Suddenly her mind was skidding over all the people she knew and trying to comprehend that single, stunning fact: They, too, had dreams.
Wings fluttered above her, no two quite the same. Yes, she thought, just like a black snow. She unconsciously lifted her arms, as she used to stand in the rain when she was very little, enjoying the tickly feeling of the water coursing over her skin. And after only a moment, the nocturni responded. They began swirling and whirling lower until they surrounded her entirely, and as they did the sounds of their wings—the humming and fluttering that echoed through the cavernous space—took on a kind of rhythm.
Suddenly the rhythm became speech, and Liza could hear little babbling words being beaten into the air by the motion of the wings. There were so many voices flapping toward her at once that she could only isolate certain words and snatches of phrases: “down the corner,” “bake shop,” “elephant wearing a top hat,” and it took her several minutes to realize that the nocturni were babbling happily about the dreams of their humans.
Then Liza noticed a nocturna hovering closer than all the others. It stayed in constant motion, circling her shoulders, swooping up and down around her head, a black, fluttering blur. As it did, its wings beat out a funny, staccato voice, which seemed to Liza somehow familiar. It was like the stuttering rhythm of her heart when she was very excited.
No—it was her heart; the voice was coming to her through the rhythm of her own heartbeat.
She noticed, now, that the other nocturni were withdrawing, falling silent, drifting upward into the murky blackness.
“Are you my nocturna?” Liza said out loud, and thought she could detect a faint tittering from the mass of nocturni above her. They were laughing.
She heard repressed laughter, too, in the voice of the nocturna still circling her endlessly. You don’t have to speak out loud, Liza, it said. I can hear what you’re thinking.
No way, she thought immediately, and the voice pushed back.
Of course.
So you’re my nocturna?
Yes.
Liza thought about this. Then you’ve known me my whole life?
Again came the rustling, fluttering laughter, like a pitter-patter in her heart. Far longer than that.
Do you have a name? she thought.
Yes. There was a temporary pause. But it’s long, and very difficult to translate into human language.
Try, Liza thought.
There was another moment’s pause. The nocturna hovered close to Liza’s chest; she could feel it there, parceling the air, like a small and concentrated wind. Then images began rising through her, one after another: a flash of sunlight on silvery water; spinning clouds of reddish dust; explosions of bright color; lava hardening into black stone; a flower unfurling its petals, coated in sparkling dew; lightning tearing across a purple, cloud-clotted sky; a child laughing.
The images stopped, and Liza was left breathless.
That’s your name? she asked.
Part of it, the nocturna said.
Mirabella had been watching Liza closely, her nose twitching. Now she scurried closer to Liza. “It’s very special,” she said. “Very, very special. Humans don’t get to meet their nocturni.”
She wished she could stay with the nocturna. She felt reassured by its presence. It was even more comforting than the broom, which she still carried tightly in one hand. But she knew they had to move on. She no longer knew how long she had been Below, but she knew they were running out of time.
I have to go, she said regretfully. I’m on my way—
To save Patrick, the nocturna finished for her. I know.
You know about Patrick?
Of course. I know everything about you. The nocturna whirled a little faster. Follow the river upstream and take the road that leads through the Live Forest. It’s a shortcut. But be careful not to wake the trees.
Okay. She knew, immediately, that her nocturna could be trusted.
Good luck, Liza, it said. We’ll be watching.
“Thank you,” Liza said out loud. Nothing but echoes came back to her; and so she and Mirabella continued on their way.
Chapter 11
THE LIVE FOREST
They followed the river upstream, as Liza’s nocturna had instructed them, and Liza found herself captivated by the water that babbled happily on their right. She had never seen water that looked so … alive before, so full of motion and color.
And now she could hear, too, that its sounds were not just regular water sounds. Beneath the babbling and the gurgling and the flowing, she thought she could make out other noises: voices, and high laughter, and the ringing of bells, and a woman—or more than one woman?—singing in a rich, warm voice that made her think of honey, and other golden things.
Without meaning to, she drifted closer and closer to the edge of the water. The farther she moved along its banks, the more she was filled with the overwhelming desire to look into the river, to put her hand in the water.
No. She wanted to swim. She wanted to be completely submerged.
Suddenly Liza felt a pressure around her middle and was tugged backward; the rat, using her tail as a lasso, pulled her sharply away from the river.
Liza’s feet flew out from underneath her and she landed, hard, on her elbows and tailbone, barely managing to keep hold of her broom. Pain zinged through her.
“What are you doing?” she cried out, as the rat uncoiled her tail from around Liza’s waist and wrapped it, once again, around her wrist. “I could have broken something.”
“You could have done much worse than that,” Mirabella said. “Much, much worse. You must stay away from the river at all costs.”
“I only wanted to look,” Liza said. She sat up, feeling her elbows tentatively for swollen places.
“That is exactly what you must never, ever do,” Mirabella replied solemnly, offering Liza her paw. Liza refused to accept it. She climbed to her feet slowly, on her own.
“Why not?” she asked. There seemed to be a lot of rules to the underground; almost as many as there were in the world Above. No doubt—if she ever made it back—her mother would ask her how she came to get so many bruises, and if Liza told her the truth, she would get in trouble for making up stories.
