The Door Before

by N. D. Wilson

  “Grower girl, do not struggle. My sons will carry you to a garden where your gift will be honored among the gifts of my most favored slaves.”

  Hyacinth wriggled in the air, and the monstrous grips tightened on her legs and arms.

  “Let her go!” Lawrence yelled from the roof above. “Put her down right now!”

  The gray face looked up and then contorted into laughter so vile and rotting that Hyacinth’s eyes burned and she went dizzy from the smell.

  Her head lolled, and she threw up all down the monster’s chest. Surprised, he refocused his attention on her.

  She shut her eyes. The witch could look at her, but she didn’t have to look back.

  Green and purple light flashed through her eyelids, and a sound like a river chewing rocks surrounded her.

  Hyacinth opened her eyes and saw the witch’s shock in her slave’s last look. But only briefly, because enormous grapevines, shimmering with light, lashed around the monster’s head and shoulders and throat.

  An army of living vines trailed behind the monster to where they all emerged in a storm of light from the palm of Mordecai’s extended hand.

  The wounded boy closed his fist, swung his arm around the light like he was gathering rope, and then jerked it all toward himself.

  Arms were shucked from shoulders and fungal heads exploded. Hyacinth dropped to the ground in two huge piles of mushroom under a coiled and tangled canopy of ancient vines, all loaded with dark, heavy grapes.

  Mordecai staggered forward, fell onto his wounded shoulder, and shut his eyes.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Lawrence said. He dropped off the roof, dangled on one of the thick remaining vines, and dropped to the ground beside his sister. “How did he do that? Who is he?”

  “Mordecai!” Caleb fought through the vines and lifted his brother to his feet. “What were you thinking?” All three dogs trailed behind him, staying clear of the vines and every scattered piece of fungus flesh.

  Hyacinth rose to her feet, blinking away her dizziness.

  “Thank you,” she said. “They had me, and then—”

  “No time,” Caleb said, turning away. “Come on. Quickly. Run.”

  Hyacinth tugged Lawrence along beside her, but not before he could grab a large cluster of grapes off the nearest vine.

  Half carrying, half dragging his brother, Caleb raced straight into the lightning trees. As he passed beyond the first rows, Mordecai grew more stable on his feet, and Caleb shrugged him off.

  “These trees,” Mordecai said. “They give more strength even than the old faeren groves.”

  “Of course they do,” Caleb said. “But that doesn’t mean you can wield it. You could have used a tithe of that force to crush that pair, and then I wouldn’t have needed to carry you out.”

  “I’m fine,” Mordecai said, and rounding a gnarled old cypress tree trunk, he slowed to a stop and rested his palms and head against the scarred bark.

  Hyacinth and Lawrence stopped beside Caleb. The three dogs lined up beside them with noses pointed back toward the house and ears and tails up.

  “Who are you guys?” Lawrence asked Caleb. “And what is going on?”

  Caleb looked at him and then at Hyacinth. He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled one of his final two arrows from his quiver and dropped to a knee beside the dogs, watching the house.

  “She didn’t lose her connection with her slaves this time,” Caleb said quietly.

  “I know,” Mordecai answered, still leaning on the tree.

  “She came herself,” Caleb said. “She’s here. She entered this world.”

  “Hy?” Lawrence asked. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  “Granlea’s been using lightning wood to open doorways between worlds,” Hyacinth said. “These brothers came through, chased by the first man with two mouths that Dad killed.”

  “Not a man,” Caleb said. “And good for your father.”

  Hyacinth looked back at the house. They were only a couple hundred yards away, but they were shrouded in shadow.

  “Not a man,” Hyacinth repeated. “But he belonged to a witch who already killed their father, and she’s been after them too.”

  “We’re after her,” Mordecai muttered.

  “And now,” Hyacinth continued, “she’s come through Granlea’s doors herself with seven more of her not-men.”

  “Seven?” Caleb sighed. “That’s unfortunate. I hoped four was her favorite number.”

