Heartwood (Tricksters Game)

by Barbara Campbell

  She blinked once, wondering if the passing cloud created the illusion or if it was her light-headedness from lack of food. She blinked again, her mind grappling with the impossibility of what she witnessed. The trees were moving. Not just leaves fluttering in the breeze. The trees were walking.

  The legends always portrayed the Summerlands as a paradise, second only to the Forever Isles in their beauty. The Memory-Keeper’s tales were rich with descriptions of hot sun and long days and shadowy forests, but woefully lacking such details as walking trees. Trees that, even now, were walking up the rise toward her.

  Perhaps they would welcome her—or perhaps they would view her as a dangerous intruder.

  Griane turned and fled. She stumbled, sliding down the slope, but regained her footing at the bottom. Glancing over her shoulder, she discovered the trees had already crested the rise. She raced on, the continuous rumbling in the ground evidence that the trees had abandoned their rhythmic stride for a more determined pursuit. Lancing pain shot through her with each breath. She pressed her hand to her side, slowing long enough to dare another glance behind her. Her breath leaked out on a shaking sob. Ten more strides and they would be on her.

  Damn Fellgair. He could have easily taken her to another part of the First Forest. Why bring her here if her presence was an abomination? And why should the trees hunt her down when all she was trying to do was leave this place?

  Whirling around, she thrust out a hand and shouted, “Stop. Right now.”

  Incredibly, they did, planting themselves so quickly that they might have been rooted once more. Now that they were closer, she realized that they weren’t simply walking trees, but some strange amalgam of tree and human. Among the mass of watchers were some that seemed more treelike than others, their skin dark and rough, their faces indistinct, as if they had dressed too quickly in the shape of men. Whether that meant they were older or younger, she couldn’t guess.

  They all had hands and feet, though the fingers were green and the toes looked like gnarled roots. Despite their similarities, she quickly discerned their different origins: the mottled silver of the birch’s torso, the thin needles covering the fir’s arms. And clearly, there were different sexes, too. Tufted red buds capped the scaly breasts of the hazel, while the oak … Merciful Maker, his dark-red penis was longer than her forearm. Blushing, she fastened her gaze on his broad chest, but not before she had glimpsed the heavy testicles, smooth and green as unripe acorns. Very large acorns.

  When one of the tree-folk stepped forward, Griane instinctively backed away, then froze, gaping at the legend come to life. Eyes the color of Midsummer leaves regarded her. The smooth, gray face creased into a smile. Nine long fingers reached down to touch her hair. A cluster of white flowers brushed her cheek, perfuming the air with sweetness.

  The rowan-woman’s leaves fluttered as she gestured to the others. Soon, all their leaves were fluttering. The others approached. Surrounded by a circle of trunks, she might have believed herself to be in the forest again, were it not for the eyes of green and gold and brown that gazed down at her.

  “My name is Griane.”

  The rowan’s gray lips pursed into a knothole.

  “I’m trying to get back to the First Forest.” Although they continued to sway, she could not tell if they understood. When she remembered Cuillon could only communicate through touch, she seized the rowan-woman’s hand, careful not to crush the delicate fingers. She poured out the tale of the Midwinter battle, the loss of the Oak, the need to find a portal to Chaos.

  The rowan-woman watched her, bark grooving in a frown. The oak-man’s expression remained inscrutable. After a great deal of leaf fluttering, they turned and headed back in the direction from which they had come. Defeated, Griane stared after them until the rowan-woman held out her hand.

  She had to trot to keep up with the tree-folk, taking three steps for each of their strides. Only when they entered the woodlands did their pace slow. Branches rustled as they passed; shrubs leaned closer as if to inspect her. An almost palpable air of excitement riffled through the leaves. How astonishing to think that she might be as wondrous to them as they were to her.

  Just as she was beginning to tire, the trees gave way to a vast open space, the mulch underfoot to bare earth. Griane peered around Rowan and confronted a wall of wood. It took her a moment to realize it was the trunk of a tree. The branches were so dense they blocked out the sunlight, the arched roots high enough for a hut to nestle beneath. This was the tree she had seen from her vantage point above the pool.

