Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son

by J B Cantwell

  A sudden, searing pain hit me across the forehead. I staggered backward and fell to the ground. There above me stood the Corentin, straddling his massive body over me on two legs the size of tree trunks. He breathed in the air that came off my skin, and his nostrils flared, in pleasure or pain I couldn’t tell.

  My head swam, tendrils of black creeping in around the edges of my vision. Slowly, I faded out of consciousness. But right before I vanished into that dark, empty place, I saw the monster above take one last breath before he crouched over me, his mouth open, ready to strike.

  He had found me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I opened my eyes.

  Gravelly earth pressed into my cheek, which was raw as if I had spent a week in the sun. My heartbeat was strong, steady. I was alone.

  How long had it been?

  Behind me, the shallow waves of the ocean sucked at my boots, pushing me forward with each approach, pulling me back with each retreat. If the water had its way, I would be snatched from the surface and dragged beneath it, meat for the animals below.

  I rolled over, dizzy and confused. A pain shot through my forehead, and I gripped it. My hands came away bloody, the relief brought by the Watcher gone. Twenty feet away, low, jagged cliffs bordered the sea. In the fading light, sea spray danced in the last rays of the sun.

  An image of bits of paper floating on the breeze like snowflakes flooded my mind, stopping my breath.

  She’s gone.

  No. Wait. She wasn’t gone. It had been a dream. Hadn’t it?

  I have to get back to her. I have to go now.

  I started to stand, but then couldn’t. The closer I got to upright, the more the world spun me back upside-down. I crawled across the soft sand towards my things, amazed that they were still with me at all. I reached out for the staff, but then hesitated. I was frightened, desperate. How would the wood react to these emotions? The hope I had felt yesterday seemed to have vanished, and I was concerned that I couldn’t remember the last half of my journey to the other side of the sea.

  Another pang gripped my head, and I grasped the staff, desperate for relief.

  As I had feared, my fingers clung to the wood like velcro. I tried to focus, but it was made more difficult from the pounding in my brain.

  Jade. Think of Jade.

  And I did, but it wasn’t the Jade full of hope and life and promise. I chose to think of her, but my subconscious made the decision about how she would come into my thoughts.

  It was the monster I thought of.

  Her face flickered in that same, unnerving way the face of the Corentin had, back and forth from her human form to her possessed one. And then I remembered. My dream, or was it fantasy? I pressed myself back into the sand as her face morphed with that of the great beast, bearing down on me now, here in this place. Above me I saw those red-rimmed eyes, and on my face I felt his hot, stinking breath.

  “You gotta let go, boy,” a voice I didn’t recognize echoed in my head.

  I was distracted again by the smoke pouring off the skin of my attacker.

  I felt something warm and soft and wet in my hand, and it confused me. Then, with a great whoosh, I was thrust backward away from the nightmare, and found myself back in the sand. The vision faded away, and my hands gripped uselessly at the tiny granules of the beach, trying to latch on to something that would steady me.

  Above me someone hovered, but it wasn’t the Corentin. I squinted up, trying to recognize her face. She looked like someone I knew once, only I couldn’t place where from. Her long, gray hair hung down in matted curls, draping across her shoulders. And her eyes, a steely blue that seemed so familiar.

  Suddenly I was knocked backward again, but not by a spell or dream. A giant animal had tackled me to the ground, and now its tongue was lapping at my face. I tried to fend it off, but its attack was relentless, and in my confusion I didn’t understand.

  “Crane!” barked the old woman. “You stupid dog. Get off!”

  “Larissa?” I croaked, collapsing back into the sand now, letting Crane do his worst. His giant tongue bathed my face, and a string of whines came from his throat. Behind him, his long, thick tail wagged back and forth and around without a shred of dignity.

  “Yup,” she answered, approaching me and peering down. “I was watchin’ ya, but there wasn’t nothin’ I could do to help. The ocean…I never seen it do anythin’ like that before.” She turned and looked out over the water, slinging my pack over her back.

  “I have to go,” I said, trying to get up. “I have to get to her.” The world spun again and I was on my back.

  “Go where?” she asked.

  “Home,” I croaked. “Earth. I have to get—”

  “How do you expect to get back to Earth?” she asked, her face incredulous. “You got gold?”

  My heart sank. No, I didn’t have gold.

  “No, but she’s in danger,” I argued. “I have to.” I tried again to sit up.

  “Who’s in danger? Someone on Earth? How do you know that?”

  “I—” I paused, trying to sort out the swirl of thoughts. Everything felt so mixed up. “I just thought that—” But I couldn’t finish the sentence. Had it really been just a dream?

  She waved her hand impatiently in front of me, and I took it. She hoisted me up, and I gripped onto her with both arms. She looked at my forehead.

  “We gotta get somethin’ for that,” she said. “You’re delirious.”

  Was she right?

  She starting to walk away, dragging me along behind her, one hand holding me up, the other holding my staff, which she had wrapped in a cloth. Each step sent a jolt through my skull, but after a while, some of the dizziness subsided.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. Everything looked distorted. But my panic slowly started to subside as we moved up off the beach.

