A Grave Tree

by Jennifer Ellis

  The grey stone of a building appeared ahead of them through the trees. The chapel.

  A faint hush of reverence washed over Abbey. They’d been walking down a narrow ravine for the last twenty minutes, and the mountains jutted up all around them on four sides. Four-Valley Gap. She’d heard that the lines of the valleys formed a perfect cross with ninety-degree angles.

  The rotting timber roof of the chapel was covered in a layer of orange needles, and moss grew up around the bottom edges of the stones, but still it stood, glowing resolutely silver and grey in the dark forest. It was supposedly a sanctuary of an odd sect of monks who had lived in Coventry in the eighteenth century. In the Coventry of Abbey’s time, it was protected as a national heritage site. Even in its run-down condition, it radiated a kind of peace. She closed her eyes for a second, trying to draw in as much of it as possible.

  Sylvain was sure her parents would return. She had to hold on to that, and she had to do whatever she could to ensure they returned. Damian had suggested that being an Alty was hereditary, which meant that either she or Caleb, or maybe even Simon, might be able to go and retrieve her parents. She just needed to learn as much as possible about this world of witchcraft first.

  She turned to Sylvain.

  “What’s fourth derivative travel, then?”

  Sylvain flashed her a grin, ghastly in its bleakness. “It’s a secret. Only the person who is Quinta or Quentin knows, and they haven’t ever been inclined to tell.”

  *****

  Mark didn’t know whether to hope that Caleb would agree to stay, or not. If he agreed, Mark wouldn’t be alone with scary Sandy. But if he disagreed, maybe scary Sandy wouldn’t discover, quite so soon, that Mark had lied about what the sign said. Either way he needed to tell Caleb what was going on—about Jake, about the second scary Sandy, and about the turbines—but every time he opened his mouth Sandy pinned him with a smile and the unspoken threat of a jolt of energy.

  Caleb removed the leather cap on his head and raked a hand through his hair, which stood on end like flames. One of Caleb’s eyes had twitched a bit when Sandy mentioned Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Beckham, as if he was holding back tears. But that couldn’t be the case. Caleb was like Warrior Mark. He didn’t cry.

  “Please, Caleb. You’re interfering with the timeline if you go. You could be endangering yourself,” Sandy said.

  “What about Ian, though? He’s up with the other men. I should tell him I’m going.”

  A strange sort of smile bloomed on Sandy’s face, making her even scarier than before. “Ian can take care of himself. You do know he’s over a hundred, right? He’s been in and out of Nowhere so many times nobody knows his actual age. Please, Caleb, we’re talking about your parents here. This isn’t your fight. You’ve rescued Mark. Let it go.”

  Caleb sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go. What makes you so sure you’ve found my parents?”

  Sandy lit up with a beam so gigantic in its wattage that it terrified Mark (of course terror had seemed to become his dominant emotion since reuniting with his half-sister), and then charged ahead down the path, chittering nonsense (or what Mark perceived to be nonsense, given the speed of her speech and the almost unfocused look in her eyes) about feeling their presence and receiving a text from Ms. Beckham. Caleb was right on her heels, leaving Mark to follow behind them uncertainly.

  He contemplated slipping off. But where would he go? And Sandy turned back to fix him with a stern look every few meters. Maybe Caleb would protect him when the lie was discovered, as it soon would be, unless the diversion blew apart and vaporized them all.

  He had to find a way to get Caleb alone (which would hopefully eliminate the risk of energy jolts) and tell him what was going on. That Sandy was bad.

  Very bad.

  The diversion must have held, because they reached the old dam site without incident. Water pooled in the reservoir, creeping farther and farther up the mud-caked sides as they approached. Sandy gave a skip of excitement and ran across the top deck, flinging open the door to one of the outbuildings.

  Caleb seemed almost bewitched and followed Sandy as if in a trance, not questioning why she knew her way around an old dam so easily. They entered a room with a bank of windows that overlooked the dam’s sheer cement face. The walls were lined with the switches, dials, and monitors of silent computers, and a giant control panel desk occupied the space below the window.

