The Soulkeepers Box Set

by G. P. Ching

  The smell of pumpkin pie wafted over him from up ahead and he found himself walking, only half conscious, toward the voice. Whoever she was, he wanted to know her. He wanted to see her. He felt pushed and pulled at the same time, a compulsion that forced one foot in front of the other instinctively.

  The pebbles gave way to a narrow strip of stepping-stones, so grown over Jacob had to push aside branches to work his way through. In a normal garden this might not be a difficult task, but this was anything but a normal garden. Thorns the size of his hand grew from some of the plants. Bright colors and strangely shaped leaves made him tentative to touch others. The thick canopy allowed only pinpoints of light to filter down from above.

  Everything about the place seemed wrong. For one, the size of the plants shouldn’t have been able to fit within the boundaries of the property as he could see it from the street. He wondered if it was an optical illusion, the sloping terrain and winding trail making the garden seem bigger than it was. But that couldn’t explain why it was at least ninety degrees. He tried not to think about it as he pushed a vine out of his way and stepped to the next stone.

  A broad mass of spiky yellow needles, like a cactus but with no green trunk, bordered the trail. Jacob balanced on the far edge of the stone and slithered to the next. From this stone, he could see a vine with what looked like a two-foot cucumber growing from it on his right. It wouldn’t have been as remarkable if it weren’t fuzzy and blue, with a texture like mold and a middle that rippled like a jellyfish. The rippling was hypnotic and, as he continued down the path, he glanced back several times to watch.

  The distraction caused him to trip over a root grown across the trail. The momentary illusion of flight gave way to a painful meeting of hands, knees, and stone.

  “Crap!” he cursed. The fall had gashed his knee and blood ran down his calf.

  “Have a nice trip! See you next fall,” the girl’s voice said with a giggle. He looked around but couldn’t see anyone.

  “Where are you? Who are you?” he called.

  “Keep going and you’ll find out.”

  He removed one of his socks and tied it tightly around the wound. Bending and unbending his knee, he tested if anything was broken. He got to his feet and tried to put some weight on it. Pain shot up his leg. There was no way he could go any farther. He decided to head back to the Laudners and talk with Dr. Silva later.

  “Good, Jacob. Go home.” The man’s voice again.

  As he moved to step over the pool of blood on the stone, Jacob reconsidered. What was the man’s voice trying to keep from him? What was Jacob missing at the end of the path? If he left, he would never know.

  Besides, going back was looking a lot more difficult. On both sides of the path a sprawling mass of flowers waved. Their heads looked like yellow snapdragons but their foliage was exotic like some type of orchid. The heads were slapping the bloody stone. If he continued this way, he would have to push past them. That was a bad idea: first, because they were moving without the benefit of any type of breeze and second, because they were licking the blood from the stone. The flowers were drinking his blood.

  Jacob flinched as one of the flowers reached for the bloody sock around his knee. Its teeth latched onto the blood-soaked cotton. He backed away and a piece of the sock ripped off in the flower’s jaws. “What the hell?” He turned and ran down the path to dodge the remaining swinging heads. What was this place? He leapt over a snapping yellow flower and bounded stone to stone toward a stream of light ahead. The forest opened.

  From the shaded stepping stone path, Jacob emerged onto a delta of sand where the trees and plants ended. Panting and exhausted, he stooped forward with his palms on his knees and the sun on his back. Calling out for Dr. Silva wasn’t an option. His mouth was too dry and, besides, he was sure he’d reach the back of the garden soon anyway. How big could this place be? There was no turning back now. His only hope was to find her.

  Forward he trudged through what seemed like an acre more of meadow before the sandy path ran directly into a dune. The climb to the top left his muscles burning and his mouth dry as a stone. But from the top of the dune he could see the back wall of the garden. The ten-foot privet was a natural blockade to the skeletal forest beyond. In the valley between the dune and the back privet, a labyrinth of spiky cacti went on for miles. At the center, he could make out the twisting branches of a gigantic tree.

