The doctor put an understanding hand on his shoulder. “At times like this, it’s best to think about what we can do rather than what we didn’t.”
“She didn’t want me to drink. She was gonna pour it out again. Hadn’t done it in a while. Though she probably should’ve. She deserved better. She was trying to make me better. Now—” He cried more.
“We’re going to do the best for her we can. But there’s no telling how extensive the damage is.”
The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas moved closer to put her hand on his, tell him, even if he couldn’t hear, that it was all going to be okay. That she was fine. But she didn’t get the chance. Because that’s when she heard the scratching. Claws across windows, walls, marble floors. Scratches like animals digging under a house, like nails on a chalkboard. The whole hospital shuddered with the sounds.
Then the lights went out and the whole hospital, for an instant, went black. Time slowed, and the black went on seemingly forever. Then the building convulsed, groaning slowly back to life, emergency floodlights winking awake, rooms and hall corners bathed in electric daylight. Were she awake, she might note the dingy dullness to the light, the way it made the dim outskirts seem brown and neglected. But in the dream, those lights blazed a thousand megawatts strong, like rays of the harnessed sun shot into blinding white spots amid the lonely black between them.
She looked down the hall, staggered spotlights like islands in the night, and then she saw them. The shadows. Kutji. Jet black against stinging white marble and paint. Crawling on all fours, some across the floor, others across the ceiling, others still scampering toward her along the walls. Each avoiding the light when they could; tearing through it, sizzling in agony when they couldn’t. Mouths open, teeth bared, eyes wide with a hungry hate. A squirming mass of black overtaking the white inch by inch.
“Get her,” slavered Jeronimus.
“Wait!” she shouted. “I thought you said you’d help me.”
“We did,” said one.
“We took you to the bunyip,” said another. “Our business is done.”
They poured toward her along every surface, a black wave of shadowy mayhem, nipping at the air in front of them, clawing to get ever closer.
At once the girl realized these things were not her friends; they were trouble. So she ran, ran as hard and as fast as she could, silvery cord trailing behind her. Down another hallway. Around another corner. Smack into another writhing wall of caterwauling kutji, drooling, pounding theirs fists on the walls and floor as they skittered closer toward her.
The halls echoed with the sounds of screaming shadows.
The pretty little girl wound her way through an endless sea of twists and turns and abandoned gurneys, black shapes shuffling past bright white spots, disappearing into the dark after her. She was confused, turned upside down and backward, not used to navigating the world of man when in the dream. At last she came to a four-way intersection, the point at which two corridors crossed, a single floodlight illuminating the center like a theater spot on a dark stage.
There she stood, dead center, watching the shadowy mass of kutji crawl over one another just past the event horizon of the light. She was surrounded, the vicious creatures snapping their teeth together, scratching the marble, taunting her to step out into the dark.
“Come out and play with us!” shouted one.
“Yes! Out into the dark!” shouted another.
“Out into the dark to become one of us! One of us forever!” shouted a third.
One of the kutji hovered at the edge of the light, sticking a cautious stump of an arm out into it. The nub smoked, hissed, searing like it had been thrown into a fire. It howled, yanking the arm back into the dark, blowing on it to soothe the pain.
“You can’t stay in the light forever,” said Jeronimus. “You have to become one of us sometime.”
“No, I don’t,” said the little girl.
“Yes, you do. It’s what we were promised, what we were tasked to do. Two more souls and we can go home. We can find peace. Like we were promised.”
“No!”
“You have no choice. We are what you were born to become.”
The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas, bathed in the bright light of the emergency floods, screamed, her shriek rippling like waves from a pebble through the hospital, the walls undulating, quivering.
The shadows stopped, silent, for a moment fearful.
Then she shot away, traveling at a thousand feet per second, the shadows left wondering where she’d gone.
Jeronimus howled, calling the pack together. “Take to the skies,” he said. “Find her. Tonight she is ours, and let nothing get in our way. Nothing.”
And with that they shuffled back into the black, turned into crows, and flew out into the night after her.
CHAPTER 30
CUT THE CORD
Mandu grew suddenly nervous, his head cocking a little to better hear, his eyes wide and alert.
“What is it?” asked Colby.
Mandu shook his head, his didgeridoo gripped tight in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something’s not right.” He looked around with a cockeyed concern weighing on his troubled brow.
It was growing chilly, the warm desert sands cooling in the night. The sky was clear, the moon bright, the air still and quiet as the dead. If something was amiss, it was both silent and well hidden.
She emerged from the dark as she had a short while before, wiping tears from her eyes with her sleeve—the pretty little girl in the purple pajamas. Her eyes were red, bloodshot, and bleary with tears, but she smiled, pretending nothing was wrong.
“Child, you’re back so soon,” said Mandu.
“I know,” she said. “I—I missed you.”
Colby pointed at her, but looked instead at Mandu. “Was that what you were—”
“Sshhhht!” he said, hushing him. “No. It wasn’t.” Mandu looked up toward the pretty little girl in the purple pajamas and motioned to her to get low. “Get down. Something . . . is out there.”
