by Billy Wright
It was a city, but like no city on Earth.
It was alive.
Not just with inhabitants, and not just because it stood housed within living trees, but because it was constantly growing and changing, yet somehow never tearing apart the bridges and causeways that connected the gigantic trees. An immense, gushing flow of creative energy flowed around and through it.
“Don’t trip over your jawbones,” Bob said with an impish grin. “’Tis quite a sight, says I. Come now.” He coaxed them along the path toward the city.
“Does it have a name?” Liz said.
Bob paused, took a deep breath, and gathered himself. What came out of his mouth was not a single language, but a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, all at once, layered over each other in impossible ways.
It was as if Stewart were hearing its name in many, many dimensions, all of them scattering through time and space in ways he could not perceive with human ears. Nevertheless, something within sensed its passing. Out of the harmonious cacophony, Stewart picked out a phrase he understood. “The City.”
Cassie held her ears. “That made me woozy.”
“Hearing True Names can do that to humans,” Bob said. “Especially when the Name is as old as the universe itself. Ye’ll get used to it, lassie. Stay here long enough, ye’ll be able to speak it yerself.”
Meanwhile, Stewart stood stock still. What had passed over him—he had to call it sound for lack of a better word—had rung him like a gong, and not in a pleasant way. It was as if all the sharp, broken, jagged bits of his inner self had resonated all at once, tearing into the soft, smooth parts deep inside him, bursting to painful life like a kennel full of ill-tempered dogs startled into barking. Every part of him ached now—joints, muscles, organs, even his eyes and ears.
It was the first but not the last time he felt such raw power. And it was only the name of the place.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. After what he had experienced, the evil dreams, the awful experiences, the wrongs he had committed, he didn’t belong here.
And the City knew it. The scope of the City’s consciousness went beyond even the word consciousness, like the difference between a lake and an ocean.
The vastness of what lay before him—the trees, the lake, the habitations, the architecture—went beyond human senses. What he saw were projections of their Truth into the three dimensions that humans could perceive and comprehend, like drawing a sphere on a two-dimensional piece of paper.
“Come along now,” Bob said. “We’re almost there.”
Stewart helped Liz to her feet, and she wiped her eyes. Was she seeing the same City that he saw? Or was her version different from his? As she faced him, the sight of her caught his breath, and he could only stare in unbridled wonder. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, who had ever existed, and love for her swelled his chest and turned his pulse into a stampede.
She caught his stare. “What?”
He kissed her. It was all he could think of to do.
When Liz pulled away, she blushed a little and smiled. “Watch yourself, mister.”
Hunter mimed a gagging face. Cassie giggled.
As they walked, Stewart tried to control his discomfort with deep breaths, clutching Liz’s hand as if it were the only life preserver in a storm-tossed tumult.
Thoughts plagued him. Was this real? Was he dreaming? Was he trapped in a nightmare so insidiously deceptive it was going to crush his soul when he awoke? Just like his life had done.
Hunter and Cassie were skipping ahead up the path, their eyes wide with wonder, and all Stewart could think about was whether it was all an elaborate ruse to lure them to their destruction. Was some hideous monster going to leap out of the idyllic landscape and kill them? Or worse, was he on the verge of some psychotic break? Was the monster he had become in that evil dream about to burst to life and wreak havoc on everything around him?
These questions clotted in his belly and lay there squirming in a cold ball like a nest of rattlesnakes. The air itself seemed to exert greater pressure on him, muffling sounds and squeezing his flesh.
“Don’t get too far ahead, kids!” Liz called after the children. At times, they seemed so far ahead they might disappear into the landscape. An instant later, they were only a step or two away. The sudden shifts in perspective made his head swim.
“There’s nothing here to hurt them, me dear,” Bob said, ambling along as if this were but a leisurely ramble. “The Dark cannot reach us here.”
Liz kept glancing at Stewart with concern. “Are you all right, babe?”
“Hanging in there.”
She squeezed his hand tighter, holding on to him.
