A Grave Tree

by Jennifer Ellis

  “He’s dead,” Abbey spat. Caleb was gone. Like Farley. Like her parents.

  Ian’s eyes went wide. “Don’t say that unless you’re very sure it’s true. Things you say and think have a way of becoming true.”

  Abbey gritted her teeth and pushed away all thoughts of Caleb being dead. He was alive. He had to be alive. Her parents were alive, and so was Farley.

  “He fell into the water because those dogs of Nate and Damian’s were chasing us by the Madrona. One of them pushed him over the edge, and he was swept away. We need to go after him.”

  “Oh dear. How did you and Mark escape?” Ian started scrambling down the rock face via the nose hole and jagged teeth of the skull like a squirrel, his feet and hands digging into unseen crevices and keeping him from slipping into the torrent below.

  “I couldn’t see the dogs. I made Mark close his eyes, and we just walked away with our eyes closed. I thought maybe observing them collapsed the wave function. And something hit Mark in the back of the head. He’s bleeding.”

  Ian seemed temporarily speechless. Finally he shook his head. “That isn’t good. That isn’t good at all. That means the Guild is helping her. That’s the only way she would have enough power to teleport.”

  Abbey approached the edge of the canyon to see him better. He had reached a ledge at the bottom of the skull, and now appeared to be trying to pull something from the skull’s mouth. A small rocky beach lay at the foot of the cliff, beside a back eddy in the raging river with a deep dark blue pool. So this was where people jumped.

  “Did you say teleport?” Abbey said. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly over the rush of water.

  Ian moved two of the large tooth boulders aside. “Yes. Well, teleport in a way. But we’ll have to talk about that later. You’re going to have to help me get this boat out of here. We have to go after Caleb.”

  Abbey looked dubiously at the skull and then at Mark. How were the two of them going to climb down the sheer face like Ian just had? There was a steep and rocky trail down to the beach right in front of them that most of the cliff jumpers probably used to return to the top of the canyon, but the trail would put them far below the ledge on which Ian stood, and she couldn’t see any way to access the ledge from the beach.

  Mark’s eyes had gone very bulgy and he’d already started to shake his head. Abbey tried to don a convincing smile. “Come on, Mark. Let’s climb down to Ian,” she said brightly, not believing for a second that either of them was going to be able to do so without some sort of rope and pulley system.

  Ian had already pulled the bow of a heavy wooden rowboat to the entrance of the mouth. Abbey flicked her eyes to the surging water just beyond the back eddy. They were going to go down a raging river in a rowboat? She rather suspected that life jackets were not in the equation.

  She made her way over to the edge of the cliff near the right eye socket. Even getting her toe into the indentation that formed the socket would require her to do some sort of spread-eagled stretch across the sheer cliff face. She felt the surprisingly warm grey slab of stone for a handhold, but encountered only rough weathered rock bereft of helpful crevices.

  “Climbing is part skill, part faith,” Ian yelled. “You have to believe the holds are going to be there, and that they’ll keep your body safe against the cliff. Belief is very important, Abbey.”

  Abbey bit back something tart about belief being for non-scientists. There was scientific evidence regarding the importance of belief after all. Well, there was scientific evidence that there were factors relating to belief that might have some influence over something, but nobody was sure yet.

  She glanced at Mark. He stood on the edge of the cliff where she had left him, his arms folded over his chest, shaking his head determinedly.

  She had to try to get to Caleb. Caleb would scale this cliff in an instant for her.

  She wiped her sweaty palms on her yoga pants and reached her hand and leg out once again, searching for tiny indentations. She closed her eyes, controlled her breathing, and let her fingers and toes guide her.

  There. A tiny fissure for her toes. She grasped what seemed like nothing with her fingers, brought her other foot to meet the first one, then found another minor indent and repeated her sideways movement until she managed to wedge her first foot in the eye socket and then draw her entire body to temporary safety.

  Standing there, with Ian below her, and the rush of water to her right throwing a rainbow mist into the air, her knees were almost rubbery with relief. There was no going back now. She didn’t even know how she’d gotten here.

