Seven Trees of Stone

by Leo Hunt

  “What is that thing, Luke?” Holiday asks.

  “I don’t know exactly,” I say. “It’s a spirit. Something from . . . outside. Something that shouldn’t be here.”

  “But why did they have . . . They have horse bodies,” Holiday says. “Why . . . ?”

  “I think being in Deadside changes spirits. My dad’s ghosts, his Host, had mostly stayed in Liveside, here, after they died. They looked like people, more or less. I think once you cross over, you might start to change into something else. If that’s what you want.”

  I’m thinking of the Fury, my dad’s dog-headed demon; thinking about the creatures I met in Deadside, the parade of monsters: a snake with human teeth; the Riverkeeper with its split face, half woman and half man; the shape-changing ghoul with arms longer than its body. Maybe all of them were regular people once.

  “Why would someone want that?” Holiday asks. I don’t have an answer. We sit there in the snow, getting our breath back. My mind is with Elza, still out there, somewhere I can’t see or speak to her. I imagine Titus sinking his shark teeth into her beautiful neck, imagine the blood —

  No. There’s no time for that. Elza will take care of herself. She knows where we’re going.

  Elza dead in the snow, the Knights eating her heart —

  She’ll meet us at my house. We’ll see her there. It’ll be fine.

  Things aren’t nearly as bad as they could be.

  Elza will be fine.

  “Just us, then,” Holiday says, as if reading my mind. I suppose she’s thinking about Alice, Mark, and Kirk. I won’t say I’m not worried about them, but not in the same way I worry for Elza.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “So we go to your house,” Holiday says. “Stick to the plan.”

  “Stay away from the town square. Cross the river.”

  “Definitely,” Holiday says. She pulls her hood back up. I look at her curiously. She’s taking all of this better than I thought she would. I kind of assumed only me and Elza could deal with things like this, but Holiday’s keeping it together. Maybe she was built to keep it together. Maybe the same thing that lets you keep all the popular Dunbarrow girls organized during a night out at Vibe lets you keep your head when your town gets swallowed by the spirit world.

  “Sorry I said you were mentally ill,” Holiday says.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I said it back when you stole that DVD from me. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Holiday, I barely remember that happening. It’s OK, really.”

  “Good,” she says.

  Another flash in the sky. For a moment it’s like we’re suspended in jade liquid, the fog stained a strange pearly green. A few fresh snowflakes come drifting down out of the gloom. Great. If it starts snowing properly again while we’re out here, that alone could kill us. I drag myself to my feet. Holiday fumbles at the knots that keep the rope around her torso.

  “They’ve gone so tight,” she says. “My fingers are too cold.”

  I pass her the knife I took from Elza’s kitchen. After a few moments of sawing, the knots are undone. We leave the rope tied to the chimney and make our way across the flat roof, then another, moving away from the bonfire in the town square. The snow up here is thick and undisturbed, and we write breathless stories on it with our feet.

  Eventually we find another fire escape and climb down, after making sure Dumachus isn’t lurking nearby. I don’t like being down at street level with the Knights and revelers prowling around, but there’s no way we can get back to my house while staying out of their reach. We’ll just have to be brave, and fast, and lucky.

  This is a side street, linking the main road with the parking lot outside the riverside leisure center. We make for the parking lot and the river, moving quickly and quietly behind ranks of parked cars, hoping we can sneak along the side of the river and find the bridge that way. The lot is covered in snow, the cars just gentle suggestions under the whiteness. You can see normal stuff still, chip bags stuck in leafless bushes, street lamps, benches, a parking meter. But the leisure center is gone, and instead there’s just blackness, silence. We pass between the last few cars like we’re in a dream and find ourselves standing on the banks of a river.

  The river isn’t the Brackrun, the river that flows through Dunbarrow and Throgdown and Brackford on its way to the North Sea. I can’t see the pedestrian bridge, the park with its bandstand and swings and ducks. I can’t see the other side at all. What I can see is black, silent water, stretching out into the fog-dimmed distance.

