The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

by S. A. Hunt

  It was Gosse Read, the man that had shown me the green armor on the steamship. Read was without a doubt in the world one of the biggest men I had ever seen in my life. He looked like someone had ripped down a piece of the night sky and draped it over a tree. Like Read, there were men here that were actually intensely dark shades of moss-green and navy-blue, with luminous eyes and dark limbic rings. The man looked positively mythical.

  There was no one here you could reliably refer to as “whites” or “blacks” or “Asians”. That’s not to say there weren’t racial physical differences, though. Most of the people were like Walter, with olive-mocha skin, tall and thin. There were also those similar to Read, towering green brutes.

  I also saw short, slender people with sloping shoulders and large triangular heads, their skin a faint two-tone gradient of sky-blue, like a fish. I even saw several women with pale brown skin that bore dark, ragged striations that reminded me of drawings I’d seen of the human nervous system.

  “I thought I would catch you before you met up with the boss,” said Read in his impossibly deep voice. He was a Kingsman gunslinger too, although he didn’t carry a six-shooter. He had a fearsome-looking shotgun strapped to his back as long as a broom-handle and twice as thick.

  He blocked us from going into the Vespertine and ushered us to the end of the front porch, where we could speak alone, in confidence. I felt like a child; he was at least a foot taller than myself.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sawyer.

  Read screwed up his mouth and glared at us from under his heavy brow. He spoke fast, an elaborate, enunciated tumble-string of words. “You think you are clever, but you are not.”

  I felt my face grow cold. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You say you’re from the back end of K-Set, but that is a hard, and mean, and lonely place,” he said, pausing for emphasis. “It does not make people like you. It makes people like myself. I know what I am looking at, and it is not a man accustomed to life on the frontier. You and your unusual companions are from elsewhere.”

  Noreen coughed. Sawyer shook his head, waving the question off with his hands: that’s enough, this is going nowhere. “Look, Mr. Read—”

  Read tapped on Sawyer’s chest with one beefy finger. “I don’t know...why the Deon is takin it so easy on you, because it is not too difficult to see you are not what you say you are. He is not a stupid man in the least. He must have gotten something obscured up his sleeve. He might have a...trying personality, but his heart is in the right place.

  “Also, he is perhaps one of the smartest men I’ve ever had the fortune to introduce myself to. But as for myself, I’m the sort of individual that likes to see the truth on the street, and I don’t. Abide. Liars. Or. Obfuscators.”

  “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “You sure about that?” asked Sawyer.

  “I’ve seen a lot in my time here in this land. I’ve, I’ve seen a woman go from one place to another with nothing in between...and cut through six inches of steel like it was warm butter. I’ve seen a giant as tall as this saloon step on a man and crush him like a bug. Once I saw Walter Rollins himself put a pistol bullet through a man’s head at four hundred yards. I’ve seen ghosts, phantoms, and ghouls. I’m primed to take in just about anything at this point.”

  Sawyer glanced at me, and we both looked at Noreen, who shrugged.

  “All right,” I said, and asked Read, “How well did you know my father Lord Eddick?”

  “The scribe? Not that well, I suppose. I met him a few times before the war, but I never really got very personal with him.”

  “You’re familiar with how Destin was created, aren’t you?” asked Sawyer, using his hands to detail the bisection and the two results, “How Behest was created by the Wolf and swallowed by the Dragon, and was cut in half by the Wolf to create the dual worlds Destin and Zam?”

  “That is an accepted rendition of the story of Creation, yes.”

  “Ross, his dad, Noreen, and I—we’re from Zam,” he said, indicating his left fist. “We were transported here by an interdimensional being called a Silen. Now we’re on a quest to find out who killed Eddick, and to find a way to get back to our world.”

  Sawyer’s explanation actually made a sideways sort of sense to me. I think I felt my sanity slipping loose, like an ill-fitting sock. Read seemed to be processing this new information, staring right at my forehead, his nostrils flaring.