  His head hurt. Where was Dr. Silva? Why had he come so far? Had the voices he’d heard before been a figment of his damaged brain? Exhausted and dehydrated, he suspected he was in trouble and was sure that if he sat down, he would never get back up. If he died here, would anyone ever find him?

  He closed his eyes, longing for the Laudners’ sage green recliner.

  When he opened them again, he was surprised to see Gideon sitting in the sand by his feet.

  “Where did you come from?” he croaked.

  The cat gave a low growl.

  “I don’t suppose you know where Dr. Silva is?” he said to the cat. The animal stared at him for a long time. If Jacob didn’t know better he would swear that Gideon was thinking something through. After some time, the cat blinked slowly, then started down the dune toward the maze. Jacob followed to the mouth of the labyrinth but the cat was too fast and by the time he entered under the thorny arch, Gideon was nowhere to be seen.

  Instinctively, Jacob knew which way to go. It was the pulling feeling again, like he was navigating each bend on autopilot, trusting his gut with the labyrinth’s twists and turns. He was disappointed not to hear the girl’s voice again, but she had probably been a hallucination to begin with. It didn’t matter. The important thing was finding Dr. Silva and then getting out of there before he collapsed.

  When he reached the center of the maze, he was disappointed that Dr. Silva was not there, just the tree he’d seen from the dune. The gnarly, twisted trunk gave way to corkscrew branches that reached in all directions. The trunk was as wide as he was tall with layers that looked like multiple trees had grown together. The leaves of the tree started near the ends of the branches, allowing the sun to shine through the small green clusters. A thick layer of moss grew over the bark.

  He’d never seen a tree like this before. But then, he was sure there’d never been a garden like this before. Just then, Gideon entered the center of the maze and sat down between the tree and Jacob.

  “Where’d you come from?” he said to the cat, but then returned his attention to the tree. The moss on the bark looked soft and inviting. He took a step forward. It wasn’t a conscious choice, more like riding on a conveyor belt.

  Gideon leapt from his seat and knocked him to the sand.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jacob yelled, pushing the cat off his stomach and standing back up. Gideon repositioned himself, growling. The animal looked absolutely deadly, all teeth and claws. But Jacob only cared about the tree. The twisting bark was so alluring. He wanted to run his hand along the moss and climb the twisting branches. He reached out and took another step toward the trunk.

  Gideon leapt again, sinking his teeth into his wrist.

  “Ouch! What the hell?” Jacob yelled, flinging the cat aside. It took more muscle than he expected. The cat had to weigh thirty pounds or more. Gideon rolled and moved to take another swipe, but this time Jacob didn’t hesitate. He reached out.

  His fingers connected with the roughness of the tree and everything slowed down. The bark climbed up his arm, as if the tree were swallowing him. Like he was changing from a liquid into a solid, every cell in his body hardened from animal to plant. Inside the tree looking out, he became the tree. A butterfly fluttered by as quickly as a jet plane. The air buzzed around him in a dance of gravitational pulls.

  Looking up through the branches, he saw the clear blue sky above and slid up those corkscrew arms into the air. Then he was the sky. He was an ageless power in connection with something infinite.

  Too soon, he was falling, sliding down through a new branc
h, turning inside out like his stomach was lurching through his belly button. Only, his stomach wasn’t a stomach but layers of wood growing one on top of the other. Until, the last layer hit the air and his bark became skin. And then he was only touching the bark.

  Jacob was human again but he was not in the cactus maze.

  In front of the tree that was not the tree in Dr. Silva’s garden but a tree on the edge of a wild jungle, he finally collapsed. His body could take no more and his knees buckled underneath him until his butt was firmly planted at the base of the tree. Propped against the trunk, he stared across a large open plain. A purple, white-capped mountain rose up beyond a sprawling savannah.

  It looked a lot like Africa.

  He shook his head in disbelief but watched the heads of a pod of giraffes bob as they ran across the plain, a spotted machine. He licked his lips. Hallucinating. He was hallucinating. But the more he attempted to free himself from the delirium, the more real it seemed.

