A Grave Tree

by Jennifer Ellis

  “You saw my parents?” Caleb’s voice seemed stretched and thin, very unlike his normal tone. The pounding on the door had increased in volume.

  “What are you two doing?” Sandy yelled.

  “They were ghosts,” Mark said in a small voice. “They disappeared.”

  “How did you get the door open anyway?” Sandy demanded. “The spillways aren’t open yet. I put them on a timer. They’re going to open in a few seconds.”

  “I lied to her about the spillways,” Mark said. “The door won’t open for her.” (At least, he didn’t think it would.)

  “The door was just open when we got here,” Caleb called. “It must have popped open when you opened the spillways the first time. We’re working on it.” He turned to Mark. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Mark sucked in his breath and tried to find the words. It was important, he knew, to find the words. He had to find the words.

  He shifted his eyes to the pentagram so he didn’t have to look at Caleb while he spoke. “I came in here earlier, with Digby, before Sandy found me. I was sketching the pentagram and the characters and they just… appeared in the middle of the pentagram. I couldn’t hear them. But Mr. Sinclair… your dad… wrote on his arm. He said they were trapped, and we have to bring the statue back to center and not to trust a person whose name begins with S. Then they disappeared.” He thought about noting the fact that they looked old—very old. But he decided against it.

  More banging came at the door. “The spillways are open. Why isn’t this door open?” The traces of sweetness that had occupied her voice before had evaporated, and Mark felt a streak of cold hard fear.

  “Maybe only a certain number of people can be in the room at once,” Caleb yelled at the door. “It won’t open from this side either.” He turned back to Mark. “That’s all? They didn’t say anything more.”

  Mark shook his head. Caleb turned and walked the circumference of the room, staring intently at the pentagram as if hoping his parents would come leaping out of it. Then he went and stood in the middle of the pentagram, which made Mark’s hair stand up, but nothing happened.

  Sandy’s voice came at the door again. “Help, help! The men are back. I can hear them outside. Open the door. Caleb, please. They’re going to hurt me. Please, help. Hurry.”

  Caleb went and stood by the door. Mark’s heart nearly stopped. He was going to let her in.

  “No,” Mark said. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  To Mark’s surprise, Caleb pressed his hand and forehead against the door for a few seconds, then turned back to Mark. “Mark, when you said your head was flying that night at Sylvain’s cabin, was it really? Did you feel like you were actually in the room with Ian and Sylvain?”

  Mark nodded vigorously.

  “When I was lying on that ledge in the river, were you there then too?”

  Mark nodded again. Sandy’s voice continued on, shrill and grating, alternately beseeching and ordering them to let her in.

  Caleb nodded. “I thought I felt you. You need to go out to that other room and check on Sandy now.”

  Mark froze. He couldn’t do that. But then he realized that Caleb wanted him to do his head-flying thing again. So he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. The screams and the pounding on the door had intensified, and loud booms started to thunder through the room. It made it exceedingly hard to focus.

  Caleb made an impatient sort of movement by the door. “Come on, Mark. Hurry, or I’m going to have to go out there and check on her.”

  Mark’s head seemed to spring from his body at this prospect, and he found himself in the tiny antechamber again. Evidently Sandy had not thought to bring a light. He couldn’t see. How could he tell Caleb what was going on if he couldn’t see? But the room felt hot and ripe with energy that burned at Mark’s nostrils. He moved closer to where he sensed energy and could make out Sandy’s small hard form. She stood in the back of the room, emanating a huge torrent of power directed at the door to the circular room. When Mark let his eyes (or maybe it was his head) adjust, he could see it sparking from her, arcing through the air and hitting the door.

  Fear coursed down him as profusely as sweat. A human in contact with that wattage of energy would be fried instantly. He searched the room for other energy signatures, for the dead forms of Caleb’s former men. But he found nothing. If they had been there (which he doubted), they’d have been vaporized.

  He pulled himself back to the room that he and Caleb occupied and shook his head. “She’s alone,” he managed to mumble.

