?
Hyacinth leaned forward again, slowly. The old woman was waiting right where she had been, still watching. This time Hyacinth met her gaze and refused to look away. She was not going to let herself be afraid.
The old woman twitched a small smile.
Hyacinth didn’t smile back. She raised her hands and slowly pulled the window down, leaving only a few inches open at the bottom. She wanted a sea breeze on the landing. Something to keep her thoughts calm while she waited for the sun.
The curtain drifted and danced as she backed away.
—
GRANLEA QUARLES WATCHED THE small opening in the upstairs window until she was sure the girl was gone. Then she shifted her attention up through the lightning grove to where the Smith parents were whispering to each other. She had known they were coming. She was even grateful—especially since they had managed to kill that double-mouthed nastiness when she had failed. She winced at the memory and rolled her shoulder. The deepest bites still hadn’t healed.
Having Smiths around could be helpful if something went wrong like that again. But they weren’t as simple as she had hoped they would be. Especially that girl. Any fool with half of one sense could tell that she was operating with something extra. She was a problem. Or maybe she was the best thing that had come Granlea’s way in decades.
No reason to rush into action one way or the other. Not just yet. Things would become clear soon enough.
“Friend or foe?” Granlea asked. “What will it be, little Smith?”
Albert and Trudie Smith were walking back toward her between jagged trunks.
She flashed them a smile.
HYACINTH SNEEZED, SPUTTERED, AND sneezed again, kicking her only blanket off the orange couch and onto Lawrence’s feet.
“Why are you sneezing?” Lawrence asked. “Are you allergic to here?”
Hyacinth sat up quickly. Sunlight was pouring onto the landing through the open bathroom door. Flocks of dust motes swirled around her brother’s matted blond hair on invisible winds and weather systems.
“Dust,” she said. “What are you—” She sneezed again. Violently. Lawrence laughed.
“Once,” he said, “do you remember when I sneezed ice cream?”
Hyacinth shut her eyes for a moment and fought the tickle in her nose with the back of her hand. Finally, the feeling passed and she cautiously focused on her brother.
“Once,” Lawrence said again, “do you remember when I sneezed ice cream?”
“I do,” Hyacinth said, looking around. She swung her bare feet onto the rough, dusty wood floor. Was anyone else in the house? She heard no footsteps. No voices. The bedroom doors were all open.
“It was in that ice cream parlor where Grandpa Jerry took us and I tried Pink Bubble Gum.”
“I remember,” Hyacinth said. “Served you right for ordering Bubble Gum.” She could tell her brother wanted to relive the whole story, but she had no interest in reliving that or any other early childhood memories of bodily functions gone wrong. She stood up and felt her feet throb, once again adjusting to blood flow and body weight.
“I got pink all down my shirt and my chest was sticky and it sprayed out of my nose all over the glass case.”
Hyacinth remembered it all vividly, and without any reminders needed. She grimaced and shook her head. The only thing she hated more than stories of bodily functions gone wrong were those moments when bodily functions actually went wrong.
“L, stop. Just don’t,” she said. “Please. Where is everybody?”
“I don’t know. They got up, but I went back to bed. You were snoring out here and they decided not to wake you up.” Lawrence shrugged. “Then you sneezed and woke me up.”
Hyacinth groaned. “I hate sleeping. Hate, hate, hate.”
“Why?” Lawrence asked. “I like sleeping.”
“Drooling with people staring at you and you don’t even know,” Hyacinth said. “Breathing weird and being all limp like an idiot.” She was already moving toward the stairs. “Being asleep when other people are awake is the worst. Almost as bad as sneezing ice cream.”
“I don’t care about drooling,” Lawrence said. “Or sneezing ice cream. But being awake is good too.” He grew serious. “Awake, you can eat. And climb trees. And play with dogs and swim. And smell things.”
Hyacinth paused on the stairs, looking through the landing rail at her sunlit brother. He continued. “But I dream about flying. So maybe sleeping wins.”
“Come on, L,” Hyacinth said. “Let’s go.”
She moved quickly through the bare living room lined with all the empty frames and headed straight for the kitchen.
“Mom?” The ancient green and mustard linoleum was sticky beneath her feet, and she peeled up quick steps toward the back door. Lawrence was still talking about sleep behind her as she pushed out onto a pair of rough-edged brick steps with decaying mortar. The sun was just high enough above the hills to have reached its full brightness, and low enough to be glaring directly at her above the groves of dead lightning t
rees.