Profusions of flowers and ferns lined the path, alive with tiny critters that flitted and jumped and crawled.
Behind them, the kaleidoscope Kodiak bear strolled, the size of a bus, sniffing the air with a look of contentment. Its coat coruscated with DayGlo colors, an ever-shifting canvas, apparently feeling no need now for camouflage. Skin crawling with worry, Stewart kept glancing back to see if the bear was preparing to attack them.
The nearer they drew to the City, the more the kids checked on him. “Dad, are you okay?” Was his discomfiture so glaring? “Daddy, what’s wrong? Come on, this is so great!”
“I’m fine, kids.” He gave them the best smile he could. “It is really wonderful.”
Bob’s scrutiny was Stewart’s constant companion. The little man seemed poised at any moment to spring into action, as if Stewart was a threat. Could Bob sense the currents of doubt and violence coursing through Stewart’s mind?
Distance was difficult to judge as they approached the City, but at one moment, Bob rounded on Stewart. “Ye’ve got yerself some willpower, me boy.”
Relief gushed through Stewart, hoping that Bob’s confrontation might assuage the illness and unease he felt.
“Willpower might be enough, but it might not,” Bob said. “Know this.” He tapped his head with his cane. “That dark elf’s fingers are still digging around in yer mind. Much of that yer feelin’ ain’t comin’ from you. That Darkness in you, ’tis there, but right now ’tis lookin’ bigger than it truly is. His spell is still in there, stirring up sludge that’s settled to the bottom. I can sense the good in you, Stewart. Don’t let that blackguard get the better o’ ye.”
“Can you help me?”
“’Tis beyond me ken, but where we’re going, there’s them that might lend their aid.”
Liz hugged him. “Hang in there, baby.”
His mouth was dry as the Arizona desert. “I’ll try.”
***
The immensity of the City threatened to swallow them as they approached its outskirts. The great trees stretched impossibly high. The lush, living smell of the foliage and lake filled Stewart’s heart with hope. Everything here was connected through the invisible flow of magic, every being, every creature, every tree, flower, and blade of grass. The sublime harmony of it all moistened his eyes.
On the outskirts, clusters of homes rested alongside the lake’s outbound tributaries. Everywhere was the sound of music and activity, laughing children, boisterous conversation without rancor. Could people truly exist this way? Without greed and selfishness? Without deception and treachery? The passing of Stewart and his family prompted many an amiable greeting. Many of them even greeted the bear as if he were an old acquaintance. The two deadly dolls marching on either side of Cassie waved to onlookers as well, their faces blank as ever, but their eyes alight with joy and anticipation.
Stewart tamped down into a hole in his mind the writhing black serpent that refused to believe any of it.
They rounded the corner onto a broad thoroughfare when Stewart held in a deep-throated expostulation of surprise.
In a pleasant plaza, a group of—well, he could only describe them as ogres, as they were eight feet tall, with a warty hide, barrel chests and gnarled limbs—a group of four ogres were sitting around playing a game that might have been so
mething like four-player chess. They were clad in brightly colored trousers and waistcoats, their huge feet bare. One of them wore a broad-brimmed hat with a long white plume. But one of them stared at Stewart in recognition, its smile a mess of slobber and crooked teeth.
Then the creature’s face snapped into recognition for Stewart, too.
It was the face of the creature who had stood over him that morning in the desert.
It jumped up from its tree-stump stool and bounded toward them, arms outstretched.
Stewart tensed to flee, but the look of joy on the ogre’s face could not be denied. It was speaking in a bass, guttural tongue, incomprehensible, but the hug it threw around Stewart could not be misunderstood. Its size dwarfed him, and it could have crushed him like a bug, but it hugged him with the relief and joy of encountering a long-lost friend.
Stewart patted its rough hide awkwardly. “Uh, how you doing, buddy?”
Then it held him at arm’s length, a little tear in its eye, then it spun just as quickly and ran back to its companions, telling them the story of meeting Stewart in its own language.
Liz and the kids stared, mouths agape.
