by S L Mason
“You’re brilliant, Zoe, but I don’t think we can get through this wall. Got any ideas about that?”
“Can’t you like sing it away or something? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”
I thought about what she said, but it was an invisible wall. It didn’t have a sound. There was no key or tune to it.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. I can’t hear it.”
We walked along the edge next to each other. I was thirsty and hungry, and I’d spent most of the day running. I was beginning to feel the drain. Nothing about this place was edible or livable or even really all that pretty. Gazing around, I saw trees but nothing like what I’d seen at Deston’s castle. His gardens were magnificent, but this was boring and drab. So far I’d only seen three or four flowers, one of which harbored killer pixies.
“Zoe, when you were watching the upper garden, did you see any flowers other than the ones the pixies were living in?”
“No, I don’t know what kind of garden this is, but it’s not a flower garden.” Her eyes still surveyed the area in a clockwork fashion.
With my back to the outer edge, I knew one way or another I’d find Arty. They said the prize was at the center. So as long as I kept walking in a straight line, I would find the center. Unless of course, this was an illogical garden and the center was off-center. The hope I had in my heart for the end of this game crashed and burned.
It was very possible that they wanted to be whimsical and decided the center wasn’t the center. Like the golden ratio spiral, and it wasn’t centered but off-centered. I guess I’d find out either it was the center or it wasn’t.
I couldn’t stop my eyes from shifting left and right, constantly searching around. With the invisible wall to one side, at least I knew nothing was coming from that side.
Zoe managed to get herself up there, so she wasn’t stuck and completely helpless. There were trees and bushes but gone were the box hedges of the lower garden. They were replaced by small, sculpted topiaries shaped into flowers as if a Japanese man had come through and trimmed every single one.
I was waiting for Mr. Miyagi to jump out and tell me to wax on, wax off.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and all the bushes jumped to a crescendo. They hummed in the background, their sweet little songs, whatever they were. Someone came through and sang, shaping them. They morphed the song low, just out of reach and below my ability to hear. I felt the vibrations in my chest. Zoe wasn’t affected.
The sound must’ve been imperceptible to Zoe. “Can you hear that?”
“No! Hear what?” I shook my head. There was no point in trying to explain it to her. You could hear it or you couldn’t. The bushes moved, and they ceased to be flowers. They reshaped themselves.
Zoe squeaked. “The garden is changing. Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I think we need to move faster.” I picked up my pace to a flat-out run. My chest heaved, lungs straining, as I pumped my arms back and forth. The bush in front of me took on a shape suspiciously like an octopus. My already adrenaline-soaked body filled with a new dose as I imagined a tentacle reaching out to me.
The eight limbs undulated as if it was on the seafloor. Octopi had eyes, but I had no idea where they were. They opened just as I passed it, brown, they were brown. The eye tracked me, and that was when I saw the wooden hooks and barbs grown into every tentacle. Octopi didn’t just grab their prey with little suction cups and hold them in place. Oh no, they had little barbs next to their suction cups to hook into their prey. Sometimes they ripped out the barb to cause blood loss and weaken their prey or to tear their prey into smaller pieces to fit inside their mouths. I didn’t see the mouth of this octopus, and I really didn’t want to. I did see a giant arm swinging my way.
I ducked as it swiped past my head. I dipped out of reach, but I ran into the stupid invisible wall, crushing my shoulder and losing balance. I fell down. I couldn’t roll to the side. I used a stick poking through the wall as leverage to stand back up and keep moving. I trailed one hand down the invisible barrier with my legs running. The octopus swiped again, missing me. I must’ve been out of range. By now, the garden was in full kill mode; it wasn’t just an octopus. Other creatures from a ram, a lion, and several dogs were coming for me. A dog threw back its head and howled as it bared its white, woody teeth, licking its leafy tongue between its sharp canines. All of it was a green plant and very creepy. I saw how tightly packed the leaves were, creating the surface of the creature. The little leafy veins were in variegated colors. The leaves merged themselves together to create perfect skin, in some cases even mimicking raised veins and muscles. I wondered what it would be like to be digested by a plant? If I didn’t keep my ass in gear, I’d find out pretty quickly.
Zoe yelped on her side of the wall. There was nothing I could do to help her.
The pièce de résistance of the garden was a mystical creature. A giant green leaf-covered dragon. I spied the head.
Maybe, it was just a head. But it reared up, exposing its chest and front claws. The woody tips gleamed in the light with their razor-sharp edge. Its long neck undulated as it pulled its head back and roared.
I would’ve rather dealt with one of those flying versions. It would’ve given me a minute to run away. It put one foot on the other side of the invisible wall and reared back, unfurling its massive wings. The dark green leafy skin stretched between the wooded skeleton. I heard a snap as it finished unfurling to reveal the little horns on the tips of the spiny edges. It leaned its head back and roared.
Please don’t let it shoot fire. Please don’t let it spew fire. Please don’t let it spew fire.
I didn’t think there was any way I could get around the dragon. It was connected to the garden ground at its belly. A massive umbilical cord attached to its belly button. I was able to move around relatively easy, but it was still anchored to one spot with only its wings and head capable of reaching out to me.