  “You’re sure? Are you absolutely positive?”

  Mark nodded, sweat collecting on his forehead. “She’s throwing energy at the door, trying to break in.”

  Apparently satisfied, Caleb moved away from the door and started to cycle around the room again. “That’s what I thought. Bring the statue back to center,” he murmured. “Do you think they meant the statue of Quinta Francis Merry? It’s at the library in Simon’s future. Abbey seemed hung up on that. Is the library at the center of the pentagram?”

  Mark frowned and shook his head. The library was not the center. How could Caleb not know that? Did he not understand geography and maps? “The train station,” he managed to say, although he was finding it difficult to stay involved in the conversation given the noise level. “The train station is the center.”

  Caleb started pacing around the pentagram again amid the skull-shattering booms. “I wonder if the statue has to be at the center for the stones and docks to work. Maybe this pentagram is the wormhole that everyone keeps talking about. Maybe the statue is the key to the energy flow that operates all the portals. Just like you, Ian, and Russell must be present for the stones to be operable. Simon sent us a message about the center and Quinta, and we thought he meant the person Quinta. But maybe he meant the statue. That’s why nothing’s working and why my parents are trapped. Maybe we just have to get to Simon’s future and move the statue.”

  The booming sounds increased in frequency and volume, as if to emphasize the unlikeliness of them ever getting to Simon’s future to move the statue.

  Caleb started feeling around the walls, running his hands over the cracks and crannies in the heavy stones. Mark tried not to think about spiders. “I take it there’s no other way out of here,” Caleb said.

  Mark shook his head. The failure in logic in his rescue plan was now all too evident. Warrior Mark probably would have done better.

  He was about to start rocking back and forth on his feet with his arms clutched around his knees when a brown shape emerged from the gloom and ran bristling and quivering over to him. He let out a scream that made Caleb spin. But then he realized it was only Digby. The rat, apparently glad to see him, skittered up his arm and onto his shoulder and curved his cool wet nose into the opening in Mark’s shirt.

  “Is that Digby?” Caleb said.

  Mark nodded.

  “Did you lose him in here?”

  Mark shook his head. “He ran off while Jake and I were being held prisoner in one of the rooms upstairs.”

  “Then if Digby managed to get in, there must be another way out of here.” Caleb started to search the walls with more intensity.

  Mark decided not to mention that a rat could fit through a crack smaller than a quarter and that it was unlikely that he and Caleb could do the same.

  Caleb returned to the center of the pentagram. “I do feel a tiny bit of energy here in the middle of the pentagram. Did you feel it?”

  Mark shook his head. He hadn’t stood in the center of the pentagram, fearful of where he might end up.

  “It’s like there’s a little bit of energy left.”

  Mark studied Caleb’s shoulders. They seemed to have grown broader since the day before, the angles of his face more pronounced. “I don’t want to go to a parallel universe,” Mark said firmly. The booming from the antechamber intensified.

  A flash of what Mark was pretty sure
was disappointment crossed Caleb’s face.

  “Well, then I guess we’ll have to wait here for a bit,” Caleb said. “Unless you want to go confront Sandy. But I just realized that unless she also set the spillways to turn off automatically, we’re all trapped.”

  15. Mad Science

  It was Abbey who heard it first as the sun passed the midpoint in the sky: the snaps of a few twigs in the distance, the faint scrabbles of claws on bark, the sudden silence of birds, which could all have been dismissed as nothing—if not for the occasional heavy pad of paws on the ground.

  Sylvain claimed not to hear anything, but his angled face had turned a little pallid.

  Abbey stared at the trees every which way as she scuttled after Sylvain, who’d picked up speed considerably since Abbey reported hearing things. Her eyeballs felt dry and she forced herself to blink. The sudden appearance of a shifting shadow of black in the trees caught her off guard.

  She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. A wolf, bear, or cougar perhaps, something indigenous to the area. Not a panther.