Hunter said, “You know that guy?”
“Uh, sort of?” Stewart said.
Then he told them the story. When he finished the kids stared at him in similar wonder. He felt abashed at not telling them sooner. “Sorry, I thought you wouldn’t believe me.”
Cassie hugged his waist and grinned. “I got to meet the Little People. You got to meet the Big People.”
***
The broad thoroughfare brought them deeper among the great trees, until the road rose into a winding series of bridges and walkways stretching between the trees. The bridges and walkways appeared to be fashioned of a wood as pale as ivory, beautifully wrought and polished in motifs of interwoven vines. Up into the canopy these bridges took them, stretching and spiraling.
The air was redolent with the smell of flowers, fresh-baked bread and pastries, spices, and greenery. A moist breeze blew off the lake, the perfect temperature to cool them from the warmth of the sun.
The tree trunks bulged with habitations, nodules shaped from the living wood, great towering mansions like Versailles or Buckingham Palace that rose rather than sprawled.
Toward the largest of these tree mansions Bob led them.
The bridge underfoot stretched across an emptiness hundreds of feet from the ground.
Cassie and Hunter ran to the balustrade and peered over.
“Be careful!” Liz called.
Both kids chorused, “Mom!” in that annoyed voice children use on overprotective mothers.
Stewart joined them and looked down from the dizzying height. Winged creatures flitted past below, some of them too quick to discern their nature, but there were birds from the size and shape of hummingbirds to condors passing below.
Ahead of them at the end of the bridge rose a mansion perhaps twenty stories tall. The nature of the City made judging scale difficult. The walls of the mansion resembled the ivory wood of the bridge, but they were shaped into a stunning array of bas-reliefs. Those bas-reliefs filled the face of the mansion with stories of heroes and heroines, quests and trials, homecomings and reconciliations. Trying to examine them all even cursorily would have taken months—even if they weren’t moving.
The closer their party drew to the gate, the more Stewart could see the bas-reliefs shifting, as if the stories being told were still in progress.
Liz and the kids were just agog, heads on swivels. There was too much to see for their human minds to take in.
“Come now, let us move a mite more expeditiously,” Bob said, gesturing to them with his cane. “Time is malleable here, but ’tis not on our side.”
As they approached the gates, the sheer grandeur of this living mansion made Stewart feel dwarf-like, stunted. Thick wooden double-doors swung inward to greet them.
Beyond the gates stretched a vaulted hall filled with lights and stairways, the walls decorated with paintings and sculptures. The floor was an elaborate parquet of a thousand colors, depicting what, Stewart could not yet see.
Stepping into view, a rotund figure said, “So, here you are.”
Stewart shouldn’t have been so surprised, but the wonders had been coming too hard and fast. “What are you doing here?”
The shopkeeper waggled his caterpillar eyebrows.
Stewart answered Liz’s inquisitive stare. “He’s the one who sold me the dolls and the map.”
From just behind him emerged a doll that resembled the two next to Cassie, but standing about twice as high, wearing a gown of the finest silk and lace that sparkled with greens and blues.
Cassie’s dolls leaped with joy and sprang forward, throwing their arms around...their mother? Their porcelain faces and limbs clicked and clinked and clacked as they all hugged.
“Aww,” Cassie said, wiping a tear.
The shopkeeper said, “Lady Jocinda is delighted you have brought her children home.”
The three dolls paused their joyful reunion, turned to the human family, and curtsied.
Stewart said to them, “Thank you for protecting Cassie, protecting all of us.”
The two dolls curtsied again.
“Indeed,” Bob said, “they did a right fine job of it. Lady Jocinda, ye should be proud.”
Lady Jocinda clutched her porcelain hands over where a human heart might be and bowed her head.
Cassie said to the dolls, “It’s weird that we’ve been together all this time and I don’t even know your names.”
Bob pointed at one. “That one is Jaclyn.” Then the other. “That one is Jazlyn.”
