by A Corrin
Nikki gave a tremendous sniffle and said, “Yeah.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
“Me too.”
With that, they disconnected.
Ethan picked up his cold coffee, setting the phone back in its cradle with a dejected slowness. He stared out the window, poured his mug out into the sink, and retrieved his truck keys from the floor by his armchair. The police had no doubt already combed Arrow Creek for any clues as to where his son might be, but it wouldn’t hurt to give the town a drive-through himself.
Chapter Eleven:
Tree Spirits
What would it take to break a prince’s heart? My sleeping mind was assailed by feverish visions of the helicopter crash, Nikki with a knife to her throat, Garrett’s eyes glowing red like lasers. Everything was disconnected and nothing made sense. First I was squatting in an icy cavern of wet rock, and thunder was roaring loud enough to rattle my skull. Then I was running toward the man who had killed my mom. Then I was in pitch-darkness and things were howling eerily somewhere nearby.
“Do you feel brave, little griffin?” The mocking voice of the man from my nightmare, the man from the park, chased me through the winding chaos of my dreams. “You finally made it to the dreamworld, I see. Are you prepared to protect your kingdom? Against the mighty evils of forsaken Man?”
At times I caught a glimpse of shark-like teeth, eyes like obsidian, gray, stony flesh. The Ranker’s laughter pursued me.
“What do you want with me?” I shouted, my voice shrill.
“Don’t you know, yet?”
A horrible feeling encompassed me, like claws were wrapping around my ribs and crushing the breath from my lungs, and I opened my eyes to the cold night. I could see as well as if it were dusk. The countless stars formed an array of constellations, some known to me and some not, across the heavens and a moon as round and full as could be was reflected in the sea below it.
I watched the water lap at the shore and fought the urge to let it lull me back to slumber and nightmares. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to move. The quicker we got to the White Griffin, the quicker I could go home.
I stuck my rump in the air and stretched like a cat, yawning. Shaking myself, I turned to see what the others were doing. My coat of feathers and fur was keeping me comfortably toasty; I felt bad for a group of knights and gladiators shivering in some ferns nearby.
Something moved, and I jolted, my talons digging into the ground. But it was only Mariah. She stopped and looked at me, eyes glowing green like a cat’s in the moonlight, then smiled and continued on toward the cold men on the ground.
I tried to remove my talons from the dirt with dignity, wondering what she was doing.
Mariah circled the men a few times, stepped so carefully in among them that they didn’t awaken, and lay down. She spread her wings out on top of them like a blanket, and almost immediately, they stopped shivering.
I joined her and opened my own wings; one lay atop her left one, and the other covered a few huddled marines. They were dressed warmer, so I didn’t know how much help I was, but it was an ice-breaker, and it didn’t hurt to help just in case.
“How is it that I can still have dreams in the Land of Dreams?” I asked in a hushed whisper.
Mariah giggled, a pretty trilling sound from her beak.
“You ask all of the right questions,” she said. “Your brain still needs to process all of the stress and sensory input from the day somehow. Sometimes that manifests as what appears to be a dream, but while you’re here, it’s really just memories or a string of tangible thoughts. Other times you have dreams-within-dreams, where you confront the deepest parts of yourself.”
“And nightmares?” I asked. Mariah looked at me sharply.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not good. The Rankers know you’re here and they will try to twist your mind and break your spirit. You need to be careful not to let them find out where you are and what we’re doing.”
“How?”
“The longer you’re here, the more you discover what it means to be a griffin, the stronger you will become. After you discover your power, that should help greatly. Until then, I’ll pray over you before you go to sleep each night. Rankers detest prayers.”
I thought of my friend Kitty with a pang. She had prayed for my friends and I on multiple occasions, usually when we were about to do something stupid like jumping from Tyson’s roof and onto his trampoline. There was something pure and bright in the casual way she, and Mariah, vowed to do something so personal and compassionate.
“Thank you,” I said.
Mariah bobbed her head.
“So,” I began in a hushed whisper. “How long have you been in this place?”
She answered casually, “A while.”
I couldn’t keep from asking her a flood of questions. “What’s it like? Have you been all over? Who’ve you met? What happens if you get hurt—”
Mariah cuffed me gently over the head with the “wrist” joint of her wing and messed up my crown feathers. While I smoothed them back out, she laughed. “It has been an awesome experience. At first, I had difficulty adjusting, just like you, but I’m a fast learner, and Kayle helped a bunch.”
“Yeah, what’s his problem?” I asked.
She sighed. “He doesn’t like change. He knew your predecessor well. We all miss him. Kayle’s frustrated that you would rather go home than embrace your destiny.”
A bunch of new questions came to mind about my predecessor, but Mariah changed the subject.
“The creatures and places and events people dream up are amazing and terrifying. Sometimes it feels like we’re intruding on their minds, but Peter said they aren’t bothered. To them, we are just another part of their dream. If they only knew…” She took a breath as if to say more, then held it, looking at her jeweled collar.
When she went on, she was hesitant, and her words were slowly chosen as if she were uncomfortable. I watched her intently, but not enough to make her nervous.
