The children followed Clare around the edge of the hole, peering down into it as they walked by. Even Wally looked on with a grave expression.
They traveled through a grid of roads and between more neighborhoods until they reached the pasture blanketed by knee-high grass. It stretched flat for a few acres and with nothing before them, the children could see ahead to the forest. Clare led them across the dirt trail cutting the pasture in half and approached the line of trees. When they arrived, several knights stood on either side of the road and a few more stood on watch in the lookout towers. The knights nodded grimly to the children.
“This is where I must leave you,” Clare said. “Do be careful in these woods. Shadows lurk amidst them. I pray I will see you again soon after completing your mission, marching triumphantly through the streets of the village. Be of good courage!”
She turned to walk back toward the village. Wally, facing backwards, kept her eyes on the children, waving her little hand goodbye, though now with a somber expression. Connor, Maggie, and Lucy waved back, watching until the two sisters fell from view. Then turning back around, they peered down the path cutting between the trees, wondering what awaited them in this mysterious forest.
19
TROUBLE AMIDST THE TREES
The dirt road leading into the forest stretched for several hundred yards before the children ran directly into a wall of woods. It was as if the road dead-ended like a neighborhood cul-de-sac.
“I wish this road took us all the way to the Shadow Tree,” Lucy said.
“I think it’s a good thing it ends like this,” Connor said.
“I don’t! Now we’re going to have to hack our way through this forest.”
“Better to do that and have the cover if the Shadow Army really does patrol these woods. Walking on the open road would leave us vulnerable.”
He pushed his way through and disappeared into the brush. His sisters looked to each other, as if willing the other to go first, until finally Maggie followed him in and Lucy did as well.
The children navigated their way through an army of all kinds of trees, both big and small and both ones found in their own world and others that were foreign to them, ones with fluorescent-colored leaves and swirling trunks and other strange features. The larger ones had trunks as thick as cars and rose as high as ten-story buildings, with lush foliage that formed a canopy atop their heads and blocked most of the sunlight, though some rays did poke through to light their path. Birds called in the limbs to one another, ones that sounded exotic and unlike anything the children had heard back home. On the ground, patches of ferns and shrubs and other plants grew, as well as blankets of moss that had grown atop stretches of rock.
At times the trees and plants were spaced out enough to form an open stretch of land, but other times they were forced to muscle their way through vines and thickets and over or around fallen trees. Connor even had to take out his sword once to hack through a particularly difficult stretch of weeds and ivy.
Every so often they would hear movement, a rustling of leaves or the swooshing of bushes and branches. They would all stop and crouch low, waiting anxiously for the source of the noise to reveal itself. At times it was merely the wind, other times a small critter, and still other times they never discovered what was moving all about them. The girls were frightened and wondered what they could do to better prepare themselves for any danger that might be lurking.
“There’s nothing we can do,” their brother said. “This forest is too big and we don’t know what’s in it. We just have to be careful and move quietly.”
Several hours later they were tired and hungry. They found a quiet patch of ground to sit behind a layer of green brush and against the rock face of a large boulder, choosing it because they were cocooned and hidden from whatever, or whoever, might come walking by.
Connor opened the pouch George had given them, finding three soft, leather thermoses of water, several loaves of bread, and a few pieces of fruit. He broke apart one loaf of bread and handed it to his sisters, along with two of the thermoses, then took some for himself.
As they sat resting and eating, Maggie said, “I still don’t understand how this…boy…what did the queen say his name was?”
“She didn’t tell us,” Connor replied.
“Oh,” Maggie said. “Right. Well, I still don’t see how he’s going to find us. These woods are huge and thick. How could he possibly know where we are?”
“Well, he knows where we’re going,” Lucy offered.
“That’s true,” Connor said, biting into his bread. “But do we know where we’re going?”
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked. “We’re going to that big nasty tree on the other side of the island.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean we’re taking the best path. I’m leading us as best as I can, but it’s been hard to keep straight since the path ended and we’ve been pushing through all this brush. I’m not sure that we’re still headed for the Shadow Tree, and we can’t see it in the sky even though it’s so tall because of all these other trees. If we’ve gotten off course and end up on one of the beaches, we’ll lose valuable time.”
“That’s why we need the boy to find us,” Maggie said. “He’s supposed to show us the way.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not here right now, is he?” Connor asked.
He stood up, finishing off the last of his bread and taking a big swig of water. He tilted his head back, surveying the tops of the trees.
“What are you thinking?” Maggie asked.
“I’m going to climb one of these trees to look out across the forest and get our bearings.”
“Not without us you aren’t!” Lucy objected.
“It will only take me ten or twenty minutes to get up and back down. You guys just stay here and rest.”
“No way,” Maggie chimed in. “We aren’t staying down here without you. We all climb.”
Connor sighed. “Okay, fine. Finish up and let’s go.”
The girls ate the last of their bread and handed their thermoses back to Connor to place in the pouch. He threw it on his back and approached what looked to be one of the taller trees. From his many adventures in trees back home, he knew magnolias were some of the best to climb since their branches began so low and sprung off the trunk in convenient, ladder-like pegs. This tree was no magnolia, and in fact was a sort of tree the children had never seen before, with odd, heart-shaped leaves and grooved bark, but like a magnolia, its branches lent themselves to being climbed.
