The Tree

  “I lost mine and my sibling made this for me.”

  “What does it look like? Take off the glove.”

  A second child piped up and reached forward to do so. He pulled at the hem of her glove and his fingertip made contact with her arm. The little ‘dant began to scream. He pulled his hand away but Min could feel where some of the skin was now stuck to her. He cried and ran into the crowd.

  Min narrowed her eyes at the other children and they all ran off quickly.

  “That was not polite, Min,” Jagi said as both Antes reappeared.

  “Neither was touching me without my permission,” Min replied.

  “She is right,” Arel said.

  “Will you tell us another story?” Davi asked, pulling Jagi’s leg until he sat down, at which point Davi crawled back into his lap.

  Arel sat down too and lifted Min to sit between them. Min leaned against him and looked down at her gloved fist, clenching and unclenching it as Jagi told them stories about the worlds that drifted too close to one another and the people who crossed over.

  ERIK

  Erik started after Matthias but a hand gripped his wrist, stopping him. He turned and looked into Lil’s eyes. She shook her head and pulled once hard on his wrist before letting go. The branch that spoke for her twisted in front of him.

  WeWillClaimHimOnOurWay

  AllPathsAreOnePathHere.

  Erik grumbled but nodded. The branch settled back around Lil’s wrist. Erik wanted to ask if it was spelling words in English because of him or if the written language of Zebub was English. He looked at the books they passed as they moved on. Many had titles in English but they were outnumbered by the titles in other languages. Some he recognized like Spanish, Chinese, Greek, Amharic, but there were others that looked like nothing he’d ever seen before. Were they just Earth languages he was unfamiliar with or native languages of this world?

  Erik’s thoughts stuttered when he realized that, for the first time since they had arrived in Zebub, he was not in pain. He lifted his hands to his temples. The low-level migraine was gone. The shadows moving in the corners of his vision, and the whispers too low for him to hear; they were all gone. Even his physical pains seemed to be healed completely. They reached a fork in the hall and, seeing footsteps in the dust headed in one direction, Erik turned to follow where Matthias had gone. Again, Lil grabbed his wrist and pulled him in the other direction.

  He somehow knew that she was right; the way that Matthias went was not the way they should go. Something called to him like magnetic north.

  They walked in silence for a while, Lil disarming rooms as they moved through, pointing out the traps both physical and mystical.

  ThereWillBeThreeTests.

  “Why three?” Erik asked.

  ThreeIsAPowerfulNumberItHasBeenSo

  InAlmostEveryCivilizationItRepresents

  BodyMindAndSoulTheyWillTestEach.

  “Not to question this whole thing, but it feels like the sort of thing you should be doing on your own?” Erik asked.

  IfTheseWereTheTestsOf

  TheAthenaeumYouWouldBeCorrect

  ThereWillBeTestsFromKandakeThatIWillFaceOnMyOwn

  TheseAreFalseTestsMeantToKeepKandakeChained

  ThereAreNoSuchRulesWhenFightingInjustice.

  Erik was silent for a moment.

  “This woman who you met. The one who said this world was made of her? Can you describe her?” He asked.

  SheWasStrengthAndPowerEvenInSpiritItWasClear

  SheHadBeenDifficultToTakeDownAndEvenWith

  WhatTheyDidToHerBodyTheyDidNotDefeatHer.

  “Did she tell you a name?” Erik asked.

  NoSheDidNot.

  ButICallHerTheDantBeneathOurFeet.

  Erik nodded. Was it Bia? If they had taken her and twisted her into this world, then perhaps that somehow explained all the pain he had been experiencing since arriving? They reached a dead end. Normally Erik would suggest they backtrack, but he could feel that this was the right way. The way they were meant to go. Lil stepped forward and placed her hand on the wall and it split apart.

  Sand spilled out on their feet as it opened. Lil took a step inside, struggling to climb the unstable sand. She paused just inside the door and Erik had to squeeze around her to see what she was looking at.

