Dreamwood

by Heather Mackey

  Her father had gone up the coast to make a new start. Lucy hoped that meant clearing a few ghosts and putting down roots in a town where they could stay awhile. He’d promised to send for her when he had a place for them to live. But she hadn’t been able to take Miss Bentley’s any longer—they were always rapping her knuckles or making her stand in the corner for speaking out of turn or correcting the teachers when they were wrong. And when he’d written that he was on the brink of uncovering something important, she couldn’t stand to be left out.

  “I’m running away from school,” Lucy confessed to Niwa. She remembered the morning her father had left her in Miss Bentley’s office, while the prim, impeccable headmistress looked on disapprovingly. Even the objects on her desk were arranged in a grid. “We’ll do something about her hair,” Miss Bentley had assured him, “and”—she had tapped a ruler ominously on her desk—“her fidgets.”

  “I don’t care about that,” her father said, winking at Lucy. “Lucy has always been high-spirited. What I do want is for Lucy to be safe.” Safe from what? Lucy should have inquired. Only she’d been too delighted at the moment by the look of shock on Miss Bentley’s porcelain face to ask.

  Niwa liked this. “Good!” she said and clapped her hands. “Were you made to go and stay there and wear different clothes? Did the teachers not understand the things of importance?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said in wonder. She pointed at the blue dress she hated. “This is my uniform. They wanted us all to act alike and look alike.” Think alike, too. Whereas she had always intended to be extraordinary. “How did you know?”

  Niwa nodded sagely. “My father put me in school. He cares that I should know many languages so I can speak to people of different countries and nations and I will sit at dinners and understand what may go into a treaty. It is so one day I will be on our council.” Her mouth tightened for just one moment. “But on council it is about business and do we have jobs for settlers. Why does that concern me?”

  “Oh . . .” Lucy’s school had focused on rote memorization, the object being to parrot back exactly what the teacher had just said. She knew her father didn’t think that was true learning; she suspected her two fearsome aunts back in Boston were the real reason she’d been put in Miss Bentley’s. Her father’s sisters, both extremely well-to-do, never took much interest in Lucy unless it was to suggest she be sent somewhere correctional.

  Niwa tossed her head, and the gold in her ears flashed. “I told him I would live my own way. So I left. And I have lived these two months in the grove of the wolf woman.”

  The train careened around a steep curve, revealing for a moment a steep slash of rock with a waterfall hanging down from it like an icicle.

  “Oh.” Lucy’s jaw dropped open as she swayed with the train. She didn’t even know what Niwa’s “own way” meant, really—or what the grove of the wolf woman was—but it sounded daring. At the mere thought of such an adventure she felt herself enlarge and grow, like a balloon filling with air.

  She looked out the window at the mysterious forest, rimmed with a gray fog. “I’d like to see that for myself,” she said.

  “It is my favorite place in the forest,” Niwa replied, although there was a note of sadness in her voice.

  Lucy leaned forward so they were both looking out the window now, resting elbow to elbow. She shot a glance at the Lupine girl. Niwa was exactly the type of girl she intended to be: independent and self-assured. She had done the right thing by leaving Miss Bentley’s.

  She was still thinking on this when the train began to slow in little hiccupping jerks.

  “Is this Pentland?” Lucy asked, searching the trees for signs of civilization.

  “No,” said Niwa, gathering up her quiver and cloak. “This is still Lupine.”

  “The town?”

  “The Lupine Nation,” Niwa said, sounding almost as if she’d like to add “silly.” She tilted her head in a way that reminded Lucy of how her father would look when she asked to hear another ghost story.

  Lucy pointed out the window. “But there isn’t a station here.”

  The train had nearly stopped and still it was nothing but trees, oppressively thick and tall. Suddenly another carved pole loomed outside the window.

  “They will stop the train for me.” Niwa looked out at the forest, surveying her domain.

  At that moment, the train shuddered to a halt.

