The Tree

by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun

  Robert swallowed but could not respond. He shrugged and she rolled her eyes before pulling him into another hug. He looked over her shoulder. His father was still seated to the right of the place his mother had been. Across from him was another empty chair that Alexander stood behind. Next to his father sat his younger brother Nicholas, head shaved, his ears adorned with large black plugs. He smiled at Robert and it was as slimy as he remembered. Nicholas’ bare arms were covered in tattoos and Robert recognized some Greek letters before he looked at the man seated to his younger brothers right. He wore a stylish red sweater and horn-rimmed glasses that accentuated his large black eyes, which were glancing around the room uncomfortably. His skin was a rich brown and his awkward smile revealed slightly crooked but perfectly white teeth.

  Next to his older brother’s empty chair sat a woman with pale white skin and dark brown hair that curled wild and loose around her round face. She was staring at Robert directly, assessing him with cool indifference. He riled under the feeling of being judged unworthy. All the reasons he had left came rushing back and the guilt he had started to feel receded.

  His mother pulled back and turned to look behind herself.

  “Oh, of course. This is Yohanna, Alexander’s girlfriend.”

  The woman nodded and stayed silent. Robert returned the gesture and did not offer his hand.

  “And Nicholas’s husband Demetri.”

  The man in the red sweater rose, half leaning over the table to reach out and shake Robert’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said with a nervous smile.

  “Same.”

  Robert let go and pulled back but Demetri stayed nervously standing until Nicholas pulled him back down.

  “You’re about to get your pants in the food, dear,” he chided.

  “What? Oh, sorry.” Demetri sat down quickly and shared a quiet smile with Nicholas. It made something clench in Robert’s belly and he had to look away.

  “Join us for dinner? We can start to catch up,” his mother offered.

  Robert was surprised at how much he wanted to say yes; to get caught up in the same old dinner antics that they used to when they were younger. But he couldn’t do it. He had come here for some answers and he needed them now. If he stayed here and fell back into the patterns of his childhood he’d never ask. He’d just let their stronger personalities push him around.

  “I’m sure they all know, don’t they?” Robert said it lowly but they all heard him. He knew it since they all turned to look at him.

  “Romanos, what are you talking about?” His father’s voice was sharp and Robert remembered his lack of patience; his lack of caring for the child that had no power. He had not known that was the reason then, but he certainly knew it now.

  “The fact that you’re all Blooded.”

  His mother’s face went sallow and even Nicholas looked at him with his mouth tight and expressionless.

  “Are they?” Robert nodded to Yohanna and Demetri.

  “I am,” Yohanna answered, head tilted to the side, her hand in Alexander’s as he stood by her chair.

  “Um, I’m not awakened,” Demetri stammered out.

  “But you still know? Funny how you were told and I was not.” Robert stared at his mother’s face and could practically see her anger rise.

  “His own family told him. Not us,” she said tightly.

  Robert let out a bitter laugh. “Of course not. Talking was never this family’s greatest strength, was it? But let’s get some answers now. When did you awaken, Alex?”

  His older brother met his gaze calmly. “Eleven.”

  “Nicholas?”

  Nicholas smirked; the smug look his younger brother had perfected in the crib. “Five.”

  Robert nodded. “No one thought to tell me?”

  “It’s not our way,” his mother said. “Our family has always only told the awakened and let the others of our family lead normal lives.”

  Robert couldn’t help but laugh again. “Normal? Did any of you ask me if I wanted a normal life? And if that was your intention, then good job at such a spectacular failure. My wife has been using me to keep herself from awakening. My son is some sort of foot soldier in a war and I am—well, who the fuck even knows?”

  “Look, Romanos. We are sorry you never showed signs of being special—” his father started.

  “Why don’t you just shut the hell up, father?” Robert yelled and saw the blankness spread across his father’s face. “You weren’t there for me when I was a child, and you think you get to have an opinion now?” His voice rose to an unattractive shriek at the end, but he could not help it. He watched his father until he was sure of the man’s continued silence. Then he turned to the rest of his family. “I wasn’t an idiot! I knew there was something going on!”

  “We didn’t know how to tell you, and we worried that if we did anything it would affect your awakening even more,” Alexander said.

  “So instead I just got to feel excluded, like I didn’t even belong in my own family?” he shouted.

  None of them had a response and Robert felt a moment of triumph; one that had been coming for a long time. Then Yohanna’s voice cut through the silence.

  “What exactly are you looking for here, Romanos? What do you want?”

  Robert stopped, both at the audacity of this stranger daring to address him by a name he had thrown off two decades ago and at the realization that he had no answer for that question.

