by Nick Lake
Next I know, we’re turning onto another road, and then another. We’re in deep forest now, and I gasp.
There’s a canyon, I say.
What?
A canyon. I point—it’s not as big as the Grand Canyon, but it’s impressive, running alongside the road, a big gouge in the land, red rock descending to a ribbon of blue water. Pine trees hug the sides, and encompass us all around. We’re on little more than a dirt track, I realize.
A rabbit runs onto the track in front of us, startles, and dashes back into the bushes.
A little later, I see a deer flit through the trees beside us, on the forest side. It gives me a strange feeling to see them there. It’s getting harder and harder to remember what happened with Mark and the elks. And there were wolves, I think? But the dream has stuck with me, unsettling me, and now it’s as if it’s bleeding into reality, like newspaper print left behind on damp clothes.
Where are we going? I ask.
Judge Ricardo’s cabin, says Mom. He’s not there at all this week—his mom had a stroke. He had to fly back east. He got the call at the end of the day on Friday.
You know where Judge Ricardo’s cabin is?
I know everything. I’m the stenographer.
And sure enough, there’s another couple of turns, and then I see a log cabin in front of us, a little semicircle of gravel drive in front of it, all neat and tidy. It’s set into the side of a hill that rises up beside the canyon, and it looks down over it, over the river below and the trees and the rock.
And this river: it’s not like the creek we saw before, with Luke, slowly flowing, brown and green. This is swift, and foamy, and racing past—it is a true river.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a river before. I am entranced by it—by the way that it is always shifting, always moving, the ripple and the currents and the eddies, but at the same time it is one indivisible still thing. The effect is of something crumpled, but shining; tinfoil.
It’s beautiful. It feels like … like my dream, I realize, woozily. That same sense of no civilization, of just primal nature, like there would have been a million years ago, when people hadn’t messed everything up. Though of course here, there’s obviously rain, because it isn’t all dry and broken.
It’s lush, and green, and there is luxuriant undergrowth everywhere and many colors of leaves.
We’ll be safe here, says Mom as she gets out of the car.
She is wrong, but I don’t know that yet.
Chapter 24
The cabin is incredible, when we finally get into it. We don’t have a key, of course, but we find one under a stone frog near the door. I guess if we hadn’t, Mom was going to bust out some previously unsuspected lock-picking skills, since she is all about surprising me these days.
The interior is all wooden floors with patterned rugs on them, and open fires, with big stone fireplaces. It’s bigger than it looked from outside, like a cottage in a fairy tale, and there are two big rooms for me and Mom, with king-size beds.
We both know, of course, that we can’t exactly stay here forever, but we deliberately don’t talk about what we’re going to do next.
There are cans in the kitchen—we make beans for dinner, and sausages. Then we share a can of peaches. In a cupboard we find enough bottled water to survive a nuclear holocaust.
We can’t figure out the closed captions on the TV, and anyway both of us are exhausted, so as soon as the sun sets, we both yawn.
Sleepy? says Mom.
Yeah.
I love you…, she says.
…all the way to Cape Cod and back, I finish. I give her a weak smile. My head is a mess, but I do love her, I do. I’ve wondered, sometimes—can you still love someone if you find out they did something bad? Turns out, you don’t have much choice. You love them whatever. You love them forever.
Mom takes out a cross-stitch kit from her purse and settles down on the couch. Fake Scottish trees in the middle of amazing real forest.
You’re kidding? I say.
She puts down the needle for a second. It’ll help me sleep, she says. You mind?
Knock yourself out, I say.
I go to my room. There are soft blankets on the bed, a deep rug next to it, so when you get out with bare feet, you don’t get the shock of the cold wooden floor. It’s chilly—we decided not to light the fires, because of the smoke. I go over to a socket in the wall and plug in my cell—I gave the other one to Mom.
I don’t undress; I just get into the bed and pull the blankets over me. I close my eyes.
And I see the knife plunge into Luke’s hand; see the blood spurt up.
I try again.
And I see the same thing.
I lie there, very still, trying to force my mind into the low gear that allows sleep, but hey, if I knew that trick I would be a millionaire.
I close my eyes, focus on the shapes swirling against my eyelids. I wait for a long time, watching them, trying to tune out the world around me, to still my thoughts.
Hospital doors.
A child, crying. The whole hospital trembling with it, my body vibrating with the pain of it.
I have to get to the child, I have to rescue the—
NO.
I snap myself back into the room. I’m drenched in sweat, my heart pistoning in my chest.
Not that again, I think. I get up. I ease my CAM Walker onto the wood floor and walk as softly as possible through the cabin. I feel like the sound of the CAM Walker on the wood is sure to wake Mom, but I don’t see her come out of her room. I go to the front door and very quietly open it.
Outside, the forest is breathing, low and slow. It’s dark, but a sliver of moon paints a glow on the leaves. There’s a sense of something sleeping, but very alert, at the same time. I see a flash of white—an owl swooping overhead. Insects dance around my head. Something black and fast rushes past me in a flurry of wings—a bat.
