by Laura Bickle
He wondered if perhaps he had died. He’d lost track of the passage of time. Thoughts drifted in and out of his mind’s eye, white shimmery shapes that didn’t fully take form. Hallucinations, dreams, visions dredged up from the river and Muirenn’s magic . . . they were all the same. He wandered through the dark landscapes of memory and the spirit world.
He did not wander these lands as a man. He was a white eagle, a white shadow upon black. He sensed that, many months ago, when he had become human, he had evolved. That was the nature of living alchemy. He had moved beyond the fermentation stage in which he’d been trapped as a Hanged Man. He had turned from raven to eagle, approaching the perfection of the Great Work. He knew that part of the work was the sloughing off of the physical skin, moving to spirit. Wind slipped under his feathers, making him light and insubstantial. His connection to earth broken, he skimmed through the sky, observing without attachment.
Though it was an evolution, he knew that it took him farther from Petra, from the physical world. She needed him. And he needed to get back to it, to her. He searched for a door, soaring over mountains, through forests, and at last a grassy field, ruled by a mighty oak tree.
The Lunaria.
He knew it at once. It had come for him, or he for it. He was not certain, tangled together as they had been for more than a century and a half.
It spread out below him, with golden roots digging deep into the earth. Its branches spread far above him, into the sky. He felt a pang of elation at that, elation and fear. The tree, he suspected, existed in all planes at once: the upper, middle, and lower worlds. And if it did so, perhaps it existed in all times. Whether this was the tree’s memory of itself as it had been in its glory or some imagining of its future form, he couldn’t be certain.
But he knew it recognized him. He landed before it, folding in his wings to gaze upon the tree with his sharp sight that saw beyond what he had ever seen as a man. The branches bent in an unseen breeze, and the roots rustled underneath his talons. It would know him. It had to. He had been wound up in its destiny since he’d first laid eyes upon it.
And not just him. Golden fruit dangled from the branches, shining softly. They were husks, like milkweed pods, six feet long and half as wide. Gabriel fluttered up to land on the nearest, digging his talons into the rough, dry surface. It pulsed beneath his touch, a living thing.
Gabe reached for a seam in the seed pod and pulled it open a foot. Hanging upside down, in the golden light cobwebs of the pod, lay one of the Hanged Men.
He shouted his name, but it only came out as a raptor’s scream.
The Hanged Man slept, refusing to be awoken.
Gabe reached into the pod to free his fellow. But the man was tangled in that deceptively strong gossamer gold. He was not yet ripe, not yet able to be pulled from the grasp of the tree.
Gabe flew to the next pod and tested it. Another Hanged Man lay within, immobile and sleeping. He counted the rest. All of the Hanged Men were here, in this . . . suspension? Gabe had read a science-fiction story about humans in suspended animation, in hibernation on a space ship. This reminded him of that, this utter stillness.
Only the tree moved. The roots rustled a bit, as if covering something. Gabe peered at the translucent ground.
There was indeed something there. A knot of roots fussing around something that lay still as a peach pit at the bottom. It was man-shaped, that much Gabriel could discern at first. His eyes adjusted, and he gazed with his eagle sight at the luminous body that lay underneath the tree. It was familiar . . . male, with a sharp profile and slender-fingered hands. He might have been anonymous except for the tree’s light burning around an opaque object at his chest, like dense tissue on an X-ray film. The light twined around a chain and hands . . . a pocket watch.
Gabe recoiled in dread, his feathers ruffling. Lascaris had owned a watch like that. This magic tasted of him. He had created the tree and somehow he had remained entangled in its spirit. Was it like the others, sleeping, or . . .
He lit on the ground, cocking his head. He couldn’t hear the watch ticking. That could be good, or it could be very bad.
He straightened, gathering himself to fly away. He knew he had to warn someone who was still in the physical world that something had happened . . .
