Shadow Tree

by Jake Halpern

  After dressing, Kiril paced back and forth rapidly, considering his next steps. Naomi was gone and Nartam had taken her – but where? Dargora was vast – she could be in any one of a thousand places. Looking for her would take far more time than he had. Kiril looked around his quarters again, this time, taking his time. The door to his quarters was broken down. Naomi had locked herself inside, as Kiril had instructed her to do. The door itself was massive, made of heavy teak, and reinforced with a latticework of steel ribs. It would have taken a while to knock down a door of this size and strength. That meant that Naomi had time before Nartam’s guards seized her. He had taught his young apprentice to think quickly, and to always leave a way out. Had she learned his lesson?

  Kiril walked to the small alcove where Naomi slept. The bed was made. Several heavy blankets, each one made of rabbits’ fur, were folded neatly at the far end of the bed. The pillow was perfectly fluffed. Everything was as it should be. Naomi was meticulous with her things – much like Kiril. Slowly, without even fully realizing it at first, Kiril became aware of a faint whistling sound. The window directly above Naomi’s bed was slightly ajar – just an inch or two. This was odd. Naomi, being a thin girl, was always lamenting how cold it was. She never opened windows, not even a crack.

  Kiril leaned towards the window and opened it further. Frigid air roared in, but Kiril did not flinch. He leaned out the window. The clouds had cleared and below him Kiril could see Dragoonya burning freshly-cut limbs from the Shadow Tree. He glanced carefully around and paid special attention to a narrow ledge directly below the window. A faint image, almost imperceptible, had been traced in the snow that accumulated on the ledge. It was the outline of a large hand.

  Kiril examined it closely. The hand was much larger than his, and lying where the palm would be was a tiny nub of lead. It was a Pencil tip. His mind raced and then, quite suddenly, he knew. He’d only met one man with a hand that large: Bilblox. Naomi was trying to tell him something. She was such a clever girl. The answer had to be right here. He knew it. The Pencil tip. What did it mean? What was Naomi trying to tell him? What had she seen? She had been standing very close to Biblox, back in the cave, when he made the Pen disappear. She had seen something – but what?

  Chapter 40: The Trench

  Hill and Resuza sat huddled at the bottom of an icy canyon. When they looked up, all they could see was a narrow slice of the sky because, on either side of them, walls of sheer ice rose upward. The sides of this canyon were studded with small notches and outcroppings and, from these notches, hung icicles – gigantic, gleaming, slabs of ice that likely weighed several tons each. If one of these missiles fell, it could easily crush a car or even a small house; and every so often, as powerful gusts of wind blasted through the canyon, an icicle would break free and explode on the floor of the canyon. When this happened, enormous shards of ice would rip through the air with enough force to decapitate a horse. Such was life at the bottom of the giant trench that circled Dargora and protected the city like a castle moat. It was a dismal setting and, quite plainly, this was the place where Hill and Resuza were expected to die.

  After being captured, Kiril and his men marched them across the snow until they reached the precipice of the trench. Here was an old rope ladder, staked into the ground, and draped over the edge and down into the trench below. “Go on,” Kiril had told them, “Climb down.” Several soldiers held crossbows and old rifles, which they pointed menacingly at Hill and Resuza. Hill nodded somberly. He seemed to understand that this was a death sentence. Resuza stood frozen in place, apparently in a state of shock. One of the soldiers, who appeared to be a halfwit, was staring at Resuza and gnawing on his own lip with great relish – as if it were a very tasty morsel of food.

  “Come on my dear,” said Hill softly, “We better do as he says.”

  Together they descended the rope ladder, deeper and deeper into the trench. Once or twice, as they descended, they paused when they heard the sound of icicles falling and shattering on the ground below. When they finally reached the floor of the trench, they both stared at the rope ladder dangling loose against the ice wall. Someone whistled from far above them, and the ladder rose quickly. It snagged on a piece of ice, sending down pieces of rope and shards of ice. The Dragoonya were obviously impatient to leave. They pulled harder on the ladder and it broke in two, with the lower half falling to their feet. The sound of the rope hitting the ice echoed with an awful finality.

