by Ben Galley
Merion could not help but stare as he watched the Shohari girls twirling around in front of him, barely a scrap of material between them, their only coverings bright splashes and stripes of purple and blue paint.
There were men too, of course, dressed with masks made from the furs and feathers of desert cats and huge vultures. But it seemed that this dance was a female’s domain, that the rhythmic pounding of the drums and wailing of the strange instruments was for the women, not the men.
Their dance was mesmerising. Feral to the core, they swayed and danced and yelped. It was hypnotic, the way their long limbs moved, as if they had no bones at all. Like shadows, they moved, black against the light of the huge pyre, shaking all the while as if possessed by maniac spirits.
Merion’s eyes widened as a group of women moved closer, eager to please the chief and the strangers from the south. They flashed their sharp teeth and howled as their serpentine bodies moved to the drums. Merion’s jaw hung agape. He found himself blushing as he caught their wild eyes, one at a time. He would never have admitted it, not in a thousand years, but Merion couldn’t deny the stirrings in his groin, the swirling of sudden emotions. Manners faded away. There were no fathers here, no watchful aunts.
It was then that Merion noticed Lurker was averting his eyes, staring at the sand instead of the naked display. He could see the downward angle of the man’s hat in his peripheral vision.
Lurker spared not a glance for the female form. His eyes were fixed at a spot just inches from his legs, and far away from the dark, sweaty skin only a few feet from him. There was a shadow over his face, but Merion could tell he felt uncomfortable.
‘Lurker?’ Merion asked.
Lurker sniffed and cleared his throat. ‘Miles away, boy. Never you mind me.’
‘Is it the dancers?’
‘No, they’re fine. Too fine for me, perhaps.’
Merion had to admit that he did not follow.
Lurker tutted. ‘Too familiar then,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘Had me a Shohari wife once, for a spell. Year maybe. Maybe less. House fire put an end to that.’
Whatever it was, something had loosened Lurker’s tongue a little. Perhaps he felt safe here, surrounded by the wild, strange Shohari. Perhaps he’d sipped more of his hipflask than usual. Whatever it was, Merion did not complain.
Lurker kept talking. ‘Was after the war, and we was livin’ out in the sticks outside of a tiny town called Hopeoak, near Denn’s Folly in Ohio. Folk in the town weren’t right in the head, not so soon after the war. Blamed my sort for a lot of things, and weren’t too keen on Shohari neither. What a couple we must of made to them. We were just two demons living on their outskirts, and they didn’t like that.’ Here Lurker took a breath. ‘Went up to Crickshaw one day to fetch some new pickaxes. Took me hours to get there, it was so damn hot. I’d been in a fight the week before, and a busted knee still hadn’t healed right. I was slow as a drunk mule.
Lurker paused here to sniff and stare at the dust some more. ‘I saw the flames from the next hill. Thought it a brush fire or somethin’. But no, it was our house. It was all rubble and cinders by the time I hobbled to it. Lehlana was dead inside. I didn’t need to see her all healthy and soft again to know her throat had been cut before the fire. The fucker that did it left the knife on the table.’
‘Who?’
Lurker rubbed his nose. ‘I don’t rightly know, but I must have killed him at some point or another…’
Merion was puzzled. ‘But … then how do you know?’
Lurker met Merion’s eyes then. His voice was cold and half-dead. ‘Because I went down to that town and killed every last man I could lay hands on. Gun. Knife. Rock. Whatever my fingers found, I used. Spilt blood in every saloon, store and outhouse that shit-creek town had to offer. I got every one of those murderous bastards, and when I was done I marched right out of there and didn’t stop running for two days. Came west and never looked back.’ Lurker broke off his stare, and Merion finally took a breath. He was starting to understand what the chief had meant about the cost of the truth. The truth was that Merion was rubbing elbows with a mass murderer.
‘I hear they call it Deadoak now.’ Lurker didn’t sound proud, but then again he didn’t exactly sound apologetic. Merion tried to see it from his perspective, and wondered what he might do if he had a dead wife, and a townful of murderers to hand. Merion found himself nodding. ‘My father would likely have called that justice.’
‘As would the Fae,’ Rhin said.
