DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
Before 1 2
Part I 3 4 5 6 7
8 9
Part II 10 11 12 13 14
15
Part III 16 17 18 19 20
21
Part IV 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30
After 31 32
1
A RAVINE CUT INTO THE GROUND, RUNNING FROM NORTH TO south. It was too wide to jump across and too long to travel around. Its overgrown banks went down sheer into the darkness.
On its western side, a bare, ridged tree rose out of the ground, growing clear of the black forest beyond. It stood tall and pale in the moonlight, topped by a crown of dead branches.
From high up in the crown, someone whistled.
Cam stepped out of the shadows on the eastern side, with the others close behind her. They all stared up at the dead tree across the ravine, hunting for Zak’s silhouette among the branches. He called out to them, and the words drifted down like sounds from another world.
"Once it was like this. Remember?"
No! said a voice in Cam’s head. No, I won’t, I won’t—
But it was too late. Zak had spoken the word they never used, and her brain filled with forbidden images. She saw herself racing over the grass, with the world turning under her and the sky wide open above her head. Her hands moved powerfully, commanding fire and water. She soared among the clouds.
Be quiet, Zak. Be QUIET!
But he was way up in the branches, too high to reach. He was beyond her orders.
"Remember," he called down. "You were up in the air—above the tops of the trees. Remember the dazzle of the sun and the space and the speed. You were there. Remember . . ."
She couldn’t stop him. None of them could stop him. He was beyond the gaping ravine, at the top of the tall, dead trunk. Only Zak could climb well enough to reach those high, cupped branches.
"Remember . . ." he said again. The sound was relentless. Unbearable.
Cam put her fingers in her ears, turning away, but she could still hear him. They all heard. Remember, remember . . . The word battered at them until the darkness vibrated with anger and pain, and there was no way of stopping it. No way of silencing Zak.
Except the rope.
The rope ends were on the ground, at Cam’s feet. The great, twelve-strand rope stretched across the ravine and back again, looping twice around the trunk of Zak’s tree. As he called again, Cam stooped blindly, grabbing at one of the ends.
The others stooped, too, jostling to find places. A dozen hands clamped around each length of rope.
"Remember," Zak shouted—and Cam began to pull, straining at the rope. Putting all her rage and pain into that single action.
Zak’s voice grew louder. "Remember! You were high in the air! Above the tops of the trees, in the full dazzle of the sun! But—all in a flash—you came tumbling down, out of the music and the buzz and the energy, into deep silence. Out of the light and into the cold shadows. Remember! Remember!"
They were all pulling now. Their movements followed the rhythm of his voice, and the trunk started to sway and creak, gathering momentum as they heaved. Up in the sky, among the top branches, Zak threw his weight forward, toward the ravine.
"Remember!"
The trunk gave way, keeling over suddenly, and Zak scrambled through the branches, screaming one word with all the air in his lungs, "DOWN!"
He rode out the fall, straddling the trunk, but the others were caught in the whip of branches. As the tree swept down toward them, Cam was knocked clean off her feet. She clenched her fists, fighting the sound that welled up inside her.
No! she thought fiercely. Zak, why did you have to—oh damn, I’m not going to—but it was impossible to stay quiet. As the tree fell, the others began to wail with rage and pain. Cam struggled for a moment and then opened her mouth and howled, giving in to the darkness.
Zak fell past her, in the branches, so close that she saw the blue flash of his eyes. The great tree came down across the gulf, spanning it like a bridge, and crashed, headfirst, onto the dark ground.
2
HIGH IN THE CLOUDS, SOMETHING SLAMMED INTO ROBERT’S sleeping brain and he woke suddenly, in a rush of adrenaline. His mind was churning with images of falling, of tumbling out of the sky in a roar of broken, burning metal. He smelled the scorching and felt the rush of air against his helpless skin as he fell . . . .
"Stop it!" Emma hissed fiercely into his ear. She grabbed at his arm and shook it, digging in with her fingers. "Be quiet!"
He hadn’t known he was making noise. He tried to move his head and found that it had slid sideways, wedged between the seat and the window shade. The engine noise vibrated in his ears, and his neck was stiff and aching.
Falling . . .
He sat up and rubbed at his cheek. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened," Emma said crossly. "You were just dreaming. Making a terrible, moaning noise."
"I was—"
Robert couldn’t get the words out. The falling and the noise and the burning were still real and savage in his mind, and he needed to talk about them. But not to Emma. His sister was the last person in the world he would choose to tell. She wouldn’t understand, and she would just say the same things, all over again. It was only a dream. Nothing happened.
He flexed his shoulders and looked around. She was right, of course. In a way. They were sitting side by side in the darkened cabin, with the engines flying the plane steadily through the night. He could hear Mom and Dad talking quietly in the seats behind. He could see a flight attendant moving calmly down the cabin. Nothing had happened.
And yet he had been falling in fire and darkness. Every cell of his body was jarred, and his heart was thumping. Was that nothing?
Turning away from Emma, he slid up the shade to look out of the window. The rising sun flared into his eyes so that he ducked his head, squinting to escape the dazzle. They were flying over a mass of trees that stretched in all directions. A river snaked out from the horizon, glinting golden where it caught the light, but the ground under the trees was dark and hidden.