  “Bilblox betrayed us,” said Resuza dully, as if she were only half conscious.

  “It would appear so,” said Hill.

  “And Naomi,” said Resuza. There were tears in her eyes. “It was a trap all along.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Hill.

  “It’s my own fault,” said Resuza softly. “I never should have left her in the first place. But it all happened so fast! And I tried to find her. I did. And I spent all that time with the Dragoonya in Barsh-yin-Binder, trying to get back to her. I even double-crossed you and Alfonso on the way to Somnos. It was all for her....”

  She sat down on the ice and buried her head in her hands. Her body shook with deep sobs. It was an awful sound, one Hill hadn’t heard from Resuza. She had always been the optimist, but suddenly she sounded broken.

  He sat down and put his arms around her. She sobbed even louder.

  “We’re going to die,” whispered Resuza. “But worst of all, I’ll die knowing that my sister hates me.”

  Hill said nothing except hugged her tighter. As he sat there holding Resuza, his mind passed quickly over the last months of captivity to a happier time back in Somnos. He closed his eyes and thought of the house he had helped design, the waterfall out back, and the lush grounds that made it a tropical paradise in the middle of the Ural Mountains. But most of all he thought of his wife Nance. After a certain point in his early 40s, Hill had given up on the idea that he would ever find someone. He was content enough living in Chicago and repairing antique watches. There was no reason to keep searching, so he had stopped.

  However, his sleeping-self had other plans. It tapped into the deep awareness that binds Dormians to the Founding Tree, and started the process of bringing the Dormian Bloom to Somnos. And even though his path had led him here, to his current situation, marooned in a polar crevasse, he wouldn’t take it back for a second. He had found his native land, and he had contributed to making it better. He had saved it and while doing so, he had saved himself. He had met the love of his life, and even if fate would not allow him any more time in her company, no one could take away those blissful years together in Somnos. Hill smiled through cracked and broken lips. A profound tiredness had settled onto his shoulders, and he was unsure of whether he’d be able to shake it off. Perhaps this was the end.

  He sighed. Not yet, he thought. Not yet. He looked at Resuza. She was silent, nearly catatonic, and her clothes were covered in shimmering snow crystals, making her look like a statue chiseled from ice. Hill stood up and rummaged through the supply pack Bilblox had given him. He removed a small pocket knife, gathered up the remnants of the rope ladder and with the knife in hand, began cutting off slender strands of twine. Once this was done, he tied these strands together so that they formed a single line. Next he took off his coat and used his knife to cut out a piece of cloth from the lining of his coat. He cut the cloth very, very carefully, and paused on many occasions – as if to contemplate the exact shape of the material that he was cutting. He also cut out a small hole in the upper portion of the cloth. When this was done, he took out two wooden rods, which were built into the frame of his backpack, and fastened them to the piece of cloth using small bits of string.

  “What are you doing?” asked Resuza finally. Her voice sounded distant, as if all of the months of strain had changed the way she spoke.

  “Trying one last trick,” said Hill with a faint smile. “And hoping for a bit of luck.”

  Chapter 41: The Distress Beacon

  Alfonso’s heart was barely pum
ping blood. It would have taken a highly skilled doctor with a stethoscope to hear the faint beating. In the bitter cold Alfonso’s skin was a grayish-blue. His lips had turned almost black and his body looked so stiff that anyone would conclude rigor mortis had set in. Alfonso’s brain just barely sensed the wind whistling far above and the snow softly falling across his body. Alfonso willed himself to stay like this. He needed his father to be convinced of his death, so that Leif would give up, turn around, and let Alfonso do what he had to do.

  Leif wept over Alfonso’s body for almost an hour. Marta sat by his side, stony faced. Did she know? Impossible to say. Finally, she persuaded Leif that they needed to build a snow shelter if they wanted to survive the cold. Marta built the shelter and, after some time, she convinced him to come inside.

