He’d made a mistake coming here. It wasn’t too late to admit that, was it? He could slip away and leave the village on the next train. Maybe if he pleaded, he could get his old job back. By tomorrow night, he could be back in the mailroom with a cup of hot tea . . . and the knowledge that he had failed. Again.
No! He’d chosen this. These people needed help. If he backed out now, it would mean that Brenner and Neeta and everyone else was right about him: that he was a useless coward, fit only for a life of drudgery. He wouldn’t accept that.
Simon glanced at the bed. He should probably at least try to rest before heading out to the mountains tomorrow.
After changing into his sleep-clothes, he crawled onto the rock-hard mattress and pulled the thin blanket over himself. But his eyes didn’t want to click shut; it was like trying to close an overstuffed suitcase.
He clung to the memories of his mother—her bittersweet scent, like dried flowers and herbs, her cool fingers absently stroking his hair, smoothing curls away from his brow.
Would he ever see her again?
His gaze strayed to the tiny glass bottle, which he’d placed on his bedside. One pill would numb him. Two would plunge him into a merciful void, empty even of dreams.
He’d first gotten the medicine a few months after the Incident, when his father realized that Simon’s misery wasn’t a passing phase, that Olivia’s death had broken something inside him. Father had taken him to a Healer, a minuscule, wizened Animist with a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on her hawkish nose. Simon recalled, word for word, the instructions she’d spoken as she handed him his first bottle: Two before bedtime, to ensure that you sleep through the night. They can be taken during the day, too, to stop the fits, but don’t take more than three in twelve hours . . . and keep in mind, they’ll dull your senses and reflexes.
Those little capsules had kept him afloat through the darkest time of his life. But an Animist couldn’t be reliant on drugs. During a battle, sharp reflexes meant the difference between life and death. When he’d started his training with Neeta, he’d weaned himself off the medication, enduring the sleepless nights, the fits of shaking and sweats.
After a few minutes, he shook a capsule into his palm. Being sleep-deprived wouldn’t help his chances. Maybe one would be enough.
He dry-swallowed it, feeling the slight flutter as it passed down his throat. The world went soft and fuzzy, and he felt himself sinking.
Most of the time, he didn’t allow himself to think about Olivia. It did no good. But during unguarded moments, the thoughts slipped in.
Where was she now? Was her soul wandering somewhere far from this world? Or had she simply winked out like a candle?
Animism was in some ways a religion as well as a discipline—or at least a branch of metaphysical philosophy, with a bit of austere spiritualism thrown in. It had its temples and services. But it had never offered much in the way of answers. Animists were a little vague on what happened after death; as a child, he dimly remembered listening to temple sermons about drops of rainwater merging back into the ocean and decaying things giving life to new grass and trees. Death as transformation, death as rebirth. Maybe Olivia was in everything now, her essence spread thin, particles of her consciousness clinging like dew to spiderwebs and robins’ feathers. There was some comfort in that, he supposed. But it was a cold, distant comfort.
He started to drift off. A girl’s voice whispered in his head: Simon.
His eyes snapped open. He lay still, every muscle rigid, holding his breath. “Who said that?”
Silence. He waited, counting his heartbeats, but there was no response. He let out a shaky breath.
Olivia was dead. He couldn’t allow himself to lose sight of that reality—couldn’t let himself start backsliding.
In the months after her death, before he started taking the pills, he’d heard her voice often. A few times, he’d even seen her—a brief glimpse, a face in a crowd. But each time he chased her down, it turned out to be some girl who shared her hair color or height, but who otherwise looked nothing like his sister. Even without Animism, the human mind could weave illusions.
But what if . . .
He slammed that mental door shut. Still a faint uncertainty lingered, like a question mark etched into his brain, as he sank into blackness.
Chapter Eight
Simon stared down at the tiny figure in the casket.