  It followed them at a languid pace, its pale blue eyes glinting in the dim light of the forest.

  She wrapped her fingers around Sylvain’s arm. He glanced down and then pulled his lips into a grim, tight line.

  “Some of the Andrews family seem to be able to keep their head enough not to eat their friends,” he murmured. “Others don’t. It was quite terrible what happened with his paternal grandparents. We could try to build a screen, but they’re considerably less effective against our own kind. We may have to use the stone as soon as we get close enough to a point of power and Mark and just go back to our present.”

  “And leave Caleb and Mark?” She didn’t add “and Jake.” Leaving Russell and Ian was a bit less of an issue as far as she could see. They were both adults, and one of them was now a panther.

  “We’re not going to be much use to them as a midday snack.”

  “Surely there’s something we can do. Surely you have something else in your toolkit.” Abbey slid her eyes back over the trees to where the panther still followed them at a distance.

  “Well, I don’t, but you might,” Sylvain said. “Like I said, some of us have a special affinity for animals. If you’re one of them, you might be able to influence our friend the panther over there. It would require approaching him though.”

  “Right. And if I’m not?” Abbey said.

  “Then that would be a very dangerous undertaking.”

  “What are our other choices?”

  “They’re not very good. We can hope Russell recognizes us. We can split up if he does decide to pursue us, so only one of us gets eaten or mauled. A weapon would be really handy right now.”

  Abbey scowled. “I thought you said you had a weapon before, and that you were trained in fencing and martial arts. That’s what you said when you forced me to test the docks for you.”

  Sylvain gave a funny sort of smile. “I’m afraid that might have been a bit of an exaggeration. Weapons tend to get turned against you, and being the best martial artist in the world isn’t going to help us against a panther. And honestly, I don’t want to hurt Russell unless absolutely necessary. I suggest we carry on walking and head in the direction of the Granton Dam, where there are buildings we can hide in. Focus on imagining us as not prey. Think of yourself as a tree, perhaps.”

  Abbey flipped one last look over her shoulder and tried to think tree thoughts, although now that Sylvain had said the word “prey” she couldn’t get it out of her head, and she feared it was hanging over her like a beacon, marking her for chase and consumption.

  *****

  Mark had been reciting the islands of the world in decreasing order of size for the last twenty minutes while Caleb paced around the room pressing his fingers into every conceivable crevice. Dust had started to fall from the ceiling as a result of the waves of energy that Sandy was hurling at the door. Early on, she’d interspersed the waves with screams, calls for help, and claims that the fur-clad men were causing the booming sounds, as if this might coax Caleb and Mark from the room. Mark had to hand it to her. She didn’t give up the charade easily.

  Mark had reached Sardinia, Italy, which was the forty-sixth largest island in the world, when suddenly the booming stopped.

  Caleb went and listened at the door, and Mark continued on as far as New Caledonia and then rose half-heartedly as if it might be time to go home, as if they had a way back to Sylvain’s cabin and the relative safety of the present.

  Caleb shook his head. “I’m sure she’s just waiting there for us. I have an idea. Do you think you could do your head-flying thing with the pentagram?”

  Mark wasn’t even sure what Caleb was getting at.

  “There might be enough energy there for you to look into the parallel universe and see if you can see my parents. Maybe you can talk to them. Find out if there’s another way out of here.”

  Mark felt his eyes get uncomfortably dry and bulgy as he stared at the pentagram, processing what Caleb was suggesting. He couldn’t do it. “I can’t talk,” he said finally. “I can’t talk when my head is flying.”

  Caleb was undeterred, as usual. “Maybe it’s a practice thing and you’ll get better at it each time you do it. I could sense you there on the river. I felt like I could almost see you. We have to give it a try. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of here otherwise. Come on, Mark.”

  Mark let himself be guided into the center of the pentagram, where he felt faint with stress. The energy that Caleb had talked about was there, pulsing beneath the ground, but he could feel it dissipating, like the slow ebb of a rechargeable battery left too long. What if there was only enough energy to get his head to the parallel universe, but not back? The prospect of being both headless and bodiless was too awful to consider.