Lurker sniffed again. ‘And that’s what I tell myself,’ he said. ‘And so now you know about me, and what I’ve done. Will that shut you up for a while?’
Merion nodded. ‘I suppose it might. For tonight at least.’
‘Well, fortunately for me, you got other ears to scorch tomorrow, besides mine. Though good luck getting answers out of these mouths,’ Lurker chuckled. ‘Here, have some of this.’
With a tired groan and a creak of leather, he leant across the chief and grabbed a clay bottle. Mayut grinned at Merion while Lurker uncorked it.
‘Is it alcohol?’ he asked, sort of hoping it was.
Lurker disappointed him. ‘No, no. Just a mix of herbs, oils, and other things. It’s good. Everybody here is drinkin’ it,’ he said, motioning at the whirling lines of dancers.
‘I shall not be dancing.’
‘Don’t worry, just drink.’
And there they were, those famous, everlasting words of wisdom. Words usually and liberally dispensed by those already well down the river of drunkenness themselves. This drink was altogether more interesting than alcohol. It was sho’aka, an old Shohari recipe, and it was potent stuff. Merion felt it hit him almost instantly; little tendrils of warmth worked their way up his spine and into his shoulders. He liked it.
After a few more gulps he wiped his hand across his mouth and passed the bottle back to Lurker, who also took a few swigs. Together they sighed and turned to watch the dancers, and slowly the sho’aka wormed its way into their skulls, and began to work its magick.
Merion felt warm, that was for sure. There was a fire in his stomach, bubbling up his throat and into his cheeks. His eyes felt dry. They kept snagging on his eyelids, every time he moved them. They were heavy too, like musket balls. Why was his mouth so wet? Was he hungry? He had to keep swallowing to avoid drowning in his own spit. His teeth felt rough.
The hooks of irreality slid under his skin, and gradually his night began to warp and change. Colours burst in the fire. The dancers became taller, and darker, like strange shadows dancing before a funeral pyre. One moment he was standing. The next he was sat down, Rhin grinning at him. Time hopped back and forth like a sluggish toad, and somewhere in that swirling, muddy soup of moments and images, Lurker got up to dance.
It was not a moment of drunken hilarity. Nor was it a moment of cheering and yelling. It was a moment that only Merion seemed to notice, as he lay there supine in the sand, one eye half-closed and the other blinking continuously. The young Hark rolled his head to one side, watching Lurker walk on the side of the world. His steps were slow but determined. The closer he drew to the fire, the darker he became, until his form danced and wavered like the others spinning around him. It was then that Lurker did a strange thing.
Button by button, garment by garment, Lurker began to undress. Merion squinted. In the flashes of light, and as Lurker turned from side to side, he saw the marks.
There were scores of them. Thick red lines, criss-crossing his back in a web of torture, as though the man’s back had once been flayed apart and then woven back together. Merion found himself sucking on his teeth as he imagined the pain, the screaming.
‘John,’ he whispered, even though he knew Lurker couldn’t hear him. He soon lost sight of him in amongst the naked bodies.
Merion turned back to the dark sky and let it spin. He was melting into the sand, he could feel it. Rhin would have to come dig him out in the morning. In between the nonsensical ramblings of his addl
ed mind, Merion found himself mumbling a word over and over again, like a charm to keep his questions at bay. Sleep had started to paw at him, and he was more than ready to let it drag him off. He was starting to feel rather sick.
‘Tomorrow,’ he whispered. ‘Tomorrow.’
Tomorrow he would get to the bottom of all this. Truth be damned.
Chapter XVI
ANSWERS FROM AKWAY
‘Close. Far too close for my liking. We were headed for the stairs to the northeast tower. I was in the suitcase, all wrapped up. His father came out of nowhere. Demanded to know what the boy was doing. Got to hand it to the lad, he spun out the yarn. Karrigan’s suspicious now though.
Merion’s spent the night in his room. I’ve spent it up here, with the pigeons and curious spiders. At least I’ve got something to eat.’
16th May, 1867
Sweating was once again the order of the day, though this time, Merion thankfully did not have to walk. The grogginess of whatever he had imbibed the previous night still hadn’t quite worn off. Twice he had emptied his stomach, much to the amusement of the Shohari. Though the fresh air had set him right again, thank the Almighty.
