by Gemma Amor
I knew without doubt that I was supposed to walk this way. I did not hesitate.
I went in.
Light seeped into this new tunnel. It had a strange, orange glow to it, like dawn. It reminded me of the sunset that soaked my nightmares, nightmares of love rejected and sex unplanned and screaming, mutated pig flesh.
After a time, the orange glow intensified, became a bright white pin prick up ahead at which I aimed myself. It illuminated the walls to either side of me, which were not rough like the walls of the tunnel that led to the Island. These were smooth, as if they had been polished, and looked almost glassy. They glowed with a deep, navy-blue hue. I let my fingers trail along the surface of the rock, and saw things hanging in frosted suspension beneath. They looked like fossils, only more colourful. I saw a curved shell with scalloped edges, reminding me of an ammonite, only this shell ended in squid-like tentacles, and a strange, flat, lobster-like head. I peered at it, momentarily distracted, and saw an eye nestled in amongst the tentacles, just below the mouth of the shell.
It blinked, and the tentacles retracted. A jet of something that looked like water propelled the thing forward, out of view, and I realised it was water, that the ammonite-creature was suspended in water, not rock, and the walls were not stone, after all. Perhaps they were crystal. They were like solid glass retainers, holding back an ocean. It was as if I walked through a giant, plexi-glass tunnel in an aquarium. As I made this realisation, something vast and grey swam over my head. A huge, primitive shark, or whale, or some distant relative of either. It moved ponderously, its huge tail swaying from side to side as it forged on through the ocean, paying no mind to the pitiful, lowly human below.
I was beneath the sea, of that much I was certain. But which sea? In which time, or space?
I walked, and the light grew brighter. The ocean around me changed, as if I were walking through a tunnel of time, and I saw fish I actually recognised, flitting in and out of forests of kelp and coral. At one point, something very like an eel snaked past, only it had a small, glowing orb attached to the front of its head on a long stalk, like an angler fish lamp. It reminded me so fiercely of Nimrod’s eyes on stalks that my heart stopped for a moment. Is that what Nimrod was? Some evolutionary deviant from another reality? The landside equivalent of an angler fish? It was humanoid from the neck down, but otherwise alien. Could it be what we might have become, had nature chosen a different path? I thought of it like the fork in the tunnel. Down one trail, walked humans. Down another, our ancestral equivalent: Nimrod.
I was sending myself mad with these thoughts.
I walked on.
And found myself, eventually, beneath a great, polished, crystal archway. The light spilling out of it was now as bright as the glow of a sun. I could see a large, branched shadow against the brilliant white beyond the archway. It moved, slowly, ponderously.
I passed through the archway.
And brightness washed me away.
58. The tree
A cherry tree above my head sheds a single blossom.
It drifts down slowly, landing upon my cheek as I look up at the branches, watching as little birds hop and chirp and peck at seeds and preen their feathers in contented harmony.
The tree hangs, impossibly, in the air before me. It rotates, slowly, in suspension. The branches rustle gently as the birds move about within, and the roots of the tree dangle down beneath the trunk like gossamer threads, every tiny tendril and fibrous strand undulating and writhing about like the tentacles of an anemone underwater, and I have never seen anything as beautiful, nor will I ever see anything like this again.
A towering column of light shoots straight up into the sky around the spinning tree, engulfing it in a brilliant luminosity. The light sparkles with energy, and it reminds me of the waterfall that appeared above the beach so suddenly on the day I killed Nimrod, only instead of the water falling downwards, the light is travelling up, up from the roots, up along the trunk, up through the branches and out past the leaves.
And all else around me is white, white space, white air, white ground, white sky, the only thing of any colour being the tree, and the birds, and the pink blossom, and the sparkling column of energy beaming skyward from a place I cannot see.
And I know I must not touch. I know it, and yet I cannot help myself. It is so beautiful, so pure, so I reach up, place a hand upon the trunk of the tree.
And feel a sucking motion. Like a fish being reeled in on a line, the tree tugs at me, drinks me in. My hand disappears into the bark, and then my arm disappears up to my elbow, and my face comes up sharp against the tree trunk, but I let it happen, I relax into it. Soon, I am no longer flesh and blood. I am bark and sapwood, heartwood and pith. Through me flows information, sticky and rich and filled with power. Little finches peck at insects in my hair. Roots snake between my toes, reaching for earth, finding nothing.
And in the heart of the tree, embedded within like a tiny bug trapped in fossilised sap, I find the stone face of a god. It opens its mouth, but it is no longer angry with me. It welcomes me.
It sings.