“I saw my mom,” she began, “but she ignored me when I called her name. She didn’t recognize me.” She gave a dark laugh. “I’ve been gone from the real world for two years.”
“Two years?” I croaked in a strained whisper.
She smiled wryly again. “Yes. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever wake up again... But I like to help protect people. Rankers try to gain numbers by influencing the darkness in our hearts through dreams...giving humans nightmares so horrible that they are driven to wickedness, even madness. When a person loses his or her mind, their destroyed consciousness can create multiple Rankers. There are hundreds—thousands—maybe millions of them out there.”
I remembered watching the helicopter crash when I had been trying to puzzle everything out with Nikki, then thought of that terrible event multiplied by ten. Monsters tearing cities apart, demolishing buildings with whatever horrific powers they possessed, massacring with abandon.
Watching me try and process, Mariah said, “Rankers want to strike from the inside out—they’ll start here, in our minds, in our hearts, but they’re gaining power and slipping free into the real world. But some people have willpower so strong that they can fight the Rankers here in the Land of Dreams and wake up perfectly normal if not a bit startled. The dreams you have when you jump start and are jolted roughly awake? Those are caused when a Ranker tries to attack you but your mind fights it off. The brain is a powerful thing—a miracle. It understands that something is wrong and so shuts it away from you.”
“So, humanity has a hope?” I asked, my voice meek.
“We are humanity’s last hope. Not everyone is equipped to fend off a Ranker, let alone an army of them. The griffin-hearted dreamers have managed to keep the beasts at bay so far, but as the darkness in humanity increases, so the Rankers’ powe
r builds. And those who have stood against the demons in their dreams will be made slaves when the Rankers are strong enough to enter the real world together as one physical army. I pity them then. The Rankers will show them no mercy.”
It was a lot to take in. I felt overwhelmed. “I’m not sure I understand.” I’m not sure I want to.
Mariah crossed her talons daintily and said, “You will. In time.”
When I took a breath to question her further, she shushed me and began purring. Apparently, griffins can do that. My anxiety threatened to escalate to full-out explosion mode, but her purring was as soothing as a lullaby. I took a long, deep breath, letting it hiss out through the nostrils of my beak. What I needed was a plan—and not whatever plan Peter and the others had all cooked up together to vanquish the Rankers. I needed something smaller...something to hold on to so I could keep sane until I figured out how to get back home, or at least find whoever the hell I needed to talk to to get answers.
Answers, I thought, That’s what I need. Something tangible I can bring back with me to my friends—a way to keep them all safe. I felt a bit better with that tiny goal in mind, letting Mariah’s kitten-esque purrs flutter against my ears like butterfly wings. Despite all of my concerns, we trailed off into a comfortable silence for a few peaceful minutes, listening to the crickets and the distant waves stroking the shore. There was also quite a backdrop of raucous snoring (marines have the lung capacity of a bull elephant), but even that seemed peaceful in a way. It was the sound of calm.
“So, you saw your mother?” I asked.
Mariah said, “She was dreaming about flowers. We were traveling through a meadow of them, and there were multitudes of people meandering around with dazed smiles on their faces. One was my mom. She was picking petals off a daisy and…humming to herself a lullaby she always sang to me. I wouldn’t doubt it if you see some people you know here, especially since you’re going to be on a lot of people’s minds. But you may not recognize them. Sometimes people have dreams where they appear as something else. I had a dream once that I was a puppy…”
I sighed slowly. “This is my first time as a griffin.”
Mariah peered sternly through her brow at me. “This isn’t a dream. This is a world that mankind has collectively created where dreams are born.”
I turned the corners of my beak down and messed with my new coral necklace, straightening it against my downy white chest.
I brushed my longest right pinion against Mariah’s collar. “Were you presented with that? Have you found out your gift?”
Mariah nodded proudly. “Yes, the dwarves gave it to me. When we passed their volcano, Peter asked for directions to Pebble Embark, and one pointed at me and said that he had long ago made this for someone, but only then knew it had been me.”
“Dwarves?” I bit back a laugh, imagining tiny, chubby old men with beards and spectacles.
Mariah gave a disgruntled sniff and said defensively, “They are the most skilled of craftsmen. Many gorgeous gemstones are discovered in their mountains. I am honored to have this trinket.”
I gulped back another laugh guiltily. Now that I remembered from Peter’s book of mythical creatures, I knew she was right. Comparing them to the seven Disney dwarves was like comparing a pit bull to a poodle.
Mariah added, “I can grow things,” with an edge of finality—like she wanted me to quit talking about it, so I changed the subject slightly.
“And what of tall, dark, and gloomy?”
Mariah understood that I meant Kayle and said, “He found out his power on his own just like Peter. Peter can blend in to his surroundings. He and Kayle were ambushed in human form by a batch of Rankers on a scouting trip, and suddenly Kayle was pinned down by one. He pulled out his lighter to burn the Ranker away, and discovered he could manipulate the fire. When he’s a griffin, he can become fully combusted, like a phoenix. It’s a spectacular gift. He destroyed that whole group of Rankers. Peter owes him his life.”