Olivia wore a bright yellow dress. Her face had been made up with pink lipstick and blush, but it couldn’t hide the pallor of death. Her hands were folded over a bouquet of white lilies. Simon’s father stood stiffly beside him, his face a mask, his eyes unfocused and faraway.
Simon knew he should be crying, but none of this felt real.
Whispers floated on the edge of his awareness:
“Tragic, isn’t it?”
“They say she was attacked in her own home.”
“A burglary gone awry, an unregistered criminal Animist—”
“Some story.”
“Shhh. Not here.”
Simon’s mother stood beside him, silent. Her hand tightened on his until he squirmed with pain. Then she released him and stepped forward. The room fell silent as she stood in front of the casket, hands clenched into tight fists. She spun around, glaring at the roomful of people. “All of you. Get out.”
The crowd shifted uncertainly. The priest cleared his throat. “Dr. Frost . . .”
“Get out!” She raised both arms into the air, and crackling yellow light wreathed her palms.
The onlookers let out cries of alarm and rushed for the exit, tripping over each other in their eagerness to escape. The priest waddled after them, stumbling on the hem of his overlong robe. Simon stood frozen, not breathing.
Panting, his mother leaned over the casket and started to lift Olivia. His father caught her arms and pulled her back. “Veera.” His voice was low and firm. “Put her down.”
“I won’t let them bury her,” she said, wild-eyed. “I won’t let her rot.”
“For Spirit’s sake, pull yourself together!” he hissed. “Our son is watching.”
She pulled free of his grasp and stood glaring at him, chest heaving. Wisps of blond hair had escaped their tight bun and hung loose around her face. “And what about our son, Aberdeen? What about him?”
Dr. Hawking’s jaw tightened. “Simon,” he said quietly, “go wait outside.”
Simon’s eyes darted from his mother to his father.
“Go!”
He bolted out the door and into the hallway. Trembling, he slammed the door shut and pressed himself against it. But he could still hear the raised voices of his parents.
“Veera. You need to let go.”
“Let go? You mean give up on Olivia?”
“Olivia is dead! There’s nothing we can do.”
There was a long pause. Then his mother spoke again, in a sharp whisper. His father replied, just as quietly. Simon couldn’t make out the words. They spoke for several minutes like that, in frantic, hissing, barely audible voices. Then Father raised his voice again: “Enough. Stop this madness at once, or I will make it stop. Do you understand?”
There was another pause. Then, softly: “Just give me a few minutes alone with her. I want to hold her before they put her in the ground.”
Simon slid down the wall, to the floor, and hugged his knees.
The door opened, and Simon gave a start. When he looked up, his father was standing over him. He was pale, his face sagging like an old man’s. “Simon,” he said. “How much did you hear?”
“I heard yelling. Is Mother angry?”
He looked away. “No. She’s just sad.”
He imagined her cradling the tiny body, rocking it back and forth, her tears falling on Olivia’s cold, still face.
She should have lived, he thought. She should have lived, and I should have died.
Later, when they lowered Olivia into the ground, his mother’s expression was empty. The priest droned
on about the cycle of life and death. When Simon took her hand again, she clutched it without looking at him.
The next morning, Mother was gone.
Simon woke to the feeble crow of a rooster.
Outside the window, the sky was awash with hazy gray light. With his knuckle, he rubbed grit from the corner of his eye. He climbed out of bed, moving in slow motion, drugged sleepiness still clinging to his thoughts like webbing.
Someone—Brock, probably—had left a bowl of cooling porridge and a hunk of bread for him outside the door. He ate the porridge, though when he tried to bite into the bread, he nearly chipped a tooth. Not wanting to seem ungrateful by leaving it in the room, he slipped it into his pack. Maybe he could use it as a projectile weapon, if it came down to that. It certainly seemed hard enough to crack a demon’s skull.
He dressed. Once he’d laced up the boots, he stood and looked himself over in the room’s tarnished mirror. He looked young and small and utterly unprepared.
Still, he was an Animist. He would do everything in his power to live up to that role.
Even if it kills you? a cowardly voice in his head whispered.