Liza felt a pang. It felt like days since she had passed through the cavernous hole in the basement. She wondered whether Above, her mother and father were frantically trying to find her. Would they think she had been kidnapped? Would they think she had run away?
“The River of Knowledge is for the nocturni alone,” the rat said. “They drink from it, and it sustains them. But to everyone else it is deadly.”
Liza cast one last, regretful look at the river and allowed the rat to lead her on. Soon they entered a place of heavy growth, where vines climbed thickly up the gnarled trees that surrounded them, and formed a canopy overhead. In places even the river was blocked from view, obscured by luscious growth, all of it in colors Liza had not seen before in any garden—black and dark purple and silver. Occasionally she saw a flower so white and huge, it reminded her of the moon. The light of the lumer-lumpen pulsed among the thick growth. Several butterflies, dark as velvet, flitted between the vines, causing the leaves to stir.
Occasionally she heard rustling, and the sound of tiny feet scrabbling through the growth on both sides of them; she tried very hard not to imagine what kind of creatures lived in this huge, black forest underground. Once she thought she detected a large, furry body shifting to her right. Her heart seized in her chest, and she was terrified to look and terrified not to; when she did, she saw two oval eyes blinking at her. The animal retreated just as quickly, and the eyes folded back into the darkness, but not before she caught sight of a long, thick pink tail, like an enormous worm. Another rat: She would have sworn to it. She wondered if Mirabella had seen.
So as not to be frightened, she thought of Patrick—not the fake-Patrick who lay aboveground, sleeping soundlessly in Patrick’s bed, but the real Patrick, w
ho would put his warm arms around her when she told him about everything she’d done to rescue him, and listen with his mouth gaping open, and say things like, “No way,” and “Uh-uh,” and “Impossible,” so that she could squeeze him back and say, “Yes, of course.”
That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself stories as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.
They reached a gloomy, gray space in the forest. Huge, twisted trees—dead trees, as far as Liza could tell, with not a single stem or bud or branch that bloomed—spiraled into the mists that swirled above them.
The trees were larger than any Liza had ever seen in her life. She seemed to be standing, in fact, among their roots: vast, vaulted arched roots that reared out of the earth before looping back into it again—like a series of monstrous, deformed arms—and formed tunnels underneath and around the ash-gray wood. She could hardly make out the trunks that soared above them, but each was the circumference of a house.
A weathered sign staked crookedly was marked with ghostly white letters: THE LIVE FOREST, it said. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. Beyond the sign were two paths. One path was well swept and made of neatly cobbled stone, painted an inviting cream color and lit by what looked like ornate streetlamps—except the lamps were tall, white birch trees, and the lightbulbs were dangling lumpen, glowing within their translucent domes. This path veered sharply to the left and followed the periphery of the forest the long way around.
The other path was just a bare space beaten into the dust between the dead-looking trees, and it went straight into the heart of the Live Forest, vanishing after only a few feet into the gloom.
Liza recalled what her nocturna had told her: Follow the river upstream and take the road that leads through the Live Forest. It’s a shortcut.
“Well, well.” Mirabella chattered nervously. “Sometimes it’s better to beat around the bush, don’t you think?” The rat scurried onto the well-lit path.
“Wait!” Liza swallowed. There was an evil feeling to the Live Forest, and she had no desire to walk through it. But the nocturna had said it was a shortcut. “It’ll be quicker to cut through the forest.”
Mirabella let out a mangled squeak. “Through the forest? Surely you don’t mean … you’re not suggesting …” She swallowed. “The Live Forest is a place for spooks and evil spirits. Very bad luck. Very bad luck.”
“We have no choice,” Liza said. “Now come on.” She took two steps along the crooked path, attempting to look brave. Instantly the mist engulfed her, as though she had been swallowed by a slick, damp throat. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Mirabella patted her wig nervously. “For the love of cheese …” she said, but she scurried along after Liza.
Liza squinted. There was a bit of pale white light that descended from above—from where, she could not have said, as they must have been miles and miles underground—just enough to make out the enormous silhouettes of the trees, and the mist clinging to them like moss.
The gnarled roots rose on all sides of them. Liza felt like a ship moving among large, glittering icebergs. It was the strangest thing: Even though the forest was perfectly still, with not a solitary shred of movement anywhere—just the terrible gnarled trees and the heavy, motionless mist—Liza still had the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
Liza thought back to the nocturna’s instructions. The nocturna had said to take the path through the Live Forest.... And it had said something else, too. Something important....
“Now let me think,” Liza murmured. “Watch out for the trees? No, no. It was something else.”
“What’s that?” Mirabella whispered.
“Be quiet. I’m trying to think.” It was something about the trees, though … she was sure of it....
“You’re buying a sink?”
“I said I’m trying to think.”
“You’re eyeing a mink?”
“I’m trying to think.” Liza whirled around, losing patience. Mirabella had been creeping so close to her, they were practically whiskers to nose, and the rat hopped backward with a startled yelp. Her tail got entangled with her feet, or her feet became entangled by her tail, and suddenly she was stumbling backward. She pinwheeled her arms but could not regain her balance. She tumbled down at the base of one of the looming tree roots, bumping her head against the ancient wood.