  Hyacinth looked at her brother. Lawrence was staring at her with his mouth open. Everything on his face told her that he was struggling to believe a word she had said, even though a real cluster of grapes was dangling from his hand.

  “You saw what happened in the living room,” Hyacinth whispered. “That was her.” She nodded at Mordecai. “And you saw what he just did.”

  Lawrence looked at Mordecai and then at the grapes in his hand. “Are you a wizard?” he asked.

  “Wizards are thieves,” Mordecai said. “Like Nimiane, they steal power they were not born with.”

  “Our father hated them,” Caleb said.

  “Then what are you guys?” Lawrence asked. He held up the grapes. “Are these real? Can I eat them?”

  Caleb smiled. “They are real. But they may be bitter. I am like you. But my brother is more. We were in the womb together, but I was the sixth born of her sons. He was the seventh. He is a pauper-son, a green man, born with the second sight—eyes that can see the living words of creation. In our mother’s garden, beside a sea not unlike this one, an old vine was the first growing thing to reveal its burning word to him. I, a sixth, saw it too, but only faintly, like a ghost. But the vine fire blazed through my brother entirely, marking him from his palm to his soul and out again.”

  “Do not talk about it,” Mordecai said, still not looking up.

  “He was blind for a week,” Caleb said. “But when the blindness passed, everything had changed for him.”

  Hyacinth moved to the tree, just beside Mordecai. She could feel the life somehow flowing between the wood and the boy like a draft in a room with no clear source. And then she placed her palm on the tree.

  She felt the life inside it, woven into every ring; she felt it draining, drying. To her touch, the cypress felt like a house collapsing, like a barn crumpling beneath a century of winters that had all arrived in a single moment. It was like an insect being drained by a spider.

  And the boy was the spider.

  “Stop it!” Hyacinth said. “You have enough. You don’t have to kill it.”

  Mordecai looked up, surprised.

  “It’s dead already.”

  “No,” Hyacinth said. “It’s dying, but it’s still alive.”

  “It has no roots,” Caleb said. “It’s just wood in a hole now. The witch would drain the life from a whole forest until it was just ash on the wind. My brother will only take what they don’t need. This one doesn’t need anything now.”

  “Yes, it does,” Hyacinth said. “It needs as much as it can get.” She focused on the trunk. There was still violence inside it from the lightning strike. A few branches were broken off above her head, but she knew that there were no roots below her. “C’mon then,” she whispered. “Don’t sleep so hard. There will be sun tomorrow. And then rain.”

  The tree couldn’t hear her, because it had no ears. But it could feel her touch; she knew it could. She couldn’t command it. She couldn’t shape the life or the power she felt inside it, and she couldn’t take it. But she could make suggestions. She could inspire. And she could wake.

  There was more than enough energy in the tree to spread a canopy and shatter stone with new roots. It only needed urging.

  The trunk groaned, and Mordecai stepped back.

  “How did you do that?” he asked. Hyacinth retreated beside him. He was staring at her, studying her hands and her face. But she was watching the tree.

  Ten feet above them, the broken branches twisted slowly, and then young shoots burst up from their
bark, extending past the jagged crown at the top of the trunk.

  The ground shivered beneath Hyacinth’s bare feet. Mordecai looked down and then at her.

  “Roots,” she said. “Splitting stone.”

  “You’re a witch,” Mordecai sneered. “What spell was that? You have no faeren magic, or I would see it.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Hyacinth said. “I’m not a witch, and I don’t know any spells. I didn’t do anything. The tree did. It used all the strength it has been collecting from our sun—our star—for centuries.”

  “That is not possible.” The boy reached out and felt the trunk.

  “It’s a lot more possible than you throwing vines out of your hand.”

  “I don’t throw them,” Mordecai said. “I gather any strength I can. Because a vine was the first to touch me, the force emerges—”

  “Guys,” Lawrence said, pointing toward the house. “Look.”

  “Be silent,” Caleb said. “Be still.”

  “I don’t throw vines,” Mordecai whispered.

  “Stop,” Caleb said. “We need a plan.”