  “Was there a flood?” Holiday asks. “The snow might’ve melted upstream . . .”

  “No,” I say. “This is like the trees we saw, that gray forest. It’s part of Deadside.”

  I walk farther forward. The parking lot fades away the closer you get to the river, asphalt and paving stones becoming sand and pebbles, a barren gray riverbank. There are tiny pale bones from an unidentifiable creature, scattered here and there. No plants grow. The river is silent and immense, larger than any of the rivers I saw the last time I journeyed through Deadside. I have the sensation of infinite space, infinite time, something almost as powerful and mysterious as the Shrouded Lake itself. I imagine this river of shadows lasting forever, a river so long it could loop around the entire universe, something that makes the Amazon look like a trickle of rainwater running over a stone. There might not be an opposite bank. I don’t find it scary, either. I think it’s beautiful.

  “Is it safe?” Holiday’s voice comes from behind me.

  “It should be. Don’t touch the water, though.”

  I don’t know if it would do her any harm, but there’s no sense tempting danger. Snowflakes dance past my vision, but they don’t seem to land anywhere on the riverbank. Whatever’s happening here, it isn’t quite part of the river. Unlike the horse spirits and the Apostle, I don’t think this river came to Dunbarrow to devour. I think it’s here just to be.

  “What is this?” Holiday asks, beside me now.

  “The river Styx,” I say. Nobody told me, but I feel like I always knew. It has to be, right?

  “That’s a real thing?”

  I gesture at the black water.

  “I mean, people probably call it different things. But there are eight rivers in Deadside. And this is the biggest one.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can just feel it,” I say.

  What was it the Shepherd called it? Backbone of the underworld. River of Oaths. I assume he stood on the banks of the Styx at some point, looking at this same expanse of darkness.

  “What’s that?” Holiday asks. She’s pointing somewhere out at the edge of our vision. I squint. There’s a small white light, moving rapidly across the surface of the Styx, from our right to our left, presumably in the direction of the current. I can’t make it out clearly, but maybe it’s a lantern on a boat of some kind. I assume the Styx has a Riverkeeper, just like the Cocytus did.

  “I don’t know,” I reply.

  It seems like an ember, something moving toward extinction. After a moment it goes out or vanishes from view.

  I look down at the shoreline. I think about sitting in gray sand and mist with Dad and Mr. Berkley, back before I understood anything about Deadside. Were we sitting by the Styx? I remember hearing the ocean. The water of this river doesn’t make a sound. It’s not so cold here, at least.

  There’s something about the stone next to my shoe that catches my eye. It’s small, maybe the size of my thumbnail, dark gray. It has a rough hole bored through it. I bend down and pick it up, look through the hole. For a moment I can see a tiny star.

  “Hey,” I say to Holiday, who’s still looking at the Styx, “check this out. A wyrdstone.”

  “A what?”

  “Stone with a natural hole. They’re charms against evil spirits.”

  “It just looks like a stone to me, Luke.”

  “Nah, I’m serious.” I hold it out to her. “You should have it.”r />
  Holiday reaches out and takes the stone. She looks at it critically.

  “Magic’s in things,” I say. “It’s really there. Trust me.”

  Holiday shrugs. “I suppose you were right about everything else so far,” she says. Holiday reaches into her jacket and pulls out her golden necklace, a little heart locket hanging from it. She unclips the chain and threads it through the hole in the center of the wyrdstone, leaving it to hang next to the locket.

  “How’s that?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, “great. Lucky, right?”

  “I don’t feel that lucky at the moment.”

  I think about Elza, remember her wyrdstone, how for ages I thought it was just some weird affectation. I remember her plunging it into the Shepherd’s face, scattering him like mist burning off in sunlight. I remember her lying on the ground outside Ash’s house. I can’t lose her again.

  “No,” I say. “Me either.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I think we walk. Let’s just walk in the direction the bridge would be and hope we find something.”

  “We should think about the bridge, then?” Holiday says.