Wow, I think. This place is awesome.
I step out onto the gravel, balancing as best I can, and before I know it I’m in the woods. My hand knows what I’m doing before I do, because it takes the knife from my pocket and holds it.
I look down at it.
I can’t seriously think this is going to work, can I?
But at the same time, I’m thinking of Mark’s biceps, of the dimples in his cheeks when his mouth quirks into a smile. And I’m thinking of sound, the richness of it, how in my dream I could hear even the smallest creatures, the wind itself.
How Mark’s voice enters through my ears and is in my mind, shimmering, like something that blends sight and touch. The utter beauty of it. The simplicity too, the ease of just opening my mouth and letting noise jump out, shaped by my tongue and teeth, rolling in waves through the air.
And the Child. The Child Mark wants us to rescue, and the idea that the world might end in days if we don’t, which of course I rationally don’t believe, but it’s nighttime and reason is less strong at nighttime.
Yeah, screw it, I think.
I hold the knife very tightly in my hand, and close my eyes.
Then I step
through—
the air.
And Into A Million Stars.
Chapter 25
—Then Mark is waiting for me where we left each other, on the border of the forest and the prairie. He nods when I appear, totally cool, even though he can’t have known when I would show up.
God, he’s hot.
But he doesn’t let my gaze linger on him because he grabs my hand. It’s good that you returned, he says. After tonight there will be only two days left in your world.
Fireworks of joy go off in me when I hear his voice inside my head again—it’s like being closer to someone than you can imagine; it’s like in my dreams where I can hear, but more.
More.
Then I think about what he said. Wait, I say. My world ends in two days?
Yes, he says. I told you that.
Oh.
But we have an advan
tage, says Mark. Because when you are in the Dreaming, time in your world passes slower. As long as you are here, you are safe.
So why don’t I just stay here? I ask.
You can’t, says Mark. It doesn’t work like that.
Oh, I think. Well, that’s clear.
I hear hooves rustling on the ground, so I look around and see that the elks are still there, standing in a group on the dry grass, looking at me with their big eyes.
Will you reach us more leaves? one of them says.
No, says Mark. We must use this time in the Dreaming. We must go to the castle.
But the Crone is there, says the elk.
Yes, says Mark.
She will kill you.
No, says Mark. We will kill her. And rescue the Child. And when we do, there will be rain again, and you will have all the grass you can eat.
The elk opens its big brown eyes even wider. But it is not he who speaks, it is another, its hide dappled, sleek. Who are you to do such a thing?
Me? says Mark. I am no one. But this is the Maiden. He is pointing to me. The elks all turn to look at me.
What? I say.
They approach us, cautiously. This is a great honor, says the first one. To think that you climbed a tree for us! He turns to Mark. Can we help you? he says. We would … we would accompany you if you wished.
But he is trembling as he says it, and I can see that he is afraid. Afraid of the Crone, I guess.
Mark shakes his head. The quest is for the Maiden, he says. I am only a guide. You should stay here and wait for our return. He turns to me. We need to go.
Where? I say.
There, he says, pointing.
Very, very far in the distance, there’s a thin point sticking into the sky, which could just be a spire, if you squinted.
That’s the Crone’s castle, says Mark.
That? That thing five million miles away?
No, the other castle, the one right in front of us. He indicates the openness of the prairie, the emptiness of it.
I stare at him for a moment. Was that a joke? I ask.
He smiles. Not a good one. The Crone’s castle is not easy to reach, he says. Otherwise it would be easy to kill her, and crones are not easy to kill. Come, he says. We need to hurry.
Why do you think I would say yes to this? I say.
He holds my eyes. Because you need to save the Child, he says. You have always known this. Haven’t you dreamed about it?
I blink at him, a little shaken. Yes, I say. But it was just a dream.
The Child needs you, he says. Are you coming with me?
I think for a moment. Filling my mind is the child in the hospital, the one I can’t pick up, the one I can’t ever pick up and comfort.
I’m coming with you, I say. But I still don’t see what this has to do with me. Why you want me to come.
It’s your destiny, says Mark.
You believe in that? I ask. Destiny?
He just stares at me, like I have asked him if he believes in mud. Yes, he says, at last. Yes, I believe in it.
Mark stretches. Farewell, elks, he says, and nods to the elks.
They bend their front legs and bow again, and I flush with embarrassment. Farewell, human and Maiden, they say.
Mark takes my hand and begins to walk over the prairie. I stumble along beside him through the dead brown grass, and we walk. My CAM Walker isn’t here, it’s back in the other world, and I don’t miss it.
And we walk.
And we walk.
I don’t know how long we continue on for, under the bright starlight of the Dreaming, but my guess is eons. Mark isn’t in a talkative mood, that much is pretty obvious. When I tried to ask him some question, some little casual thing, he just said, the Crone isn’t going to kill herself.
After another while, my feet start to ache, and my legs too. My broken one doesn’t hurt here like it does in my world, but we’ve been walking for approximately 4,300 years and that takes it out of anyone.