  “You’re going already?” Lucy slumped down, suddenly aware again of her sweaty dress and uncomfortable boots.

  “I have to.” For a second Lucy thought she saw a flicker of reluctance cross Niwa’s face. She adjusted her fur and her weapons, then stopped and considered Lucy. “You are different.”

  “Different from what?” Lucy loved to be told she was different.

  Niwa laughed. “From the settler girls I meet. Many are afraid of Lupines.” Almost as an afterthought she added, “They think we are witches.” Her expression was unreadable, but she watched Lucy, waiting for her reaction.

  “Oh, witches,” Lucy said, with a lighthearted shrug. For she had been brought up not to believe in magic or witchcraft—they weren’t scientifically proven, after all. And although she felt bad about what it said of her character, she did look down on superstitious types. “Of course you aren’t witches.”

  “No.” Niwa’s eyes clouded over as she fingered the grip of her bow. “If we were, the trees would not die.”

  What was that supposed to mean? Lucy stood up, but the Lupine girl was already walking down the aisle. The porter appeared again and bowed as he ushered her off the train. Lucy flopped down in her seat. Had she said something wrong?

  Niwa’s departure lifted the lumberjacks’ self-imposed silence. Now they made up for their earlier quiet.

  While the train idled, they leaned to the window, their hulking shoulders crammed together, and watched as Niwa stepped off the train.

  “Look out, Bert,” said the blond one. “She sees you staring at her and you’ll be hexed.”

  Bert, having recovered his bravado, thrust a leg into the aisle. “I’m not afraid of a Lupine witch.”

  “You were plenty scared earlier, when you thought you’d tripped her on accident. Never seen your face so white!”

  “Naw, the only thing that scares me is an empty stomach.”

  “It’s the same thing,” the third man muttered sourly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Bert.

  “They’ve cursed the trees, haven’t they?” said the third man. “There’s your empty stomach for you. No trees, no work.”

  But no one could “curse” the trees, Lucy thought. And whatever was happening, Niwa was upset by it, too. She put her chin in her hands. Already Saarthe struck her as someplace where it was hard to see the truth straight on. Like Bert’s wolf crow.

  The train began slowly to move, and Lucy hurried across the aisle once more, opening the window and leaning her head outside. Lucy could see Niwa some distance down the track, already receding, a small figure dwarfed by the crumbling poles. And then the train curved and she was gone.

  At last the train slowed with a finality that suggested it had reached the end of the line. A wooden station came into view.

  Lucy watched the lumberjacks rise, noticing how their faces set into hard defeated lines as they made their way off. Now that they’d arrived, the three men became grim and somber. They left the train as if their joints ached and they were looking to punch someone because of it. Lucy waited awhile before climbing down after them.

  She stepped off the train and into the cool air of a late June evening in Outer Saarthe. The station was no more than a few rough-hewn structures still sporting bark on one side. Behind it rose the tallest trees she’d ever seen. There was a station house, and a few people milling about. She looked at all of them expectantly, but there was no one with her father’s neat beard, jaunt
y walk, or winking smile. She walked farther into the station, lugging the instrument case along with her.

  Perhaps he’d gotten delayed or caught up in conversation. There was no one for talking like her father. She was always having to remind him of the time.

  “Don’t run off yet, miss,” the porter from the train said, jogging up to her. “You need your luggage.”

  She’d forgotten her trunk. It was there alone on the platform, looking as battered as it had in all the previous moves.

  “Anything else?” he asked, checking the platform diligently, as if he worried she might still be too preoccupied to remember the rest of her belongings.

  “No, just the trunk.” It wasn’t like her to forget things, but she was busy keeping an eye out for her father. Lucy scanned the station again.