  Mark stared out the window at the expanse of grey cement that led to the dizzying drop below. Sandy had flicked a few switches, and a couple of the computers had hummed to life (the dam probably generated its own electricity). Caleb wandered around the room examining the old computers. Mark’s eyes automatically sought out the outlines of the door with the pentagon on the wall of the dam.

  “Wait!” he said. Sandy gave him a look that he knew was frosty even without the benefit of his little yellow cards. “How are we going to get in the door if the spillways are open?”

  He wasn’t sure why he was facilitating this. Getting in the door would put Sandy one step closer to knowing that Mark had lied.

  Sandy’s smooth brow creased up beneath her bangs. She turned to Caleb. “Mark’s right,” she conceded finally. “You and I are going to have to go down to the room now, and Mark is going to have to open the spillways for us.”

  Mark recoiled. “Me?”

  “I’ll set it up. All you have to do is flip two switches to open the spillways.”

  Mark thought he might have detected a slight shift in Caleb’s eyebrows out of the corner of his eye, but when he flicked his gaze to Caleb, his freckled face was neutral, as if he had experienced no surprise that Sandy knew how to operate a dam.

  Mark did a quick risk assessment. Remaining up in the control room would at least mean that he would be away from Sandy when she discovered that the door would not open. As an added bonus, while the spillways were open—at least for a brief period before the reservoir was completely drained again—Sandy would be unable to get out of the room, which meant that Mark could perhaps escape. On the down side, Caleb, whom Mark rather liked—despite the fact that he seemed to be in a trance or under a spell—would be stuck in the room with Sandy.

  “Can you do that, Mark?” Sandy’s tone seemed a bit sharper than before.

  “Um, uh…” Mark hesitated. The thing about these adventures was that he was required to make all sorts of decisions quickly—decisions he would rather mull over and weigh the pros and cons of for a long period of time.

  “Mark, we’re waiting,” Sandy snapped.

  Again Mark thought he caught a flit of eyebrow movement on Caleb’s face.

  “You know,” Caleb said, “we could probably program the spillways to open fifteen minutes after we leave the room. Then Mark could come with us. Would that make you more comfortable, Mark?”

  Caleb nodded encouragingly, as if he wanted Mark to agree. Then again, Mark was never good at reading nuances, so Caleb could be asking him to disagree.

  Sandy formed her lips into a round little rosebud and crossed her arms. “None of us knows how to do that, and we don’t have all day to figure it out.”

  “I can stay up here and open the spillways, and you and Mark can go,” Caleb said.

  “No!” Mark and Sandy said in unison.

  Mark narrowed his eyes at Sandy. Why did she want Caleb down there so much?

  The door swung open with a crash. Seven men wearing animal skins burst in, thrusting spears in every direction. Caleb’s men? Mark blinked.

  “I told you. It’s the Light,” one of the men said.

  Caleb stepped forward as if to greet them.

  “Traitor,” one of the men yelled.

  Two of the men unleashed their spears while the other two pulled their crossbows. Mark felt a surge of energy behind him, and the men flew back against the wall of the room, spears and crossbows scattering and heads slamming against the cement.

 
“Run!” Caleb yelled, taking a swing at one of the men who was struggling to his feet, and snatching up two of the spears.

  Mark needed no further encouragement. He took off out of the room as fast as he could go. He turned left and flew down one of the dim corridors he’d traversed the day before with raccoon-hat man, his feet slapping hard against the cement floor. He thought he heard footsteps behind him.

  The tunnel forked, and Mark went right and prayed. After a few minutes, he slowed. The footsteps behind him had vanished. He risked a look back and saw only the narrow passageway with pipes running overhead.

  He reduced his pace to a half jog, looking for a door, preferably one that led to the outside. But all the doors that lined the corridor were locked. Occasionally the sound of shouts reached him, but they were indistinct and he couldn’t tell who they were.

