The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  Freya was startled when she ventured into the rubble at the back of the toyshop, where the upper floor had fallen away. Something gave a squeal of terror and darted past her into the front hall. They all ran over to see what it was, and there, cowering in a corner, was a fat brown and pink-spotted pig, with the shreds of what might have once been a fine velvet coat still hanging around his neck.

  “It’s Hodge!” Rowen said.

  “You’re right,” Will said. “Look at his face. I guess the werefire didn’t destroy him.”

  Rowen approached the terrified animal, speaking to it in a soft, soothing voice. Just as she was about to place a hand on it, the pig sprang out of its corner, bolted down the hall and was caught, squealing and snorting, in Balor’s arms.

  “What do we do with him?” the wildman asked, struggling to hang on to the frantic, thrashing animal. “If I let him go someone else will catch him and he’ll have an apple in his mouth by day’s end. Probably what he deserves.”

  Rowen shook her head firmly. “No, we won’t let that happen. Look after him, Balor, will you? For my grandfather’s sake. Don’t let anyone eat him.”

  “So now I’m the keeper of a pet pig,” Balor muttered. “I’m not sure I like the way this story of yours turned out, Rowen of Blue Hill.”

  Balor found some twine and made a leash to keep the pig from running off. They all returned to work, and the day passed quickly, so that to their surprise it was soon time for dinner. Edweth outdid herself, given what she had to work with, and they ate and talked, and candles were lit at the table as the day faded.

  As they were finishing their meal, Miles Plunkett arrived from the Golden Goose. When he saw to his relief that everyone was all right, he insisted that they spend the night not in the wreckage of the toyshop but at his inn, where he insisted there would be rooms for them all. Reluctantly they agreed, and followed him back to the inn. On the way, Will and Rowen saw to their surprise and delight how closely Edweth walked beside the innkeeper. When they reached the bridge where the Golden Goose stood, Finn and Balor took their leave, saying that they had to return to Appleyard to carry out their duties there. The wildman had Hodge with him on his leash, but Balor seemed to have warmed to him, and for his part the pig trotted alongside Balor as if they belonged together.

  After the innkeeper had shown them to their rooms and made sure they had whatever they might need to be comfortable for the night, they all came down to the common room, which was full to bursting with Bournefolk and guests from many other lands, all talking of the battle and its aftermath. Will was relieved to discover that no one there recognized him as the Pathfinder, the boy so many were praising and telling their own wild tales about. Others put forward the names of various supernatural beings to explain the miraculous turnabout of the fetches, and a loud, high-spirited debate got under way.

  Before long Rowen and Will grew tired of the noise and light. They went outside together and leaned over the parapet and watched the water flow quietly beneath them in the dusk.

  “I heard you, Will,” Rowen said after a long silence. “Under the tree, after Dama struck me and I was in the nightmare and couldn’t get out. I heard you talking to me.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “I knew you hadn’t given up, so I couldn’t either.”

  “You saved me. I didn’t want you to stay with me, but if you hadn’t, I would’ve been lost. I heard you, and I knew I wasn’t alone. That kept me fighting.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Shade,” Will said. “Do you know where he is now, or if he’s still alive? I hate to think of him as that … that monster.”

  To his surprise, Rowen’s face lit with a mischievous smile.

  “I fixed a few things,” she said. “You and Shade will meet again. I just don’t know when or where.”

  Will nodded and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.

  “When you were talking to your grandfather,” he went on, “you said there was more you had to do. That you weren’t finished.”

  “I’m not,” Rowen said, turning to look at him. “Or it’s not. The work, I mean. It’s only beginning. There are still so many places where people are lost and without hope, like the camp of the Fair Folk. The stories they lived by are broken—they don’t work anymore—and they’re frightened. And some are angry, too, because everything is changing and they don’t want it to. We’re all walking into the unknown now, but I can show people they don’t have to be afraid.”