Stewart wasn’t sure how to tell them apart. Maybe Jazlyn had slightly longer hair and bigger eyes, but he couldn’t be sure—and after the way they’d handled him, he didn’t want to get close enough for a good look.
Then Cassie’s voice grew sad. “Does this mean you’re not my dolls anymore?”
Jaclyn and Jazlyn shook their heads emphatically and rushed forward to throw their arms around Cassie’s legs.
“But I don’t want to take you away from your mommy again,” Cassie said.
Bob said, “The lassies took this job willingly, my dear. They’re your guardians until you decide you no longer need their service.”
“Oh,” Cassie said, a sense of responsibility creeping into her voice. “I’ll make sure to take good care of them, Lady Jocinda.”
Lady Jocinda bowed her head in acknowledgment.
“You must be starving,” the shopkeeper said. “You’ve crossed three whole worlds on foot, after all.”
Liz swallowed hard and collected her voice. “I have so many questions.”
“Isn’t a companionable meal the perfect place to answer them?” the shopkeeper said. Then he gave Stewart a weighty look. “And now that you’re here, you and I have much to discuss.”
“We do?” Stewart said, feeling stupid at his slack-jawed response.
“You don’t think you were brought here for no reason, do you?” the shopkeeper said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Inside the tree mansion was more artisan-made beauty than he imagined could have existed. The floors and grand staircases of polished wood were somehow still alive, their wood grain shifting and changing like the city outside. Paintings, murals, sculptures in wood and stone, mosaics, bas-reliefs, tapestries. Some covered in stories, others simply abstracts that seized Stewart’s subconscious attention and struck him deep, lodging half-guessed impressions in his psyche.
The immensity of the mansion, with its many floors above and below, countless rooms filled with art and activity, made him feel insignificant, almost naked. What the activity was, he could not guess. The bureaucracy that oversaw the universe? Were there other humans like him who had the eye of the Queen and her court?
On the breeze came the scents of flowers, pine resin...and food.
The shopkeeper led them into a grand dining hall with a ceiling thr
ee stories high, where a dining table of modest size was set for six, dwarfed by the cavernous space. The silvery white tablecloth gleamed. All the dinnerware was of painted porcelain. Cutlery was fashioned of wood so dark it might have been ebony. Awaiting them were platters full of bread, bowls of fresh fruit, some types of which he didn’t recognize, and steaming tureens of savory soup.
Sunlight poured through skylights, painting shifting patterns on the floor. Paintings covered the walls. The dining table itself had legs that looked as if it might trot away at any moment.
Stewart remembered something he had read as a child. “So, if we eat any of this, do we still get to go home?”
“Stewart!” Liz hissed. “That’s rude!”
But the shopkeeper smiled. “You’re referring to the faerie tales that say if a mortal finds himself in the Faerie Realm, he should not eat anything he finds, or else be trapped there and unable to return home forever.”
Stewart nodded, glancing at Bob, who was growing in size sufficient to sit properly on one of the human-size chairs. “And Little People were usually the culprits.”
Bob said, “That’s a tactic oft employed by them that hold to the Dark path. Taint yerself with enough of the Dark, and it becomes mighty difficult to leave.”
“The same isn’t true here?” Stewart asked suspiciously.
“Stewart!” Liz said. “These are our hosts!”
But he ignored her. The sense that this was all too good to be true nagged at him.
The shopkeeper said, “We aren’t interested in forcing anyone to do anything. Eating our food, for instance, might make it easier for someone to return, but it won’t trap them here. In your case, it might make staying here easier.”
Stewart still looked insubstantial, fuzzy around the edges, as if the subject of a soft-focus lens, and he felt much that way, plagued by a buzzing tingle that wouldn’t relent. He hoped the food would help quell the tendrils of distrust and wariness.
Bob and the shopkeeper took seats at the ends of the table, Stewart and Liz on one side, the kids on the other. As Cassie slid up onto a chair, Jaclyn and Jazlyn took their places on either side of her. When they weren’t moving, they appeared inanimate, like real dolls. The uncanniness of it gave Stewart a chill.