  At the back of the socket, she thought she could perhaps see the faint outlines of a door. The hideaway that Ian had referred to. She looked back at Mark.

  “It’s okay. You can do it,” she said. “If I can do it, you can do it. You should probably start now.”

  She inched back out to the edge of the socket and got on her hands and knees, grasping the edge of the socket with her fingers while she stretched her toes below her looking for purchase. Centimeter by painful centimeter, she found her way down to the opening that formed the nose of the skull. Each second wasted meant another second that Caleb could be drowning, or that his battered body lay bleeding to death at the side of the river downstream.

  Mark had still not budged from where he stood on the cliff. Were they going to have to leave him behind? Could they guide the rowboat into the back eddy to retrieve Mark from the beach? The powerful rush of water all around the ledge made that look unlikely.

  “Mark,” she called severely. “You need to start climbing, or we’re going to have to go without you, and you’re going to have to follow the trail back to the cabin.”

  She felt bad threatening this. She should have checked the back of his neck to see how badly he was hurt. And what if the dogs remained roving the woods by the Madrona? She couldn’t just abandon Mark. “Please come down here. You can do it,” she added, edging her way backward out of the nose on her hands and knees.

  Mark had dropped into a crouch with his hands wrapped round his shins and continued to shake his head.

  Abbey glanced down at Ian, who stood only ten meters below her now, his back bent and arm muscles strained as he heaved on the rowboat. “What are we going to do?” she said. “Can we pick him up on the beach?”

  Ian turned his head to the beach and then the foaming water at the foot of the ledge. “I doubt we’d be able to get the boat there. The current is pretty strong. We won’t be able to get to the edge of the river until it flattens out and slows down in the valley.”

  Or until it’s dashed to pieces on some rocks a couple hundred meters downstream, Abbey thought grimly. She looked back up at Mark. “Are you going to just stay there and wait for us? We might be a while.”

  Mark gave a violent nod, and after hesitating for a second, Abbey continued her descent, her mind in turmoil. Mark was an adult. Even though he had some challenges, he was an adult and could make his own decisions. It was okay to leave him on the cliff. She repeated this over and over in her mind.

  The going was easier in the mouth, as there were more hand and footholds among the teeth, and soon Abbey dropped to the ledge next to Ian and grabbed hold of the boat that was now a third of the way out of the mouth.

  “How are we going to get the boat in the water?” she said. The ledge on which they stood featured a sheer three-meter drop into foaming water on all the sides that she could see.

  Ian pressed his lips together and directed his gaze over to the edge closest to the river, the only edge she had not yet inspected. “You’re not going to like it,” he said.

  Abbey took a couple of steps in that direction and saw why. The water had scoured away a section of rock, forming a steep but smooth slide that continually refilled with surging water from the river below. The slide would direct them into the narrowest part of the canyon, where the water bucked and frothed, throwing vast amounts of spray into the air. In
other words, they were going to have to ride a rowboat down a natural waterslide into a treacherous rapid.

  Maybe Mark had made the right choice after all. He looked like a nesting vulture up there on the cliff on his haunches.

  Abbey considered her options. They could walk down the canyon edge, searching for Caleb; they could run back to the cabin and call 9-1-1. But that would all take too long. They had to get to Caleb now.

  “Wait. Do you have a phone?” she said to Ian. “Could you call for help?”

  Ian shook his head. “No service up here.”

  Of course there isn’t, Abbey muttered as she helped Ian haul the heavy boat the rest of the way out of the mouth.

  The planked boat looked like it had seen better days. The wood seemed soft in places and the whole boat had the general sense of rot. Two oars lay in the bottom, their wood aged and splitting.

  Abbey closed her eyes. “Mark!” she yelled. “Go back to the cabin and get Sylvain and Russell. Tell them what’s happened.”

  Mark didn’t move. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. She tried once again, with no effect, then ground her teeth together and went back to the boat. She couldn’t waste any more time.