  He pressed his body hurriedly against a fifth door without any expectation, but to his surprise it flew open and Mark almost landed on his face on the floor inside. He struggled up and staggered forward. It was an office, much like the one he and Jake had occupied, except the desk in this one was covered with maps.

  Maps. Mark’s heart rate accelerated slightly. This wasn’t what he had been looking for. He had been looking for a way to get outside. But maps…

  He checked the hallway. Nobody seemed to be behind him. He closed the door to the room.

  *****

  Abbey stepped gingerly through entrance to the stone chapel while Sylvain retrieved the stone he had buried in the woods east of the rotting structure. Beyond a small entryway, thick wooden beams and rafters supported what remained of the roof. Patches of sunlight illuminated the leaf- and needle-strewn floor, and heavy wooden pews, battered by the elements, lined the sides of the aisle.

  “It’s a sanctuary of sorts,” Sylvain said, entering the chapel behind her. “Our people believed this was one place where witchcraft could not be practiced and violence not wrought. A place of safety. Non-witches think it was a chapel of the Christian faith, but it wasn’t. The five monks were a part of our Guild.”

  Abbey made her way to the slightly raised dais at the front of the chapel. In the center, a small statue of a woman stood on an altar, her arms outstretched. Abbey could see how she could be mistaken for Mary, with her dress and hair covering, but there was a shrewd boldness about the face.

  “This is Quinta Francis Merry, isn’t it?”

  Sylvain nodded.

  Abbey stared at the statue, at the eyes that seemed to regard her, to see into her. There was no doubt in her mind that this woman was a witch—but had she been a good witch… or a bad one?

  What secrets do you hold, Quinta? Abbey thought.

  They built a small fire outside the chapel and heated some of the rations—tinned items that looked like they might be of Second World War vintage. Abbey tried not to think about botulism or other potential hazards while she gulped down the scorched stew and green beans. She drank water from a small stream behind the chapel. Dehydration was a greater health risk than giardia, but it didn’t stop her from imagining the little cysts replicating and populating her intestines.

  “So, other than building screens, what else can you do?” she said, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. She’d already updated Sylvain on everything Matilde and Graham had said regarding the diversion and Quinta. “It would probably be helpful for me to know.”

  Sylvain offered a weak sort of smile, his gold tooth glimmering in the firelight. “Not much, I’m afraid. I can create distractions such that you don’t notice me doing things, and I can influence your point of view with some persuasive language and a dash of what you might call hypnosis. Frankly, I’ve made my living more by a reasonable knowledge of human nature, and careful use of my foresight, than by my abilities. And I haven’t done too badly… until now.”

  “And the others? Ian said there were intuits, extuits, and pattern finders. Which of those does building screens fall under?”

  Sylvain gazed out on the seemingly ancient trees all around them. “That would be the extuit category. Extuits is just a broad category for witches who can manifest their power externally and influence people, matter, and energy. The more powerful witches can collect energy from the air, or serve as a conduit for it; I’m not sure how it works, but they can actually create and transfer surges of energy. Some can cast their mind into a different location and see and hear what’s happening there. Mark seems to be able to do that. Some can influence animals to do their bidding. Anyway, all of those things fall under the extuit banner.”

  Sylvain shifted his eyes back to her and his expression became appraising. “Pattern finders have exceptional puzzle-solving ability, and intuits can hear people’s thoughts and anticipate their actions. I rather think Ian has that ability, although he doesn’t seem inclined to tell anybody. He claims to be just a basic extuit with the ability to influence people, but I don’t believe him…” He trailed off as Abbey contemplated Ian’s trick with the pentagram and numbers. Perhaps he had read Simon’s mind. “Some strong witches possess several of these abilities to varying degrees. I would suggest you experiment.”

  “But, how is it possible that we can do these things?”