Yes, he replied. But the hollow ringing in the pit of his stomach remained.
If you don’t have a realistic chance of defeating the monster, you’re just throwing your life away. And for what? These people don’t like you. You’re not even supposed to be here. What are you trying to prove?
Sometimes, his cowardly side could be disturbingly logical. Still, he presented his counterargument: If I don’t help them, no one will.
Or maybe, deep down, you actually want to die. Maybe you’re looking for an excuse.
He gritted his teeth. No. He wasn’t that person—not anymore. He had a purpose. He was stable—
Oh yes, very stable. Standing here, staring into space in a walleyed stupor while arguing with yourself in your head. You’re the picture of sanity.
Oh, shut up.
Simon left his suitcase in the room, taking only what he could carry in his lightweight pack: some bread he’d purchased in Eidendel, his bronze compass, and his one remaining pill. The house was empty and silent. His footsteps echoed through the entrance hall. The animal heads on the wall seemed to track his progress with their glassy, unseeing eyes.
He stepped out through the front door, into the crisp morning air. A few villagers were out. An old woman swept her yard with a straw broom. A few barefoot children ran about, shrieking with laughter. None of them seemed to take any notice of Simon.
He trudged toward the mountains, through fields of autumn-brown grass, past a lone scarecrow with a withered pumpkin for a head, until he reached a wooden post jutting out of the ground. It marked the beginning of a barely visible trail—little more than a deer path—that wandered up through the pine-covered foothills. A short distance ahead, it vanished into a thick maze of pine trees.
Had his mother followed this same trail? Was this the route she’d taken to the Gaokerena tree where she’d spent a week meditating, seeking knowledge in its sacred presence?
The trail sloped steeply upward. Before long, he was puffing for breath, his clothes damp with sweat despite the chill. The forests enveloped him, a mixture of dense pine and knobby deciduous trees, their leaves gone dry and brown. The sprawling branches blocked out the sun, so it felt almost as though he were moving through a tunnel. A few weak beams of light trickled through gaps in the canopy, and motes swirled within, glimmering like fireflies.
Dust in sunlight had always fascinated Simon. As a small child, he’d mistaken those shining specks for meta—the diffuse form of it that existed in the atmosphere—until his father explained to him that meta particles were too small to be seen with the naked eye.
Ahead, two huge, moss-covered boulders blocked the path. Light trickled through a narrow space between them.
What now? Go around? The forest was too dense.
Simon had to wriggle like a worm, but he was small enough—just barely—to squeeze himself through the gap.
When he emerged, breathless, he found himself standing in a spacious clearing—a little round valley tucked away in the forest. Pine trees towered around the valley’s rim, their gnarled roots lacing its earthen walls. Rising up from the clearing’s center was a single tree. A soft gasp escaped Simon’s throat.
He’d seen the Gaokerena tree in Eidendel, the one in the Gregor Temple, but this one was easily twice its size. Had the tree been on level ground with the pines, it would have dwarfed them. Ten people could have stood around its circumference, hands joined. Scaly bark covered the fat trunk, and a mass of squiggly branches sprawled outward from its top, sprouting long plumes of moss-green leaves. The light filtering down through those leaves had an eerie green quality, giving Simon the feeling that he was underwater. There was no wind, but the branches swayed slightly, creaking.
Gently, he touched the rough bark.
His mother had once told him that the trees spoke to those who knew how to listen. There was an old story about a sage whose daughter died of sickness. He buried her beneath a Gaokerena, and the next morning he found her awake and smiling, sitting under the branches.
Just a legend, of course. Over the years, countless grieving people had attempted to duplicate the results, with no success.
Simon circled around to the other side of the tree . . . and froze. There, nestled in the fork formed by two thick roots, was something round, pebbly, and roughly as large as himself—a sort of pod—with a dark, lustrous sheen that looked greenish or purplish, depending on how the light hit it. A ropy stalk ran from the tree’s trunk to the top of the object, like an umbilical cord, spreading thin roots over the surface.
