by Laura Bickle
She stepped over the circle of stones and into the dark.
Sig trotted beside her, snooting at the set of glowing tracks that led into the night. They were a man’s tracks, she could tell. She hoped that the spirit world was playing it straight with her, just this once, and that these would lead her to her father. As she walked, she glanced down at her pendant, the lion devouring the sun. It, too, glowed with the same dim, cold light. The pendant and the footprints had to be connected.
Her heart pounded as she followed the tracks. They guided her to a field that felt somehow familiar. The shape of the land, the way the flat plain fell away from the mountains—it reminded her of the land behind her trailer. She shuddered involuntarily. In her own world, this land was serene and comforting. Not here.
The tracks led her to a wrought iron fence that wrapped around the ruins of a structure. The building seemed to have burned, charred timbers fallen in on themselves. Black glass glittered in the ruins, cold and still with a dusting of frost over it. It didn’t take long for her to figure out what she was looking at. This was Lascaris’s house, or at least the spirit world’s memory of it. Had to be.
Petra shivered. She opened the gate warily. She and Sig slid through. She thumbed back the hammers of the guns, and audible clicks sounded over the frost-covered scene.
There had been fire, and she thought immediately of the phoenix. Had the phoenix been here, at Lascaris’s house? Had Gabe been mistaken in his account, and had the phoenix perhaps started the fire?
She followed the glowing footprints to the edge of the ruin. Where they pressed into the ground, the frost was wiped away. At the edge, she peered down through a ruined floor, where the tracks vanished. A basement yawned below her, so much like the pit of basalt in the forest. Lascaris must have conjured the bird here. And her father must have come here to investigate.
But then what happened?
“Dad?” she called. “Dad?”
There was no answer. Sig watched the sky, as if scanning for an airborne threat, his ears pressed forward in alertness.
Sig seemed much more keyed in to the spirit world than she ever had been. She pointed to the basement. “Do you think it’s safe to go down there?”
Sig continued to gaze upward. He was clearly more concerned with skyward threats than underground ones. She took that as encouragement. The basement could be a trap, but she had to look. Her father could be in there, somewhere in this ruin.
“Keep watch,” she ordered the coyote. “Good dog.”
She scrambled down into the basement to look for her dad, skidding part of the way and jumping the rest, guns lifted at shoulder height. She landed in a puff of black char that sputtered up some dark ash. She saw a few smears of luminescence here, but the tracks just stopped. With the barrel of a gun, she poked among the illegible curled black pages of books that disintegrated when she touched them. She sifted pieces of broken glass. A cold athanor sat in the corner. Gold particles glittered here and there, fine as dust. She combed through the rubble, the broken brick, and found nothing. There was no sign of her father, and no magical secrets that survived the fire.
“Dad!” she shouted.
No one answered her. She holstered her guns, and climbed up, out of the basement, picking her way along collapsed timbers. She stood on the ground above and shouted as loud as she could for her father. At her side, Sig howled.
And there was nothing. Nothing answered her.
Silence rang in her ears.
Petra awoke beside the Eye of the World. She was lying on her side, with Sig sprawled over her knees. The ground still held the heat of the day, and she felt sluggish. She stared into the water, which gave up no secrets.
Something croaked behind her.
She turned over, drawing her guns and dislodging Sig, to face a black toad perched on a rock. It looked like the small toad that had fled into the water.
“Do you talk?” she asked, not feeling stupid in the slightest.
The toad’s throat ballooned, turning pale as it spoke: “The kingdom of death is nigh.”
Sig growled, and she felt it vibrating through his body. He skulked behind her to approach the toad. She shoved him back with a leg.
“What does that mean? Does that mean that my father is dead? Where is he?”
The toad blinked at her. “Knowledge will cost you.”