  Once Leif entered the snow shelter, Alfonso set his mind to morphing. He pictured the scene inside the burning armory and imagined the scent of the smoldering timbers. He willed himself back into that moment, back to that point in his life, back to being fifteen years old. Anybody looking at Alfonso morph back into life would have witnessed an unforgettable scene. Tiny ribbons of color wormed their way from Alfonso’s heart, through his circulatory system, into the far reaches of his body. These arteries then fed frozen veins to restart the entire body. His color changed from a dirty white to a slight pink and then back to normal. His lips lost some of their black color, but not all, and they remained cracked and sore. Alfonso was happy not to have a mirror – he felt terrible and he figured he looked even worse – but he was fifteen again.

  Alfonso rose to his feet. The wind blew loudly and there was no chance that his dad would have heard him getting up. Alfonso briefly felt an urge to run to his dad, to ease the incredible pain he would be feeling, and to tackle the destruction of the Shadow Tree together. Alfonso even took two steps in the direction of the cave before stopping.

  No. He couldn’t take that chance. The Shadow Tree was his burden, and he had to face it. Alfonso stood in the darkness for a few minutes more. He was feeling better, enough to tolerate eating a handful of dried fruit and to drink some water. That done, he stood quietly for a moment.

  He was alone, surrounded by hundreds – perhaps thousands – of miles of the most inhospitable terrain on earth; and yet, even in these most dire of circumstances, there was so much to admire: the delicate build-up of snowflakes on his boots, the shrill yet melodic rush of wind across the snowdrifts, and even the absolute stillness that occurred whenever the wind died down. Alfonso checked the strange-looking compass from Imad’s library. The hand was pointing northeast. This was something new. For most of his journey the compass had been pointing due north. Why the sudden change? He shrugged. Northeast it would be.

  His thoughts drifted back to Imad’s antechamber and the final door. Again he pictured the waves. He knew exactly what he had to do. It was all so perfectly laid out it was as if Imad had planned it all – or, at the very least, foreseen it all. Alfonso shouldered his backpack and with some effort entered hypnogogia. He locked his concentration on a single snowflake. The snowflake seemed to slow down, as if in slow motion. Alfonso watched it flutter, watched it rotate slowly on it axis. Then, slowly, Alfonso expanded his realm of concentration, allowing himself to become aware of other snowflakes around him. He tried to imagine these snowflakes as tiny tiles or pieces that he could manipulate and, sure enough, the snowflakes seemed to respond to the power of his will. The bits of snow jostled and shoved each other, like huskies getting ready to pull a sled. Gradually, they took on a strange momentum, and began to move together in a rhythmic fashion. Snow from nearby drifts joined this nucleus, and the particles grew into a massive body that unfurled like a great ripple in a small pond.

  Then a wave formed. It was a curious wave – it simply curled and undulated as if it were about to crash, but it never did. When it had grown to a height of about twenty feet, Alfonso climbed tiredly to the top. To his surprise, the footing was surprisingly firm, even though the wave itself felt rather mushy.

  He rode the wave of snow slowly at first, but then as his confidence grew, so did his speed. The wind bit at his cheeks, and Alfonso shivered. He had been outside and exposed to the elements for over twenty-four hours – he was utterly exhausted – but he couldn’t help smiling. He was surfing on a wave of snow that was rolling northeast across the landscape faster than the speed of a car. It was exhilarating. By this point, the pitch-black sky had begun to lighten and what passed for dawn in this bitterly cold world was near. Alfonso slowed down and turned his focus to the world around him. If there was any time to discover the true location of Dargora, it would be now. Due north, the horizon lightened even more, and all across that section of the sky, a diffuse light began to spread.

  As Alfonso admired the majesty of this polar sunrise, the clouds in that direction cleared momentarily. He gasped. In the far horizon, above the clouds, he clearly saw several ships that appeared to be flying through the air. They were old vessels from the 19th century, with tall masts and tatters of rigging like strands of hair. The largest had several decks stacked on top of each other, each one larger than the one beneath. Even from the long distance, Alfonso could tell they were being maintained. Each shimmered in the morning light as if freshly painted. Alfonso wondered if he was hallucinating from a polar sickness – perhaps it was a strange type of blindness. But then he saw that each ship was not actually flying. Instead, each sat at the top of a pole, some of which were curved slightly, like tusks.