  Rowan pulled her forward. Hesitantly, she stepped up to the ancient oak and repeated her tale. If the tree understood, it gave no sign that she could see. She laid her palms in one of the deep grooves scoring its bark and tried to send the oak images of the battle. The forest went silent, as if all the creatures of the Summerlands were awaiting the giant’s response.

  Finally, she squatted on the ground and smoothed the cool earth with her hands. With her forefinger, she drew the outline of the One Tree, sketching a holly leaf on one branch and the seven-lobed leaf of a blood-oak on the other. A rustling overhead made her look up. The oak’s branches drooped lower.

  She jumped up. Standing as straight as she could, she pounded her chest and pointed to the oak leaf. Then she leaped across the drawing and became the Holly. Feverishly, she acted out their battle, then fell to her knees. How could she depict a portal when she’d never seen one? A lightning bolt, she decided. That, the tree-folk would understand. She sketched it in the earth, then drew her dagger. Pointing from her dagger to the lightning bolt, she stabbed the drawing of the One Tree.

  The tree-folk swayed, their leaves fluttering wildly. She smoothed the edges of the holly leaf, shaping the lines into the form of a man. Then she dug her fingers into the earth, obliterating the oak leaf, and hurled the dirt into the air. Sweat pouring down her sides, she drew one last picture: the image of the One Tree, shattered and broken. Panting and spent, she sat back on her haunches. She had done her best. She only hoped the great tree understood.

  A shudder ran up the oak’s trunk. A root ripped free of the earth, dredging a crevasse that snaked across the grove, nearly toppling a birch-woman. The tree-folk’s branches moaned. Roots stamped the ground. The earth shook. Griane flung out a hand to steady herself, then snatched it away when she felt the oak’s bark heave.

  The explosion of air made her curl into a ball, hands cradling her head. The leaves of the tree-folk twisted like tiny creatures in their death throes. Their anguish sped around the grove. Twigs and branches rained down. Birds erupted from the trees, wings slapping the air in a frantic attempt to escape the tumult. And then, with a suddenness that left her gasping, it simply stopped. The tree-folk’s leaves drifted back into stillness, the branches of the rooted ones fell silent.

  The depth of their grief made hers seem small. Not knowing what else to do, Griane embraced the oak. She knelt there, her cheek resting against a ridge, her arms too short to even feel the curve of the root.

  Then she crawled away and drew a new picture. A single oak leaf. She pointed at her breast, pointed at the leaf. Crouched down and cupped her hands. Cradling the imaginary leaf in her palms, she walked back to the drawing of the shattered Tree and pretended to place the leaf at the end of one branch. She smoothed away the jagged scar in the trunk, drew new lines to reconnect the broken branch.

  Rowan’s sigh drifted around the circle of tree-folk. She patted Griane’s cheek, then gently nudged her toward the oak. A sense of peace stole over her as she curled up under one of the huge roots. For the first time since they had started their quest, Griane slept soundly.

  Chapter 34

  IN THE FIRST FOREST, it must be nearing moonset. In the unchanging light of Chaos, Darak could only judge the passage of time by his weariness. Distance, too, seemed to obey other laws here, for the trees grew no closer as he walked. Often, he lost sight of them altogether as new obstacles appeared.

  Rocks sproute
d pointed muzzles and rows of spikes along their backs like hedgehogs. The hedgehogs grew to the size of sheep, savaging each other with their tusks, showering blood and pebbles across the path before lumbering off, apparently uninterested in him.

  Worse were the scrubby trees, whose twisted branches transformed into grotesquely deformed arms. Mouths gaped open in the trunks. Tormented eyes looked out. Groans of misery alternated with beseeching wails as their many arms reached toward him.

  “Help us.”

  Knobby fingers circled his ankles, tugged at his breeches.

  “Save us.”

  He ran. They pursued, screaming his name. He tore at the clutching fingers, staring in horror as they snapped off, geysering yellow slime over the stumps. He hurled them away, but more reached for him, slipping through the rents in his breeches to touch his flesh.

  “Warm,” they whispered. “Alive. Real.”

