A Grave Tree

by Jennifer Ellis

  Sylvain’s reply was cut off by Mark’s blood-curdling scream. He shot out of the trees at a run. A panther padded behind him, its jaw and teeth crimson with fresh blood, the spear protruding from its side bent and hanging.

  “He’s not looking altogether friendly,” Caleb said, as everyone, except Sylvain, backed down the silty slope that led to the edge of the reservoir.

  “He’s not alone,” Sylvain said, just as a spear flew out of the trees and whistled past him. He swung his head wildly from left to right before stumbling down the bank himself. “There’s at least ten men up there. We’re trapped.”

  Abbey grabbed one end of the booster cable from Caleb. It had the same symbol as the magnet. She opened the magnet case. The cable jerked downward toward the magnet, wrenching Abbey’s arm, while the magnet flew out of the box and hit the metal end of the cable with a clang, the symbol on the magnet meeting with the symbol on the cable. Oddly enough, the other ends of the cable, which was still in Caleb’s hands, didn’t seem to be attracted to the magnet at all, and she wondered what they were made of. But there was no time for curiosity. Curiosity was for safe physics labs.

  “Sylvain, the raft. We have to build a raft.” She looked over to where he stood frozen, licking his lips on the beach. “Now, Sylvain. Please.”

  He looked up, and she gave him her bulgy-eyed look. Then she found her center—belief was coming more easily to her now—and felt her mind knitting together atoms from the air, weaving them tightly to form something that would support their weight. She felt Sylvain helping her, and the raft grew larger and sturdier. What were these molecules of matter that they were pulling from the air?

  “If we’re going to do this,” she heard Sylvain murmur, “if we’re going to actually step on board this thing, you’re going to have to believe like you’ve never believed before, and you can’t stop believing.”

  The song “Don’t Stop Believin’” started running through Abbey’s head. She clenched her teeth and recentered her mind.

  A few seconds later, a raft sat at their feet, a grey, nondescript blob of nothing the size of four air mattresses, which, if you looked at it the right way—or the wrong way—appeared almost transparent. But when Abbey reached down and touched it, the edges felt solid and substantial.

  She lifted it off the beach and pushed it partway into the water. With the raft in hand, and all her focus on keeping it real, she felt almost like she was in a dream state. Sylvain bent to hold the floating blob as well.

  The panther had followed them down the bank and now stood only about three meters away. It regarded them intently with its pale blue eyes, crouched low as if ready to spring, the blood on its maw glistening.

  “Get on the raft,” Sylvain said calmly, but there was an edge to his voice.

  Abbey and Caleb scrambled on board, and Abbey struggled to control the bob and weave of the material she had created from her mind. As soon as Sylvain got on board, they’d be pulled away from the beach and caught in the current. That’s if they didn’t sink.

  Her brainiac mind-feed slipped into her consciousness. In order for the raft to float, the weight of the four of them, plus the weight of the raft, must not exceed the buoyant force the water would exert on the raft, which would be equal to the weight of the water displaced by the submerged portion of the raft.

  She’d concentrated on making the raft large enough not to fit through the rebar posts—but was it big enough to float? She tried to lengthen and widen it, but her strength was fading. Then she felt Sylvain’s response, helping her, pushing more atoms into place, locking them together.

  Mark still hopped from one foot to the other on the beach, vacillating between the horror of the raft and the horror of the panther.

  Movement on the top of the bank caught Abbey’s eye, and she jerked her head up to see two men—presumably the ones who had thrown the spear at Russell—peering over the edge, their weapons at the ready. Abbey searched frantically but did not see any crossbows.

  “Mark!” She spoke with some effort, her tongue thick and furry, the strain of keeping the raft intact wearing on her.

  “I told you,” one of the men called over his shoulder. “It’s the beast and the Light. Together. More evidence of black magic. Kill them!”