  “You mean that you have to go,” Will said. “You can’t stay here with me.”

  “I have to help where I can. I’m still a loremaster. But you can’t stay, either, Will. Your father and your sister need you. The shadow also touched your world. There are people there who are lost in the same nightmare of hate and fear and trying to wake up from it. You can help them.”

  Will frowned, then nodded. “I do have to go home,” he said. “I promised my dad I’d come back. But I don’t want to leave you. It seems we keep having to say goodbye.”

  Rowen moved closer to him, and he put his arms around her and held her.

  “I don’t want to leave you, either,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to be forever. It won’t be.”

  “You know that we’ll see each other again? You’re sure?”

  “I’m not sure of very much anymore,” Rowen said. “And perhaps that’s how it should be. But I think, because of the golden thread, there won’t be any more happy endings. Not because good things will no longer happen—they will, and maybe even more than they used to. People will still find what they’ve lost, and fall in love, and work to save what’s good in this world. But we won’t need things to end happily when we know that nothing will ever really end. Then maybe we can live as if every moment is the beginning of something new.”

  “I’ll come back as often as I can,” Will said. “I’ll come to Fable, and if you’re not here, I’ll look for you.”

  “I’ll look for you, too. And I’ll need your help. What’s happened here, to Fable, to all of us, mustn’t be forgotten. The truth was lost once and so much was destroyed because of it. I can’t forget poor Mimling Hammersong. And your friend the doctor. Even Ammon Brax. I have to tell the story. Share it with others. You can help me do that.”

  “I’m no storyteller,” Will said.

  “You will be,” Rowen said, and Will heard sadness in her voice. “I don’t think you and I have a choice about that. It’s what we’ll do to keep from getting lost.”

  Rowen and Will stayed in Fable the next day and the day after that. They couldn’t bring themselves to leave each other or their friends just yet.

  The army of the defenders was disbanding now; the tents were coming down and Storyfolk were leaving for their own lands. The fetches still remained standing, but it wasn’t clear whether there was any spark of life within them. Finn and Balor went to find out. Cautiously they approached one of the motionless figures, and after much inspection and debate about what to do, Balor growled impatiently and gave the armour a shove. The fetch toppled over onto the grass and cracked open. Several others fell over on their own during the course of the day, and this seemed to confirm that the spirits had vacated their iron shells.

  The question then became what to do with all the fever iron from which the abandoned armour was forged. Enough of it could be salvaged to power a hundred skyships, the Stormriders said, but in the end it was Corr Madoc who argued loudest that the armour should be buried as it was and left to rust in the earth until its power had seeped away and it could no longer tempt anyone to use it again.

  The last of the allies to leave the field was the first who had arrived, the company of the Red Duke. On the third evening after the battle Balor Gruff brought Jodo Flyte, the Red Duke’s captain of bowmen, to the Golden Goose. Flyte played his battered lute and the two of them sang together. They did not sing about the battle or the strange way it had ended. They sang about those who had fallen, a sad song that made many we
ep. When they had finished that song, they began others, old songs of friends meeting and parting, of happier times and good cheer.

  At dawn the next day the Red Duke rode away with his company, and the sun rose over the quiet, empty Course and warmed the broken walls of the city.

  Will and Rowen walked together from the gates. The grass along the roadsides glittered with dew, and from some farmyard nearby a dog barked. They climbed out of the valley and found the path that had brought them from Blue Hill not very long ago. They looked back once at the city. The sun was burning the mists away from the low places. Appleyard Hill shimmered green and gold in the sun.

  They walked on through the morning, taking their time, neither wanting to reach their destination, but all too soon they reached the familiar hilltop, and there was the cottage, nestled in the tall grass at the bottom of the slope.

  They descended to the cottage and found things just as they had left them. The chimney leaned and the nettles and dandelions were still growing thick around the walls.

  “I’ve got a long way to go, but I think I’ll start here,” Rowen said. “This place needs some looking after. The cottage could still make a good home one day.”