  Together she and Ian dragged the boat over to the slide, Abbey questioning her and Ian’s sanity the whole way. The roar of the water had risen in volume, and Abbey’s hair and jacket were soaked from the spray.

  “I’ll go in front if you want,” Ian said. “But that means you’re going to have to push off and hop in.”

  Abbey nodded mutely. What if she missed and ended up sliding down the chute behind the boat? She would be dashed to death immediately on the rocks, pulled under the current, her bloated body thrust again to the surface downstream.

  Of course, that was likely to happen in the boat too, so what difference did it make?

  They positioned the boat at the top of the slide, and Ian clambered in, keeping his weight in the middle. “As soon as you give it a push and get in, I’ll move to the front. That should be enough to carry the boat down the slide. I know this goes without saying, but I would strongly suggest keeping low and hanging on tightly for the first bit.”

  Abbey moved to the back of the boat, her arms extended to give it the final push. The word “Believe” was written in calligraphic letters on the stern. Not surprising. You’d have to have a whole lot of belief—not to mention stupidity and desperation—to get in this scow. But apparently she had all three. She gave the boat a final hard shove, then leapt over the edge of the stern and into the bottom of the rickety wooden craft. Ian lunged into the front, and the boat picked up speed, careening down the chute at an alarming pace.

  The bow of the boat was thrown into the air when they hit the water, and Abbey was thrown backward, her spine hitting the seat hard, her fingers burning from gripping the gunwales. It seemed as though they might capsize, but then the bow dropped back into the water, and they were off down the wild foaming river like a shot, catapulting from side to side and up and down in the current.

  The last thing Abbey saw as she glanced back up at the cliff was Sylvain and Russell standing on either side of Mark, with Jake behind them. Sylvain had his hands in the air and appeared to be yelling something. But it was too late.

  *****

  Sometimes seeing the bad man was not a bad thing, Mark decided. And sometimes seeing the beret man seemed to bring a lot of difficulty and discomfort. He watched Abbey and Ian sail off down the river in the bucking and writhing rowboat, while the bad man yelled, “Stop!” and “Stop immediately!” (both of which were rather pointless commands as far as Mark was concerned).

  Hands were placed under his elbows and he was yanked to his feet—not roughly, but not gently either. The bad man’s craggy face and silver hair appeared directly in Mark’s line of vision (a little too close, in Mark’s opinion) and the gold tooth in his mouth flashed wildly. “Where’s Caleb? What happened to your head?”

  “Caleb fell in the river with one of the bad dogs. Selena hit me in the head with a rock. They were by the tree. But we closed our eyes and they went away.”

  “What?” the bad man sputtered. “What are you talking about? How is that possible?”

  Mark shook his head. He considered mentioning the teleporting that the beret man had talked about, but decided not to. It might unhinge the bad man even more, and right now, Mark just wanted to get back to the cabin, and Ocean, although he did feel a bit worried about Abbey and Caleb.

  The bad man had sprung away from him anyway and now stood at the very edge of the cliff, craning his neck in the direction that Abbey and the beret man had gone. He lifted his hands to his head and clutched it on either side (much like Mark himself did when he was upset). “They’re going to be killed. They’re going to be smashed to bits. This is terrible.”

  The bad man darted a squinty-eyed look over his shoulder at Russell, then started running along the edge of the cliff, staring over the edge as if intent on pursuing the rowboat to its certain destruction, his twiggy legs and dark trench coat flying. Mark wondered if he might not leap off the sheer wall and take flight like an elongated bat. Russell followed the bad man at a rapid clip.

  Jake, dressed in his normal red and black Coventry Cats warm-up suit, raised an eyebrow at Mark. “We’d better go with them. I hope Ian has some witchcraft up his sleeve to keep that boat safe.” Then he turned and also started running along the top of the canyon.

  Mark followed, his own legs rubbery. He was not getting left behind, and he smarted from the hint of accusation in Jake’s voice that Abbey’s departure in the boat was somehow his fault, as if he had been the adult present, as if he could have done anything to stop her, as if he controlled, or even influenced, these people.