  “I want—” He didn’t know how to finish, and as Yohanna opened her own mouth to say something else, the ground between them exploded. Monstrous things that he could only assume were the Angelics that Dayida had told him about came through. Three of them. The first simply looked like a giant black serpent with no face or features at all, terrifying but at least identifiable and comparable to something Robert had seen before. The second two he had no idea what to compare to. The second one through the hole was a rounded ball of flesh; pink with veins of blue and red rising to its surface before they disappeared again. It rolled along the ground but Robert saw little things pushing at the flesh from the inside, propelling it forward. It disturbingly reminded him of when Dayida had been pregnant and Erik had pushed his little foot or hand so hard against his home that they had seen the imprint from the outside. The third was burning. Robert had no other way to describe it. He could see the warping in the air, could sense the heat radiating from it. The floor sizzled and blackened underneath it, but there was no flame. The second and third had no eyes but they did not seem to need them as they headed for his family.

  Alexander went for the serpent, dived upon its back and pulled it back from where it had been about to strike at Demetri. He locked his arms around the serpent’s body and pulled back.

  Nicholas had pulled a sword from somewhere and leapt forward, bringing it through the ball of flesh, carving it in half. Robert caught a glimpse of blood and organs before they reformed as two balls. One bounced up and melted across Nicholas’s face. He dropped his sword and began to grope at his face. Demetri screamed and rushed forward, pulling at the pink putty that was blocking his husband’s airways.

  His father was now on the table trying to direct the action, but no one was listening to him. The serpent had gotten free of Alex and had him wrapped in its coils. Yohanna screamed and shifted into another form. Her hands and feet were now clawed and wickedly sharp. Her mouth full of sharp teeth. She’d dived at the serpent and begun to tear at it’s skin. His mother was on her feet facing the warp in the air.

  Somehow as he stared at his mother she seemed to get bigger, sharper, and longer. Her fingers grew unnaturally long and her face did as well, becoming a thing of nightmares. He felt the fear well up in his stomach and it froze his body motionless. He managed to shift his eyes over to the warp and saw that it was slowly backing back toward the hole in the ground, away from his mother. As soon as his eyes were not directly on her, the fear drained from his body. If he glanced at her from the corner of h
is eye, quickly, she looked the same as she ever did. If he looked too long though she started to stretch out again, turning into a monster.

  Robert saw his father and Demetri had managed to the get the thing off of Nicholas’ face and it was now pinned to the floor with the sword. The second half of the creature was wrapped around his father’s hands trying to reach his face. Demetri was busy trying to revive Nicholas by breathing in his mouth and pumping his chest. He watched his father for a moment; saw the pink slip up his wrists, and to his elbows. He thought about helping but was still undecided when it reached his father’s neck and he cried out, causing his mother to look over. As soon as his mother took her attention off the warp in the air a flash of unbearable heat had swept over them all and everything went dark.

  He’d woken chained and speared to the wall, with his family on either side of him. He did not know how long they had been on the wall but he had woken up a few times to the same sight. None of the others were ever awake when he was and even if they were it was not like they could speak. His lips were gone, his tongue and teeth still there but behind a wall of flesh with no orifice. He’d passed out from panic the first three time he’d awoken because of that simple fact.

  Now Robert lay in the bed, panting as if in remembering his body had gone through it all again. His hands slammed up to his lips; they felt cut and raw, jagged and uneven. He licked out and felt scars and ridges. He tried to push himself up.

  “Rest. You need it.”

  Robert’s head snapped around but he could see no one in the room with him that was not on a table and unconscious.

  “Remember me, Robert?” Daniel appeared floating above him and smirking. Robert let out a yelp and, had he been stronger, would have rolled off the table completely.

  “Daniel?” He was shaking. “What are you doing here? Are you one of them, like Erik?”

  Daniel smiled and it was not nice. “No, Robert. I’m dead. Thanks to you.”

  Robert moaned low in his throat. “Are you here to haunt me?”

  Daniel smirked. “You wish. I have much more important things to deal with than you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Change is coming, Robert. I’m offering you a chance to not only be a part of that change, but to have a position of power within that change.”

  Robert was tempted by power, as he always was, but Yohanna’s voice echoed in his head. What do you want? What did he want?

  “What are you asking me to do?”

  “So here’s the thing. This world is going to be under siege soon.” Daniel looked down at Robert’s bandaged wrists. “You’ve already experienced the first wave. There are many more to come. There is no way to stop it. So you must decide which side you want to be on—winning? Or losing?”

  Robert stared at the boy who had every cause to hate him.

  “And which side is the rest of my family on?” Robert finally asked.

  “I think you know that,” Daniel smiled, moving to Robert’s side. “But you’ve always been more practical than the rest of your family, right?” He saw the hand reaching for his face but could do nothing to stop it. He felt the touch, like feather-light electricity down his jaw and under his chin. “You help me out and I promise not to kill any of your family, on purpose. As well as giving you a place of power in the new order. What more could you ask for?”

  Robert thought about the offer and looked at those around him. His eyes landed on his mother’s form. Her usually stocky body looked somehow bird thin against the white sheet. Her steel gray hair spread out around her head. As if seeing her had started a chain reaction, his gaze landed on his father and then on Alexander, then Nicholas, then Alexander’s girlfriend Yohanna and Nicholas’s husband Demetri and he felt something stir inside of him.