  Mark finally turned and vaulted onto the raft as a group of men charged down the bank, their spears aloft. Sylvain pushed off hard, and the raft skidded out onto the water, lurching and bobbing like a water mattress—just as the black form of the panther sailed through the air and landed on the edge. Before anyone had a chance to react, the current picked them up, and they were swept toward the diversion and hopefully out of range of the spears.

  Abbey eyed the panther, her jaw numb with the effort of sustaining the weave of atoms. It would not be good to pass out with a panther on the raft. Caleb had turned as if to fend off the giant cat.

  “Caleb, ignore Russell,” Abbey managed to say. “You have to throw the magnet at the rebar, swing us out of the current, and then let go. We have to get into the right current immediately or we won’t be able to.”

  The last thing she saw before the edges of the world became a little too fuzzy for her liking was Caleb hurling the magnet at the rebar… and Mark leaping off the edge of the raft.

  *****

  Mark screamed when he hit the icy water, but he kept a firm hold on the almost amorphous material that made up the raft. He hadn’t wanted to get back in the water so soon after his swim with Caleb, but it was better than sharing a tiny raft with a panther. He was conscious of the magnet flying through the air, of Caleb holding the cable with two hands and leaning. The raft careened toward the jagged-toothed edge of the diversion. The panther occupied all too much of the raft, its pale blue eyes luminous. It was almost beautiful, save for the spray of blood on its jaw. The men on the bank had run down to the water’s edge and were waving their spears.

  Mark wasn’t sure his adrenaline or cortisol levels could actually go higher.

  Abbey’s eyes flicked open. She seemed to be only semi-conscious. “Mark, no!” she yelled. “You have to get back on the raft. You’ll create too much drag.”

  “It’s not working. I can’t get us out of the current,” Caleb called.

  “It’s Mark. Get back on the raft, Mark, please,” Abbey urged.

  Ignore the panther. He had to ignore the panther. Mark gritted his teeth and pulled himself aboard, remaining as far away from the creature as possible.

  Caleb let go of the cable, and for a second the raft sailed over toward the platform, but then it picked up speed and started flying once again in the direction of the diversion—and the opening.

  “What now, Ab?” Caleb’s voice was uncharacteristically sharp. “Please tell me you have a plan.”

  Apparently Mark’s cortisol and adrenaline could go higher. If nobody did anything, they’d hit the diversion in about thirty seconds, and if the raft wasn’t wide enough, or it collapsed (since after all, it wasn’t very substantial), they could quite possibly fall over the edge. And it was his fault.

  “I’m thinking!” Abbey snapped. “And what, am I the only one who can come up with plans here?”

  The men had regrouped and followed them downriver. A single spear landed in the water just short of the raft, as if the men were testing their range (which seemed blessedly short, but not comfortably short, in Mark’s opinion).

  “Can you build a wall to stop the spears?” Caleb said.

  “We’re a little busy right now. Give us a second,” Sylvain growled, his face ashen. The panther, bedraggled and breathing heavily, had lain down on its side on the raft.

  Mark’s head hurt from his own thinking (and from making sure he stayed well away from the panther). How could he fix this? Before, on the beach, Abbey had asked him if he could move things when his head was flying, and Sylvain had suggested that he should be able to. Could he move the raft?

  He tried an experimental push of the raft;
the edge tipped straight down into the water in some sort of dive. Sylvain yelped in alarm. Panicked, Mark pulled back immediately.

  He tried reaching out for the magnet instead. Maybe he could carry it with his head and attach it to the platform railing, and Caleb could reel them in with the cable. Sending his head across the water now seemed easy, but he couldn’t budge the magnet an inch. Maybe it was too strong, or too heavy—or maybe he just had no idea how to move objects with his head.

  The raft careened toward his floating head, and he could see the gaping, slack-jawed expression of terror on his own face. Did he really look like that?

  The raft hit the rebar with a terrifying thwap, its edges curling up like a leaf on a storm sewer grate, as if with enough force it might fold and slip through the posts. Caleb grasped the rebar and tried to push the raft away from the edge.