“Mirabella!” Liza cried, and ran to her, dropping to her knees. “Are you all right?”
The rat’s wig had slid forward so it obscured one of her eyes. She was rubbing her head and moaning.
“My head!” she cried. “My tender, pulpy head!”
Then the rat froze. Liza froze too. Suddenly, from all around them, came the low sounds of rumbling, as of distant thunder: cracking, too, and beneath it all, a horrifying, sibilant hiss.
“What is that?” Liza asked. All the fear had slammed back into her at once. The ground was rumbling and rolling beneath their feet, as though an earthquake was building. “What’s happening?”
But even as she asked, the nocturna’s words came back to her.
You mustn’t wake the trees.
At that moment the root—the dull, gray, lifeless root that had bruised Mirabella’s head—shook itself and began to twist, and uncurl.
And uncurl.
And uncurl.
It extracted itself from the ground with a terrible tearing sound and raised itself in the air, and at its tapered point was the mossy, dirt-encrusted face of a grinning, wood-colored snake, with shining black eyes and terrible gray fangs.
The tree snake stared at Liza, swaying lightly on its enormous coils. Every time it moved there was a cracking sound, as of a giant crashing through a forest, and Liza watched in horror as little bits of bark flaked off from its skin.
“Run!” Mirabella screamed, and became a streaking comet of fur, rocketing past her.
But Liza couldn’t run. She was so terrified she couldn’t move, or breathe. Her whole body was filled with leaden weight.
The tree snake reared back, and the hissing sound in the air grew louder. A dark forked tongue flickered dangerously in its mouth, and Liza knew the snake was about to strike.
At that instant, the tree snake lunged for Liza, lightning quick. She barely had time to roll out of the way before the snake had plunged its fangs into the space where she had been kneeling, driving its mouth into the dirt. She bumped hard up against another tree root, and this one began to shake and crack as well.
Liza scrambled to her feet, holding tight to the broom, filled with blind panic. Around them, other trees were uprooting themselves violently, and from everywhere. All over the forest, the tree snakes were wrenching themselves from the ground, coughing up dirt. They loomed through the mist, their bark rippling terribly, sometimes three or four of them radiating in a circle from their trunks, like monstrous pets leashed together.
“Liza! This way! Follow me!” Mirabella was scrabbling ahead, weaving a path through the swaying, swirling forest and all the living, deadly trees. For once she had forgotten about walking like a lady and was running on all fours.
Another tree snake lunged for Liza, and she sprang out of the way, feeling a whistle of wind on her neck as the snake snapped its mouth on air. It came at her again. She struck out frantically with her broom, and the tree snake clomped down on the bristles, so Liza was left with only the handle. The snake coughed out a mouthful of straw, giving Liza just enough time to scamper out of its reach. It strained for her but was pulled back, sharply, by the tree trunk at its center; it gave a dissatisfied hiss as Liza plunged blindly forward.
“This way, this way!” Mirabella was digging frantically in the soft earth, sending sprays of dirt pinwheeling out from beneath her paws. At every moment, even more tree snakes were waking. The cracking and hissing was a
lmost deafening, the ground buckled and shook beneath them, and the air was a shower of bark, pattering down from above like a black rain.
Then Liza’s world turned a cartwheel; pain slammed her blindingly from the left, and her feet were above her head and her head was skimming several feet over the earth, and it took her a full 3.7 seconds to realize she had been knocked off her feet. The patch of ground she had been standing on had cleaved suddenly and completely in two, opening up like a book upon which she had been perched; she was seesawed into the air and landed, hard, on her back. The air went out of her at once, and in those moments of breathlessness everything appeared to move in slow motion.
From out of the cleft in the ground rose, inch by inch, a coal-black head the size of a car. It emerged from the earth as if it were floating up through water—the most fearsome snake Liza had yet seen, dark and rotten, encrusted all over with dirt. Its fangs were looped with smaller brambles, and insects skittered out of its mouth; moss grew along its bark and down its chin, a long, tangled beard. It glowered at Liza, hissing, and its breath smelled terrible, like death and long-buried things.
Liza wanted to stand. She wanted to run. But her brain no longer seemed to send clear directions to her body. Her body was possessed by terror; her lungs had stopped working; she couldn’t think.
The black snake hissed at her again, taking its time, sending a forked tongue through terrible cracked wooden lips. It shimmied a few feet closer, its ancient body snapping and cracking: a deafening noise echoed through the forest, and all the other tree snakes fell silent, watching. Somehow Liza knew that this was the oldest tree of all, the center of the Live Forest—its longest and largest root, and its meanest, evilest snake.
Then the snake struck. It lashed out without warning, and Liza saw nothing but a tunnel of black about to consume her. Instinct took over, and she rolled desperately to one side. The snake’s fangs whizzed by her; she could feel a whoosh of air as its massive body missed colliding with hers by inches. She jumped to her feet. She could breathe again. The blood was pounding through her, her heart churning furiously.
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