  “Yeah. That’s right. Just try to imagine us crossing it. Think about the others, too,” I say, as if there were any danger of us not thinking about them. Elza’s probably at my house already, I tell myself. She knows what it looks like, what it feels like to be there; she can lead Kirk and Mark there easily.

  We walk along the riverbank, ears straining for the sound of voices or hoofbeats. I think the wyrdstone will help us a little against Dumachus and Titus, but I don’t know how much. The Knights of the Tree seem powerful, closer to a spirit like the Riverkeeper than a wandering ghost, and I don’t know what rules they play by.

  The landscape around us seems to only be Deadside now, gray trees and bushes and stones, a constant backdrop of churning gray mist. The cars are gone. I’m still cold, and a sulky crowd of snowflakes comes falling past my eyes as we walk. Another group of the strange lights passes us in the river, but each of them is too far out into the mist to see clearly.

  We pass more bones, half buried in the gray sand, some creature that I can’t put a name to. I wonder how long they’ve been there. Time here is strange, and there’s a sense that a million years ago and right now are the same thing, that there’s no difference between those concepts. The eight rivers will always flow. We walk through a copse of gray willow trees, their branches trailing down into the shadowy water. What did Ryan say to me, back there in the town square? The Barrenwhite Tree. If only I knew what that was supposed to mean. We make our way up a low rise, gray, brittle grass under our feet, and in the hollow beyond the rise, we come across three figures sitting around a gray fire.

  I don’t know whether we should turn around, don’t know what we’ve walked into. The people around the fire look just like that: people, without horse bodies or animal masks or any of the other horrible things we’ve seen tonight. There’s something odd about their postures, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.

  One of the people, a man, I think, has risen to his feet.

  “Who goes there?” he calls to us. His voice is high and musical.

  “What do we do?” Holiday whispers.

  “Introduce ourselves or run away,” I whisper back. “Which do you think?”

  “They sound like they’re afraid of us,” she hisses. “Why don’t we ask them for help?”

  “Luke Manchett,” I call to the people, “and Holiday Simmon. We’re lost travelers and looking for help.”

  “Very well spoken,” the man calls back, with a hint of mockery. He’s lit from behind, the fire a pale smear of light. “Be you a haunt, Luke Manchett?”

  “I don’t know what that means!” I shout.

  “Be you a ghoul, then? Be you a soul-sucker?”

  “We’re not dead,” I call. “We’re alive.”

  There’s a pause, then the man who’s calling to us bursts into laughter. “Alive!” he shouts. “The living walk lost along the banks of the Styx now! You hear that, Bald Samson? Rain will be falling upward next! You are not alive, Luke Manchett!”

  “We are!” Holiday yells to him. “Let us come closer and you’ll see.”

  The man is talking to the others around the fire. I can’t hear what they say. After a while he shouts up the bank to us, “Sit by our fire, then! But be slow about it, and know we are armed!”

  We approach the fire carefully, still not sure what to make of these strangers. They must be dead: his laughter when I said we were alive makes me sure of that. Beyond that, I have no idea. I’ve not been lucky enough to meet many friendly spirits, but I know they do exist. Their fire grows closer, and I can see their shapes more clearly in the mist: two men and a woman, who’s sitting at ease in the gray grass. The man who was talking to us moves away from the campfire, walking with a strange gait. He comes closer, and I can finally see him properly through the mist.

  He has a thin, aged face, a neck with loose flesh hanging from it, light wisps of hair sprouting from his hands and ears and nose, and teeth that are crooked and graying. But his eyes are bright, alert, and intelligent, appraising me and Holiday with rapid glances. He’s dressed in gray rags and walks with an odd limp because of the heavy stone attached to his torso. The rock is big, larger than my head, dark colored, firmly chained to the man. It drags along the ground behind him, twisting his body to one side.

  “Welcome, travelers,” the strange man says. “Well met upon this dismal road.”

  He reaches out to me, and before I can think better of it, I take his gnarled gray hand. His palm is cold, his fingers like flutes of ice, but I know he can feel my warmth even through the glove I’m wearing, and his colorless eyes widen.