Emma leaned across his body, pushing him out of the way so that she could see.
"Wow!" she said. "Isn’t that lovely? It’s just like a photo."
"No, it’s not!" Robert pushed her away angrily. "Don’t be stupid!"
The rush of fury took him by surprise, but it was her fault for talking nonsense. It’s just like a photo. What did she mean? A photograph was just an image—flat colors on a piece of shiny paper. There was nothing behind the surface.
What they could see through the window was completely different. It was real.
If they swooped down twenty-five thousand feet, the tangled mass of treetops would separate into a pattern of interwoven branches, of twigs and leaves and intricate, ridged bark. If they dived through that, into the shadows, there would be a whole, secret world of animals and plants, and of streams and earth. And, deeper still, there were insects and fungi and tiny micro-organisms, getting smaller and smaller, in unimaginable complexity.
He and Emma were the ones who were unreal. They were floating high above the trees in a pressurized capsule, surrounded by strangers. The air they breathed was recycled, and the temperature around them was artificially controlled. Every surface he could see was molded into smooth, unnatural curves, and beyond those curves was—nothing. Except the cold and empty sky.
The plane felt safe and ordinary, but it would take only a crack to shatter that safety and plunge them headlong through the air. Falling and burning . . .
He pressed his forehead against the window, struggling to look down through the trees into the hidden, real ground u
nderneath them. But he couldn’t do it.
"What’s gotten into you?" Emma said.
It was dark, and there was noise and fire . . . . The words burned in Robert’s head, but he couldn’t speak them. The dark and the fire and the falling were real, like the trees and the river. But he couldn’t explain that to Emma. She would give him a scornful, superior stare and go on talking about dreams and photos and what time the plane was going to land.
And she would think he was pathetic.
As usual.
Reaching forward, he snatched the travel kit out of the pocket in front of him.
"I’m going to brush my teeth," he said abruptly. He stood up and squeezed his way out into the aisle, pushing past Emma and the person in the next seat, without giving them a chance to move.
He thought he had his expression under control, but there must have been something odd about it. When he reached the bathroom, the man who was corning out gave him a long, strange look. His eyes were blue and very clear. Robert turned away from them, hiding his face as he went through the open door.
The restroom was in the center of the plane—a neat, cramped cubicle with no window and everything made to fit into the smallest possible space. Laying his travel kit on the shelf, Robert took out the toothbrush and toothpaste. He unscrewed the top of the tube and squeezed a short length of toothpaste onto his brush.
But he could still feel eyes watching him . . .
He looked up quickly and found himself staring straight into the face in the mirror. What’s the matter with me? I can’t be scared of myself. But there was something unsettling about the reflection. Putting his toothbrush down, he leaned closer, peering at it.
His own eyes peered back at him. They were gray green, striped in a dozen places with faint, brown lines. The pattern was infinitely familiar—but today there was something different about it.
A face was looking back at him down the black tunnel of the pupils.
It was a tiny, strange face, almost too small to see. He moved his head and it kept time, moving with him, its own eyes as sharp as pinpoints. When he lifted his hand toward it, a minute, pale hand came up in answer, stretching out to him.
Who is it? he thought. He could see the mirrored hand trembling in the glass. Is that my face? My hand?
His own hand was trembling, too. Half of him wanted to look away, but he couldn’t make his eyes disconnect. Taking a slow, deliberate breath, he reached out farther, nearer the glass. And nearer still . . . until his real hand met the mirror hand, fingertip to fingertip—
—and a shock went through him, jolting his whole body.
The strange face exploded forward, swooping out of the darkness. For a split second, in a flash of clear, dazzling blue, he saw his own face reflected in its eyes.
Then the darkness flared into his face, blotting out everything. It exploded around him, grating against his eyes and grinding into his head. Air and vibration beat at him, until he was shaken from the inside outward.
Noise roared into every cell, jarring his bones and burning up his blood, and raw heat blasted against the surface of his skin.
Then a long, wrenching twist wound up the spirals of his body, squeezing in and down and in and down and inand-downandinanddownand—
And a deeper darkness came up to meet him.
I
3
HE CAME TO SUDDENLY, SHOCKED AND SHIVERING. ONE moment he was unconscious and the next he was sitting up in a litter of wet, rotting vegetation, with the wind scouring his bare skin.
He was cold and naked, and his whole, aching body was covered with scratches. The damp air around him smelled of decay. The ground ran away into shadows. Looking up, he saw a tangle of branches arching far above his head, closing out the light.
He had absolutely no idea where he was.
He remembered walking down the plane toward the rest-room. But after that—nothing. It was like looking into a thick fog full of hazy shapes that slid away when he tried to focus. There had been a blur of pain and a dazzle of light—
And then an exploding, overwhelming darkness.
He began to test out his body, checking the bones. Working each joint to be sure that it was still functioning.
Fingers? Eight (plus two thumbs), all whole and agile.
Toes? They wiggled reassuringly.
Arms? Legs? Nothing wrong there.