  Read’s eyes twitched. He blinked, looked over my head into the middle distance, casually remarked, “Aaaawright,” and walked away into the Vespertine.

  _______

  The saloon was almost exactly how I pictured it would look. Rich, dim light from the grimy electric sconces on the walls cast a warm glow on a dozen round pub tables. Scores of people sat in circles, drinking and chatting and playing cards. The bar was a glossy cherrywood spotted with white mug-rings and carved graffiti, manned by a hulking bald bartender with bushy red muttonchops.

  The shelves behind him held a great and varied collection of bottles in a dozen different hues, and one fat wooden keg that didn’t linger untapped for more than a couple minutes at a time. The air was heavy with the smell of fried food wafting in from the kitchen behind the bar, and I heard a growling wolverine in my guts.

  I found Walter Rollins, Gosse Read, and another Kingsman sitting at a table in the corner, and went over to sit with them. They were drinking in a sullen silence, hunched over mugs of some dark beer.

  “We’re here, yo,” I said, and Sawyer shot me a look.

  Walter sat up sharply, his hands on his thighs, and he thrust an offering hand in my direction. “So you are. Have a seat.”

  There was only one chair so I let Sawyer have it. Noreen sat on his lap and folded her arms protectively. I stood over them in an awkward silence as they brooded over their beers, waiting for someone to say something.

  Eventually, Read said, “You’re looking a little peak-ed. I don’t suppose you want anything to eat?”

  “Don’t have any money,” croaked Noreen.

  “I didn’t ask you if you had any money,” he said. “I asked you if you wanted something to eat.”

  “Sit down, bastard. You make me anxious,” said Walter.

  “Yes, we’re hungry as hell,” said Sawyer, as I attempted to obey the Deon and take a seat. “What’s good here?”

  I looked around for a chair but saw no nearby empty ones. I briefly debated the wisdom of carrying one from the other side of the Vespertine but decided against it.

  I tried to take a knee on the floor but felt weird doing it, and stood back up. I put my butt on the back of Sawyer’s chair but it was too tall, attempted to lean my elbow casually on the table but it was too low. I finally settled for squatting next to Read with my hands on the edge of the table to steady myself.

  Walter was looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. He said to Sawyer, “The cheese and spinach pie is the best thing here for your coin.”

  Sawyer wrinkled his nose. “I’m not too hot on spinach. Is there anything else?”

  “Pohtir-nyhmi,” said Read.

  “What’s that?” asked Noreen.

  “A large horned beast of the fields. We ride them.”

  The Deon nodded, scratched his head, and said, “And they smell like dirty dead arse.”

  “I have suddenly developed a taste for spinach.”

  While they discussed the merits (or not) of eating livestock, I surveyed the saloon.

  There were many rough-looking people here, in a variety of conditions and outfits, from many different dubious backgrounds and equally shadowy occupations. It struck me that it was an incredible experience—efficient, even—to be here, to be immersed in the culture and world of my father’s books.

  Would I even have the opportunity, I wondered, to return to Earth (née Zam) and attempt to write the last book in the series? That raised the issue of what I should—or could—even write. D
id I even have to make anything up? Here lay the world of Destin before me, its plots and contrivances physical, emergent, and at my beck and call. I made up my mind that, if I were going to be stuck here for a while, I should begin finding out what I could about what had transpired since the events of my dad’s latest novel, so that I could transcribe them.

  I realized that this must have been how he had written the series: by coming here and seeing the events and places in the novels firsthand, by recording its history, and weaving it into a tapestry of prose. He had been a biographer.

  The atmosphere loosened as we sat there having dinner, and we conversed about ourselves and each other, about our accomplishments and failures, our experiences, amusing anecdotes—tempered, of course, by judicious censorship of anything that pegged us as outsiders (outside of our clothes and accents). We’d told Read where we’d come from, and he didn’t seem too fazed by it. I was glad of that. I hoped Walter would be an equally easy sell.