  “You’re not real.”

  “Touch us.”

  “You’re an illusion!”

  “Feel us.”

  They rubbed against him like cats, pushing him to the ground, eager fingers sliding over his flesh. Hot, fetid breath filled his nose. Crusty tongues licked his neck, his face, his lips. All those arms twining around him in a hideous embrace, all those eyes begging him for help.

  Fear is the enemy. Control the fear. Control yourself.

  The despairing wails became shrieks of laughter. Arms, fingers, and tongues melted into furry gray balls, sticky as spiderwebs. When he scrambled to his feet, they floated away like dandelion fluff. Had he driven them away or had they simply tired of the game?

  Too late, he wondered if Tinnean’s face had been among them. He told himself it was impossible, his brother could not have been transformed into one of those loathsome creatures. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from reaching up to capture an errant ball of fluff. A barb darted out and he jerked his hand away.

  None of the other horrors were as bad as that, not the forest of snakes that sprang up around him or the bats that swooped down to peck at his shielding arms with their curved beaks. Fear is the enemy, he told himself, and he endured, wondering if his ability to control his fear was his greatest strength.

  After all he had witnessed, the giant buttercups looked beautiful, though a shiver ran down his spine when he realized the huge yellow heads dipped down to follow his progress. He wondered if they rejoiced when he lost the star-path, if they enjoyed the sight of him on hands and knees, scrabbling through the knee-high grass, without finding a trace of it. What he did find was a cluster of leaves, green and gleaming atop a spiky brown tussock.

  He looked around for a holly, but the giant buttercups obscured everything. Perhaps one of them had been a holly before transforming into a flower. Then he examined the sprig more closely. The twig had been sheared off with a dagger. He scratched a dark spot on one leaf with his thumbnail. Blood.

  He crawled forward and found more blood spots, fragments of leaves, a scrap of doeskin. It had to be some cruel trick of Chaos. He rose, spotted the trail of crushed grass, and followed it, measuring the stride.

  Fellgair had promised. They had sealed the bargain with a handshake.

  He shook his head, willing the signs to disappear, praying for them to be an illusion. Knowing that they were not.

  Cuillon was in Chaos.

  “You fool. You damn fool!” His voice rose to a shout. The heads of the buttercups reared back, then bobbed closer, as if intrigued by his outburst.

  The path through the long grass was straight and clear. Cuillon had to be following the Oak’s energy. All he could do was follow Cuillon. He would not allow himself to think about the meaning of the holly leaves and the blood.

  He flinched when he heard the familiar whining. A buttercup tree shuddered, petals drooping. One hairy, lobed leaf shook, as if caught in a gust of wind. As the center of the leaf grew filmy, Darak could have sworn he heard the sound of chanting.

  Although the edges of the leaf were still rimmed in green, the center turned transparent. He could see sky and scudding gray clouds, but he couldn’t make sense of the odd latticework that framed them. Had the portal opened in the intertwined limbs of birches?

  He heard the dry clatter of a rattle, smelled the scent of burning herbs. He recognized the chant now, the one they sang during burial rites. Standing on tiptoe, he peered through the portal.

  A long, narrow shape swung into view. It sagged toward him, swaying a little as if suspended. It took a moment to determine that he was staring at a woven mantle, another to recognize the distinctive colors. Other tribes sang the death chant, but only his had those strands of green running through the dusky grays and browns.

  Details fell into place with horrifying clarity. The shape of a body encased in the sagging mantle. The pale things around the mantle’s edges—fingers. And the lattice of branches that weren’t branches at all, but arms and legs, blue-white and frozen.

  “Merciful Maker.”

  The chanting died. The mantle rocked from side to side. A face appeared over one corner. Sweet gods, it was Nionik. The chief stared back at him, eyes widening with horror. More faces appeared. Jurl. Gortin. Red Dugan. The mantle swayed violently as hands dropped away to make signs of protection. A woman screamed. The mantle tilted and a body spilled out.

  Darak stared into Mother Netal’s sightless blue eyes. Only when her body twitched did he rear back, clutching his bag of charms. Two white hands dug through the tangle of arms and legs in the Death Hut. Lisula stared at him, her expression as horrified as Nionik’s.