  “First time in Outer Saarthe?” the porter asked. He wasn’t going away, so she turned her attention to him. He had a friendly, open face and an easy way of holding himself. The deep brownish red of his hair seemed somehow familiar. When she looked over his shoulder, she realized it was the same color as the bark on the gigantic trees. Hundreds of feet tall, they towered over everything around them. She looked up and it gave her a funny feeling, a bit like vertigo in reverse.

  “First time anywhere in the Northwest Regions,” she admitted. Though she had read plenty of adventure novels set here, full of brawny woodsmen, sharpshooting women, and wolves.

  “Well, trees are what we’re famous for,” he said. “Though the way things are going, who knows how long we’ll even have them. The trees are coming down sick. More people are leaving Saarthe these days than coming. He cocked his head round at the sleepy station. “The eight o’clock train used to draw a crowd.” A thought occurred to him. “Say, is anyone meeting you?”

  “My father.” She squeezed her shoulders together. She’d written to tell him the date and time of her arrival. He was absentminded, but surely he wouldn’t forget about her.

  The train’s whistle sounded.

  The porter hiked up his shoulders in apology. “Sorry, miss. That’s the signal.”

  As soon as he said that she realized the sun was going down. In the time they’d been talking the station had cleared out.

  “Don’t worry now,” the porter reassured her. “He’ll be along. There’s delays on the road all the time on account of the logging wagons. You’ll be fine here. And if you do get worried, tell Old Wundt, the stationmaster—he’ll take you inside until your pa can collect you.”

  The train began to move slowly, and he jumped onto the step. “Make sure you don’t leave the station alone,” he called. “Not with evening coming.” He tipped his cap to her and stepped inside. Lucy watched the train go. Then with a sinking feeling, she turned back to the platform.

  She wandered to the stationmaster’s office. An old man lay asleep there. He wore a threadbare striped cardigan sweater, and his outstretched arm, which trembled slightly from the rhythmic force of his snores, held a pipe. She gathered this was Old Wundt. He did not look helpful.

  Pinned up on the wall behind him were row after row of Wanted posters. She hadn’t imagined one little settlement could produce so many outlaws. If she encountered one, she supposed she’d have to outsmart him . . . which she could probably do. Outlaws weren’t smart, were they?

  She peered at the woods outside the station. They were dark and concealing, as if within their depths all manner of evil lurked. The evening was growing cooler, and she shivered. Where was her father? Could her letter have gone astray? It hadn’t worried her that he’d never replied—until now.

  Panic flared. Stop it, Lucy told herself sternly. She’d figure something out. There was still some light. She would manage. Didn’t her father always say she had a cool head? She’d saved them both the time they’d gotten locked in the Wickham churchyard while trying to take a spirit photograph of the old priest’s ghost. She’d remembered there were candles kept in one of the crypts, and with the light steadying her she’d been able to manage the lock.

  Lucy went back to the platform and tugged at the handle of her trunk; she could carry it, but awkwardly, and she let it fall back down again with a thud. The air felt still and quiet, so that she almost disbelieved there was anyone else within miles. But she was wrong about that. For there, at the end of the station, emerging from the shadows, was an enormous man in a dark coat with a huge shaggy head of hair, as if he were built on the same scale as the giant trees, moving toward her with the slow, purposeful stride of an undertaker.

  The huge man was definitely coming for her.

  Lucy’s heart hammered in her chest, and she thought of the many Wanted posters papered over the station walls. It seemed unfair to have just arrived and already have to face an outlaw.

  She abandoned her trunk and took a few steps backward. “What do you want?” she called out.

  There was no answer as he bore down on her, closing the space between them in a few giant strides. Lucy got ready to swing her case. She’d hit him in the shins, and that would hurt, then she would run.

  But the man stopped before it came to that. She looked up and he looked down. He must have been close to seven feet tall, with a long mane of dark brown hair that came over his rough collar. He wore a weathered black coat and black clothes under that. One of his eyes was dead; milky white, it drooped, as if trying to see the wrinkled scar on his cheek below.