And I sing with it, finding a harmony to an ancient song I didn’t realise I knew, our voices mingling into a single, vibrant sound that soars up along the beacon and off into a universe unknown, for the tree is an axis, around which multiple possibilities spin, and I am a walker between worlds, a Key, a gatekeeper of the Other Place, just like my Grandmother before me, and her Grandmother before her, and hers before that, and so on, stretching back in time as far as anyone could be bothered to trace, and then beyond. I was part of something primitive and duty-bound, and my lineage had led me here, to the tree, to make music with a god.
And my arms, which have leaves sprouting from them, come up and out, for I embrace the light, I embrace my heritage. This is further than any of my ancestors have ever travelled, this is unchartered territory. This is the final stage of the ritual. I am the first, and the last, and I stretch wide, feeling power run along every part of my being, and my questing roots finally find soft, damp soil, and stones, and lichen, and heather.
The tree and I sink down towards the earth, slowly. I push my feet out with all my might, digging each of my roots into a pile of stones that I land upon, a distinctive mound of rocks packed tight to form a cairn, a carefully arranged cone on top of a sloping rise in the centre of an Island. A black, dead triangle of ash lies about the cairn, a place where once, a town called White Pines stood proud.
The beacon of light expands sideways, travelling across the bleak space until it hits the edges of the triangle, filling it up, and everything is energy, everything is song.
And the air begins to flicker, tremble.
Things that have been stolen begin to come back.
Shadows fade in and out of view, shadows that move, and speak, and huddle together in terror. The people of White Pines come slowly into view. There are less of them than there were when they had last been seen on the Island. So many have died. But these are the survivors, the ones who made it through the veil and back again, and would be forever changed because of it. They stumble about, weeping and clutching at each other, bathed in a coruscating light, and although they do not know it yet, they are safe now. There will be no more terrors for them.
One of those shadows is the shape of a man I know, a tall, slim man with salt and pepper hair. He materialises fully, a shadow no more, and drops to his knees beneath the cherry tree that has newly sprouted upon the summit of An Eilid, exhausted and half-mad from the things he has seen and borne. He kneels, shaking with relief, and he thinks of a woman, a woman who might be me, a woman who is no longer a woman but part of a new ecosystem, a network of possibility that spans the very breadth and depth of his known universe, and beyond.
A woman who was finally able to save him.
A woman who loved him once, and loves him still.
And if he were to look up, he might have seen me standing there, tall and wide, proud and strong, pink petals still
clinging to my hair.
Epilogue
There is an Island, in a bay, in the Highlands of Scotland, not far from a small village called Laide.
The Island has a chequered history, as do I. It used to be home to smugglers, and rebels, and scientists, and soldiers, and livestock, and well-meaning luddites who just wanted a place to get away from it all.
But that was then, and this is now.
Now, the Island is my home, and mine alone.
My Granny would have been proud of me.
I stand anchored to a mound of rock on a hill that rises up in the very middle of a large circle of pine trees. The trees are curiously white, their bark glowing as if freshly painted. Within their confines, a fresh, green pasture now grows, where once a large, decimated expanse of ashen land lay, its shape the shape of a perfect equilateral triangle. Amongst the blades of grass, there is rubble. Stone foundations, long abandoned. Slate roof tiles, littered about like confetti after a wedding. A rusted old water pump, sprouting like a weed from the centre of a ruined flagstone square. Next to it, a collapsed sandstone bench, bifurcated by a huge crack running across the middle of it.
These are the remains of White Pines, a town that was built where no town should have been built. I watch over these ruins every single day, my face turned to the sun, my arms stretched wide to the sky. I can feel the earth beneath my feet, and the call of the Other Place, and I can feel my body, anchored in one place that is also the centre of so many places, and my roots spread wide, fraying like tiny threads, shooting across space, all of them tugging and pulling at me, demanding my attention. Every root tip sucks from a different soil, a different reality. I am in one place and all places, at the same time.
For I am the walker between worlds.
I am the Key, the Gatekeeper, the one who goes where others should not.
And I am a tree, beneath which a boy and a man with salt and pepper hair sometimes sit, sheltered by my branches, and shaded by my love.
The End.
With thanks and love
This book would not be possible without the support of my wonderful backers, who funded its creation on Kickstarter. Your belief in my work is humbling, and I adore each and every one of you:
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About the Author
Gemma Amor is the Bram Stoker Award nominated author of DEAR LAURA, CRUEL WORKS OF NATURE, TILL THE SCORE IS PAID and WHITE PINES.
She is also a podcaster, illustrator and voice actor based in Bristol, in the U.K.
Many of her stories have been adapted into audio dramas by the wildly popular NoSleep Podcast, and on Shadows at the Door, Creepy, and The Grey Rooms podcasts.
She is the co-creator, writer and voice actor for horror-comedy podcast Calling Darkness, which also stars TV and film actress Kate Siegel.
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