By midmorning, he had decided that the little piebald pony he had been allotted needed a name, and that name was to be Gorm. It dribbled. It wheezed. It constantly wandered off the beaten trail. It spent long minutes just staring at the grass in front of its long nose: Gorm by name, gormless by nature. He was nothing like the ponies and small horses Merion had ridden in Caravel, on the dark beaches of the west coast.
Gorm’s only redeeming feature was the fact that Merion could ride him. Even though his back was bony, and he had to be constantly kept in check with sharp tugs of the reins, by the time the Shohari stopped for water Merion’s feet had not touched the sandy earth for almost four hours. It was blissful, and his aching feet thanked him.
The countryside rolled past, changing gradually as they moved from the hills and onto open, empty plain. The ground was greener here. Small emerald shrubs abounded. Cacti waved them past with rigid, bristling arms. Herds of buffalo could be seen milling about in the distance. Mice ran under the hooves of the horses, and jackals yowled at them from their dens. In only half a day’s travel, Wyoming had come alive, and Merion soaked up every drop of it.
Every one of his senses was on fire. The twittering of little finches filled his ears. The blossom of the shrubs and the sour-sweet scent of the cacti bombarded his nose. He could taste every little bit of grit on his tongue. He knew every hair and bead of sweat on his skin. Even the light had its way with him; stinging his eyes and making the colours of the plains pop and shimmer.
‘When does this stuff wear off?’ he asked moodily. Lurker rode just up ahead. His head had been bowed most of the day. Riding horseback apparently made him feel sick.
‘Noon. You’ll feel right as rain,’ he grunted.
‘Rain would be very welcome right now.’
Lurker snorted. ‘You’d be lucky, now we’re slippin’ into summer. You picked one hell of a time to come to Wyoming, boy.’
And hell was the perfect word for it.
By noon, the air shivered over the prairie. Even there, amongst the green shrubs and cacti, the heat was oppressive. Sweat ran down his face in little rivers, making his eyes sting all the more. Every inch of him burned, almost as though he could actually feel his skin cooking, bit by bit. It seemed as though their journey would never end, that the plains would stretch on for eternity, but then a miracle appeared on the horizon.
First, it came in the shape of a long, dark smudge, punctuated only by a few hills and a dusty canyon carving a chunk out of its right flank. Halfway through the searing afternoon, it was a thick band of deep green, gently swaying in the heat-waves coming off the plains. Then at last, as the day crumbled to evening, Merion realised what it was. He shook Rhin, who had fallen asleep on Gorm’s neck. ‘It’s a forest, Rhin. Wake up.’
And what a forest it was. The trees stood like an impenetrable wall, hundreds of feet high, battlements bursting with deep green bristles and knotted branches. Nothing is small here, thought Merion to himself, craning to look upward, daring his neck to snap.
The Shohari made no signs of halting to gawp. They plunged straight into the forest without so much as a word. The dust-brown tree trunks they rode between were like the pillars of the sky itself. They must have been a hundred paces around, at least. Big red berries glistened in the lower branches, hiding amongst the sage green of the fir. Creepers tussled with their thick, wandering roots. The air was thick with the smell of acid-sweet resin. Their path led them a merry dance through the undergrowth and down into a small ravine made sheer by slick granite rocks. Water trickled under-hoof. The going was slow, but steady. Still the Shohari made no noise. They were deadly silent to the very last. At the bottom of the ravine they followed its walls deeper into the forest. The day was on its death-bed, and with the towering trees and dark granite, it was unnervingly dark in the ravine.
After an hour of silent trudging, they came to an opening in the rock. The sheer walls peeled away and formed a wide, teardrop-shaped hollow in the earth. A small lake had gathered there, ringed in ivy and shadow. One solitary island sat on its glass-like surface like a broken crown. One tree grew alone on the little spur of rock, and one tree only. Even from the little grey beach at the edge of the hollow, Merion could see it was stunted and crippled. Its pale-leafed boughs stuck out at odd, tortured angles, and it seemed to sway, even though there was no breeze.
‘The Sleeping Tree,’ murmured Lurker, from behind him.