  “Lisula. It’s Darak.”

  The whine intensified and Lisula winced. Gortin’s face appeared over her shoulder. His mouth moved, but the portal’s whine drowned out his words.

  “I am in Chaos. Lisula! Gortin! Can you hear me?”

  The edges of the portal were blurring. Gortin’s fingers dug into Lisula’s arm as he tried to pull her away. She turned her head, snapping something that made him drop his hand. Then her eyes met his again. Slowly, she extended a trembling hand.

  Home was an arm’s length away. He had only to grasp Lisula’s hand and he would be there. As if his hand had a will of its own, he saw it reaching past Mother Netal’s wrinkled face, reaching toward Lisula’s wavering fingers, pale as moonlight, formless as fog.

  He clenched his traitorous fingers into a fist and stepped back. The whining crescendoed, then abruptly ceased. Lisula vanished and he was staring once again into the green leaf of the buttercup tree.

  His legs wobbled and he collapsed. Try as he might, he could not control his shaking, any more than he could will away the images. Nionik’s face, as lined as one of the tribe’s elders. Jurl’s, shrunken and sagging. Red Dugan’s hair, streaked with white. And what about those he hadn’t seen? What of Krali and Sim? Why had he heard no children’s voices? There had been some fifty men, women, and children when he had left. There had to be more than these pitiful few.

  They had been standing too far away for him to see. They were back at the village, too weak to attend the rite. He’d only been gone a moon. They could not be dead.

  “It’s not true. It’s not real.”

  “The world is dying,” he had told Fellgair. Grand, impassioned words, but empty. His people were dying. People he had seen every day. Faces that were as much a part of his life as the air he breathed. Gone. Lost.

  The very old and the very young, they would succumb first, just as they had during the plague. How many more stiff, frozen corpses lay in the Death Hut with Mother Netal? How long would the others last, weakened by hunger and hopelessness? Nionik, Jurl, Red Dugan—they were all dying. And there were more, many more—not just in his village, but throughout the world. If he did not find Tinnean and the Oak soon, they would all die.

  He stood up. On shaking legs, he followed Cuillon’s trail. He found a circle of dented grass where he had rested, scattered fish bones where he had eaten. And then, like the star-path, the trail disappeared.


  He tore through the furry undergrowth, slapping aside the leering faces that snapped at him, mocked him, whispered that he was lost. He stumbled through gelatinous roots and man-high spiderwebs. When he spotted something gleaming on the far side of a sinkhole, he raced toward it, only to watch green wings open and carry the thing skyward with a shrill screech.

  He staggered away from the sinkhole, through a thicket, and onto a starry, black beach. Waves of light arced overhead—green, white, red—shimmering like the Northern Dancers. They rippled across the sky, foaming and hissing like real waves when they broke upon the beach.

  He would find the trail again. He would find Cuillon. He would find Tinnean and the Oak.

  Fear is the enemy.

  Fear was the pounding of his heart and the pounding of the waves. Fear was the light streaking across the sky like fiery spears flung by the Lightning God. Fear was the flashing sparks that flew up as they pelted the beach.

  “I will find them!” He screamed his defiance at the sky, at the spears, at the Lord of Chaos and all the gods who watched his people die and did nothing.

  Fear was a spear, plummeting toward him.

  White.

  Blazing.

  Merciless.

  Fear was an icicle, piercing his heart.

  Chapter 35

  GRIANE OPENED HER EYES to find the tree-folk clustered about her. She was sure she had convinced them of her need to return to the First Forest, but she had no idea how they would manage it.

  You can’t worry about that, Griane. Worry about what you can fix.

  She tugged Rowan’s hand, pointing in what she hoped was the direction of the pool. Rowan frowned, pointing in the opposite direction, but after a long, silent discussion with the others, finally nodded. Griane lingered long enough to lay her palm against the great oak and whisper a prayer of thanks. She hoped the tree understood her when she told it that the Oak’s spirit would return, hoped with equal fervor that it wasn’t a lie.