  Hyacinth crouched behind the three dogs beside her brother. Shapes were moving out from the house in both directions. Many shapes. Dozens. All fanning out around the lightning trees.

  “I guess only seven hunters was too good to be true,” Caleb said.

  Hyacinth recognized the glossy shapes of the mushroom men, but there were others too. Men in cloaks and high boots. Men with bows and men with swords and men with staves like scythes, crowned with long hooked blades.

  “Those aren’t just hunters,” Mordecai said. “She’s brought her witch-dogs.”

  “Witch-dogs?” Hyacinth asked.

  “Wizard warriors,” Caleb said. “Her thralls. She feeds them powers they are not strong enough to gather for themselves.”

  “We should hide,” Lawrence said. “Where can we hide?”

  All three dogs began to growl, and then Hyacinth saw the wolves. They had to be wolves. They were much too big to be anything else. There were three of them, and they were perfectly white, brighter than the moonlight. Each wolf was held back by chains, held by two men, one on each side.

  “Whoa…,” Lawrence said. “Those are really big dogs.”

  “Wolves,” Caleb said. “We can’t hide from them. We’ll have to fight through.”

  “Through to what?” Hyacinth asked.

  “To the doorway they just entered inside the house,” Mordecai said. “The doorway that will lead us back to our own world.”

  “You’re nuts.” Hyacinth shook her head. “We have to get out of here. Right now. We have to run.” She grabbed Lawrence, pulling him to his feet and backing away.

  Three stripes of pale orange fire surged up from the house and over the lightning trees, touching down on the other side.

  Hyacinth blinked in the sudden light. The fiery rainbows hung in the air, shrinking the shadows between the trees to almost nothing.

  “Where do we go?” Lawrence squeezed his sister’s hand tight. “Hy. Where do we go?”

  Hyacinth pulled him behind the cypress tree, leaning out just far enough to keep her eyes on the house.

  Mordecai and Caleb slipped behind a tree across from them. The dogs held their positions, still growling, but quietly. They knew they were outmatched.

  Beside the house, the witch-queen stood tall in the leafy tangle of Mordecai’s vines. She extended both hands and the vines disintegrated, swirling in ash around her feet.

  “There she is,” Hyacinth whispered. “Shoot her, Caleb. Do something!”

  Caleb didn’t move. Mordecai was saying something in his ear.

  —

  NIMIANE, DAUGHTER OF NIMROTH, witch-queen of Endor, shut her eyes and sniffed at the salty air. She did not care for the sea. Almost as much as she did not care for the green men. The sea was unwieldy, even for her. But the green men were worse than unwieldy. They were self-confident savages best devoured young—younger even than the one she now hunted. In Endor and its many territories, seventh sons were enthralled or destroyed at birth. Even as thralls, the green ones often found their own minds and rebelled.

  But when they developed a hunger and desire for the devouring power she could offer them, a green man could not be surpassed by any wizard. And all of hers had been killed by the vile Amram Iothric. The boy might be worth tempting, if only to further spite the memory of his dead father.

  Her mushroom sons and slaves would be in position soon. And her wolves would hunt. But if she could shorten the fight, she would. She let her mind wander behind the eyes of her sons, moving her senses from one skull to the next, looking down at the firelit graveyard of trees. They were perched on rocks and in brush, waiting to attack, but they saw nothing.

  She hadn’t expected them to. With a slight shift, she felt for her cat.

  “Bast.” With her eyes still closed, she hissed the animal’s name under her breath. When the cat was close, she didn’t need to. But over distance…

  Nimiane’s mind was filled with orange light. She was crouched low, moving like liquid between thick tree trunks in holes and over mounds of loose earth between them. She smelled rodents. Rats had filled almost every crack with their scent. She wanted to pursue. To capture and torture, to pierce flesh and taste heartbeaten blood, but she could not. She was Bast, and she was hunting larger prey.

  The cat slowed, lowering her belly almost to the ground. The breeze was coming to her, and it carried the smell prints of four hated people. Three hated dogs.