He leaped into the air, beat his wings three times. But the branches reached for him, trapping him in a cage. He beat his wings against them, feathers descending in a flurry of snow. But he couldn’t escape. Branches pulled him close to the trunk of the tree. He struggled against them, the branches snapping, crackling strings of golden light. The trunk of the tree pressed against his spine, sprouting branches high into the sky, shimmering. He was part of it, as he had been before; he could feel the sap moving underneath the bark as easily as he could feel his own blood. He was both comforted and panicked. Comforted, because he had missed the tree, the touchstone of his unlife. Panicked, because he was afraid for what this meant, for himself, for the Hanged Men, for the Lunaria . . . and everyone in the physical world. For Petra and Sig.
The tree would take over everything it could reach. He knew this.
A figure approached, walking through the field. A figure with a coyote. Petra. She was still searching for him, and his heart lifted. He screamed at her from his tree prison, but she, like the Hanged Men, seemed not to hear him.
She was different from the last time he’d seen her. Her physical body had faded, leaving a spectral suggestion of light that smeared away on all the things she touched, an overexposed photograph that was slowly melting.
She was peeling through pages of maps that he had drawn, thick blocks of text. She turned them this way and that, trying to orient herself in the black landscape. There was no moon overhead, no stars to navigate by, just that dim inner glow.
He shouted at her. But all that came out was that same raptor cry. He ruffled his feathers and tried again, but emitted only a hoarse squawk.
She looked up through the branches at him. This time, it seemed she could see him. “Where are you?”
Perhaps if he flew, she could follow him. He knew she was fading, and he wanted to see her one last time, hold her hand in the physical world, no matter the cost.
But the tree held him fast. It wrapped around him, a tightening cage of golden light. He melted into it, his pale feathers sinking into it.
He fought it. On a cellular level, he rejected this change with all his might, this evolution that took him away from her. He fought hard, fought until his feathers darkened. He fought until his body couldn’t take it—he felt it ripping—and then his being split apart like blood spilled in water.
The Eye of the World swallowed her.
She had fallen too deeply in it, and she couldn’t climb out again. She’d reached down for the tree roots, through the sludge of wet feathers on the surface, hoping to find Gabriel. She’d gone deeper, deeper, and then the tree’s branches started pulling her in. She didn’t have the strength to struggle. She held her breath and looked up, through the red surface of the water.
Funny how the algae gathered here, like clouds scudding across the glass-like surface.
Consciousness was slipping beyond her fingers. As far as ways to die, this was not the worst. There was no pain. No racking sobs of grief. Maybe the Lunaria would take her to Gabriel if she went willingly.
She exhaled, her lungs emptying of air, and felt herself beginning to drop like a stone. She closed her eyes and inhaled. The water of the Eye of the World soaked into her brain, bright with salt and magic.
She heard distant barking, far overhead.
All was silent for a moment. She could only hear her own pulse thundering in her ears and feel the grip of the tree wrapping around her legs.
But the calm surface of the water overhead shattered in an awful cacophony, a crash and bubbling. The tree retreated into the depths—she could feel it letting go. Petra hung, weightless for an instant before hands hauled her out of the water.
She was diml
y aware of Nine and Sig splashing into the water, pulling her to shore, shaking her. She couldn’t move, her limbs as leaden as the stone sentinels shadowing the pool. Droplets of water spangled her face.
Nine was pushing water out of her lungs. She muttered something in another language. Petra wondered if that was one of her father’s spells, some bit of practical magic he’d taught her. Nine pushed until bile came up and Petra gagged. Sig circled around the women, whining.
Nine’s dark eyes peered into hers, and Petra began to shiver. Sig licked her face.
“Coyote came to get me,” Nine said.
“I fell in,” she whispered, lying. Her sinuses burned with too much light and the water from the Eye. She felt unanchored in her body, as if she should have stayed in the water, continued to look for Gabe there. She glanced back at the pool. It was silent, dark. No red, no tree, no sign of Gabriel.