  “I got a place,” she said.

  “What did the ocean do?” I asked, trying hard to think clearly.

  “It chased ya,” she said. “Like it was tryin’ to swallow ya up.”

  “How did you know I would be here?” The pain in my head was a sharp reminder of reality. I tried to shake off the last of the nightmare.

  “Didn’t,” she grunted. “I been travelin’ round these parts for a time. I was about to move on, but then things started changin’.” She looked up to the sky, where thick clouds billowed high in the atmosphere. “Decided I better stay for a bit, just a little while, to get a better read on what was goin’ on.”

  “But how?” I asked. The last and only time I had met Larissa, it had been made clear that she had no way to make interstellar links. Kiron, her brother, had made sure of that before we had jumped from the mountaintop she called home.

  She blew a long, angry breath at my question.

  “I ain’t no idiot,” she said. “My dear brother might think different, but I was close enough already to figurin’ out the spell without him. Mind you, I been takin’ a beatin’ on the jumps I’ve made.” She indicated a long, fresh scar down the side of her neck. I shuddered. I knew what Kiron’s inexpert links felt like to use. What had Larissa’s own, hacked versions done to her?

  I knew about link-making, and I wondered how she had managed it all on her own. I stopped, suddenly wary.

  “Who helped you?”

  She pulled on my arm, but I stood firm. She turned.

  “Nobody helped me,” she said. “Story of my life, kid.”

  “But where did you get a frame?” I asked. “Or gold?”

  Her eyes narrowed at such specific questions. She put her hands on her hips, releasing my arm. The world spun.

  “Well, look who knows everything,” she said.

  I started falling backward again. Despite her anger, she reached out and steadied me before I hit the ground.

  “Come on,” she said, dragging me along again.

  I followed. I had little choice.

  “My pa left me a frame, if you must know,” she snarled. “He never told
Kiron about it. Or if he did, Kiron never let on that he knew. He says he’s so convinced that pa didn’t want me makin’ links, but like I always said, he didn’t know what I knew.”

  “He’s just trying to do what he thinks is right,” I said, concentrating hard on putting one foot in front of the other.

  “You think it’s right to rob your sister of her birthright, do ya?” she spat. “He’s got it wrong. That man don’t trust no one. Not even his own blood.”

  It was true. Kiron had shown again and again his mistrust of others. Though, for whatever reason, he always seemed to trust me.

  “I know what you mean,” I said, remembering his treatment of Chapman when we had first come to Stonemore. Crane trotted along next to me, occasionally snuffling at the spot where my forearm disappeared into my shirt. “But he’s changing. He’s made friends. I’ve met them.”

  She snorted.

  “If you think a hundred and fifty-six year old man is gonna change his ways in just a few months, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

  Our feet sunk into the deep sand, and I struggled to keep myself upright.

  “What about the gold?” I asked, panting.

  “Huh?” she puffed.

  “You didn’t say where you got the gold. For the link.”

  She paused, eyeing me. For a moment I thought she might drop me back down to the ground, she looked so angry.

  “My gold is my business,” she said.

  “But if you have gold—” I argued.

  “Had,” she corrected. “I had gold. But I used the last of it to get me to this stinkin’ planet. Worst idea ever.”

  My heart sank. Excited as I was to be heading home, the entire situation would be much easier, much less risky, if the gold could be found here, instead.

  We walked off the beach now, up a path that led away from the water, but ascended in a gentle slope up the side of the cliff. I stumbled over the rocks and fell to my knees.

  “Ugh,” she complained. “This ain’t gonna work, and we ain’t got time.” She put both arms underneath my armpits and hoisted me upright again. “Crane! Home!” she commanded. The dog whined and gave several loud barks.

  Then, before I realized what she was doing, the pebbles beneath our feet started darting away from the place we had been standing a moment before. Air seemed to boil all around us without heat or flame. And then we were airborne.

  It would have been so much better if I had been able to enjoy the flight in a healthy state. Larissa was a sailer, someone who could fly just by using the force of her mind and the magic in her veins to lift her off the ground. When I had met her last, she had started to show me her trick, and despite Kiron’s warnings I had wanted to take to the air with her. When else would I have a chance to fly?

  But now, the loss of the steady ground beneath my feet only made my stomach turn over. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of anything except the comforting blackness behind my lids. But when I did, the pounding in my head seemed only to increase. I couldn’t win.

  The ocean slipped away, and in the distance plumes of black smoke billowed up from Ossenland. I caught the scent of fire. I wanted to ask after it, wanted to know what had happened to the bustling port town, but my stomach flipped again and I stayed silent.

  Five minutes of sailing across low, grassy hills, and we arrived at the outer edges of a forest that stretched wide across the land. Hidden from view, just behind the first row of trees, stood a small wood shack. Like the little hut in the swamp, it blended nearly perfectly with the surrounding trees. But the land was dry here, and the mistress of this tiny house did not possess the eerie beauty that the Watcher had.

  She set us down carefully in the dirt, dead branches snapping under our feet. My body wanted to collapse to the ground, but Larissa held me firm.

