The Whispering Trees

by J. A. White

  Kara was only able to hold it for a few moments before it squirmed away, but that was enough time to learn its secrets.

  “It’s not your fault,” she told Imogen. “You were once a wexari, but your power has been corrupted. They used you, didn’t they? Your parents? That’s why you came to the Thickety. To escape. You were searching for solitude. You found something else.”

  Imogen’s wizened mouth curled into a scowl.

  “You are no longer amusing, Kara Westfall,” she said. Something whipped around Kara’s ankle and she was suddenly upside down, only a few feet from Imogen’s face. “You think you know me? You think you know suffering? You know nothing!” Blind eyes like saucers of spoiled milk searched her out. “It doesn’t have to be what you want, you know. I can create a world where you watch your mother die, over and over again. Or maybe a world where Taff becomes a witch hunter and slides a dagger across your throat.” Imogen brought her closer, baring daggerlike teeth. “Then again . . . talking with you has reminded me that at one point I truly did enjoy the taste of meat. Perhaps it is time to revisit lost pleasures.”

  “‘Remember what it eats,’” Kara said.

  “What? What was that?”

  “I thought Mary was talking about you, but she was really talking about that creature attached to your back.” Kara could see it clearly now, black and spiny like polluted coral. Hundreds of tentacles narrowed to cilia as they needled its surface, delivering the sustenance of lost dreams.

  The creature pulsated. Swallowing.

  “You don’t know anything,” Imogen said. “This creature is my slave. It helps me gather what I need.”

  “It calls itself the Harthix. Did you know that?”

  This gave Imogen pause. “You’ve spoken to it?”

  Kara nodded. “It can bestow great power—or, at least, it can exaggerate power that already exists. But it cannot eat on its own. It needs a host. It transformed your magic into a way to gather food, like a farmer building a threshing machine. After all these years, you’re still being used.”

  “That’s not true! I am wexari. I am its master!”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  The tentacle released Kara and she crashed to the ground, her fall broken by a pile of tattered old manuscripts.

  “What are you doing?” Imogen shouted. “Attack her! Attack her!”

  “I’m sorry,” Kara said, “because the Harthix lives for new tastes, new experiences, and I told it that while lost childhoods and lost loved ones must taste fine, imagine how grand it would be to feast on someone who has lost her humanity!”

  The first tentacle slipped into Imogen’s ear. Her blind eyes widened in horror, seeking Kara everywhere.

  “Please,” Imogen said. “You’re like me. A true witch. I sense it. Please help your sister. Please.”

  “I can’t do that,” Kara said. “I made a bargain with the Harthix. It promised to let everyone else go. In exchange, I assured it that you would provide enough nourishment for centuries.”

  “No!” Imogen exclaimed as the tentacles began to drag her deeper into the fog. “No! Put me down! I am your master! I am your—”

  The last thing Kara heard was Imogen’s scream as she was pulled into the depths of an unknown abyss.

  She checked six pits before she found Taff, standing with his back pressed against the wall so he remained hidden in the shadows. His eyes were wide and disoriented. She called his name and he slumped to the ground with relief.

  “I thought I was all alone,” Taff said, pressing his face to his hands.

  “Never,” Kara replied.

  The Harthix’s tentacles were nowhere to be seen, so Kara slid a long branch into the pit and Taff shimmied to the surface.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, hugging him tight.

  “Why are the inside of my ears wet?”

  “You really don’t want to know.”

  Kara gave him the brief version of her encounter with Imogen, skimming over the more horrific parts. Taff had been through enough.

  “I’m glad that monster took her,” Taff said. “She deserved it.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Where’s Father?” he asked, his voice still groggy. “Is he in one of the pits too?”

  Holding him tight, Kara reminded Taff that their father was lost to them in this world. His body grew slack as he remembered. She felt his tears on the back of her neck but pretended not to.

  There was more she wanted to tell him, but Taff’s was not the only pit, and the calls of the others could no longer be ignored. Though Kara was almost too tired to stand, she and Taff spent several hours fashioning makeshift ropes from fancy cloaks and robes they found among the other lost things. Not everyone awoke; some had been too long under Imogen’s spell to survive the detachment. Others were angry with Kara and refused to leave their pits, praying for Imogen to return them to their mind worlds. A few people, however, seemed happy to be freed again, and despite their dazed and bewildered states helped Kara and Taff free the others. When Kara asked them what village they had come from they simply bowed their heads and scrambled away, too frightened to speak to this strange girl powerful enough to destroy their captor.

  Eventually she gave up asking.

  “How many days do you think it’s been?” Kara asked Taff. If her brother had been older, perhaps she could have judged time’s passing by the length of his beard; his sandy hair seemed as unruly as usual but no longer than she remembered it.

  “Just a few days,” Taff said. “For us, that is. But some of the others—I think they’ve been here for years. Magic must have kept them alive.”

  “What was it like for you?”

  “Perfect,” Taff muttered.

  “It wasn’t real.”

  “It felt real at the time. But it’s getting harder to remember.”

  Kara understood what he meant. The false years she had spent in Imogen’s world had at first seemed as vivid as any recent experience but were now being supplanted by her real memories, like feeling returning to a limb that had fallen asleep. In time she supposed she might forget the dream world altogether.