On the beach, a small and no-doubt ancient canoe was pulled up. ‘Akway,’ announced Mayut, pointing at the dusty vessel. ‘He waits for you, little warrior.’
Merion scrambled off Gorm and stepped forward. ‘I go alone?’
Mayut shook his head, scowling as if that were preposterous. ‘No. I with you, and Lurker too. Maybe.’
‘He can come,’ Merion replied, with a sideways glance at the prospector. Lurker just shrugged. ‘And Rhin,’ he added, letting Rhin climb back into the rucksack.
‘Then let us go,’ Mayut nodded, and with a flick of his knife the chief cut the rope holding the canoe on the beach. Together the three pushed it across the shingle and into the cold water. Lurker and Mayut took the paddles, and with deep, strong strokes they powered the creaking canoe towards the island. Merion sat in the middle, staring at the water. The lake was like liquid glass. Even in the gloom, Merion could see fish at its bottom.
The young Hark felt terribly nervous and yet excited at the same time. He wondered what Akway would look like, and how he managed to stay alive on his odd island. Perhaps he caught the fish with a spear, and lived in the branches of this ‘sleeping tree’ … Merion spun himself a little fantasy while the two men paddled.
With a thud, the nose of the canoe struck rock, and Merion was jolted forwards.
Mayut wrapped a scrap of rope around a protrusion of rock and then grunted at Merion. ‘Little warrior. Up there,’ he said, and pointed. Merion noticed his voice was softer now, gentler, as if he were afraid to wake something. It made Merion’s heart beat even faster. This is it, he told himself.
Merion hopped onto the rock, narrowly avoiding dunking one entire shoe in the water. With Lurker in tow, he scrambled up a little path to where the ancient tree clung to the rocks with thick, gnarled roots. There was no dirt here for its tentacles, only rock. He wondered how it had survived all these years.
Breathing slightly heavier than usual, Merion stood before the Sleeping Tree, and took in all of its twisted beauty. Every inch of its bark was contorted and warped into whorls, zigzags and spiderwebs. Even its leaves were curved or coiled, as though some great force had reached up inside its trunk one day and pulled out its insides, sucked everything inward. Even though there was no breeze, its leaves rustled, and Merion found himself transfixed by their sighing.
The boy looked all around, up and down, but there was no sign of a
ny Akway, shaman or wise man, nor any other strange, old or malnourished soothsayers. Merion was beginning to feel that old familiar sinking feeling yet again.
‘So where is this Akway?’ he whispered, as loud as he dared. There was an air of the sacrosanct about this little island, one that he wasn’t quite sure about spoiling, not yet.
Mayut rumbled from behind him. ‘Clear as day, little warrior.’
Merion made a show of looking about again. ‘I don’t see a soul.’
The chief shook his head solemnly. ‘Not one soul. Three.’
Merion threw him a quizzical look, and Mayut pointed a finger at each of his eyes, then back at the tree. ‘Look into the tree. At its heart. You find your answers.’
Merion looked, eyes straining towards the rippled trunk, trying to dig out whatever it was the chief was talking about. Anything: patterns, words, faces …
Faces.
His eyes caught it, and Merion almost yelped with shock. The face was huge and gnarled, made of knots and creases. Embedded deep in the trunk, it must have been the size of a banquet platter, and terrifyingly enough, it was now grinning at the young Hark.
It took barely a second for Merion to spot the second face, almost conjoined with the first, hanging from its chin. It too was comprised of broken bark, though this one lacked eyes. The upper half of its face had been swallowed up by a mossy growth.
Then the third and bottommost face twitched. It wrinkled its knotted brow and took a breath, making a sound like fingernails dragging across sun-baked driftwood. Merion took a step back, doubting his nerve for a moment.
‘Fear not,’ Mayut advised him, in barely a whisper.
The other two faces were coming to life now, blinking and twitching as the magick crept into their wizened, ancient features. The tree itself began to quiver. Around Merion’s feet, the tangled roots started to squirm among the rocks. Rhin, now out of the pack, and as fascinated as Merion, hopped away from them, feeling the magick burning in them. This was old, older than anything Fae. Merion realised what Lurker had meant, back on the shore.