“What do you want? Money?” She had no money on her. The only thing of value she owned was the necklace that her father had given her—wait, that wasn’t true. She laid down one gun and patted her pockets. She also had Lascaris’s pocket watch. Her fingers closed over it, and she was tempted. But it was not hers to trade. Her fingers slipped up instead to the necklace her father had given her. With trembling regret, she took it off and set it on the ground between them.
The toad hopped forward and licked the gold. “Pretty. But the gold in your pocket is more appealing.”
Petra fished the timepiece out of her pocket and held it in her hand. She didn’t know the full extent of the watch’s meaning for Gabe. She knew she had no right to trade it for anything. “It’s not mine,” she said stubbornly.
“Then there is no trade.”
Sig snarled. Petra reached for his collar and wrapped both her legs around him. He huffed and growled, and it was all she could do to keep the coyote from destroying the little toad.
Petra sighed. Gabe had a very long life in which to forgive her. She placed the watch before the toad. The toad crept toward it and swallowed it, fragmented chain and all. Its belly distended, and Petra had no idea how the creature would even be able to move.
“Where is my father?” she asked again.
The toad blinked, and it seemed as if its slitted pupils stared past her, to the Eye of the World itself. “You will see your father’s face again when you find the phoenix. Search the edge of the fire.”
Without another word, the toad hopped away.
“Wait—that’s it?”
Petra reached out to grab it, to demand clarification, but it slid into the darkness and disappeared.
She released Sig, hoping that the coyote would track him down for her. Instead, Sig sat upright and stared at her with a look of extreme disapproval, as if she’d eaten an entire package of hot dogs without sharing. Which is how her stomach felt, actually—she’d given away the watch for basically nothing.
Well, maybe not nothing.
“When I find the phoenix . . .”
Her father was chasing the phoenix, too. It made sense that there was no trace of him in the spirit world, if he was off on some harebrained quest.
And that meant he had to be out there, somewhere.
She would find him.
Chapter 17
Unkindness
Gabe flew into the dusk as an unkindness of ravens, peering at the ground through dozens of eyes. He skimmed over trails and forests and fields, surging toward the last known location of Joseph Dee. New barricades had been erected on the dark ribbons of roads, lit with flashing lights. He followed them, deep into the park. Fire washed over the horizon, sending up clouds of smoke that stung his eyes. His shadows flickered over the smoke as he spiraled in and out, over the singed trees.
He saw no cars, no headlamps, only the gathering darkness and fire. Soldiers moved at the perimeter of the fire like ants. A helicopter flew away in a fury of sound, a bucket dangling from a line. The Magpie was growing larger than any fire that Gabe had lodged in his memory, and he had seen many in his time. He knew that it was now beyond any human hope of stopping it.
He searched until the darkness became indistinguishable from the smoke. His daylight eyes could see no more. With reluctance, he turned his feathered bodies toward the Rutherford Ranch.
Wind slicked through his wings, and the journey to the Lunaria was short. He heard the tree before he spied it on the ground; the leaves whispered to themselves in the dark. He landed a few yards away, feathers and bird bones clotting into the shape of a man. He reached in
to his truck for his clothing. He dressed quickly and pulled his pistol out from under the seat. He held the gun in his right hand, his thumb on the hammer.
He approached the tree warily. The branches shuddered, and the whispering increased in volume as he crossed under its canopy.
“No,” Gabe said. “There’s no more making peace. This is war.”
The tree groaned, a sound that reverberated up from the ground and rattled the topmost branches. A tree root rose from the ground and licked his shoe. It had the sense of being a submissive, placating gesture. Gabe tensed and aimed his gun at it. The root froze. Maybe the tree would . . .
The ground opened up beneath him, and he was falling in an avalanche of dirt, tree roots, and rock. He struggled to hold on to his gun as he fell into the dark.
Gabe landed on his left shoulder in the shallows of the underground river, gasping like a fish. He struggled to climb to his feet, swallowing metallic-tasting river water.