  “Nah, not yet,” she said. She forced me up to the door of the little hut, pushing it open, my body ahead of hers. A single chair sat waiting in the corner. She shuffled me to it and I slumped down, grateful for the end of the journey.

  I must have passed out, because when I woke I was stretched out in the chair, a blanket tucked firmly around my legs and feet, and Crane’s blocky head laying heavily in my lap. A small table had appeared next to the chair, and on it a half-empty bowl of liquid sat. I raised my hand to my forehead and felt the hard, dry cracks of a large scab.

  “What happened?” I asked. But only the dog answered with a huff and a lick from his giant tongue. Larissa was nowhere to be found.

  I felt calmer. Clearer. Though the knot of worry over my mother refused to leave me entirely.

  I sat up, relieved at the lack of dizziness, the pain in my head now only a twinge, a memory of what it had been. I looked out of the small window that sat next to the chair, and Larissa’s lumpy shape came into view. I raised up one hand and knocked on the rippled glass.

  She started, whipping her head around at the sound. Then she turned and opened the door, shuffling inside.

  “We’re alright for now,” she said. “But I don’t think for much longer. I’m glad you’re finally up.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, slipping out from underneath the blanket and testing my feet on the rough wood floor.

  “She’s comin’ for ya,” she said. “Last night they burned the town, like you saw. But I don’t think they know I’m here, or if they do, they don’t know you and I have met before. For now, they won’t be after me.”

  She let out a long, rattled sigh and sat down across from me.

  “She’s coming for me?” I asked.

  “Your girl,” she said. “The crazy one up in the tower.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Saw her men,” she said. “The giants all stormed the town late in the night. They came with the storm. And when they got there, they started searchin’ the village. Now I see they were lookin’ for you. At the time I didn’t care what they were after, I just got outta there.”

  My heart dropped into my stomach. I was in the thick of battle again already.

  “Of all the thousands of miles of beach, you just happened to find me,” I said. “How?”

  She looked up at me through the straggly strands of hair that hung over her face.

  “Saw somethin’ weird,” she said. She ran both of her hands over her thighs nervously. Then, seemingly unsure of what else to do with them, put her knobby fingers together, folding them in a gesture that made her look much less offensive than usual. Almost pleasing. “Ain’t never seen somethin’ like that.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “An animal,” she said. Crane walked up beside her and put his head in her lap. She looked down into the dog’s face, and then broke apart her laced fingers to scratch him behind the ears. “A dog, actually.”

  “You found me because you saw a dog?” I asked.

  “Wasn’t no ordinary dog,” she said, shooting me a glance. “I was on my way out, away from the fire, hidin’ behind buildings as I made my way to the edge of town. And there he was, a big ‘ol white dog standin’ between the trees, lookin’ at me.”

  My heart, which had started to feel squashed and deflated, suddenly came back to life. I sat up straighter.

  “You saw a White Guard animal?” I asked, shocked.

  “And what might that be?” she asked, curious.

  “They’re protectors,” I said. “It glowed?”

  She nodded.

  “It walked away, and I followed him. Crane didn’t care for it much. He held back, followed pretty far behind us. But the beast got me outta there. And then when we got to the water’s edge, I saw what was really goin’ on. I saw you, fightin’ your way through the sea, and the sea…well, it fought to take you under. And when it couldn’t, a big wave came and bashed you against those rocks. I never so much as dreamed of that kind of magic.” She folded her hands, again unsure. “When I finally looked back toward the dog, he had disappeared.”

  I felt a small smile fight for space on my
face. And finally I let it break through, grinning with relief at what she was telling me.

  To be visited, much less led, by a member of the White Guard, you had to be someone worthy of their attention. You had to be good. My fears about Larissa’s intent, propelled however unfairly by her brother’s opinion of her, evaporated instantaneously.

  But her face remained grave and worried.

  “I don’t know what you can possibly think of to smile about,” she said harshly. “There’s an army of possessed giants out there, huntin’ you from what I can tell.”

  She was right, but I couldn’t help myself. Here sat possibly the only person I could trust in this place.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked, trying to wipe away the grin.

  “Nah, of course not,” she said. “‘Cept to get outta here as soon as you’re able. Where you headed, anyways?”

  I stood up and started shuffling through my things, strapping my pack on. I looked down at the staff, still partly wrapped in the fabric Larissa had used to protect herself from it when she wrenched it away from me. I reached out my fingers, then stopped, deciding.

  The pain in my head was all but gone. There was still fear in me, but it mingled now with the light, airy feeling of hope.

  I picked up the staff, and it felt slippery between my fingers. I smiled again.

  “Back to your brother,” I said, evening out the straps on the backpack. “And you should, too. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  After a brief scouring of the house, including a spell Larissa did to hide our presence there, we set out. I wasn’t sure how we would find the precise spot Owyn and I had landed at when we had left the Fire Mountains together. The warmth coming from the chaser, now in my hand, lessened my worry, and I tried to push the concern aside. I would have to trust that the strange little ball would glow hot when the place was near.