Please, I say, can’t we—
I break off, because we can’t walk anymore. There’s a canyon in front of us. It’s not like the one beside the cabin Mom and I are staying in—I mean, it has some similarities, but the big difference is that this one is massive. I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, but I think it would fit inside this one, easily.
The ground just stops
(
)
and starts again, maybe a mile away. And below, very far below, is not a ribbon of blue but a fast-flowing river, and I can tell it’s fast because I see the white of the foam.
The canyon wasn’t visible from the edge of the forest, I guess because it’s more of an absence than a presence—it’s just a big gap in the world, and when you’re looking horizontally along a plane you don’t see a crack like that. But there’s no way we can cross it, is there …
How the hell do we get across that? I say.
There’s a path, says Mark.
Where?
He pulls me forward and shows me—and yes, there’s a little track down the side of the canyon, that makes several U-turns on its way down. It looks very steep, very narrow, and very precarious.
Okay, I say. And what about the river?
We have to cross it, he says, like I’m a moron.
Easy as that?
Well, no, he says, totally missing my sarcasm. There are also snakes.
In the water?
Yes.
Poisonous ones?
Yes.
He starts down the path and I follow, feeling sick. There are several times when I think I’m going to have to stop, I’m so dizzy, but I just keep telling myself that the farther down I go, the less distance I have to fall if I slip, and that turns out to be a pretty awesome motivator.
Finally, I take the last bend and I get to the bottom, where Mark is waiting for me, grinning. You made it at last, he says. Now for the snakes.
I close my eyes and try not to cry.
He approaches the river, which really is moving very fast, I can see now, and frowns.
What is it?
The current. I don’t like it.
Is this you screwing with me still?
He gives me a serious look. No. I swear it. I don’t understand—there’s been no rain. The Crone must have put a spell on it.
Okay, that really is you screwing with me, right?
No.
Oh.
He stands there, looking out over the fast-flowing water, and as I stand next to him, I see something move from the shallows near my feet, out into the rushing middle—something that swims in a shape similar to the wave of my heartbeat, on the monitor in the hospital. Like:
~
A snake.
It’s possible, says Mark, that this is going to be very dangerous indeed. Snakes serve the Crone.
Great, I say. Is there anything that doesn’t serve the Crone?
He frowns. Yes. Me. Elk. Badger. Fox. Ra—
He’s interrupted by a clattering noise above us. He turns, and I turn too, and we see a stone bouncing down the slope toward us. It stops in the dust at our feet.
Something is coming, says Mark.
He whirls to face what is clattering down the path, and are his fingers now claws? And are his teeth now pointed, and does his jaw—
Chapter 26
Then an elk comes into view, taking one of the bends, carefully planting its feet as it descends the path.
I stare at Mark, whose whole body has shrunk a little, like a balloon left a long time. But I could swear … I could swear for a moment there he had seemed to ripple, to shift, and I had seen sharpness, and fur.
What the— I start to say to him, but he holds up his hand to shush me.
Then another elk appears.
And another.
Mark and I watch in amazement as the elks come slowly down to the bottom of the canyon, then stand before us.
There are wolves following you, says the one that first spoke before—it
has a white blaze on its forehead. You gave us food. We will take you across the river.
But the water, says Mark.
It is fast, says the elk. It is not deep.
There are snakes, says Mark. You could be killed.
If one of us falls, the herd remains. We are Elk.
As he says this, more of the beautiful creatures join him, lining up, flank to flank. Their bodies steam in the night air; they breathe like dragons. Their flanks are molten moon. Their antlers pierce the sky and rock. They are magnificent.
I will take the Maiden, says the leader. He tips his antlers toward another large elk. And she will take you, human, he says to Mark.
The leader steps shyly toward me, stepping high. He lowers his head, then bends his foreleg, bringing his back down, his great antlers, so that I can climb up onto him.
You’re sure? I ask.
Yes, says the elk. Our backs are strong. We oppose the Crone. We cleave to our task. We are Elk.
I lift my leg and straddle his back. He is warm, and his … fur? hair? … I don’t know what it’s called on an elk, but it’s soft, so soft, and I grip his neck and it smells like something ancient, something gracious, something that says love and companionship and destiny and … rightness.
You see? says the elk. We were made for this.
For the very first time, I understand, truly understand, what we lost when we made trains and cars and planes, and even when we began to grow things. But I’m not able to think about it for long because the elk steps forward, without hesitating, and into the river. Beside me, Mark rides too, on the high dappled female, his face grim-set.
And on either side of us, the herd moves as one.
The snakes come at us fast, angry. They slip between the legs of the elks, and I see their fangs, and the elks stamp their feet, snorting, mouths foaming, eyes rolling. But they keep going, as scared and as thrashing as they are. The moon is behind clouds. Above us are only stars, sharp and shining as teeth.
I see an elk to my left go down, suddenly, like its legs just aren’t there anymore—it rolls, once, then disappears under the water, and I just catch a glimpse of its hooves as it tumbles down the rocky rapids.
Then another falls to my right, and another.