  “Able Dodd,” the man said, and pointed to himself. “You’re to follow me.”

  Not without an explanation she wasn’t.

  “Who sent you?” she demanded, stiffening inside her rumpled dress. Behind him she could see the station exit and beyond that the mysterious forest.

  “Knightly,” he replied, before turning his back on her and picking up her trunk. He lifted it as if it weighed no more than an empty box.

  Lucy swallowed, still gripping her case. “Who’s that?”

  “Lawyer,” he said over his shoulder.

  Lucy watched him retreat across the platform. She didn’t know any lawyers. And he couldn’t just take her things. She ran after him, the black case banging against her leg.

  Able Dodd walked through the station and outside to where a buckboard wagon was waiting with two horses in harness. Lucy followed, out of breath, and watched as he tossed her trunk into the wagon bed.

  Was her father in trouble with the law?

  “Did he borrow money?” she asked. “He’s good for it if he did. You don’t have to take me to a lawyer. Just take me to my father and I’ll get this sorted out.” She pulled up her gloves and straightened her hat. People often looked kindly on a pretty, well-mannered girl.

  “Can’t,” the man said with strange finality, as if her father were beyond his—or anyone’s—reach.

  “What do you mean?” Lucy dropped her case on the ground. A thousand fearful thoughts flew through her head: Perhaps he was in jail. Or maybe he was sick or ill. She pressed a hand against her mouth.

  “I’ll let Knightly say.” Able Dodd gave her a dark glance and made to tie her trunk fast with ropes, leaving her to fret in silence.

  When he was satisfied with his knots, he faced her. For one irrational moment Lucy was afraid he was going to throw her into the back of the wagon and tie her down, too. Instead he turned to the horses.

  “This is Whitsun,” he said, pointing to a white horse. “And this is Snickers.” Snickers was roan. They both looked at her intelligently; they seemed to understand Able Dodd’s words. Their wise, kind faces seemed to see right into her. Strangely, she was reassured. A person who cared enough about his horses to make sure she knew their names could not be all bad.

  “Lucy Darrington,” she found herself saying to them, as if she were introduced to horses all the time.

  Able Dodd nodded to say she’d done well. Then, with an air of getting on with his work, he simply picked her up and sat
her down on the rough plank seat of the wagon.

  “But where are we going?” Lucy squirmed on the seat.

  “The Knightlys’ place,” Able Dodd said as if they’d already been over this. He walked around to his side of the wagon, and she watched him. Lucy couldn’t see any luxuries to him: no rings or watches or belt buckles or anything fine. His austerity was so complete it had the air of a philosophy, and she sensed that such a person wouldn’t give in to pleas or pestering. Which meant she was stuck with him . . . for the moment.

  He climbed up beside her and flicked the reins lightly.

  “Gee up.”

  Whitsun and Snickers took off in a slow clip-clop down a narrow road that plunged immediately into the shade and stillness of the forest. For a while Lucy tried to pretend Able Dodd wasn’t so terribly strange or that this journey was something she’d laugh about soon with her father. But it was hard to keep her spirits up with such a dour companion. To all her questions Able Dodd replied only with a “hm”—or sometimes, more eloquently, with a “hmpf”—and at last she gave up and turned dully to study the forest.

  The forest.

  Never had she been in woods so thick and pressing. It was as if they were traveling through a mountain of living wood.

  The trees were everywhere: huge ones that must have been thousands of years old, and frail seedlings poking up from the mulch on the ground. The hollow trunks of dead trees stood secretive as caves, and fallen logs were covered with thick green moss and the shoots of new trees. Soft needles and smoky red bark covered the forest floor like a carpet. Only the treetops were invisible, veiled by a still and blanketing mist that gave everything a suspended feeling, like the forest itself might be a dream.

  Lucy hugged herself and peered into the gloom, unable to shake the feeling that this forest was hiding her father—had swallowed him up, and would swallow her, too.