The three looked out into the dark, the light stretching only a couple of dozen feet out from the fire before the world became pitch-black. Mandu lowered his didgeridoo, picked up his walking stick. With his free hand he reached into his dilly bag and pulled out his bullroarer.
“If I say run,” he said, whispering, “you run like the willy-willy. You don’t look back. Do you both understand?”
They both nodded.
“But—” said Colby.
“No buts, eh? You run. I run. We all run.”
“Okay.”
The night remained silent. No wild things howling or barking. Only fire. Cracking, popping, dwindling.
A burst of beating wings nearby, crows erupting into a flapping flock of caws and wings beating.
Colby sighed loudly. “It’s only birds,” he said. “Crows.”
Mandu looked at him gravely, his skin taking on a strange pallor. “Ain’t no crows out here this time of year, Colby. Those are spirits. Kutji.”
“Yeah,” said the girl. “They’re the ones that showed me the bunyip. So I could meet Colby.”
“Oh no,” said Mandu, his eyes full of fear. “What have you done?” He waved his walking stick over the fire and it fizzled, fading out with a green flicker before flaring up again. “Run.”
The night erupted with the sounds of anguished torment, braying, cackling, setting the whole desert on edge. Everyone ran.
Mandu’s pace was furious, barefoot over the desert, his feet always knowing just where to fall, as if he’d run it a thousand times. His jaw was open in shock, eyes wide with terror. He had seen a great many things. He had not seen this.
The pretty little girl was close on his heels, trying not to outrun him.
“Away with you,” he said. “Run faster! Don’t wait for us!”
“I’m not leaving you,” she said.
“It will not end well if you follow us. Not for a long while.�
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“Don’t leave me alone.”
“Girl, you—”
“This is my fault, isn’t it?”
Mandu fell quiet for a second, his steady, controlled breathing and his footfalls the only sound he made. “Yes,” he said, finally. “They followed your cord.”
Colby was right behind them, pushing himself as hard as he could. Over the past few years he had seen his fair share of trouble and learned the value of being in shape. He walked everywhere, ran when he could, and found mortal terror to be an adequate motivator. He could run like this for hours. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” he said. “Listen to Mandu. Get out of here!”
The pretty little girl burst into tears. “I don’t want to be alone,” she said, sobbing.
“You’re only putting yourself in danger,” said Mandu. “Putting all of us in danger.”
“Please don’t make me go.”
Colby caught up to the two, exchanged glances with Mandu, both nodding to the other.
“You were warned,” said Colby.
Mandu looked up into the sky above him, the beating of wings surrounding them on all sides, dark shapes coasting across the star field, outlined by the cloudy arm of the Milky Way. Crows.
Kutji.
Shaking his head he looked at Colby, then nodded ahead of them. Colby knew what he meant. They were about to have company.
Colby took a deep breath, drawing in the universe, feeling out the rippling waves of dreamstuff surrounding them—the energy so thick, so bright this far out in the wilderness that he could feel them coming, like flies in a web. They were descending right ahead of them, driving them into a trap as would a sheepdog, swarming like maddened bees, shifting into shadowy, demihuman shapes as their talons touched the ground.
Clever, he thought to himself. Think clever. Not strong. Clever.
Nothing came.
So, being eleven years old, he reacted anyway.
Colby’s muscles bulged, his hair fell away, and his eyes glowed the color of the sun winking out at dusk. Everything about Colby became wrong for a second, his insides folding out from within. He jumped, wings sprouting behind his arms, scales creeping over his flesh. Within a moment, he had become a dragon, a pillar of flame erupting from his gaping mouth, lighting the night.
Several dozen shadows stood before them, waiting, looking for a fight.
Colby didn’t hesitate. He took to the air, letting loose a fire so hot it turned the ground beneath him to glass. Mandu reeled from the heat, hair singeing off his body, still running. The shadows didn’t care about the heat. But the light chased them behind their own hands and stumps, stung them like a thousand bees at once, the fire lighting small patches of brush around them like candles.
This was no normal light. This was raw, lambent dreamstuff, brighter even than the sun. The whole landscape lit up with the fire, blazing like noonday, incinerating every bit of brush nearby.
Inspired, Mandu pointed a wild, excited finger. “Colby,” he yelled. “The tree!”
Colby soared around the shadows, his wings beating with a mighty THWUMP. He looked down, saw the white bark of a towering ghost gum, its crisp green eucalyptus leaves glimmering in the light of the dwindling brush fires. And he let loose another gout, setting it ablaze.
The night grew bright as day, the fire white hot and hateful.
Colby swooped down on the cowering mass of shadows, grabbed two with his massive clawed feet, and cast them shrieking into the fire. The shadows didn’t perish, but for a moment they wished they had. The remaining shadows scattered into the night, fleeing for the dark as if they were, themselves, on fire, seeking out the darkest spots nearby.
Mandu waved frantically for Colby to join him on the ground, the girl hiding behind him, cowering from both shadow and flame.
Colby landed, his taloned claw turning back into a foot as it touched the ground, the transformation creeping up his legs, washing across his torso, shifting him back into a boy.