The tree was incandescent with rage. Pale yellow light, its lifeblood of stored sunshine, shivered through its roots and dripped down the tendrils into the sluggish river, forming a glowing oil slick around Gabe. Gabe climbed to his feet in the water and trudged toward shore. He aimed his gun at the heart of the tree, curling with angry roots.
“You have me. Leave her alone.”
A root snaked under the water and snapped around Gabe’s ankle. It turned him upside down and hauled him up by his ankle, flailing. Gabe struggled to keep hold of his gun and his wits.
The Lunaria drew him close to its glowing heartwood and shook him sharply. The roots seethed and growled. He shot at them, and the tree winced. But he only had so many bullets. The splinters settled on the water like matchsticks on a puddle.
“I will leave you forever if you don’t let her be.”
The wood of the tree groaned, the sound of a creaking door in an old house.
“Yes. I will fade and die without you. And you will continue on, as you always have. But she will have no reason to come here, ever again.” He swung by his ankle, serene as Odin dangling from the World Tree, Yggdrasil.
The tree reached out with dozens of rhizomes, forming a cage around him.
He snorted. “You can try to imprison me.”
Roots dug into his skin, letting phosphorescent blood. He hissed: “You can try to torture me.”
The tree growled, deep in its heartwood.
“But I will not stay.”
He closed his eyes and exploded in a flurry of ravens. They slipped through the gaps in the cage and flew to the gate. They flitted soundlessly through the spaces in the grate, into the night.
All but one. A nimble root reached out and caught it as it worked its way through the cage. The bird squawked, but the tree held it gently. It gathered the agitated bird to itself, petting and smoothing its feathers.
Gabe paused. He could afford the loss of one raven. When he reintegrated, it would likely mean the loss of an eye or a rib. But there was something in how the Lunaria handled the bird that reminded him of what it had been, in its prior incarnation, long ago, when it had been his midwife into this undead life.
The tree began to sing, slowly, softly, a creaking and soughing that sounded like wind through a bamboo forest. As the tree touched the raven, Gabe could see what it projected to him—the memory of how it had once been two trees, together on a plain. There had been a drought, and the second tree died. The Lunaria mourned its loss, but grew over the stump of the lost tree, making a home for birds and basking in the sun. Worms and moles moved in the earth below it, and it grew content. Lightning struck it a handful of times. It was venerated by men and women who walked the land here, and it once or twice was a ladder for a god climbing into the sky. It had a visceral knowledge of its role as an unknown pillar of the world, as a gateway to what the shamans called the lower, middle, and upper worlds—to the underworld, this physical reality, and the spirit world. It was, by and large, content.
Then Lascaris came. He poured potions and toxins at the base of the tree, uttered incantations upon it. It awakened in a way that a tree should not ever have been awakened. The tree yearned. It dreamed now, and it wanted to know if it was the only thing that had such experiences, this moving from one world to the other. It was confused. Alone.
And then Lascaris brought men to be hanged by the tree. Gabe was the first. He was hanged there, taken down, and the tree claimed him. It cared for him as if he were a squirrel nesting in its branches, or a child. It fed the fallen man light and love and caused him to walk again. And it experienced the world in Gabe’s dreams. Those dreams of the tree and Gabe were a shared reality, a connection to a world that was changing in ways the Lunaria didn’t understand.
And there were more men, men that became the Hanged Men. The Lunaria fed them with all the magic it had, but the magic dwindled. There was only so much light left underground, so much magic remaining to feed them. But all of them, whether they were as self-aware as Gabe, or shadows like some of the last automatons, were the Lunaria’s children. And she loved them all, fiercely. She knit their bones and brains back together every night, to the best of her ability, smoothing their skin like wrinkled shirts.
And then . . . the Lunaria was burned. The Hanged Men died, without her to feed them. She put her last magic into Gabriel, her firstborn. She gave him enough magic to walk away from her, to be just a man. It was her last gift.