  Matthias sat next to Byron’s corpse. For a long time, Matthias did not acknowledge them, though he had to have heard the door opening and their entrance. He simply stared down at the corpse of the man next to him. They all looked at Byron’s body but no one asked questions or mentioned the dried tears on Matthias’s cheeks.

  Lil did not try to communicate with them, and stood still until Matthias finally looked up smiling.

  He stood. “It took you all long enough.” The smile on his face was a broken thing, missing the joy that usually cascaded from it.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t just go off running when you see someone,” Erik quipped, but he could muster none of his usual sarcasm.

  They were interrupted by the grinding of stone and looked up to see Lil gesturing impatiently at the opposite door, which had started to close again. The three of them hurried to it and headed through. They walked in silence for a long time, though Erik did reach over and place his hand on Matthias shoulder, squeezing it once. Matthias’s own hand came up and gripped his. They walked like this, hand in hand, down yet another hallway, until suddenly they crossed over . . . to someplace else.

  He did not know how to explain it but Erik felt it all over his body. They were not in the building of Kandake anymore. They were elsewhere. Erik inhaled the sharp copper smell of the air. The feeling in the room was familiar; it was the same buzz and softness that overlaid his mind when Erik called his power up.

  CarefulWeAreNowNearTheHeartNothing

  YouSeeCanBeTrusted.

  He did not need the warning. Anyone with sense could tell that this was not an area to take lightly. He kept silent and his hand in Matthias’s.

  LIL

  The rooms were suddenly much plainer and the shelves on the walls held crumbling scrolls more than bound books. Dust was thick on everything, as if no one had been this way in centuries. It was larger than the other rooms. Twists and turns within its four extremely tall walls turned it into a maze. Lil had no idea what kind of tests Mayer had layered in here, so she crept forward carefully.

  The only reason she knew the type of tests was because of what the ‘dant beneath our feet had said. They turned to the right were immediately forced left by the curve of the wall. They found themselves in a small alcove created by the winding walls. It was lit up like it was on fire. Long vines of light bulbs blazed from every inch of the wall and curled around dozens of shelves stacked with small stone disks. What drew Lil’s eyes, though, was the pile of junk pushed into an unaccountably dim corner. Lil took a small step closer, leaning in. She was able to make out certain shapes, and gasped.

  “Jesus wept.” Erik exclaimed.

  Lil did not understand the expression, but she felt, and agreed with the sentiment behind it. Piled in the center of the room were the pieces of her body that had been removed. It made a very small pile, to be sure. A few fingers and toes and some small, indistinguishable chunks of flesh. She knew exactly where each piece was torn from, though, because every night she ran her hands over her body, relearning what was hers, and what they had taken from her.

  “Jesus? Really?” Matthias asked.

  The conversation faded into the background for her as she moved closer. Her hand went out, reaching for her tongue, which stood atop the pile, a foul flag pole. Before she closed her fingers around it, Lil noticed the writing around the edge of the pile.

  “What does it say?” The voice startled her but Erik and Matthias had come up on either side and were looking down with her. The text was in one of the more obscure power languages, a mix of Eastern Muria and Atlani.

  Her branch spelled it out for them.

  WhatYouTakeIsWhatYouLose.

  “We
ll, that sounds ominous as fuck,” Erik stated.

  Lil knew this was a test of Mayer’s, but she longed for her tongue back. Once she had the piece, she was sure that she could make use of power to reattach it. She could speak again. She could cast Babel. I could be useful again.

  That thought stopped her cold. Where had it come from? She been useful this whole time.

  She had helped to defeat the first Maasu she’d encountered. She had talked to the ‘dant under our feet. She had found her sibs and reclaimed them.

  She would claim Kandake as well.

  Her worth was not in her body alone but in the mind that drove her. Lil wished that, with that revelation, all her yearning for the pile of things they had taken would have left her, but that wasn’t true. She still wanted it badly, but she could see past it now.