Mandu pointed again at the tree. “That tree is our only way out of here. Quickly, before the trunk is consumed.”
“I don’t understand,” said Colby.
“Trees in the outback do not grow by accident. They are connected. If you know the way, you can find your way from one tree to another. It will buy us some time.”
“Why are we running and not fighting? You’ve seen our destinies. You know we survive.”
Mandu looked back over his shoulder into the night. “Too many. It’s not our time yet to face them. You’re not ready.”
“I’m ready.”
Mandu shook his head. “I have seen you in dreams. I have seen her in dreams. You know what I haven’t seen in dreams?”
“What?”
“Me,” he said. “So into the tree.”
“But how?”
“Take my hand, close your eyes, and try to feel the road you cannot see. Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Colby nodded, taking the hand of the pretty little girl just as she took Mandu’s. The tree stood before them, a towering blaze, the leaves already burned away, branches blackening. They held their breath, took two steps toward the fire, eyes closed.
The air crackled with the sound of the fire, masking the all but silent footfalls on the desert sand. Mandu’s eyes shot open and he turned in time to see several shadows barreling at them, single-clawed hands outstretched. He flinched, pulling the children behind him, diving into the tree.
Mandu sank into it like a stone into water, enveloped by the bark, dragging the girl’s arm with him. But as the pretty little girl in the purple pajamas followed, the kutji caught her by the hair, dangling from the silvery cord on the back of her head.
She screamed as they tugged.
Colby beat at them with a solid fist, too distracted to do anything else. He yelled with as much bass as he could muster. “Get away! Get the hell away!”
They scratched at her, tugged at her hair, screeching, the black shadow of their flesh sizzling away in the light of the fire. But they would not yield. This was too important. She couldn’t get away. Not this time. They yanked hard, halting her descent into the tree, bending her neck so far back that her skull touched her spine. Mandu pulled hard on her arm, but she would not budge.
The horde of shadows emerged from the night, bunched together in a serpentine mass, pressing forward like a long, thin school of fish, using one another’s bodies to shield themselves, only to suffer a second of the harsh firelight before ducking back behind another.
Within seconds they would be on them, overtaking Colby and the girl completely.
Colby didn’t have time to think; he only had time left to act.
And so he did.
In his hand appeared a giant, gleaming sword, glowing ghostly white and brilliant. He swung, cleaving in two a shadow perched atop the girl’s back, narrowly missing the cord. Then he swung again, one hand still holding hers, bisecting another. The shadows of their bodies fell away into nothing, shattering first into a thousand pieces, fizzling away before they hit the ground.
The mass of shadows leaped up, engulfed the silver cord, shimmying along it ever closer to the two, tugging on it to keep the girl from moving an inch closer to the tree.
Colby swung with all his might, his arc wide, the blade leaving tracers in its wake. Half a dozen shadows scattered at once, a heartbeat away from meeting the end of their brothers. The blade caught nothing. Nothing but the cord.
It snapped, severed in two without the slightest bit of give. Then the long end disintegrated without a sound.
The school of shadows broke, taking off in all directions, some turning back to crows, others scampering away on foot. Mandu tugged again and the children followed him at once into the tree, their bodies vanishing into it.
The tree erupted, exploding, spraying splinters and ash in a circle around the blaze.
For a moment the night was hushed. And then the kutji slowly returned, one by one, to survey the wreckage of the g
um tree.
They stood around the smoldering remnants, its fire no longer too bright to hurt them. Jeronimus stepped forward, a sickly, proud smile on his crooked lips. “It is done. Our business with the Clever Man is finished.”
“What now?” hissed a kutji from the pack.
“Now we find her, we take her, and we kill anyone who tries to stop us.”
“But we can’t kill the Clever Man,” said another.
“No,” said Jeronimus. “But we can kill the boy.”
CHAPTER 31
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TREE
Mandu stared at the tree, waiting to see if anything followed. Colby in turn waited, ready to unleash on anything that stepped through. But nothing came.
“That was a powerful fire, Colby,” said Mandu.
“I’m sorry,” said Colby. “I tried to be clever.”
“Oh, but you were.”
“I was?”
“You scared them, scattered them, threw them off their plan. You were aces. They didn’t expect that. But they will next time. Trying it again would not be so clever.”
Colby smiled weakly. “I’ll try something else next time.”
“It would be best if there were no next time.”
The pretty little girl in the purple pajamas stood to the side, fiddling with the fragment of silvery thread dangling from the back of her head. Mandu looked sadly upon her, his expression one both concerned and sympathetic. It was done. There was no going back now.
“How bad is it, Clever Man?” she asked, trying to look tough, like a TV gangster, squinting and strong jawed. “Give it to me straight.”
“It’s very bad,” he said. “The worst. You’ve lost the cord back to your body. You have to find it now. Reconnect. Put yourself back together before it is too late.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” said Colby. “You remember where you live, right?”
Mandu waved a finger, shaking his head. “It’s not that easy. Without her cord she can’t move like she used to. She can’t run anymore. She has to walk through dreamtime.”
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