But then she recovered. And Gabriel returned to her. She could pour back all the magic she’d drawn from the underground river, back into him. And she was terrified. Terrified of losing him. Terrified that she would be alone, aware, for all of time, just as much as she was terrified of the fire. Gabe sensed that she had gathered all her magic to her, that she was cloaking herself from the view of the phoenix with all her might. But sooner or later, the phoenix would find her, if it wasn’t stopped. Being burned by the phoenix would be almost as bad as being alone. Fear and loneliness crackled through her.
She wanted Gabe here. And she wanted Petra, too. Another child to protect her. She knew the two of them belonged together, and she could return the favor of their protection. She could make them both strong and powerful. And maybe they would bring her other children, other men and women who would accept the gifts she offered. Maybe the wolf-woman, Nine. Maybe the woman, Maria, and her lover, Mike. They could choose who the Hanged Men would be this time, and they could take this land away from the Rutherfords. There could be a new order in this world, a new order of magic and peace in Temperance. A new era.
You cannot make that choice for them, Gabe thought at the tree. Neither can I.
The tree flashed an image to him, an image of Petra in her full glow of health now. And it flashed an all-too-familiar image of her, sickly, and dying.
It could happen again. And it likely will, Gabe thought. But neither you nor I can stop it. It’s the power of time. She is human. She gets to choose.
And though I am no longer human, so do I.
The tree root delicately stroked the raven’s head. It opened its root-hand and let it go.
The raven flew away, to the grate, to join the others perching on the bars.
The tree made a sigh, a sound like a heart breaking. The light dimmed, and all became darkness in the underworld.
The ravens chuffed softly to each other. They gathered, clotting into the shape of a man. Gabriel reached for the gate and tugged on it.
The gate slowly opened.
He walked back inside, on the bank of the underground river.
The tree slowly lit up, hopeful.
He reached up, up in the branches, touch grazing the bullet holes he’d left there.
The branches closed over him, and he let himself be gathered in that embrace, the guts of darkness and light, the source of his life.
They understood each other, now. And there was a truce forged in the shadow of the alchemical Tree of Life.
Petra awoke a bit before dawn.
She slid out of bed be
fore light had begun to flood the kitchen. She was immediately pursued by a sleepy coyote and a cranky cat, both demanding food. She fed them both and brewed some coffee, gazing out into the darkness.
She took her coffee out to the porch. Sig and Pearl, full of kibble, plodded after her. Pearl began to take a bath, and Sig stretched out on the porch to take a second shot at sleep.
She sat on the porch swing and took this moment just to be still. She’d been full of plans and action. Now, she had to clearly evaluate what came next. Her father was being searched for. She and Gabe had to check on the mirror, to see if it had survived the time in Lev’s pizza oven. If it was intact, if it still worked, then they could go chase down the phoenix. Trap the creature in the mirror, and maybe find her father in the process.
Petra had mixed feelings about trapping the phoenix. The phoenix was a being, just like any other. It wasn’t fair to imprison it in a mirror for eternity. Maybe the mirror would be a temporary solution, until they found a way to turn it loose in some pocket of the spirit world, where it could cause little harm. Maybe there was a fireproof forest somewhere there for it to frolic in. Hopefully, when they found her father, he could engineer a ritual that would do just that. She knew he’d been wandering the spirit realms for decades; if anyone knew where to set free a flammable creature, he would know. And for all she knew, maybe he was pursuing it to do just that.
She held the cup of coffee close to her aching chest. He would be all right. He had to be. She felt deep pangs of sorrow and guilt for the people he’d apparently killed. If he had done it, if he was this close to losing it, how had she not known? Had she been blind to his deterioration, wanting to believe that he was the father he had never been to her so much that she ignored that something terrible was wrong? Maybe he’d cracked, knowing his Alzheimer’s was stealing up on him, and was desperately seeking a magical solution, as he’d done before. If she had only agreed to Dr. Vaughn’s tests, maybe this could have been averted. If her father wasn’t in his right mind, this was all on her shoulders, and she knew it.