  “Kotelny, Russia is the next largest island,” he said to Caleb. “It was named after a copper kettle. Nobody knows how the kettle got there.”

  Would that be the case with his head?

  Caleb raised an eyebrow. “That’s great, Mark. Just focus on whatever you need to focus on to send your head somewhere. I’ll be right here holding on to your arm in case I need to pull you back.”

  “The others…” Mark wondered if he should fill in names, but he had too much difficulty with that. “Helped, by the river. They sent me energy, I think.”

  Caleb nodded. His face and hair were chalky from the dust that had fallen from the ceiling. If Mark knew Caleb better, and could interpret expressions better, he’d almost say that Caleb was afraid.

  “Okay. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’ll do my best.”

  Mark felt the warmth of Caleb’s hand on his arm. Normally this kind of touch would freak him out, but he tried to accept it. He focused on clearing his head and bringing up on the image of Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Beckham that he’d seen in the pentagram the previous day. He imagined himself with them, talking to them, and then he started to collect the energy from the air as he had before. He could feel Sandy’s pull on the energy in the next room, and at first he was afraid there might not be enough for him, but bit by bit he was able to tear some away. It was easier this time, and Mark felt as though he was knitting together a map of energy, a web of interconnecting energy lines that he could at least somewhat bend to his will. He felt a slight faltering glow of energy coming from Caleb, and added it to his own. It was small compared to what Mark generated, and he experienced a tiny gleam of satisfaction. He could do something better than Caleb.

  Then his head seemed to be in a long tunnel of nowhere, and he stumbled a little, disoriented. Did his feet actually stumble, he wondered, or did it just feel like his head stumbled? Then his head was in a forest near a river with trees much like the forest outside the dam, except smaller. The river flowed by a few meters away, its waters foaming and swirling. On the ground beneath him was a pentagram formed out of sticks, the strange symbols carved into the dirt
. Nestled in the woods by the river was a small cabin with a thin stream of smoke emerging from the chimney.

  He edged his way over to the cabin (or rather directed his head over that way, because he supposed a head could not edge). Could he be killed in this new location? Was his head immune from death because it was still attached to his body elsewhere?

  He pushed his head through the front door of the cabin. Better to go in the front door, he decided. (If he went through a wall he might end up in a bathroom or a bedroom and catch someone in a state of undress and that would be very uncomfortable. There were lots of subtleties to this head-flying thing.)

  The cabin was spare but tidy. An old woman sat on a faded flowered couch, her back bent, her age-spotted face as lined as a relief map in a mountainous area. She lifted her head as he approached, as if she sensed his presence, and her sunken blue eyes ignited faintly.

  It was his mother. The shock almost sent Mark reeling back to the dam, back to the room where Caleb stood holding his arm. He could even feel the outline of Caleb’s fingers pressed against his skin. But he refocused and remained where he was. How had she gotten so old? What was she doing here? Tears sprang to his eyes, and a sudden jolt shot through him. What if this was not actually his mother, but rather a parallel universe version of her?

  A stack of creamy parchment paper with a pot of ink and an old fountain pen lay before her. She seemed to be searching the air, looking for him, and he drew a bit closer even though he was afraid. Then, quicker than he thought an old lady would be capable of moving, she snatched up the pen, removed the cork from the inkpot, and started to draw.

  Mark watched, transfixed. He should be trying to speak, to ask how to get out of the circular room, but his lips didn’t seem capable of movement or sound.

  His mother had drawn a tombstone with a mound of dirt in front of it. Mark recoiled. What was she saying? A panic swept over him. Was he going to die? Was that his grave? She added a bunch of leaves around the grave. Was that to say he was dead in the autumn? Then she drew a big tree with long branches, a big slash across the page (like a minus symbol), and a man with an anchor tattoo on his arm and a big scrubby beard. A pirate? There were pirates here?