Back? He winced as he moved and felt the long, raw patch running down the left-hand side. Was it a burn or a scrape? He tried looking over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see, and he had no way of finding out.
He was shivering harder now, not from shock, but from sheer cold. Within a few moments that had driven everything else out of his mind. He had to get warm. It was more urgent than hunger, more important than understanding. He had to cover himself up.
But how?
He was lying half submerged in a chilly, disintegrating mass of leaf fragments, as thick and heavy as wet leather. The tangled branches over his head were dark and dripping, and a break in the canopy showed a glimpse of threatening sky.
He had to find some kind of shelter.
Squelching in old leaf-sludge, he dragged himself onto his feet and looked around. He was in the middle of a strange, gloomy forest. Its floor was wet and barren, covered with leaf litter.
Out of the leaf litter, jagged, gnarled tree trunks thrust vigorously upward. They grew in clumps, three or four together, splaying apart and rising high above his head, with branches that curved like great, stone ribs. They wove in and out of each other, and their coarse, tarnished leaves shut out the sun. It was impossible to see anything beyond them.
The wet ground had no clues to give him either. There was no sign of a trail. Nothing to show how he had come into the forest and no path to lead him out. Everything looked the same, whichever way he turned.
He began to struggle forward over the leaves, choosing a direction at random. It was slow and tiring. The brown mess sagged and squelched under him, and twice he slipped and landed on his hands and knees. His limbs ached and his back hurt. Every step was an effort.
He was just beginning to feel that the forest was endless, that he might as well give up, when he caught a glimpse of something different, off to his left. A patch of light, broken by pale, vertical lines. He slithered toward it and found himself at a break in the canopy.
Behind him the dark forest was full of vigorous, arching trees and the strong smell of decay. Ahead the ground was quite different. Dozens of pale trees rose up into the sky, almost impossibly tall, hardly branching until the very top. Their trunks were straight and slender, and they had a dry, brittle look. Their stunted, spindly branches had begun to disintegrate, splitting open to spill out long white fibers.
Every one of the trees was dead.
They rose out of a wilderness of tall, bent plants that looked like old bamboo. The rain had beaten down their jointed stems and plastered the leaf strips one over another, molding the plants into high, soggy mounds. He thought he might somehow use the leaves to cover himself, but when he pulled at one it was coarse and tough, and it scratched his hands.
It was quite dead. Everything was dead.
He was standing on the edge of a ghost wood.
The only living thing was a long, tough creeper, thicker than his arm. Its spiraling stems had reached out greedily, looping from one tree to another and scrambling upward.
On the far side of the pale wood, it had pulled some of the dry trees sideways, roping them around so that half a dozen leaned together. Farther on, the creeper’s weight had brought down a couple of other trees. It grew over them in a thick mat, with their odd, split branches sticking through.
The strands that spilled out of them had a soft, silky look, and Robert’s heart jumped suddenly. He could see that they might be within his reach and he began to struggle toward them, fighting his way between the clumps of bamboo.
The ground was covered with a network of tough bamboo stems, and it was hard going, but
he had a purpose now. He hardly noticed how the rough bamboo leaves scraped at his skin. He was more concerned by a sudden darkening that seemed to threaten rain. He wanted to reach that silky floss before it was drenched and useless. Rubbing impatiently at his scratched legs, he battled on over the roots and the creeping stalks.
When he reached the fallen trees, he found that their branches were higher than he had thought. But by standing on tiptoe, he could just touch the lowest one. Straining upward, he buried his hands in the soft, thick floss and tugged. A great clump of it came loose, tangled with seeds. He pulled it down and twisted the long strands together, feeling their warmth.
He had had grand ideas of making them into thread, maybe even weaving some kind of cloth. But as soon as he had them in his hands, he realized that all that was a hopeless fantasy. He would have to settle for something much more primitive.
He reached up and pulled down more of the floss. Without bothering to pick out the seeds, he rubbed the silky strands together, turning the whole mass in on itself until it hung together in a huge, matted bundle. It was bulky, but very light and soft.
Parting it with his hands, he burrowed in, pulling it on over his head, like a shirt, and pushing his arms out through the sides. Then he worked away at it, tucking and knotting to close up the gaps. The result was awkward and comic—more like a sheep’s fleece than a garment—but it covered him from the neck to the knees, and he was immediately warmer.
Making the fleece had given him something to focus on. As soon as it was done, his energy drained away. He was exhausted. It seemed sensible to gather more floss, before the rain started, but he couldn’t make himself reach up to pull it down.
He couldn’t face the effort of struggling back under the dark trees either, but the temperature was dropping fast and he needed some kind of shelter. Going down on all fours, he pushed his way into the nearest bamboo clump, wriggling between the tough stems and the jagged leaves that caught at his fleece and scratched his arms and face.
The stalks inside the clump were damp but not soft. They grew close together, and he squatted awkwardly between them, wedging himself into place and pulling his arms inside his fleece for warmth. The moment he stopped moving, he realized that he was hungry and desperately thirsty. But he was too tired to cope with that. He closed his eyes—just for a second—and fell asleep instantly, in spite of his uncomfortable position.
The Dark Ground Page 1