  “You spoke true,” he says, and then, “Bald Samson! They spoke truly! They are a living boy and girl! Whatever are you doing, wandering by these dark waters?”

  “We’re looking for Luke’s house,” Holiday says.

  “I daresay you have gone off course,” remarks the other man.

  “Join us by the fire,” the thin man enthuses to us, shaking Holiday’s hand as well. “I am Larktongue, and these are my traveling companions: Bald Samson and the lady who does not speak and thus has not introduced herself to me.”

  Bald Samson nods to us both, neither hostile nor particularly welcoming. He’s enormous, one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen, built like a bull, with a thick dark beard and dark skin and a wide, smooth scalp that reflects the firelight, and a black scrap of hair above each ear. He’s dressed in the same gray clothing as Larktongue, and there’s a heavy stone attached to his body as well. Bald Samson seems to carry his burden tightly strapped to his torso, giving him a permanent hunchback. The woman remains mute and doesn’t look up from the fire, apparently uninterested in us. She’s dressed in gray rags like her traveling companions, but with a veil of thin gray cloth enveloping her face, hiding it from view. She has a smaller rock, perhaps the size of a soccer ball, chained to her left wrist. Holiday grins at these strange people, wringing every drop of warmth from the famous Simmon smile.

  We sit by the fire. The flames are bright, but they’re the color of a rainy sky, and they cast no heat upon our faces. Larktongue sits with his boulder beside him and pokes at the campfire with a gray branch. He has a long knife in his belt, I notice, and Bald Samson has a heavy wooden walking stick, so they’re clearly prepared to fight if they have to. From what I’ve seen of Deadside, this strikes me as pretty sensible. The veiled woman doesn’t seem to be armed.

  “Where are you all going?” Holiday asks them. She’s taking this remarkably well.

  “We are pilgrims,” Larktongue tells us. “Sinners seeking peace. We are following this great river to its holy source, the Shrouded Lake. They say the Styx is longer than a man could walk in ten lifetimes, but the dead have all the time they need. One day we will reach that sacred lake of darkness and cast our sins into its depths. Until then, we car
ry them alongside us.”

  “Is that what the rock is?” I ask.

  “Indeed!” Larktongue replies. “This accursed burden is my sin given form. My pride and sloth and waste and lust. Only once I have borne it all along the banks of this mighty river will I truly understand the weight upon me and be ready to let it go.”

  “Did you sin a lot?” Holiday asks.

  “I am given to understand my sins were modest. Bald Samson here, as you can see, bears a much heavier load, in part due to his long career of iniquity.”

  Bald Samson shrugs his enormous shoulders.

  “I lived how I lived,” he rumbles. “I carry what I carry.”

  “But who made you do this?” Holiday asks Larktongue. “Who chained these to you? Who says that’s fair?”

  “Made us? Child, we chained these rocks to ourselves willingly. I am glad on it! It is only through this grand pilgrimage that we have any hope of entering Elysium, the lap of the heavens.”

  “And that’s good, right?” I ask him.

  “It is paradise,” he says. “It will be true bliss.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No.” Larktongue sighs. “But we have spoken to those who have. It is a kingdom of light.”

  “If you set out on this journey filled with a hunger for Elysium,” Bald Samson pronounces, “you will never see it. We do not think on it overmuch. We think instead on our loads and what we did to incur this weight.”

  “What brings you to these shores?” Larktongue asks us.

  “He is a sorcerer,” the veiled woman says softly. A shiver runs through my spine.

  “He is what?” Bald Samson asks her.

  “You choose now to speak?” Larktongue says.

  “He is the Black Goat’s favored child,” the woman says without anger. She’s still looking at the fire.

  Bald Samson leaps to his feet, brandishing his staff.

  “A servant of the Devil?” he roars. “Does the lady speak truly? Be you a sorcerer, Luke? What business on these banks has one whose heart still pumps blood?”