  They embraced and said their goodbyes through tears, swearing that they would find each other again. Then Will turned away from Rowen standing at the door of the cottage and kept on.

  He was on his way home again. He had no idea how to get there, but from experience he understood that all he could do was keep walking, until the right path became clear. He took a narrow cart track that led away from the cottage toward the northern hills called the Braids. The sky was blue and clear, and after so long in the grey dimness of the Shadow Realm, he felt a desire for sunlight and air. So whenever his road branched he followed the path that looked as if it might take him to higher ground. Eventually he found himself on a windswept ridge, the highest spot for miles around.

  He stopped here to rest for a while and looked out over the way he had come. He thought he could just make out the green prominence that was Appleyard Hill. It was then, while he was eating the bread and cheese that Edweth had packed for him, that he had the feeling he was being watched.

  When he was finished his meal he rose, looked all around, then kept along the ridge. If he was being followed, this was the best place to be for now. The wind strengthened and grew colder, and eventually the chill forced him off the ridge and along a path that wound down the far side, away from the Bourne. As he was coming down the path he stopped suddenly and gazed around. He had come to a wide, sloping meadow dotted with flowers and alive with butterflies and the hum of bees. The ridge rose like a wall on his left, and before him emerged height after height of steep forested hills he was sure he had never seen before. He was close to the border, he knew, and out there were the wild lands beyond the Bourne.

  He looked back the way he had come and saw shapes on the crest of the ridge. Wolves. A line of them, dark against the sky.

  His heart leaped.

  They had been flanking him, observing him, he suddenly knew. But he also knew that they were not hunting him. If that had been the case, he doubted he would have seen them until it was too late.

  The wolf at the head of the line broke away from the others and bounded down the ridge toward him. When it was only a few paces distant, the wolf pulled up short and regarded him with its bright amber eyes.

  “Shade?” Will said softly.

  It was his friend—and yet it wasn’t. The pack that this wolf led had once belonged to Corr Madoc, but they had been released and now followed a new leader. They would not hunt him, he was certain of that, but neither would this wolf speak to him. Will understood now that Rowen had given their friend what he most desired. The life of Shade the Speaking Creature was over. The wolf was free again.

  Will stepped closer and held out his hand.

  The wolf came toward him and lowered its head so that Will could reach out and lay his hand on the fur between its ears. Only for a moment. Then the wolf turned and bounded back up the hill to rejoin its pack.

  “Thank you, Shade,” Will said. “I’ll never forget you.”

  The wolves trotted along the top of the ridge, away from him, until their path took them among the trees on the far slopes, where they slipped one by one from his sight and vanished into the wild.

  “THAT’S THE END?” THE older girl asked.

  The young man looked up. He’s almost forgotten he wasn’t alone. The whole family was gathered around him now. The children’s father had left his repairs on the truck and had come to sit beside the woman, the little boy and girl cradled in his lap. The older girl was perched on the tailgate of the truck, her arms around her knees, still keeping her distance, but from her question he knew she’d been listening. The grandmother was snoring quietly, her chin on her chest. You can’t please everyone, the young man thought.

  “That’s all I have to tell,” he said. “So far.”

  “What about Will and Rowen?” the girl asked. “Do they find each other again?”

  “Well, if you remember, I warned you before I started that the story wasn’t over.”

  The old woman’s head shot up.

  “Of course they find each other,” she snapped, with a glare that defied anyone to accuse her of sleeping. “It couldn’t end any other way. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “I wish we knew for sure,” the girl said.

  “So do I,” the young man agreed.

  “I want Will and Shade to fight more monsters!” the little boy shouted, swinging an imaginary sword.

  “More monsters?” the young man said, and he laughed. “There are always more monsters, I suppose.”

  “True enough,” the man said, “but they’ll have to keep for another day. We have a long road still to go, and that’s all the time we have for make-believe.”