  Mark jumped back into his own body. “We need to take the magnet off the post and put it back in the box. Then we can go to the other end of the raft, take it out, and throw it to that post,” he announced, pointing at the rebar post three meters away and just out of reach.

  Caleb lowered his eyebrows. He looked at the dangling cable, then at the rebar post.

  “It might work,” Abbey breathed. “If the magnet is strong enough, you might be able to pull us along the rebar posts with the cable. You’re going to have to throw it pretty hard though or it will just fly back to the closer rebar post, and potentially take your head off.”

  “Okay. Assuming I can pull us along the posts, then what?” Caleb said.

  Abbey jutted her chin at the intact portion of the dark cement wall. “If you get us past the hole in the diversion, maybe we can get up onto the wall.”

  Caleb nodded. “All right, Mark, let’s try together.”

  Mark cautiously moved over to where Caleb stood on the edge of the raft. Two more spears fell just short of them, and the panther had started to pant. Mark felt exposed on all sides.

  They pulled at the magnet, but it was no use. The small silver cube was stuck firmly to the rebar. “Try adding a push of energy, or whatever it is you do that moves things,” Caleb ordered.

  “You’re going to need to hurry,” Abbey said, sounding faint and desperate.

  Mark scowled at Caleb. Where had those big pushes of energy come from before? Had they even come from him? He didn’t know. He looked at the long cable that Caleb had pulled out of the water and coiled on the raft. He gestured at Caleb’s chest, where they’d stuck the end of the cable before. Caleb’s eyes widened, but he nodded.

  Mark knew he should be volunteering for this job himself—he was stronger. But the cable creeped him out.

  Caleb closed his eyes for a second, then pressed the end against his heart. Mark could almost see the energy crackle down the cable.

  With the added boost, he and Caleb peeled the magnet off the rebar post and put it in the case. They couldn’t close the case because of the cable, but it still seemed to have enough of a damping effect on the magnet that Caleb could go to the edge of the raft, remove the case, and throw the magnet at the next post. Mark ducked, thinking the magnet might come flying back at him, but it sailed through the air and landed on the next piece of rebar. Using the cable (and what seemed to Mark like extra superhuman strength), Caleb managed to pull the raft three meters forward, to the next piece of rebar.

  “Okay, next one, Mark,” Caleb said. He looked a bit pale, almost green actually, his skin only a few shades lighter than his eyes.

  Working together, they moved the raft, rebar post by rebar post, fifteen meters or so along the diversion. When they at last managed to pull the raft to the edge of the opening, they were able to tuck it in against the solid wall of the diversion about twenty meters from the platform.

  Unfortunately, the water level had dropped, which meant that the raft sat too low in the water for any of them to scramble up onto the diversion.

  “What do we do now?” Caleb asked.

  “Can you push us over to the platform?” Sylvain suggested. “We could use the cable to climb up.”

  “The current’s too strong,” Caleb said. “It’s pressing us against the diversion. And I can’t throw the magnet that far.”

  Mark pressed his fingernails hard into his palms. Caleb was holding them in place against the wall by pushing on the last rebar stump. But some of the men with spears had made their way out onto the diversion on the far side of the opening, trying to get a better angle with their weapons. And if their attackers attracted the attention of the men standing guard behind the turbine building, they’d be surrounded.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better figure it out fast. We can’t go on much longer here,” Sylvain muttered. Abbey was silent, her face scrunched up in concentration.

  Caleb looked around desperately, as if believing someone would suddenly throw them a rope. He turned to Mark. “Mark, can you push the raft?”

  Mark considered. Where had the energy come from before, when he’d pushed the men at the river? Had he even done that? Mark clawed desperately through every crevice of his brain. He thought about his mother’s drawings. They had provided important clues before.

  Leaves, a grave, a tree, and a minus pirate. Leaves in a grave and a tree minus a pirate. A grave, a tree, and a pirate. It made no sense. All Mark could see was a tree surrounded by pirate graves, where everyone was saying arghh.

  Pirates said “Arghh.”

  Minus Arghh. Minus R. Grave Tee.