That explained why he had seemed to be setting off smoke on the beach. I made a mental note not to anger him any more than was deemed necessary unless I wanted to be cooked medium, rare, or well done.
“And what about your human life? How did you get here in the first place?” I asked.
A dark cloud fell across Mariah’s face. Her eyes narrowed. She clicked her beak, shifted almost imperceptibly a few inches away, and muttered, “That’s private.”
Almost right after that, Peter climbed out of a patch of berry bushes and shook himself like a great, shaggy dog. Flapping his wings a bit to stretch out the kinks, he shouted, “It’s time to move out! Open your eyes and stand ready, men, we have before us a long day.”
Faster than I thought possible, everyone was up and awake.
The warriors placed their armor and smoothed the creases from their uniforms. Kayle slunk out of the trees, looking wide awake. Maybe he hadn’t even slept at all.
Within minutes, we were all packed up and moving on down an overgrown trail. The sun was abnormally large, but just as bright and warm as the sun in reality. It turned the sky (seen only barely through the canopy) a pale blue and pink. We kept on maneuvering around thick and mossy trees and stumbling over knobby roots—feeling like the jungle was trying to stop us, preventing us from traveling into its dark heart.
The day wore on slowly. We took random breaks to eat some fruits and vegetables that Mariah grew straight from the ground. (I couldn’t stop staring at her for a while afterward until she gave me a really venomous stink eye.) And soon after, we moved on.
My feet were sore. I longed to change back into a human, but no matter how hard I tried, my feathers and fur remained. I had pestered Peter about it earlier on, and he had shrugged and told me that I had to learn how to do it on my own—there were no instructions, no trick to get it to happen. My mind needed to “adjust to the new way things were” first.
The lush leaves above us kept us shaded, but because of how closed the jungle was, humidity seeped from every clump of moss and flora like steam in a hot shower.
On one of our breaks sometime around noon, I was starting to feel a little weird. My heart was beating faster, and I was filled with an eager sense of anticipation. I was avoiding Peter, Kayle, and Mariah for various reasons, so I only had the gladiator sitting beside me and whittling what suspiciously resembled a siren to ask, “Do you feel that?”
In a thick accent of some sort, Greek or Roman maybe, he queried, “Feel what, my prince?”
I was too distracted to tell him not to call me that and stared into the jungle, replying vaguely, “Like you’re being watched, but by someone that you know…?”
The gladiator set aside his sculpture and clenched his knife tighter in his hand. He saw Peter watching from across the glade and gestured for him to join us, his strong-featured face a mask of concern. Peter appeared at my side, his talons and paws making no noise on the earthy jungle floor. We both gazed into the gloom of the shrubbery, ears cocked forward.
The squadron quieted their conversations and warily took up their weapons. Kayle’s eyes glowed a dull red; rivulets of smoke coiled from his nostrils like gray snakes. Mariah’s face was blank. Slowly, she placed a talon over her heart and closed her eyes.
I was tilting my head every which way, striving to pinpoint a sound or sight—anything to explain the emotions I was feeling.
Peter’s rigid form relaxed, and he breathed, “Tree spirits.”
At his declaration, an invisible wind shook the branches, and a few leaves fluttered meekly to the dirt. The trunks swayed side to side, creaking so loudly that I was afraid they might snap and fall over on us. But just when I was about to retreat into the open somewhere out of the way, the creaking stopped and shimmering, ghostlike people stepped out of the trunks of five trees nearby.
Two were female. They wore silver dresses, and crowns of brambles, leaves, and berrie
s graced their locks. One had ringlets, and the second, long and thin tresses.
The other three were men. Two were younger, about the women’s ages, wore gold-tinted pants and tunics, and had shoulder-length hair. One had his hair pulled back and tied with a band of pine needles and sap.
The third man was so old that it looked like another gust of wind would send him flying. His skin was very wrinkled, and I observed his thin shoulders beneath the white robe he was draped in. He leaned on a knobbly staff, and his wispy hair hung down to his waist. From the way the other four shot him occasional reverent looks, I could tell he was the leader.
While we stood there staring at each other, I fought to remember what I had read about tree spirits. Their human appearances resembled the tree they resided in. As a human, they couldn’t be hurt. They could only be destroyed if the tree they were connected to was somehow killed. Peaceful and wise, they assisted the lost and weary traveler, provided the most delicious and replenishing fruit, and had super-thick bark. The only time they were known to be dangerous was when their tree was being threatened: then, they used their arsenal of fingery knife-sharp branches as defense.
“Oakpaen,” Peter said warmly, arcing his tail into a sinuous S shape, and the five tree spirits broke into small smiles. “I was hoping to find you.”
Oakpaen’s voice was breezy, and I had to strain to actually hear the syllables he was forming when he chuckled and said, “You did not. I found you. But what is your business here, Peter Griffin-Scribe?”
Peter replied airily, “To get directions.”
One of the women asked in a voice like fresh autumn air, “Where to?”
Peter stepped back and extended his wing to brush my side, saying, “The prince has arrived, and our quest begins in the Melancholy Bog.”