  He lifted the children from his lap and they groaned and said it wasn’t fair, but the woman gave them a stern look that abruptly ended the complaints.

  The man slammed the truck’s hood shut and nodded to his wife. The family began to load their belongings into the back. The young man helped, and when they were nearly finished packing and making everything secure, the older girl moved close to him.

  “What Rowen did with the thread …” she began in a hushed voice, as if she was afraid someone else might overhear. “How she gave everyone a way out of the nightmare …”

  “Yes?”

  “You told us you were there. You didn’t make it all up, then. You knew them. You knew Will and Rowen.”

  “As well as anyone, I suppose.”

  “We had to move because of me,” the girl said quickly. “I was getting into trouble. Into fights. I didn’t start them. Well, most of them I didn’t. But that’s how it goes for me. When the others find out I’m not like them—when they find out I’m …” She gave the young man a sharp, distrusting glance. “I wish things were different, that’s all,” she said, her eyes burning. “Sometimes I think I must be in a story, too, but it’s the wrong one and I don’t know how to get out.”

  “I was in a place like that, too—a long time ago. I’d say you’re off to a good start if you’re already looking for a door.”

  “Those paths Rowen made, do you think they’re real?”

  “I know they are. It’s just that they can be hard to see sometimes. When you find the right one, you’ll know.”

  The woman called the girl’s name and she turned away and climbed into the back of the truck. The children’s father stepped onto the running board and then paused.

  “You need a lift?” he asked the young man. “Where we’re going is a big place. Lots of folks who might trade a meal for a good yarn.”

  “I’ve been to that town,” the young man said. “There are good people in it and I’m sure you’ll be welcome. But I’m not headed that way.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The man climbed in and shut the door. The truck coughed and sputtered to life, then
trundled off down the road. The little children waved from the windows and the young man waved back. The older girl was half-hidden amid the family’s belongings. She didn’t wave but her eyes were on him until the truck went around a bend and out of sight. Then he turned away and walked on, until the rumble of the engine faded to silence and he was alone again.

  For the rest of that day he met no one on the road. The night brought a biting wind, and he took shelter in a stand of old wind-bent pines.

  He’d told the girl’s family that the story wasn’t over, that it was still going on and they were all part of it. Drawing his coat tighter against the cold he asked himself if he still believed that. He’d searched for so long and told the story so often that he found himself wondering the same thing his listeners always wanted to know.

  Did it really happen?

  At times like this, he would tell himself the rest of it. Everything that followed his last meeting with Shade. He needed to reassure himself that it was still there—the invisible thread between that other world and his own, between the story and his life after. He would recall the road he’d taken to get home. And then the back porch light gleaming in the dark like a star, just as it had the night he’d left. Returning to his old life with Dad and Jess, and then the days and years that came and went so quickly. He’d finished school and worked for a while at different jobs, none of which he stayed with for long. His dad had married again and moved with Jess and his new wife to another town. He hadn’t gone with them. Instead he’d sold most of his things and set out on the road. Whenever he met someone who seemed to need a story, he would tell his own as if it were someone else’s. And maybe it was. Maybe that’s what he was doing: trying to tell his way back into the story.

  Making his way into the Perilous Realm again hadn’t been difficult. The two worlds seemed to have drawn closer to each other in many places, so that sometimes he would slip from one to the other without realizing it. Even so, very little in that other world was as he remembered it. He would glimpse a familiar line of hills in the distance or find himself crossing a bridge over a stream that he thought he’d crossed once before, but these hints and suggestions never came to anything. He couldn’t find the Bourne, and almost no one he encountered had ever heard of a city called Fable. Some had heard stories, though. Tales of the Errantry. They said the knights had a new marshal, a young man named Finn Madoc. They’d heard of his wife, too—the famous toymaker. And there was an ogre in some of these tales. Well, ogre or wildman, no one was certain which. The wildman lived in the woods with his own folk, but sometimes he emerged, when the marshal needed his help.