  Dargora. He took a deep breath. He was close.

  Alfonso felt sick in the pit of his stomach. At first he assumed it was just exhaustion coupled with nerves. Then he felt himself slipping out of hypnogogia involuntarily. The wave of snow dissipated beneath him and he crumpled to the ground. Exhausted, he staggered onward. He was so tired he nearly tripped over several large rocks that lay half-buried in the snow. Several feet beyond this, he suddenly noticed the precipice of a great chasm. The chasm was very deep and it went for miles in either direction like a great trench or perhaps even a moat. It formed a perfect defense – just the thing to stop an advancing army.

  His heart sank. There was no way in his condition that he’d be able to cross it. He looked in both directions, hoping there was a bridge he might cross. Just then, something in the sky caught his attention. It looked like a large bird, but he realized it was something manmade – a piece of cloth, perhaps. He walked towards it. It seemed completely out of place, but it was hard to avoid the conclusion that this was a kite on a string, and the string descended into the trench below.

  Obviously it could be a trap, but that didn’t appear likely. The Dragoonya were not the type to spend their leisure time flying kites, or even to imagine that a kite could be used to lure someone closer. No, something else was going on. Alfonso walked along the edge of the trench until he came to the spot where the string was descending downward. He reached out over the precipice, grabbed hold of the string, and began hauling in the kite. Moments later he was holding the thing in his hands. He studied it closely.

  Something about the shape of the kite looked familiar. At first glance it resembled the head of a bird with a hole for an eye. No, that wasn’t it. Alfonso studied it further, and suddenly smiled from ear to ear. He recognized the shape. It was a near perfect rendering of the State of Minnesota and the hole at the top was in the exact location of his hometown, World’s End. Only one man in the entire world would make such a whacky, goofy distress beacon. Then he recalled the words in “Scenario II” of Imad’s prophecy: “A Perplexon will rejoice with friends in the dark of the chasm.”

  “Uncle Hill!” Alfonso screamed into the bottom of the trench.

  No response.

  “Uncle Hill!” he screamed again.

  Silence.

  He looked again at the kite and realized there was no way it could be anything but his Uncle Hill. He shivered and walked back to the rocks buried in the snow. He opened his backpack. There were two coils of rope.
He took out one of the coils, wrapped it carefully around the largest rock, and threw the loose end over the edge. Moments later, he began rappelling downward.

  Chapter 42: Old Friends

  Blackness. Not even the slightest trace of light. Bilblox could hear the wind howling, but that was the only information he could gather from the outside world. Bilblox let out a long, heavy sigh. Once again, he was locked up. There were heavy iron handcuffs around his wrists and manacles around his legs.

  Bilblox had been in prison several times before. He’d been jailed in Fort Krasnik for brawling, and of course he had been imprisoned in Somnos after it was discovered that he’d burned a leaf from the Dormian Bloom; but this was different. When the door to his cell closed this time, the click of the lock had been louder and more menacing than he remembered.

  He stared into the darkness for so long that he couldn’t tell whether he was awake or asleep. It all became one long, rolling wave of semi-consciousness. His dreams were scattered and empty, just scenes of devastation. It felt like watching a silent movie that flickered on for only seconds at a time. He closed and opened his eyes but nothing changed.

  And then abruptly, it did change. He opened his eyes from a fitful sleep and saw a glow of light coming from the far corner of his cell. The glow emanated from a lantern. Sitting next to the lantern, with his back propped up against the wall, was Kiril. Bilblox blinked. He was amazed to see Kiril and equally amazed that his eyesight was still working. Kiril had given him the potion so nonchalantly that he figured it wouldn’t last very long.

  “I thought you could do with a bit of light,” said Kiril.

  “Yes,” said Bilblox as he struggled to adjust to the light. Kiril handed Bilblox a flask of potion and Bilblox took it eagerly. However, before he brought it to his lips, he looked at Kiril suspiciously.