  They were good. They would fight to the last. Robert was not good. He wasn’t evil either. At least he didn’t think so. But he knew a good deal when he saw it. Maybe they’d defeat whatever was coming, in which case great, but, in the more likely event that they lost, at least they wouldn’t die.

  He had always assumed that his family kept things from him out of indifference, if not straight-up malice. But maybe they actually were trying to protect him? After the attack, he could almost believe it. This was an opportunity to prove to himself and to his families that he was worth more. That he could care about them in that same way. He would do this thing for them.

  “Yes. I will help you.”

  He looked back to Daniel but the ghost was gone. Exhausted, he lay his head down and sank into sleep.

  BYRON

  He had delivered on his part of the bargain in the middle of the night. Calling on Mayer, they had met again by the water, and he had received the key to the door of Kandake and told the older man where to find those he was looking for. It had been a simple thing to return to the House of the Madame he was staying in and question the proprietor as to where the two Antes with the two ‘dant children had fled to.

  His ambient powers did not seem to work here—no one just liked him from being in close proximity to him—but when he focused, his powers were stronger than ever. He had cut through whatever defenses The Door had and gotten the information easily. The same with The Door at the second House of the Madame.

  He wondered if he could go further, and maybe push his powers into telepathy? It was terribly tempting to try.

  The sun was rising in the sky as they arrived at Kandake. The huge doors were closed and no lights burned in the windows at all. It felt abandoned.

  He smiled as he approached and pulled the small fold of cloth that he carried in his pocket. He unfolded it carefully, revealing the three drops of blood, not soaked into the fabric but resting on it, whole and round. He located the first place that the Holder had mentioned; a small depression where the door met the floor. He picked up the first drop carefully and let it fall in the depression. The second drop went in a small recess on the inside of the door handle, easy to mistake for just regular pitting. The final drop he balanced on his thumb as he reached for the handle. Right were his thumb would land, a thorn jutted out. He let the tip of it pierce the drop of blood and sucked it in.

  The door unlocked under his hand and he pushed it open. The lighting was dim, barely bright enough to see anything. He gestured for Bastion to go first, and followed with Melisande bringing up the rear. From whatever direction an attack might come, it would hit one of them first, giving him a chance to fight back.

  “What are we looking for?” Bastion asked belligerently.

  Byron smiled. He supposed it was no longer necessary to keep it from them. He doubted they would be useful for that much longer.

  “I awakened at a very young age. Most charmers do. They find themselves in some situation where they are desperate enough, where they need someone to like them so much that their power comes online. When you charm others, you start to see the dark side of people liking you. Wanting you.”

  “Okay, what does this have to do with anything?” Melisande asked.

  Byron simply ignored the question. “Right up here, Bastion.”

  He did not know for sure that they should turn right, but it felt like a good choice, and they just needed to get deeper, closer to the living portion of the building. He felt the air pressure change and the temperature skyrocket beside him and quickly leapt forward as a funnel of fire blasted out from the side of the wall.

  Melisande cursed loudly behind him, but it was frustration, not pain.

  “Still alive back there?” Byron laughed at his own joke, ignoring the look Bastion threw at him. He continued his explanation. “There’s a chance, you see. To not only save our world, but to change it too. But I need more power. I need to be able to tame what is coming and make it do what it should have done the first time.”

  “What do you mean, ‘first time?’” Bastion asked. His voice was quieter, and more cautious. They had arrived in a cramped portion of the library. Books curved overhead on rickety wood shelves. T
here was barely any space for them to move.

  “The world has been made and destroyed so many times now. It is a process of expanding and shrinking. Each time we are created anew; a little different perhaps, but the same basic plan. Always with the same problems: the same hunger and pain; the same bitterness and oppression. It’s a flaw in the design. I plan to fix it.”

  The walls around them had widened up and they were approaching a rough staircase. As they climbed Byron continued. “Those with other powers—more explosive or obvious powers—tend to overlook charmers. Most don’t even bother to learn what bloodlines we descend from. But it’s important. Charming is manipulation. It’s forcing your way into someone’s mind and making a place for yourself. It is anything but harmless.”

  They reached the top of the stairs and stood in a hall of statues; some made out of ivory, some out of gold, and some seemingly carved of water or fire or other non-solid-materials somehow made firm. As Bastion passed the first one, a metal woman, nude, holding a man’s head in one hand and a knife in the other, it turned to face him and spoke.

  “You come to the hall of memories. What is it that you seek?”

  Bastion yelled and jumped at the first word.

  “Passage?” Byron answered.

  “Passage is free. Go as thou wilt, but have you no questions for us?” The statue answered.

  “No.” Byron did not need anyone to tell him that any questions in here would have a catch attached. The statues had Catch-22 written all over them.

  “I have a question,” Melisande said.

  Byron swung around to silence the little idiot but it was too late. The statue who answered Melisande looked to be the nude form of a man made of white marble veined in pink. He had wide hips and shoulders and held a whip in one hand and in the other a jug against his hip. His head was that of a cheetah and the look in the statue’s eyes was pure predator.

  “Ask your question, child.” The voice was a purr more than anything else. It invited confidence and seduction.