Hyacinth squinted and shielded her instantly watering eyes. Light, like most things, affected her more intensely than her siblings. But she could already hear them.
“Why would anyone do this?” Daniel’s voice asked from somewhere in the middle distance. “So much work…”
“So much crazy,” Circe said. “Totally bonkers. A forest of dead trees? It scares me that she’s even family.”
“Barely. But she’s not the one who did all this,” Harriet said.
“Yeah,” Circe said. “Sure. Grandpa Isaac did it all by himself. Some of these look pretty new.”
“Who cares about the trees?” Harriet said. “I can’t believe Hy and L have to stay here with her.”
“Maybe Mom and Dad are going crazy too,” Circe said. “It makes me feel sick.”
“Hey,” Daniel said. “They wouldn’t be doing it if there was a better option.”
Lawrence nudged Hyacinth, and she jerked in surprise, opening her eyes. She had shut them without noticing, focusing on the awful conversation she was hearing.
“You asleep again?” Lawrence asked.
Hyacinth shook her head. She could see now, but she couldn’t see her siblings. The voices were still there, but far more faintly. The dead forest filled the little valley that rose up behind the house and lined the slopes on either side, planted in crudely dug holes in strangely uneven and swirling rows, each blackened and splintered trunk beside a loose pile of earth. Live trees occasionally stood among the dead, and full groves with slowly swaying green canopies surrounded the valley. Hyacinth wanted to touch each lightning tree; she wanted to know every story wrapped in every ring from every day of every year that the gathered trees had witnessed. She felt like she was looking at the richest, most exhaustive library she would ever see—with every towering volume in a language she would never be able to fully read. But she had more immediate things to sort out.
To her left, a dozen yards from one corner of the grove, stood the battered barn. All its doors were shut.
“Where are they?” she asked her brother. “Do you see them?”
Lawrence pointed up the hill. One hundred yards and the first twenty uneven rows of charred timber separated Hyacinth from the conversation she had been hearing. She blinked, focused, and blinked again. There was Daniel, slapping a trunk and then poking at a black spiraling lightning scar at least a foot wide. Circe tucked back her short hair, stuck one leg forward, and crossed her arms. It was her best angry stance. Harriet was nervous, pulling at her braid.
“Should we go out there?” Lawrence asked.
“Hush,” Hyacinth said. “Just for a second.” And then she shut her eyes again and focused.
“Lots of families send kids to camps that young,” Circe said. Her voice sounded like it was fighting through a breeze to reach Hyacinth’s ears. “I know they do.”
“And lots of families have money,” Daniel said. “I’m surprised Dad can afford to send the three of us.”
“Why should we have to train at all? What is a training camp even for? I just don’t think they should split us up,” Harriet said. “Ever. We can’t let them.”
“Let them?” Daniel laughed, but not cheerfully. “Let Mom and Dad? They’re Mom and Dad. Do you think they want us taking care of other people’s houses when we’re all grown?” He was frustrated, that much was obvious. But not just at his sisters. He was frustrated that he had to be frustrated at his sisters. Frustrated that he had to defend a decision that he hated.
Hyacinth opened her eyes again, and the voices dropped to normal levels. Whatever was happening, Daniel hated it too. He hated it more than any of them. He was angry and even scared. But he was trying not to show it.
“What’s going on?” Lawrence asked.
“Nothing good,” Hyacinth said, and she grabbed her little brother’s hand and pulled him off the loose brick stairs onto the gravel path. Already she felt alone with him—two kids on one life raft, floating toward something she didn’t understand.
Hyacinth didn’t head out into the trees. Ignoring her older siblings but still gripping Lawrence by the hand, she headed down the path toward the barn as quickly as her callused feet could carry her.
“Hy,” Lawrence said, scrambling beside and behind her. “Hy! I’m wearing socks.”
Hyacinth glanced down at her brother’s feet. Much too large gray-and-red woolly socks were flopping off of his toes. Red stripes that would have been loose around a man-size calf were sagging around Lawrence’s ankles.
Hyacinth skidded to a stop.
“I found them in a dresser.” Lawrence looked down at his toes. “I didn’t mean to wear them outside. They aren’t mine.”
“Go get some shoes,” Hyacinth said. “Or just kick them off. I don’t know.”
Lawrence shuffled. “They look like flat sheep.” He stepped on one flapping toe and then the other, tugging his feet free. He was wearing another pair of socks underneath, and they still had baggy toes, but they were white and much smaller.
“Are those yours?” Hyacinth asked.