  I must have been getting over my initial shock at being brought here, to such an alien place, in such a startling way. It was nice to have time to rest, warm up, pack away a good hot meal, sort through the situation, and get to know each other in a place that wasn’t making me seasick. The more I learned about our friends the Kingsmen, the more I made up my mind to bring their history and adventures to life back on Earth.

  I must have been a quiet, introspective dinner guest, because my mind—fully ensconced in our circumstances by now—was finally beginning to spin up to operational velocity.

  By the time we were getting ready for bed in the Vespertine’s upstairs accommodations, I was positively vibrating. I lay in the simple four-poster bed staring up at the ceiling, contemplating, listening to a headboard thump against the wall in an adjacent bedroom as Sawyer administered Noreen’s medicine in the bed next to mine.

  This must have been how Edward Richard Brigham/Lord Eddick Bridger felt when he first came here.

  The thumping eventually subsided. My friends went to sleep, and I rolled over, hugging my musty down pillow to my face, excited about tomorrow’s prospects. It hit me, as I tried to drift off, that I was effectively taking his place. I hoped that I wouldn’t join him in the grave the same way.

  The size of the thing was dismaying in and of itself, inspiring despair and dread just by existing.

  The giant No-Man moved with a fluid gravity, stepping over the rampart of junk without even disturbing the crenellations, or the men standing on them. Pack’s heart leapt in shocked fear when he realized just how woefully under-prepared Harwell’s men had been, and how close he’d come to dying every time he’d perched on the wall after joining the Lord on his morning rounds.

  The boy ran, not hiding or fighting, but simply away from the commotion. He hoped that he could put enough landscape between himself and the thundering monster before either the sun went down and he couldn’t see, or the thing chased him down and killed him. He pushed his way through a throng of people paralyzed by fear, and clambered up a ladder.

  When he got to the top, he paused just long enough to look back at the great silhouette looming over the village, and wonder if they ate people.

  —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 2 “The Cape and the Castle”

  There’s a Catch

  MAXWELL BAYARD RELAXED AS American Airlines Flight 4276 rocketed down the runway and eased into the air. He could feel the weight of the plane’s belly take over, the wheels leaving the tarmac, the floor almost seeming to droop under his feet.

  He checked his watch again, and took off his hat, combed his fingers through what was left of his hair. He held out that age-spotted hand and saw that it was trembling.

  He was nervous. He’d taken thousands of air trips across the States in his career as Ed Brigham’s literary agent. Hurtling through the sky at four hundred miles an hour in a four-hundred ton metal box never bothered him before, but today he was definitely beset by unease.

  It wasn’t because he was afraid Ross was going to get caught up in Ed’s shenanigans—he had enough confidence that he’d intimidated the boy out of prodding further into the circumstances of his father’s death.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have illuminated the fact that Ed was killed, and hadn’t died of a heart attack as the world was led to believe, but he figured that was the price to pay for using the revelation to scare Ross. He hadn’t told Ed’s son how he had discovered the writer in a puddle of his own blood on his kitchen floor, a gaping bullet wound in his throat.

  Besides, he contemplated as the world outside the window spiraled down out of sight, there was no way to get into Destin without the door under the church, and somehow, the Sileni had closed it off from the other side.

  And that meant Ross would be safe here on Earth.

  To pat himself on the back, Maxwell had enjoyed the couple days of vacation he’d given himself in Chattanooga before heading home, visiting the aquarium and treating himself to some top-shelf Thai cuisine. He’d been through Chattanooga a thousand times, but he’d never gone to see the Tennessee Aquarium. What a shame.

  The Sileni hadn’t needed to talk him into covering up the murder. The prospect of being richer than his wildest dreams had been enough to goad him into talking the kids out of following Ed into that other world, as well as abandoning the Fiddle and the Fire franchise for good.