  The grasses parted unevenly a hundred yards ahead, no more noticeable than a gentle breeze. A lioness crept forward from the greenish brown savannah, yellow eyes locked onto him. She was hunting Jacob and he was easy prey. His legs felt like rubber bands. Whatever magic had brought him there had drained every ounce of energy he’d had left. All he could do was watch in fear as the predator inched closer, and hope that she was a figment of his dehydrated brain.

  The lioness pounced, teeth flashing.

  Claws sank into his back, but they were not the claws of the lioness. A hand grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him backward, plunging him into the tree’s slowing sensation. As he was absorbed into the bark, he saw the lioness fall to the earth in fast-forward before experiencing the funny inside out feeling again, but backward. Then he was sliding down a branch and folding into a tree trunk. Until, finally, he was Jacob again, lying on a patch of sand looking up into the sky.

  No … he was looking up into two sky-blue eyes.

  Dr. Silva’s face hovered above him, her frown stern and resolute. She glanced at the tree, which now appeared normal in its cactus habitat, and then back at him on the sandy mound.

  “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I see that you’ve found Oswald. Jacob, it is time we had a serious talk.”

  Chapter 15

  The Root Of The Problem

  “There’s no sense hiding it from you now. I’m going to need your help keeping this a secret. Let’s go back to the house and get you cleaned up. I’ll explain everything over lunch.” Dr. Silva reached for his elbow and helped him to stand.

  Jacob’s knees wobbled. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get his mind to form coherent words, his thoughts a jumble of images lost in translation. Without asking permission, she grabbed his arm and rolled him onto her back, piggyback style.

  “Don’t worry, the feeling should clear up in a half hour or so,” she said. Dr. Silva navigated the cactus maze with astounding speed considering his added weight. He could already see the sand dune.

  “It’s amazing that you made it through the cacti unharmed. Some of them are quite poisonous—even deadly. Of course, I planted them myself to keep people out. You can see why, I’m sure. There could be … complications, if Oswald was accessible to the wrong people.” She stepped down the stone pathway, between the snapdragons and past the blue cucumber.

  “That bloody knee has my Dracaena Daemonorops in a state.” The plants swayed violently and he could feel Dr. Silva accelerate across the stones, dodging the yellow heads. When the teeth of one succeeded in latching onto the bloody sock again, she casually reached into her pocket and pulled out garden shears. Without missing a step, she clipped the flower at its neck and the head dropped to the stone walkway.

  Moments later, he was overcome with the stench of rotting flesh. He buried his face in his arm to escape it.

  “Yeah, that will bring you around.” Dr. Silva laughed. “They are Amorphophallus titanum—very rare. The smell is to attract flies and beetles, which pollinate the flowers. Totally harmless but, again, meant to deter. Apparently, you were not to be discouraged.”

  She bounded through the gate, carefully unlocking and locking it behind her. Before he knew what was happening, he landed on his backside beneath the shady maples, a mass of achy joints and throbbing temples. She handed him a bottle of water from a pocket in her cargo pants. He drank greedily, his blood bounding in his veins. A moan escaped his lips as he broke contact with the bottle to catch his breath.

  “Right. Keep drinking. I’ve heard it feels like altitude sickness … to your kind.” In her hand was his sweatshirt. She wrapped it around him, pursing her lips against the puff of compost that escaped the fabric, and helped him get his flaccid arms into the sleeves. He noticed she was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt but didn’t seem the least bit cold. She tucked the empty bottle into her pocket and hoisted him onto her back as gracefully as if he were her cape.

  When they reached the sunroom off the kitchen, she dumped his body into a rattan chair.

  “What the hell?” he stammered.

  “Now, Jacob, relax and listen to what I have to say. There’s a logical explanation for all of this. Wait here, I’ll be right back.” She left the room and returned several minutes later with a tray of pita bread, hummus, cheese, and assorted fruits and vegetables. “I hope this is all right. I’m a vegetarian.” She poured them both a tall glass of water and settled into the chair across from him.