  Fifty more strides and her eyes found them. She dropped all the way to her belly, moving nothing but her tail. With it, she lashed the wind.

  A girl people and a smaller boy people of the same blood. Another boy people with weapons and a boy people wearing his soul on the outside—a soul of greens and purples that twisted and wound around him like dancing snakes.

  Three dogs. Two were simple brutes. But the third dog, the ugliest, wore his soul on the outside, just like the boy people. The dog’s soul looked like clear steely tongues wavering around it like bladed water.

  His soul wouldn’t matter. The wolves would eat him whole regardless.

  “We stand ready, Queen.” The words came through different ears in a different place, but the cat heard them clearly.

  “Yes,” Nimiane said. “We do. The children have not yet reached the center of the wood. Strike now, and gather me the green boy.”

  “Which is the green?”

  The boy people wrapped in fire. The cat hissed. She wanted her queen to crush the fool and let Bast lick the hot blood.

  Nimiane silenced the urges of the cat. Bast would stay and be her eyes.

  “The one tearing your body apart with vines or shattering your bones with wind,” the witch-queen said. “He will be the green. Bring him to me still drawing breath.”

  “Strike!” the man yelled, and chains rattled loose in front of the witch. Clawed feet tore at the earth as the wolves raced away. The shouts of men echoed between the hills, but Nimiane did not open her eyes. The excitement would happen elsewhere, where she was already watching. She felt fear and anticipation trickle up Bast’s spine.

  —

  HYACINTH WAS TRYING TO think. Fighting was not an option. As amazing as Mordecai’s vines had been, he had collapsed after destroying just two of the mushroom men. But running didn’t seem like much of an option either. They needed to hide, and they needed to hide right now. From wolves and men and monsters and a witch-queen with her crazy cat.

  She could hear voices. A man’s. And then the witch’s.

  “Hy?” Lawrence was squeezing her arm. She tugged it loose and put her hands on her head.

  “We have nothing,” she said. “What do we have? Nothing. A couple boys and three dogs.”

  “Hy?” Lawrence grabbed her again. “Look.”

  “We have boys and dogs and…we can’t just hide behind trees.”

  She looked at Mordecai and Caleb. Caleb had an arrow o
n the string, and Mordecai was breathing deeply, clearly preparing for his final fight.

  “Death is a vanquished foe,” Caleb said.

  “Death cannot end me,” Mordecai answered.

  “Stop it!” Hyacinth hissed. “We are not dying right now! We are not!”

  “Hy!” Lawrence pinched her arm tight. “Look!”

  Finally, Hyacinth followed her brother’s glance. Fifty yards away, at the base of a huge cedar with a gaping trunk, she saw the witch’s white cat. Its belly was low, its eyes were glowing from the firelight hanging above them all, and its tail was lashing slowly.

  “She’s watching us,” Hyacinth said. She turned back toward Caleb and Mordecai. “The witch knows where we are!”

  Caleb shrugged. Mordecai’s lips were moving. He was praying.

  “Squid!” Hyacinth whispered. “Here!”

  The mottled dog broke formation with the other two and trotted to Hyacinth. Dropping to her knees, she grabbed his head, pressing her own against his, pointing his snout at the cat and the gaping cedar tree.

  “You see it?” she asked, and the dog tensed.

  “Strike!” The witch-queen’s command spread out over the trees. Hyacinth heard the chains rattle as the wolves were loosed. War cries and shouts washed around her from all sides. Shark and Ray were both whimpering, but Squid was undistracted.

  “Kill,” Hyacinth said, and the dog rocketed toward the cat.

  “They’re coming,” Lawrence said, picking up two rocks. “Hy, they’re coming.”

  Caleb stepped out from behind his tree, drawing his bow to his ear.

  Hyacinth grabbed one of Lawrence’s rocks and threw it hard. The stone hit Caleb in the ribs. Gasping, his arrow flew astray and he wheeled on her, furious.

  Hyacinth jumped up to her feet.

  “If you two don’t come with me right now, I’ll kill you myself.”

  Turning, pulling her brother beside her, Hyacinth raced after Squid.