Sig washed the hypnotic water from her face with his tongue, whimpering. She looked at her still wet hands—it wasn’t blood anymore, just water.
“Come home.” Nine pulled her to her feet, and she stumbled. “You will have time enough for the spirit world later.”
Without another word, Nine put her arm behind Petra’s shoulders and her knees. Too exhausted to fight, Petra let Nine carry her through the grassy field to the little yellow cottage beyond.
Evening had washed the creek in orange and gold.
Muirenn took a deep breath, drinking in the sunset as she washed her hair and braided it. Her hair was losing its straw-like texture. Near her scalp, it was soft as algae. She felt more fat along her ribs than she’d had in her far-distant memory. She felt strong. The bruises on her body were fading. The greenish-blue tint to her body was fading. Even her gums had stopped bleeding. Where she was missing a few teeth, she could feel sharp edges of new ones growing in, and she ran her tongue over their fresh, serrated edges. Magic was stirring in her, healing her quickly—she had not cast away all her healing magic on Owen.
She had given herself over to some small luxuries, out here in the wilderness. Away from Owen. Away from that troubling relic of her past, Gabriel. Involuntarily, she scrubbed her tongue across her teeth at the thought of him, at the memory of that terrible bitter taste. Every time she remembered it, she couldn’t shake the idea that he had tasted like sour magic from Lascaris’s time. Like poison. She hated that she was denied her desired revenge, and hated even more that she had not yet decided what to do with him. She couldn’t eat him, so any reason she kept him around would need to be strategic. And if she killed him, she’d need to do it in such a way that she either hid it from or justified it to Owen. Was the former Hanged Man in the middle of some sort of alchemical process? She couldn’t put her finger on it. Was he finally decaying? She would have to analyze him, even if it meant taking him apart to do it and examining the pieces in the sunlight.
Preferably if it meant taking him apart . . .
She had spent the last few hours grazing. She’d found some wild onion, the tender bulbs and leaves tasting sharp on her tongue. A bear had dropped a piece of beehive, and she’d gleefully scooped out the honeycomb within. She could taste the labor of the bees inside, nourishing her at a deep, invisible level. She licked the honeycomb clean, crunching up the hard bits of it. She pulled herself up on a bank to pick up a speckled egg that had fallen from a bird nest. She cracked it open and devoured the yolk and white in one delicious gulp. She’d found some dandelion greens and ate them by the fistful, savoring that tang of their greenness.
In between foraging, she made it a point to watch and observe people from a distance. She’d seen some people walking from far away, on trails that wound away into the flat grasslands. She spied a black ribbon of road in the distance, on which silent carriages ran at impossible speeds, carrying people in odd clothing. The wildlife seemed unconcerned by the people and their machines; beavers building a dam didn’t seem to pay any attention to the walkers. And the vultures didn’t stop to peck human meat from the carriages, simply focusing on the carcasses the machines left behind on the road.
From the river, she spied some morel mushrooms growing on the land. Her mouth watered. She hadn’t had those since she was a human woman. But they were far up the bank, at least twenty feet, sprouting in the shade of quaking aspen. She examined them a long time, looking at their tantalizing umbrellas from every angle she could reach. They were true morels, she was certain, not poisonous. Her memory of these delicacies was still sharp.
She contemplated the risk. Twenty feet was not far in the water, and she would have gobbled down water forage quickly. But on land, she knew that this distance—coupled with her tail—rendered her vulnerable to the men and machines she’d seen.
She listened carefully. She heard no one around, no sign of a threat. The birds sang overhead, and the squirrels showed no sign of alarm.
Taking a deep breath, she sank her fingers into the muddy bank. She hauled herself up with her arms, moving out of the water on her elbows. She slashed her tail right and left for leverage. It wasn’t elegant, and her approach was pretty noisy, but her attention was focused on those delicious morels.
After some minutes of effort, she reached the stand of mushrooms. Greedily, she ripped them out of the soft, black soil and stuffed them in her mouth.