  Grave Tee.

  “Grave Tee,” Mark said to Abbey. “Grave Tee is important.”

  Abbey eyeballed him through narrowed eyes, her face rigid with strain. “I can’t help right now,” she said. “You two need to figure something out.”

  “My mother’s drawings,” Mark insisted. “She drew Grave Tee. A Grave Tree, with a pirate to minus the R. With Leaves.”

  This caught Abbey’s attention. She closed her eyes. “I would almost think she meant gravity. Grave Tee. Gravity. But her drawings are usually literal,” she said. “Like they refer to an actual thing.”

  “Gravity’s a thing,” Caleb said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Our abilities are linked to gravity,” Sylvain called from across the raft, a sheen of sweat on his face. “And our spaceships in the future—or at least the future as it was before it got ruined—ran on zero point gravity, using electromagnetic radiation.”

  “Zero point gravity?” Abbey repeated. Her eyes flickered with something, and she looked at the magnet in its case in Mark’s hand, and then at the yellow bag Mark still carried. “Let me see the gun that was in my mother’s purse,” she said.

  Mark offered it to her. She turned it over in her hands several times.

  “Have you fired this before?” she said, finally.

  “Yes,” Caleb said. “But it’s useless. Nothing happened on the EM setting, and there was just a tiny little explosion on the AM setting. There are no bullets in it, and it doesn’t seem to be a laser.”

  Abbey flicked the gun to the EM setting and handed it back to Mark. “Mark, go to the edge of the raft closest to the platform. Fire the gun at the raft on the EM setting,” she said. “Then immediately take the magnet out of its case, switch the gun to AM, and fire it at the magnet. Then try to throw your energy and push us through the water. Caleb, you push off the post at the same time.”

  The raft suddenly plunged deeper into the water and gave a dreadful lurch, causing Mark to yelp and Abbey to scream. A dark form sailed over Mark’s head, and the panther landed gracefully on the top of the diversion. It turned back to regard them with glittery eyes before slinking off in the dark toward the relative safety of the platform.

  Mark eyed the gun like a tarantula. What if he shot a hole in the raft and it sank? But he could think of nothing to do than other than comply. He pressed his teeth together, moved carefully to the edge of the raft, and fired. Nothing happened when he fired at the raft (and thankfully no hole appear
ed). He pulled the magnet out and felt the jerk of it pulling back to the piece of rebar that Caleb held. But he switched the gun’s setting and fired it at the magnet as Abbey had instructed, and then he tried to gather the energy (and his wits) and push the air around the raft.

  The raft suddenly lurched forward a few feet as if on a wave (of air or water—Mark couldn’t tell), and got caught more firmly in the current leading to the building. It spun around lazily, then started to pick up speed, cruising toward the building. Mark nearly passed out with relief as the space between them and the platform narrowed.

  “It worked,” Caleb breathed. “What does that gun shoot?”

  Abbey shook her head and didn’t reply. “I’ll explain later,” she mumbled.

  A thunderous crack split the air, and a large chunk of the diversion toppled off the wall and plunged into the river below. The surge of water over the diversion resumed. The raft spun again, caught in an eddy of the two currents. No rebar blocked the way in this new opening. If the raft went that way, it would fly right off the edge. More cracks appeared in the diversion. It was like the whole thing was going to crumble.

  “The magnet!” Caleb yelled. “Give me the magnet!” Caleb snatched the silver cube out of Mark’s hand, snapped it onto the end of the cable, wound up, and threw. It seemed to almost hover in mid-air, uncertain what direction to go. Then it flew through the night sky, hit the platform’s railing, and stuck with an audible clank.

  Caleb pulled them through the current, yarding the cable over his shoulder length after length as more bits of the diversion fell off, taking the men atop it with them. The rush of water pouring over the diversion, punctuated by the men’s screams, pounded in Mark’s head.

  They hit the platform wall, and with a boost from Caleb, Abbey scrambled up the cable and onto the platform. Sylvain managed to clamber up after her, again with help from Caleb.