  Despite his expectation of being quickly and easily outrun, he found that with some exertion (which made his chest feel a bit tight), he could keep up with the other runners. The rain had stopped, and although a mist remained in the sky, he could feel the warmth of the sun burning through the cloud cover.

  They ran for twelve minutes (according to Mark’s Garmin Forerunner) before Sylvain came to an abrupt stop. (Mark was going to try to use proper names for people, at least for Sylvain, who had just rescued Mark and now seemed so determined to rescue Abbey that the “bad man” title did not seem to fit as well as it had before, although for a rescuer, Sylvain did not seem overly concerned about Mark’s well-being, or the fact that he was bleeding.)

  “It’s no use,” Sylvain said. “They’re moving way too fast. We’re going to have to try something else.” He held a curled finger to his lips and lowered his gaze to the ground. Then he raised his eyes to Mark, his angular face hard and sharp. “We’re going to have to use projection. We need to go back to the Madrona.”

  Mark froze. He had appraised the Madrona out of the corner of his eye when they passed it a few minutes ago (checking to make sure the dogs were not lingering at its base waiting to leap out at them). It had seemed deserted, but there was something in the way Sylvain was looking at him now that he did not like.

  Sylvain cut inland in the direction of the Madrona, and the procession followed. Mark tried to reassure himself as he ran. Sylvain would not want him to do anything, even though technically he was the second-oldest person present and the only adult other than Sylvain. But nobody regarded him as an adult, and nobody depended on him to do anything.

  At the foot of the blessedly bereft-of-dogs Madrona, Sylvain turned to them. “Okay, here’s the deal. Mark is going to follow the path of the river with his mind. He can go faster that way. In order to project that far, he’s going to need our help. We’re going to have to stay here at the Madrona and concentrate on sending him energy.”

  “What?” Mark managed to eject from his mouth in a rather clipped yelp. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the only one of us, as far as I know, who has the ability to do it. Projecting requires a keen sense of geography and a certain kind of mind that not
es the details of place. I’m pretty sure you’ve studied and know the path of this river. I’m pretty sure Jake and Russell haven’t. Besides, you’ve already demonstrated that you’re capable of projecting based on the fact that your head was flying around my office last night. If we send you energy, we can help you go farther distances in a more sustained way. You might even be able to partially teleport, which would mean you could help them.”

  Mark opened his mouth to deny this, to deny something, anything, to make it so that he was not responsible for doing something, for doing this. But his brain came up blank, and he ended up standing there with his lips open wide and unspeaking.

  “We don’t have much time,” Sylvain continued when Mark said nothing. “I don’t know how to project myself, but I understand you need to allow yourself to go into a bit of a trance. Being close to the Madrona helps, as they serve as conduits for our connection to the world and the energy that allows us to perform witchcraft. The rest of us will gather by the tree and focus on helping you. You need to follow the course of the river as quickly as you can, checking both sides all the way down. If you find them, see if you can steer the boat or help in any way. If not, come back, and we’ll go to them.”

  Sylvain motioned Russell and Jake to the tree. Russell moved immediately and obediently. Jake hung back a little, but after shooting Mark a raised-eyebrow look as if to express his deep misgivings about trusting Mark with any task, he, too, went and stood by Sylvain.

  Mark stood dumbly, gawping at the tree and the three men who stood beside it. He didn’t know how to project. He had only done it last night by complete accident, although he supposed he had in fact done it again just an hour ago, when he found himself in his own room looking at the map of Coventry and Granton. But that had again been by complete accident. He couldn’t do this. He imagined Abbey and Caleb being carried farther and farther down the river, their bodies bruised and broken by rocks. He clenched his fists.

  Russell and Jake, at Sylvain’s direction, already had their heads bent and eyes closed. Mark closed his own eyes and tried to focus on moving his head down the river, on scouring both sides of the riverbanks for people, for debris, the water surging beneath him. He mentally traced the sinewy line of the Moon River, a line he had studied so many times on a map, but his mind remained stubbornly entrenched on the cliff, the low breathing of the others and the twittering of nearby birds jarring his concentration.