  She still wondered if she could fight off whatever curse or spell Mayer had lain on her pieces but she knew the cost would be much too high. Even if the cost was just a delay in the time it took them to get back to the people they’d left behind. Lil closed her eyes and turned with a slow step and moved past the pile. With every step away, the desire to turn back decreased, and when she finally allowed herself to glance back, she saw the pile was now nothing but a mass of rotting offal, heaving and pulsating as if it lived and breathed.

  “I’m gonna say it was a good thing that none of us tried to touch that thing,” Erik stated.

  Lil nodded and moved around another corner of the maze, suddenly finding herself in an apartment that was very familiar. Lil bit at her lips, feeling them bruise with the pressure. Her parents’ old apartment. She could feel it coming, like a shiver up her spine.

  “What are you doing here, Lil?” The voices spoke in unison and Lil saw Erik and Matthias turn to face those who had spoken. She stayed still.

  “Who are they?” Erik asked.

  MyParents.

  Lil answered without looking. When she could bring herself to turn they were not dead or decaying as she had feared. They simply stood there wearing the same nightclothes they had had on when they died.

  “You couldn’t even save us but you think you can save this world?” They asked, their voices melding together again.

  The expression on their faces was something she had gotten used to long ago: a mix of wariness and disgust. She had first seen it when she was only six cycles, but it still cut through her every time she saw it again, making her feel like a young, helpless child.

  “You should’ve known you were never a worthy member of this family, let alone worthy of holding an Athenaeum,” Lil’s mother said, frowning at her.

  Her father put his arm around her mother and pulled her close, looking at Lil in reproach. “We’ve never liked you, remember?”

  Suddenly she was looking down at the scene outside of Kandake when she had been given to Mayer. Her six-cycle self clinging with stubborn determination to her father’s leg and screaming as her parents pried her off.

  Mayer stepped forward, touched her young self on the forehead. Lil saw her six-cycle self go slack and obedient. She remembered this, remembered screaming in her head, trying to fight off the control that snaked through her tiny body. Lil’s younger self followed him into the Athenaeum. It was the last time she had seen her parents for three cycles, until Min’s birth.

  The vision did not follow Mayer and the little ‘dant inside, though. It stayed out with her parents as smiles crept across their faces and they held each other tighter.

  “We’re finally free of her,” her father whispered.

  “Free to make children we can actually love,” her mother replied.

  And that was the detail that broke through the haze of pain that Lil floated in. It was what she had always imagined her parents said after she was taken away.

  Exactly. Down to the intonation.

  The world around her was changing again, no doubt to another scene built to convince her that her parents had never wanted her. Lil did not look. She closed her eyes and began to think it through. If the last one was body, then this one must be the test of the mind. Her parents were dead, so Mayer could not be using their memories. The trap had to be using her own mind to ensnare her. And if she was truly in her mind, then she could change it.

  Lil felt the world spin again and she was in her bedroom, right before their deaths. When they had apologized and hugged her. She held on to that memory and opened her eyes to find the images of her parents smiling at her, real, genuine smiles she could barely remember. Then they were gone and she was on her hands and knees on the cold stone floor. Lil stayed there shuddering and taking in deep breaths until hands came down on her shoulders. She looked up to see Erik and Matthias looking at her in concern.

  Lil had forgotten they were there but she was glad of their hands on her shoulders since it brought her back into the real world quickly. She needed to push through. She would not let others see her like this for long, even allies.

  Lil rose to her feet. As soon as she gained her footing, the scene around them spun and reformed. Now they were in The Out, in the center of a small dim clearing. The grass grew to their knees and branches tangled in Matthias’s hair. The dense impenetrable forest around them creaked and shuddered with wind.

  “Where are we?” Matthias asked. His eyes glowed yellow in the light, the way that animal’s eyes reflected light.

  TheOut.

  Except that wasn’t quite right, because while The Out had some shy wildlife, this version was teeming with life. The bushes around them and the canopy above shifted with movement. Warm fur brushed past her ankles, the softness of feathers dragged across her cheeks, but she could see none of the creatures that surrounded them.