  He reclined the seat, toed his loafers off of his feet, stretched his cramping legs, and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, the plane was at cruising altitude, somewhere over the Midwest. He’d been awakened by the silvery burning in his bladder that told him he had to piss, and he had to do it soon or face the consequences. He unbuckled his belt and shuffled sideways down the aisle to the lavatory, where he found that it was occupied.

  He sighed and leaned against the wall.

  A flight attendant sidled past him toward coach. “Excuse me, sir, but we’re about to serve refreshments. I just thought I would let you know in case you end up waiting a while.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He followed her pert little ass with his gaze, and accidentally locked eyes with a woman that had been watching a movie, earning an angry glare. Embarrassed in spite of himself, Max Bayard turned his head the other way, and that’s when he saw something that validated every last one of his fears.

  He forgot about waiting for the toilet and traveled back across the business class section to the cockpit door, glancing back at the people sitting there. He noticed a powerfully-built man in a cheap suit giving him a look that would wither cabbage.

  “Can I help you, sir?” said the air marshal.

  Maxwell smiled, though it felt like more of a wince. “I’m just waiting for the lavatory where I won’t be in the way of the drinks cart.”

  “Your seat is closer.”

  “Yes, well—” Max was about to say something about having to tie his shoes, but he wasn’t wearing any.

  “Sit down, sir,” said the air marshal.

  Maxwell was in no position to argue, but the passengers and the marshal couldn’t see the little horned man standing by the cockpit door, whispering to the pilot on the other side, his moving lips an inch from the panel’s surface.

  If Max pointed it out, that wouldn’t have helped the situation in the least. The Silen was invisible, and the only person on the plane that could see him was the literary agent, even if he only materialized as a pale, ethereal shadow, his face the last truly solid part of him.

  He’d had a lot of practice over the years.

  Thinking fast, Max grabbed one of the creature’s goat-horns and marched back to his seat, pulling it along. His heart jumped when he realized that to the air marshal, it looked like he was holding something behind his back.

  He took his cellphone out of his jacket pocket and sat back down, putting the phone to his ear. “Hello?” he said, the earpiece silent. The phone was still turned off.

  “What are you doing, you little shit?” he whispered to the Silen.

  “Trus
t is earned,” it hissed in some dead language, calmly standing there as Max pretended to talk on the phone. For some reason, you could always understand what they were saying, regardless of it whether it was plain English or what the Mesopotamians spoke to each other two millenia ago. “It is done. Our plans are in motion. You cannot stop it.”

  “Stop what?” asked Maxwell.

  The Silen did nothing but grin with those horrible, pointy little Bat-Boy teeth. Max couldn’t kill an immortal, but he could sure as hell hurt one. He put the phone down, took an ink pen out of his jacket pocket and bit off the cap, then stuck the point in the corner of the Silen’s eye.

  It jerked at the pressure, but didn’t retaliate. Max wasn’t worried about that. They couldn’t be killed or kill anyone else. That was part of their curse—they lived forever, but there were conditions, and one of them was that they could not end the life of another by their own hand—their own life, or anyone else’s.

  “The writer’s son is in the other-world,” it said.

  A lady sitting across the aisle gave him a strange look, so Max scooted backward until he was against the wall. His seat was next to two empty ones. He applied more force with the pen, and the Silen scrunched that side of his face, trying to back away. Max held him tight.

  “What did you do?” asked Max, and the plane began to decelerate. He could hear exclamations of surprise and fear from coach. “You mused the pilot, didn’t you?”

  “Now you cannot stop us,” said the Silen. “The Rhetor has won. The boy will be ours in the other-world, and now—you will die in this one.”

  The engines, all four of them, started slowing. Soon, they would be still, and the plane and all six hundred people on board would slam into Kansas at terminal velocity.

  The Silen began to fade, his shape narrowing until all he could see of it was its staring, liquid-gold reptilian eyes and that huge, hideous puppy-teeth grin. It blinked out of existence with a slap of displaced air, leaving Max with handfuls of nothing.