How am I going to get away from this thing while dodging snapping jaws and the hounds of hell?
I worked my way back and around, out of reach of the dragon. Its evil yellow eyes watched me, so I waved Zoe off in the opposite direction, hoping she’d walk around the evil dragon.
She stopped dead still and took a good long look at the dragon. She pulled something out of her shirt. I saw light flash off of it—a knife.
How the hell did she get a knife in here?
She ran dead straight for the belly of the beast. The closer she got to the dragon she crouched down and slid in like she was headed to home base. She reached the umbilical cord as the dragon turned its head under to snap at her. She hacked away at the base of the bush itself, the one thing attaching it to the ground. It morphed, growing smaller and smaller as there were fewer branches to connect it. Soon, there was nothing more than a baby wyvern. With no hind legs to hold it up, it beat its wings rapidly to stay in the air, balancing on the tip of its tail.
It opened its mouth and snapped at Zoe, pulling a chunk of hair and skin from her head, but it was too little too late. Zoe was already halfway through the last of the branches. It reared its head back to roar, but her knife sliced through the last of the fibers. It wilted with its wings held wide.
I jumped up and dashed to her side, dodging snapping jaws and growling mouths.
Blood poured from the wound in her scalp. She blinked blood from her eyes. I unwound a length of silk and took her knife to cut it. A high E issued from the fabric, raking over my ears.
Ignoring the pain that rang through my head, I wrapped the fabric around her head several times and tied it in a knot.
She resembled a trauma victim. She launched herself at me. “Thank you! You saved me.”
I didn’t know what she meant. She’d saved me. “We don’t have time for this. Thank me when it’s over.”
With her arms wrapped around my neck, I stood, and we both continued to the center of this hellhole.
My eyes darted left and right, sca
nning for trouble. There had to be something more. It couldn’t be over. In my gut, I knew there was more. Every rustle in the distance told me there was more.
CHAPTER 24
We pushed our way through to the last of the bushes, most of which were relatively inert. I heard notes coming off of one or two of them but nothing significant. I didn’t get the feeling any of them were lying in wait to attack us. A bush resembling a pterodactyl, but it also looked like an Areca palm. It was bizarre with two long, spindly legs stuck into the ground, spreading palm fronds and shaping itself into the bird’s long snout and its web-like wings. We skirted around it, waving the knife to ward it off.
This was the quiet before the storm, my gut kept telling me, like one of those horror movies where everything gets quiet before something jumps out and scares the shit out of you. Or just before the murderer decides to jump out and kill everyone. What were the words they used to describe it, eerily quiet?
Whatever was going to jump out, I wanted to be ready for it. I couldn’t stop looking around. If I let my guard down, it was going to be there ready to jump or attack. There had to be something to set it off. I saw Zoe’s hand kept reaching toward me, and then she would pull back like she wanted to hold on to my hand but was afraid.
“If you want to hold my hands, just go right ahead and do it. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I understand you’re scared, but whatever comes, we need to have both hands available to fight it off.”
“Who creates a garden to kill people?” Her voice pleaded with me.
“I don’t know, it’s a great question. What kind of sick, sadistic creature decides they’re going to kill off someone in a garden? ‘Hey, come over for a party. We’ll go to the garden and kill some humans. It’ll be fun, and bring a friend; it’s BYOH.’”
“BYOH?”She asked.
“Yeah, you know, bring your own human.” I snickered.
She snorted and covered her mouth with her free hand. “Bring your own human. That’s funny. So the killers are already here, they just need to bring something to make them want to kill us?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of the idea I was getting. They bring us here to kill us, yeah.”
What was really obvious was that it was designed for someone to survive or maybe a few someones. The big question wasn’t who survives, nor was the big question whether we survive. The question was why did they want us to survive? Why did they want anybody to survive? I mean, the running around killing us, this was some kind of contest, or the Fae said it was. Janice said there was a prize, something bigger and more important than humanity or fairy. Deston said it was the world. No one could offer someone else the world, so it was ridiculous. Maybe he said that to make me fight harder, to want to win more.
I shook my head.
Up ahead loomed a massive tree, one of those great old oaks or maples. The garden ended at the edge of a giant sinkhole. The tree sat in the center, suspended from a platform and linked with bridges. The roots of the tree trailed over the side, hanging down into the black void.
“What kind of tree is that?” Zoe asked. It was apparently a conversation to take my mind off the open, bottomless pit surrounding the tree and the narrow bridges leading to it.
“I think it’s an oak. It looks like one that my grandmother had in her backyard.”
“Yeah? Was hers over the top of a big hole too?” I asked.
“Yeah, no, it just looks like that.” She replied.
Oak trees lived for hundreds of years, and this one looked like the first oak tree of all time. The massive gnarled branches twisted around on itself. Giant roots dug into the platform and curled around the bridges, clinging to one another in a twisted, woody vine.
It was easy to see the various humans surrounding the base. All had different colored hair and skin. I heard moaning from the direction we were headed.