  Hunger is a powerful motivator. Jacob started in on the tray with no regard for manners. “I’m listening,” he said between bites.

  “It was a mutual love of plants that brought Oswald and I together,” she began, and as she did she turned her head slightly and stared at a spot on the wall. “I was a graduate student studying the plants of India when I made the most remarkable find while visiting the Bengali marketplace. It was an amazing specimen that any horticulturalist would be proud to display. The seed of the Coco de mer can be found naturally only in the Seychelles, a group of islands off the coast of Madagascar. It was a truly incredible find, easily forty pounds or more, and I was haggling with the shopkeeper for it. I can be very persuasive. The seed was as good as mine.

  “Oswald swept into the shop and recognized my prize immediately. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t immediately taken with him. He was quite an attractive man, my husband. But I was more concerned at the moment with acquiring the find of my career. In perfect Bengali, he told the shopkeeper he would pay whatever he asked and proceeded to buy the seed right from under my nose for the equivalent of fifty U.S. dollars. I followed him out of the shop, of course, demanding that he return the seed to me at once.

  “‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I know that you probably want this as a decorative mantelpiece but I will have you know this is a—’

  “‘—A priceless seed! It is the largest in the world. A truly remarkable botanical find,’ I said.

  “We agreed at that moment to join each other for dinner, to discuss who was the rightful owner of the seed. I learned he was a young professor and also from the United States, California specifically. After spending two weeks together in India, Oswald gave me that seed as an engagement present. We returned to the United States and I convinced him to move here, to my house.

  “Our marriage was one adventure after another. We traveled all over the world, you see, studying plants of all sorts and discovering new species. At one point we had the largest natural seed collection of anyone in the United States. But he died, as all men do.”

  Jacob stopped eating at “died.” Her face was different as she talked about Oswald and he could tell this was a difficult memory for her. “I’m so sorry. That must have been horrible. What did you do?” he asked softly.

  “Once I confirmed he was dead, I buried him in the garden.”

  “Wha—excuse me?” Jacob spit out a bite of pita and looked Dr. Silva in the eye.

  “I buried him in the garden,” she said again. “It was what he always wanted. It was in his wil
l. He loved plants. He wanted to be part of nature, eternally.”

  “But didn’t you have to go to the emergency room or call the police or something?”

  “Jacob, this isn’t TV, it’s Paris. I called the coroner, he was pronounced dead, and I buried him. That’s all. No fanfare, no funeral, no autopsy. It wasn’t required back then.”

  Jacob sat back in the cream futon and raised his eyebrows. The only thing he could think to say was “okay,” which must have been enough because she continued.

  “I did the best I could to bury him. It was probably not deep enough. Not as deep anyway as they bury you in a cemetery, but he was my first grave. I buried him in the fall. The ground froze over that winter and I trudged through the snow to visit his grave. In the spring, I was ecstatic to find a sapling growing there. I knew then that his blood had unlocked deep magic.”

  “Magic? Are you a witch?” he blurted.

  “No. I. Am. Not.” She held up a finger in front of his face. No further explanation was offered. She continued with her story.

  “As the year progressed and the tree grew faster than any, I realized that the air around the tree was always warm and humid, no matter what the temperature. I began planting some of our collection of rare seeds around Oswald. Everything grew, faster and larger than possible. It is always around eighty-five degrees there, three hundred sixty-five days per year. I took precautions—the hedge, the corpse plants, the cacti maze—to make sure that I was the only one who knew the secret of the garden.

  “Even I did not learn of Oswald’s greatest secret until later. I was transported the first time in the summer, when Oswald had reached his full height. I was lucky to be found by a medicine woman. She was a Healer and an elder of the Achuar tribe of the South American rainforest. See, they have none of the preconceptions about time and space that we do. She just assumed my presence was a sign from the spirit world and took me in. She showed me what I needed to know. That’s when Gideon came to me.” She looked across the room at the cat. “I’ve been traveling with Oswald ever since.”