  “We’re back in the real world now,” Kara said. “It’s best to forget what happened there.”

  “No,” Taff said. “I want to remember. I want him back!”

  Kara knelt next to her brother. She was still much taller than him, but the height difference was not quite as significant as when she first found the grimoire and their lives changed forever.

  He’s growing up. Faster than he should be.

  “We’ll get him back. Our real father. We’ll all be together again.”

  “You promise?”

  Kara hesitated. Can I really promise such a thing? What happens if I can’t do it? He’ll be crushed.

  But in the end she decided that there was no other choice. She would promise this one thing to her brother and either do it or die trying.

  “You have my word,” she said.

  Taff’s upper lip trembled. Kara thought, at first, that he was going to cry, and moved to hug him, but instead he burst into a teasing giggle.

  “In my dream,” he said, “you married Lucas!”

  Kara turned her face away before he could see her blush.

  They traveled past the remaining pits and the fog dissipated, revealing fresh water and a field of edible mushrooms. These tasted horrible but restored a little of her energy, though what she really needed was sleep.

  “Should we set up camp?” Kara asked. “Or go back and find Mary—”

  “Feel this!” Taff shouted, holding his hand as high as he could. “Feel this!”

  Kara joined her brother at the edge of the field. There was no need to raise her hand. Not only did she feel the ocean breeze on her face, she smelled it: briny and fresh and so different than the ever-lingering decay of the Thickety.

  It smelled like freedom.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Taff.

  They ran toward the scent
of the ocean. At first Kara feared it might be some sort of cruel mirage, but the smell was undeniable now, the salty air tickling her nostrils. Kara heard fierce wind unshackled from trees, water clapping upon water.

  And then she saw it.

  Back in De’Noran, Kara and Lucas had spent many hours staring out across the ocean. Her friend, desperate for news of his lost family, loved discussing what life must be like in the World—and while Kara thought the ocean view was certainly pleasant, she had never understood her friend’s obsession with it. After weeks trapped in the darkness of the Thickety, however, the staggering beauty of such unhindered blueness overwhelmed her.

  She wished Lucas were here so she could tell him: I finally understand now.

  “Mary didn’t lie,” Kara said. “This is the way out of the Thickety.”

  “Why would she have lied?” Taff asked.

  It seemed pointless explaining Watcher’s accusation; Kara felt guilty even thinking about it. How could I have doubted her? Mary had led them safely across the Thickety, taught Kara how to use her powers, and even given her the key to escaping Imogen. She’s a true friend.

  “I’ll race you to the water,” Kara said.

  Taff took off, building a solid lead before Kara, her previous exhaustion forgotten, passed him. She leaped into the ocean first, nearly losing her balance when Taff crashed into her a moment later.

  The water was icy cold. It felt wonderful.

  “Cheater,” Taff said, splashing her. “You’re too big.”

  “That’s not cheating,” she said, splashing him in return. “That’s just winning.”

  After playing in the water a bit longer they crawled onto the sand and lay out in the sun to dry.

  “That was fun,” said Kara, “but unfortunately we can’t swim to the World. We need a boat.”

  Taff shook his head in disbelief.

  “You may be really good at magic, but you’re not so great at noticing things.” He pointed at the trees just beyond the beach, where a small canoe lay half covered by weeds. It was battered and ill suited to travel such a long distance but looked as though it might still float.

  “Please don’t have a giant hole in your bottom,” Taff said, rising to his feet.

  Kara wanted nothing more than to take a nap in the sun, but she followed her brother toward the canoe.

  “What about Mary?” Taff asked. “I’m worried that if we leave, Sordyr will punish her.”

  “I believe there’s enough room for three people in that canoe. You’ll just have to convince her to come with us.”

  “Why me?”

  Kara ruffled his hair. “You’re too cute to refuse.”

  They stood before the canoe. It was stuck in a tangle of wrapweed but its bottom seemed whole and undamaged. Two thick branches leaned against a tree, their ends flattened into vaguely oar-like shapes.

  As though waiting for us, Kara thought.

  Taff began pulling at the wrapweed, attempting to free the canoe, but Kara stilled him with a touch.

  “Taff?” she asked. “Didn’t Mary say there was supposed to be a ship here? Some explorers who came to the Thickety and never returned?”

  Taff shrugged. “Maybe they anchored farther out and took the canoe to shore.”

  “Then why is the canoe in the forest and not on the beach?”

  “In case there’s a high tide,” he said. “So it doesn’t float away.”

  The answers made sense—but something still didn’t feel right.

  “Help me push this thing into the water,” Taff said, bracing himself behind the canoe. “Actually, toss those oars on top first! We don’t want to forget them!”

  Kara nodded, her eyes fixed on the motionless canopy. Not a single leaf moved, as if the wind itself had fled. She reached out to the creatures above her, hoping they might have some explanation, but they remained silent.

  I don’t like this, Kara thought, grabbing the branches against the tree. The quicker we get out of here, the better.

  The branches grabbed her back.