With a single finger, Simon touched the pod. It was cool and hard, like stone. A long, jagged crack ran down the center, as though it had split open, revealing a hollow interior caked with some dense, stringy matter that had dried to a crust.
Simon crouched, examining the ground near the base of the tree. Glittering, dark fragments littered the mossy earth.
Mysteries within mysteries.
He cast one last glance at the pod, then left the clearing, pushing his way through the wall of pine boughs, back to the trail.
By noon, he reached his destination—a dilapidated cabin sitting at the base of the peak, sheltered by trees, its back to the sheer rock wall. A small well stood out front, a glossy raven perched on its stone lip. Simon wasn’t a believer in bad omens, but the sight still made him unreasonably nervous.
“Shoo,” he said, waving his hand. The raven ignored him.
The windows were dark. No smoke came from the brick chimney. But he could feel . . . something. A presence, like a dark aura. The hairs on Simon’s neck tingled and stiffened.
He would need a light.
A small golden glow, like a candle flame, flickered to life above his palm. He cupped it carefully, sheltering it as he made his way to the front door. The wood was gray and ancient, peeling in places, like a snake shedding its skin.
If the monster was intelligent, negotiating was Simon’s best chance. Don’t think of it as going into battle, he told himself. You’re just paying someone a visit. That being the case, maybe he ought to knock. So he did. “Hello?” No response.
He pushed the door open. Hinges squealed.
The smell of rotting flesh hit him like a moist, meaty slap in the face. He gagged and pressed a hand over his nose and mouth, staring into the darkened hallway.
Breathing through his mouth, he entered, leaving the door open behind him. The floorboards groaned beneath his feet as he crept down the hall. Aside from that, a deep hush hung over the house.
The door slammed shut, and he jumped, letting out an undignified yelp.
Just the wind.
To his left stood a half-open doorway. Beyond lay the remains of a kitchen, its walls streaked and spattered with some dark substance. Simon took a cautious step inside; he raised his hand, still cupping the tiny light. The room was empty, s
ave for a rusted sink, but the dark liquid was everywhere. Blood. Flies buzzed around a congealed puddle on the floor.
In the corner of the room lay the partially eaten body of a deer. There wasn’t much left except its head and front legs. Yet its eyes seemed to be moving. When he stepped closer, he saw that its sockets were filled with squirming maggots.
Simon turned away, his stomach shifting queasily. Dry-mouthed, he reached into the pocket of his robe and withdrew the jar of summoning ash. It hadn’t worked out so well the first time, but it was worth another shot. At least he wouldn’t be alone.
He sprinkled the remaining ash on the floor, added a few drops of blood, and whispered the ritual words. There was a poof, and when the smoke cleared, a wrinkled, pug-like face stared up at him. Reddish eyes bulged. A pair of veiny wings rustled and spread.
“Oh, Spirit,” Simon whispered. “Not you.”
The wraith’s tiny, hinge-like jaw flapped open, and a hellish shriek sprang from its throat. Its wings flapped, and it rose into the air, spraying out an arch of foul-smelling liquid. Its body spun in circles, splashing the walls. Simon thrust out a hand. “No! Go away! I dismiss you! I dismiss you!”
In a poof, the wraith vanished.
So much for that. He’d lost the element of surprise. And now the air smelled even worse.
In the darkness of the hall, something creaked. He spun around. “Who’s there?” he called.
No response.
He took a cautious step into the hallway. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.” Another step.
There was a jolt, and a sharp tingling swept over his skin, like a thousand icy pins pricking him at once. He sucked in his breath and looked down. His boot rested on the edge of a summoning circle, no larger than his hand, daubed on the floorboards in messy rust-colored lines, a mixture of ash and—blood? It looked more black than red.
He recognized the symbol within. A trigger symbol. This was a special type of summoning circle, designed to unleash a summoned entity upon contact. He’d stepped into a trap.
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