Lawrence nodded.
“Good. Ruin them all you like. Now keep up.”
The big barn had lost most of its paint on the seaward side, and its vertical wood plank siding was gray and bowed and tiger-striped with cracks. The metal roofing was entirely rust, and an old tractor with spiked metal wheels was parked on the barn’s inland side.
At first, Hyacinth was focused on the large central door hanging on a battered but greasy rail, but as she and Lawrence approached the barn, she shifted toward a small door, slightly ajar on the seaward side. One of its hinges had torn out of the wall, and the other was hanging on by a single screw.
Hyacinth dropped her brother’s hand and leaned forward, peering into the darkness. She was looking at stairs. And she could hear voices.
Carefully holding the door’s weight so the hinge wouldn’t have to carry as much, she opened it just a foot and then let the bottom rest on the ground. The screw held. She put her finger to her lips, warning Lawrence, and then slipped inside.
The cool dust of decades cushioned her bare feet as she stepped up onto the thick plank stair. Above her, she heard wings flutter and pigeons coo as they discussed some hidden roost. She smelled aging wood and forgotten animals and a residue of oiled leather and fuel and a long history of birds. And something recent and nasty—sour. Old meat. Blood. Death.
Daylight striped through the cracked siding and across the leaning stairwell. When Lawrence stepped into the barn behind her, she began to climb.
The loft was vast, crowded around the edges with piles hidden by thick brown oilcloth tarps that were themselves coated with dust and painted with pigeon blight. The center of the floor was open and protected by teetering and broken rails. A voice Hyacinth didn’t recognize rose up into the rafters.
Hyacinth crept across sagging boards toward the light. The soft dust beneath her feet was now punctuated by dry pigeon waste, too densely sprinkled to avoid. The guilty birds fluttered in the rafters above her. She stepped over one owl pellet, and then two.
“Hy,” Lawrence whispered behind her.
She flashed him a warning look, but he ignored it and pointed at the proof that a much bigger owl had been using the barn as well—pigeon skeletons picked completely clean and left to dry, with only the feathered wings left undamaged and spread wide. Lawrence was nudging the nearest winged skeleton with an absolutely filthy socked toe. Hyacinth knew that Lawrence would make even more noise if she didn’t acknowledge his find, so she widened her eyes in brief amazement and then raised a finger to her lips.
Lawrence put one hand over his mouth in apology. Hyacinth crouched down, placed her hands palm flat in the dust, and eased herself forward until she had her first view of the lit floor below.
There was sawdust everywhere and stacks of partially milled lightning timber, and dozens of incomplete or damaged frames leaning against walls and hanging from hooks on the ceiling.
In the center of it all, a big man built like a picture-book Viking, with thick blond hair and a blond beard both well on their way to white, was crouching beside a body on a tarp, taking measurements with gloved hands and a large pair of metal calipers that looked like a giant earwig’s pincers. The skin on his long, thick arms was sun-dark and speckled, and he wore his pants tucked into high boots. Hyacinth had never seen him before, but she had seen his type. Whenever men like him had appeared at the Smiths’ different temporary houses, her father had always treated them like his bosses while the kids had steered clear.
The body on the tarp looked mostly normal from Hyacinth’s perch—long brown hair pooling around the head, eyes closed, normal mouth slightly open, skin perfectly smooth and undamaged, even though it had now turned gray and looked slick with moisture.
“The head, hands, and feet are all well above average,” the man said. His English was polished and easy, but he had an accent Hyacinth couldn’t place.
“I would think you’d be more interested in the second mouth,” Albert said, stepping into view. Trudie Smith appeared next to her husband, tucking her hand nervously under his arm and leaning against him. It was not a pose Hyacinth saw often. Whatever was going on, her mother needed comforting.
Albert continued, “And of course there’s the fact that nothing seemed to injure him.”
“Until he died, that is,” the big man said.
“Sure,” said Albert. “But even then I think that was more by choice. He was just tied up in the truck. And there are no wounds on him, even though I shot him more times than I can count.”
“Well, he’s rotting quickly now,” the man said, and he slid his right hand under the corpse’s neck, lifting up so the head fell back with a sound like a sigh.
And there it was—the second mouth.
Hyacinth caught her breath. Her mother had told them about the two mouths, but she hadn’t seen them for herself. Under the chin, where the jaw met the neck, there was a wide seam of thin lips. The lips parted as the head flopped back, revealing upper and lower rows of small translucent teeth—teeth guarding the dark gaping entrance to the throat.