A B-flat permeated the air. It was high and bright, and it rang from the direction of the tree, like the sound of a bow being pulled across the strings of a cello calling to me.
Zoe extended her hand, reaching out for it. She turned zombie-like with enchantment and walked to the edge of the pit skirting around to a bridge. I grabbed her hand, desperate to pull her back. She simply kept going, wrestling her wrist this way and that to free herself. I lost my grip, releasing her.
I wasn’t entranced, and I didn’t find the sound of the tree was entrancing at all. It sounded terrifying, but we weren’t the Eloi and the Fae weren’t the Morlocks, were they? Living underground, preying upon humanity, was that what was really going on here? It sounded like the bell that H. G. Wells described in his story. The one that rang the humans to their doom, leading them underground to be eaten and devoured by blue inhuman creatures that had once lived on the surface. How would Wells have warned us? What if it wasn’t for some fun science fiction story about a time traveler? What if time travel was something he was describing to warn us in the future? The Fae had done it before, and they would do it again.
What if it had happened before? I saw the way she moved toward the tree, the way the other humans were enslaved as willing participants in their own death with little regard for themselves or anyone around them. They turned into mindless food or fodder. Maybe Wells got the food part wrong, but he hadn’t gotten the fodder part wrong.
I wasn’t sure how, but he realized there was a creature living underground, attempting to control us, dominate us, take us, and use us.
I followed behind Zoe, tentatively talking to her and hoping to snap her out of it.
The light globs hung in the air around the tree like marbles left where they may. They lingered under the bridges, revealing the flat surface holding the tree suspended above the bottomless pit.
The tree held all the prizes prisoners. They were stuck and incapable of freeing themselves. In their entranced state, the desire to free themselves was as vacant as their eyes. The roots of the tree had wrapped around their legs and driven through their hands, even wrapping around their torsos. It held them tight to the base.
There had been others, nothing left but a bloodstain. They’d been absorbed into the tree as if it lived on human blood and ate them. Bile rose to the back of my throat. The acid taste caused saliva to flood my mouth.
How do you free someone from a tree that absorbs them?
CHAPTER 25
H. G. Wells said in order to defeat the Morlocks, the Eloi destroyed their underground facilities, blowing them up to bury them alive. Few survived, and the only ones left, lived on the surface.
As this all ran through my mind, judging by the network of caves and the sheer volume of this massive cavern. They weren’t just caverns. It was a whole other surface to the planet, an underground world. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the Earth was hollow being down here. I’d never heard anything about a hollow earth, but if you tried to collapse what was down here, you’d destroy the surface in its entirety. H. G. Wells’ resolution would never work.
Somehow there was a balance between the two, there had to be. Either we humans and Fae could both survive together, or we’d mutually assured each other’s destruction. I didn’t think humanity would survive.
H. G. Wells didn’t have to worry about trees that sucked people dry of their blood.
Zoe approached the tree. I wanted to pull her back, but I was also fascinated to see what happened next.
She was entranced. How could you release someone when you didn’t even have control of your own mind?
She stopped in front of a young girl, no more than eight. It had to be her sister, they had the same hair color and some of the same facial features. Both of their cheeks curved into a shy smile, and their eyes were vacant, but deep inside they recognized the other. Zoe stretched out and touched Olive. Her bonds fell away, and the tree freed Olive. It made no attempts to attack Zoe or her sister.
The Fae hadn’t said how to get out of the garden. All they said was that we had to get to the center and free our friends. That was i
t. All we had to do was free our friends.
Nothing happened. Zoe freed her sister, but they were both still standing there in a zombie-like state.
I was a coward for standing off to the side, watching my friend and waiting to see what happened. She couldn’t control herself, and I didn’t want to take the time to tie her down to something that could kill her here.
I need more data. Information was power right now, and I had zero power and zero information. Watch and wait, that would be the smart move.
I paced around the base of the tree till I spied black hair and light reflecting from glasses. I stumbled over roots, stopping myself short of touching him. My hands itched to free Arty from his thorny bonds, but what would happen after? My belly filled with acid. What if I became entranced by touching him? I didn’t know what to do. I sat as close to Arty as I could and waited. With my arms wrapped around my bent legs, I rocked and waited.
Other than the B-flat and the C of the bushes, I couldn’t hear anything else. There were no humming insects or screams. I didn’t hear footfalls. I was alone.
The girl stuck next to Arty whimpered. The tree pulsed and visibly moved in and out as if it was a beating heart and taking a breath like lungs. With every breath out, the girl next to Arty cried louder and the thorns around her breasts dug deeper. A branch appeared near her neck and wrapped around it with thorns, lashing around her neck. She screamed. Nobody moved, and I was frozen in fear, transfixed. I couldn’t move. How did I know the tree wouldn’t lash out at me for trying to stop it? Her eyes opened briefly.
“Please, please,” her small voice pleaded with me.
I watched the light in her eyes die. Her mouth was open with a ‘please’ dying on her tongue. She didn’t blink, and the tree opened behind her. It split in two and drew her inside. I watched as the sickly pallor of her skin disappeared behind the brown of the bark, leaving behind only the bloody thorns that had been holding her in place.