  Things growled and roared and squawked all around them. Matthias’s scream was more one of surprise than pain, but by the time she turned there was only rustling as he was dragged into the forest.

  “What the fuck?” Erik yelled. As she turned to him she saw a blur of red and yellow shoot from the surrounding forest and tackle Erik, taking him into the trees as well. Lil ran forward hoping to catch him and bring him back, but it was too late. When she reached the place where he had disappeared, all the plants were still, as if nothing had passed through them.

  Lil took a deep breath and pushed down the fear gathering in her chest. She had seen them both in action. They could take care of themselves. There was no need to worry for them. Still, she scanned the forest for any signs of them.

  It was only when Lil heard the soft growl that she turned from her search. A four-legged beast was directly across from her, entering the clearing with no sound. Its fur was the yellow of aged bones. The top half of its skull was growing over its face like an obscene mask of pure, shining ivory. A bonewolf. Its eyes watched her, judged her, and found her wanting. Its head would come well above her hip and it was longer than she was tall. The fur on the body was short and she could see its muscles ripple underneath its skin.

  Lil held out her hands palm-to-palm and traced them through the air, a simple Kimerical physical prayer to calm wild beasts. She finished and absolutely nothing coursed through her.

  The bonewolf took another step toward her and snarled loudly. Lil swallowed and tried something else, stomping her feet in a Uka pattern that was a litany of nature’s true names and that should have made anything in range accept her as kin.

  Again, Lil was shocked to feel nothing, so when the bonewolf crouched and leapt for her she didn’t move fast enough. The jaws closed on her shoulder and she screamed, falling backwards. Her fall pulled the bonewolf with her and its own momentum flipped it over her shoulder. She screamed again as its teeth ripped from her body.

  Lil rolled and scrambled in the other direction. She got to her knees and faced the animal, which was now circling her slowly and snarling. The branch came to her hand and stiffened. She used the staff as leverage to get to her feet and waited. She did not have to wait long. The bonewolf ran across half the space between them, quick and low to the ground, an
d then launched itself towards her throat. She snapped the staff up between them just in time to stop the bonewolf’s teeth closing on her throat but it was not strong enough to stop the creature itself. The thing clawed at her body while she struggled to push it away. One of the thorns on the staff pierced one of the bonewolf’s eyes as they struggled. It yelped and backed away.

  Lil knew it would attack again and she would likely die when it did. None of her power worked here. What chance did she have against this monster who wanted her dead? And it did want her dead, but not just dead; in pain. She could read the intention in the air. This was no predator hunting to feed itself or its family. This was pain and death and revenge. It would kill her and it would relish every moment of the kill.

  Lil watched it circle ever closer and thought of never returning to her sibs. She thought of Min and Davi waiting for a sib who would never return. She thought of them lost as the darkness closed in. She thought of Arel and Jagi and the fierceness with which they would defend her sibs; the fierceness with which they had defended her sibs. She thought of the way they believed in her and the way they cared for her. Sudden rage rose up in her. Not just the need to survive but the burning desire to make the thing attacking her suffer; to teach it its mistakes through pain. Even if Lil died here she wanted the thing to suffer for the rest of its days. She wanted it to remember her. Lil stared into the beast’s last remaining eye as it snarled from a distance, and recognized it.

  She recognized it and struggled to her feet.

  The point was not to kill the predator; not to murder all that hate and lust and anger. The point was to accept it into yourself. That hate, lust, and anger? It lived in every soul. The bonewolf growled and approached. She was leaking copious amounts of blood from her shoulder and only hoped she was right because she would only be able to try this once.

  This time when it leapt she moved closer, reaching to get hands up to grasp its paws. She opened her mouth wide. As soon as she had made the decision, it became easy. A simple choice. The beast’s snout came into range and she snapped forward, bit down. Bone shattered under her teeth, as skin and muscle tore and blood filled her throat. She swallowed it down and kept chewing.