Her eyes closed in pleasure. The mushrooms melted in her mouth, and she barely needed to chew them. They were perfect. She had dug almost all of them out of the ground before she looked up to take full stock of her surroundings.
The bank was short and steep. In the distant past, this creek must have swelled to the size of a large river, cutting through mud and sandstone and tree roots.
Above her, something rustled.
She sucked in her breath.
A group of wild turkeys surged over the ridge above her, running past her in a flurry of warbling and feathers. They ran to the creek, a cackling mass of alarm.
She whipped back, her braids striking her in the face.
A man had started down the bank after the turkeys. His expression, looking after them, was one of playful wonder, almost the expression of a child. He carried a heavy pack on his back with a bedroll, and he reminded her of an illustration of a Tarot card she’d seen a long time ago: The Fool. Then his eyes fell on her, and his brows shot up.
He slipped in the spring mud, sliding down the embankment with his arms spread out and hands grasping for the puny grasses growing in the shade. He landed about six feet from Muirenn, gaping like a fish at her.
Two impulses warred in Muirenn. Her first instinct was to flee, knowing that she was at a disadvantage on land. It was a cerebral impulse, born of fear.
But the second one was deeper and more primal. It came from rage and hunger.
She sat, coiled up as tight as a spring in the mud. She could lunge for the water, or she could spring for the man.
Hunger won.
She launched herself at him.
He fought back, battling with a great deal of strength. But Muirenn had been growing stronger herself, and unlike the man, she delighted in this fight. They rolled in the sparse grasses and the mud and gravel and last bits of mushroom. Muirenn snapped at his throat with her teeth as he tried to push her away. He scrambled back on his elbows and feet, crab-like, and tried to climb to his feet. With her tail, she knocked his feet out from under him, rolled, and pressed him to the mud. She planted her hands on his shoulders.
He sucked in his breath and closed his eyes, as if he could ward her off by sheer thought, as if she were some vain imagining or hallucination.
She leaned forward and ripped his throat out.
There was no imagining that.
Greedily, she dipped her head to drink.
She fell back, pressing the back of her hand to her bloody mouth. She thrashed her head from side to side. Like Gabriel—though not like him at all—this man was polluted, his blood burning her mouth with the foul tang of magic.
Hissing, she crawled to the creek and plunge
d her head beneath the cooling water.
The world was much different than it had been when she’d strode through it on two legs.
It was poison.
Chapter 13
Here and Gone
Petra and Nine didn’t speak about what happened at the Eye of the World.
To Petra, this was a relief. She didn’t know how to explain what had happened. Weird things had always happened at the Eye, but Petra had the sense that this was something more than that. That time was getting short.
Though Nine wasn’t talking, Sig gave her plenty of grief. He followed her everywhere. He scrambled inside the bathtub as she took a shower. He tangled in her legs when she went to the laundry room. He had sat opposite her while she used the toilet, ears pressed forward with an “I’m watching you, you fucking moron” expression.
“Thank you,” she told him.
He just huffed and his canine eyebrows worked up and down in worry.
Petra turned her attention back to Gabe’s papers. He had left behind maps, a dozen of them.
They were puzzles, she had decided, designed to confuse Owen. No compass rose had been drawn on any of them. No landmarks. No markings of scale or distance. They were squiggles of scribbles on the paper, turning back on themselves like the trails of termites. Petra suspected that these were the tunnels that stretched below the Rutherford Ranch. The only markings were alchemical symbols. Some she recognized—the symbols for air, fire, water, earth, mercury, and salt. Some were astrological symbols. She wondered if they might have anything to do with alchemical processes, and compared them to what she saw on the Locus. The Locus had stubbornly refused to help her in this, however, as it had decided that notebook paper and pencil were nonmagical, meaning she was on her own. So she’d looked as many of the symbols up on the internet as she could find and made notations beside them. There were symbols for brimstone and antimony and sulfur. Hell, there was even an alchemical symbol for horse shit.