  Sylvain shook his head. “Our abilities are related to quantum mechanics and gravity somehow. So is the travel to the future and between futures.”

  Abbey hugged her knees against her chest. “I don’t quite understand why using the docks and traveling between the futures is first derivative travel. It doesn’t make sense. Didn’t the futures split sometime around our present? So thirty years ago, there would have been no futures to go between. So how did it get to be first derivative travel?”

  “We don’t know a lot about the docks,” Sylvain said, “because as I’ve said, using them has been considered against the rules, probably for good reason. So in my day nobody used them. All we know is that the docks are for ‘between travel.’ Between what… well, that may depend on the time period. Now it seems to default to ‘between futures,’ but it may not have always been that way.”

  “And what are the points of power?”

  Sylvain placed one of his forefingers beneath his hawk-like nose and rested his thumb on his chin. “Your mother might literally kill me for telling you all this, but I suppose she’s not here, and given that someone is rearranging the future, all bets are off. Points of power are the spots you are already familiar with—the vertices of the pentagram and the ends of the cross—but they also include other spots where a weaker energy can be found, but which can still be potentially used to travel, if one has the appropriate stones or parts of a dock. Our abilities are also stronger near the points of power. They’re all over Coventry, and up through the Stairway and Circle Mountains. Nobody has mapped them or been able to discern the pattern, if there indeed is a pattern, but some of us can sense them, and often a Madrona or particular species of rose will grow in that spot.”

  He rose. “We should get a move on if we’re going to try to rescue Russell and meet up with the others.”

  14. Spilling Open

  Mark made for the desk like a man starved. Surely it had been years since he had last held and caressed a map, lost himself in a coastline. It felt like years.

  He stared at the map reverently for a few seconds before squinting in dismay. It was a 2012 topographical map of Coventry, Granton, and the Circle and Stairway Mountains, the Moon River carving its way through the landscape. Written on it, in blue ballpoint pen, were two dots with circles around them. The dots were in the Stairway Mountains, quite close to the Granton Dam.

  He removed his backpack and pulled out his satchel. Carefully, he withdrew his hand-drawn replica of Kasey’s map and the overlay of the pentagram and cross. It was the wrong scale, but from what Mark could tell, the dots on the new map were not in the same places as the dots on his map.

  More dots. Mark wasn’t sure if he wanted more dots to worry about.

  He flipped th
rough the other maps on the desk: a geological map of the area showing the known mineral deposits, an isostatic residual gravity map, and an isogonic map of the lines of magnetic declination, dated 2035.

  Mark’s hands grew a little shaky at this last. Instead of the vertical lines running down North America and curling up at the ends that he expected, this map showed horizontal lines running across North America. This was impossible, wasn’t it? Unless a geomagnetic jerk had happened and the north and south poles now temporarily occupied the east and west poles. What would that mean for navigation, or—Mark actually physically shuddered—map-making?

  Two sets of footsteps thundered down the hall outside the room. Mark ducked beneath the desk. When the footsteps were gone, he took a deep breath, and before he could think about it too much, he stacked the three maps and folded them neatly. Folding maps made his hands sweaty on top of shaky, but if he rolled them (which was the right thing to do with maps) he wouldn’t be able to conceal them in his satchel. He was stuffing the satchel back in his pack when he spied Ms. Beckham’s flowered handbag, looking lifeless and battered, in the bottom of his pack.

  He felt a bit like a criminal concealing a body. He’d taken evidence from the scene of… well, the scene of something. He must tell Caleb about the handbag.

  He crept back to the door and listened. Shouts could be heard in the distance, but the hallway sounded clear. He risked opening the door a crack and poking his head out. Seeing nobody, he turned and bolted down the hall, heading in the same direction as before. He arrived at the foot of a set of stairs and began the ponderous jog up them, trying but failing to maintain his pace, his backpack weighing heavy and his stomach growling. If he was going to become Warrior Mark, he was going to need to start doing stairs and remembering to pack beef jerky and salami sandwiches.