  Kara struggled to escape, but the supposed oars had formed twig-like fingers that wrapped around her wrists with unyielding strength. Setting her feet in the dirt, Kara yanked backward. Something jerked loose in the tree, and a figure cloaked in pumpkin-orange stepped into the failing sunlight with branch hands still firmly wrapped around her wrists.

  Sordyr.

  He slowly rose to his full height, and as she fell within his shadow all the joy Kara had felt at their impending freedom curdled to helplessness. Though Sordyr’s face remained concealed within the darkness of his hood she felt his eyes considering her.

  “You have done well, wexari,” he said, the words crackling through the air like dead leaves. “Defeating Imogen was an impressive display of magic. You are finally ready to play your part.”

  “Let her go!” Taff exclaimed as the canoe before him disintegrated into black earth. Unsheathing his wooden sword, he charged the Forest Demon and swung at his back. Sordyr’s cloak flicked out like the tongue of a snake and swatted him away.

  “Did you really think I would let you escape?” Sordyr asked. “I could have captured you at any time. You must know that.”

  “Let Taff go. You don’t need him.”

  “Who knows? The future is a fickle thing. I just might.”

  Kara reached out with her mind and sensed something with three wings and razor-sharp teeth swirling above them.

  I need a distraction. Just enough time so we can get to the ocean . . .

  As soon as Kara began to build her mind-bridge, however, the creature fled in terror.

  “Your magic is powerful,” Sordyr said, “but nowhere near as powerful as their fear of me. They will not help you.”

  Then there’s no hope, Kara thought.

  Sordyr ran a branched hand across her cheek.

  “No,” he said. “There really isn’t.”

  BOOK THREE

  THE SPIDER BENEATH THE EARTH

  “Magic is a plague. It must be contained, or the entire World will perish.”

  —The Path

  Leaf 205, Vein 99

  The Forest Demon led them past Imogen’s now-empty pits to the orchard of lost things. Branchwolves nipped and clawed at one another in a violent display that might have been their version of playing. Kara did not try to reach out to them, nor any of the other animals she felt lingering nearby. She knew it was useless.

  Near the remnants of their campfire lay Mary’s sack.

  “What did you do to her?” Taff asked. “What did you do to Mary?”

  “I’m here, my child,” said a soft voice.

  Mary stepped out from the shadows of a tree. Though she was no older than forty today, the skin beneath her eyes sagged from lack of sleep. Heedless of the snapping branchwolves between them, Taff ran into her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We brought you into this. It’s all our fault.”

  The old witch hugged him tight and buried her face in his hair for just a moment.

  Then shoved him away.

  “You really are a foolish little boy, aren’t you?” she asked. Taff winced as though slapped, tears already forming in his eyes. “Don’t you get it? Your path through the Thickety was charted out a long, long time ago.” She turned to Kara. “Every single footprint you’ve made is because he wanted you to make it. With my assistance, of course.”

  “We trusted you,” Taff said, and Kara winced at the pain in his voice.

  “You were meant to! That’s why Sordyr, in his infinite wisdom, allowed you to escape onto the bridge—so I could ‘save’ you from the branchwolves. After that it was all too easy. I pretended to guide you, but my true role was training your sister to be a wexari. The Forest Demon needs her to be strong if she’s going to fulfill her purpose.”

  Watcher was right. . . .

  “From the very beginning, it was all a test,” Kara muttered. “The grettin. Crossing the Draye’varg. The darkeaters. Imogen.”
r />   “At last,” said Mary, “you’re beginning to understand.”

  “But why would you help Sordyr in the first place?” Taff asked.

  “Have you forgotten? I am Mary Kettle. I’m evil.”

  “Not anymore. You feel bad about the things you’ve done. You want to be good.”

  Mary grabbed Taff by the chin and tilted his head to the side. She brought her lips to his ear, close enough to bite.

  “Heed me and heed me well, child. I will never be good.”

  “Her grimoire,” said Kara. “That’s why she helped him. It’s the only thing she’s ever cared about in her long, sad life. Sordyr promised to return your grimoire to you, didn’t he?”

  “Even better,” said Mary Kettle. “The Forest Demon is going to grant me a new grimoire. Think of all those blank pages waiting to be filled. I’m going to be a proper witch again. You understand, boy? You were nothing but a means to an end. I was never your friend!”

  Mary picked up her sack and carried it toward a waiting horse with black flowers in its eyes.

  “I don’t believe you,” Taff said.

  Mary turned back, shock registering plainly on her face.

  “At first it was like you said,” Taff continued. “You were helping Sordyr. But as we traveled, you started to change. You began to like us. Maybe even love us.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  Taff crossed his arms and gave her a challenging stare.

  “I guess we’ll just have to see who’s right, then.”

  Mary opened her mouth as though to reply, then shook her head in disgust. “Foolish child,” she muttered. She mounted her horse and, with one last uneasy look at Taff, galloped down the path.

  Sordyr led them farther into the forest, the branchwolves trailing behind them. They eventually came to a carriage constructed from black bark. Wheels of dried mud sat upon two parallel sets of roots, raised from the ground and extending along the path. Four horses with mossy flanks were harnessed to the carriage by red ivy.