Connor tossed the food pouch against the trunk and jumped to take hold of one of the lower branches. He pulled himself up and, once secure, helped his sisters up. They began to climb and were soon hundreds of feet in the air. They felt like monkeys when they reached the top and broke through the forest’s canopy, standing tall on one of the highest branches and hugging the trunk. While there were some trees still taller that blocked their view, from their elevated perch, they could get a sense of where they were on the island. Behind them they could see the mountain and the queen’s castle. They couldn’t see the village since it lay flat in the pastures, but they knew it was there below the trees.
They turned in the other direction and saw their destination: the black tree rising against the sky like a monstrous beast, its many gnarled branches coiling through the air. It seemed they had made good time on their journey thus far because it was closer than they expected. Yet it was still many miles off. The children squinted to try and see farther, wondering if they could make out any of the Shadow Army patrolling the limbs. But for now, they still could not.
“I’m glad we came up here,” Connor said. “We’ve drifted north. We’ll need to push back more in that direction,” he said pointing southeast.
The children enjoyed the view a moment longer before crawling back down. The girls were talking and laughing about a memory they had of climbing trees with Daddy once when he fell on his bum. But in the midst of their childish giggles, their b
rother reached up from below them and grabbed their ankles.
“Ow!” Lucy said. “What’d ya’ do that for?”
Both girls looked down. Connor had his finger over his mouth in a very stern gesture. They didn’t understand why he was telling them to be quiet until their vision fell past him to the ground where seven beastly creatures stood rummaging through their food pouch.
20
BATTLING AN ENEMY PATROL
Connor cursed himself for leaving the food pouch behind as they climbed the tree. He should have known not to leave such an obvious trace of their presence. Now, he peered down some thirty feet below to a band of creatures tearing through their things, creatures so ghastly he could not conjure them up in the worst nightmare imaginable.
They weren’t particularly big—only a little bigger than Connor—but what these beasts lacked in size they made up for with grotesque features. Burnt, scarlet skin that looked more like a layer of scabs was stretched tightly across their boney and deformed bodies. They had unusually long arms, like a chimp’s, and their heads were oversized, helmet-like skulls, with pitch black eyes sunk deep in their sockets, and hints of fur layering their chins and necks like a beard. They were nearly naked, save for some dirty, tattered garments strung around them like togas, and belts tied around their waist that holstered curved, foot-long daggers. Some of them held their daggers as they looked around the forest, in search of whoever had left this food behind.
As they rummaged through the children’s food pouch, they seemed to be communicating to one another. It sounded as if they could speak like any human could, but they often repeated certain words several times, like a kind of full-word stutter, and at the end of sentences they would bellow and grunt and make bizarre sounds as they twitched their heads frantically, as if the mere act of talking brought them a great deal of pain. The children strained to hear the demons from their perch in the trees.
“What be’s this…ack! Hmmm..?” one said picking the pouch up off the ground.
“Gimme a look, look, look ah…eh! Now, ughhh!!” another said, ripping away the pouch.
“Wathcha’ self, mind me, ehhh-ya..you! Gimme it back, back, back!”
Another one stepped between them.
“You’s idiots both yaaah, hand it over.”
They handed it to the one who seemed to be their leader. He peeked inside and pulled out a loaf of bread. Lucy and Maggie nearly cried at seeing his slimy hands all over their food. Some of the others yelped and grunted excitedly, like stray dogs begging for a scrap of food. But instead of tossing it to them, the leader sniffed it.
He smiled. “I smell the outside, I do I do I do… ack..shhhug.”
“De outside?” one questioned. “Det’s where’s we headed, no?” one asked.
“Course we is!” the leader snapped. “Once master destroy’s that wretched tree n’da mountain, we’ll have meh’ passage to the outside. Hack-jub! Yuolll! De time’s near, near, near! But we’ve ta’ find these ones the queen brought within..rggg..tyt! They no doubt headed fa’ ta’ assault master. No odah reason she’d bring’em here, ya’ see! Now geta whiff a’ der scent, scent, scent and spread out and find em’…waff qrt!”
The beasts all approached to smell the bread before spreading out in search of the children, sniffing the air and ground like animals. Connor motioned for the girls to climb back into the canopy to hide. They each took a few climbs up, moving as silently as they could, when Lucy suddenly cracked a limb below her feet.
The beasts on the ground jerked their heads up!
“Der’s they is!” one screamed.
“Get, get, get’em!” the leader bellowed to the others.
The other six scrambled to the base of the tree and leapt into the branches. They were skilled climbers with their long arms, ascending the tree as quick as squirrels. They were so voracious about reaching the children they nearly pushed each other off the branches just so they could be the first to attack.
“Climb up!” Connor screamed.
They moved as fast as they could, but it quickly became apparent that their efforts to out-climb the beasts were futile. And where did they think they would go when the reached the top? Connor changed their strategy, pulling his sword from its sheath and hacking at the branches below them.
“Girls! Get out your weapons! Shoot them, now!”
“But we might hit you!” Maggie said.
“Just do it!” he yelled, still hacking at the branches. One became dislodged from the trunk and fell toward the climbing beasts. It knocked one in the head but did little to slow him down. Connor began to hack at another one. He hoped to stall their ascent by chopping off enough branches; the falling debris hitting them was just a happy accident.
Maggie and Lucy steadied themselves on a larger branch and pulled out their weapons. Maggie lifted an arrow and slotted it in her bow, taking aim on her target below. Her fingers quivered as she aimed.
“Connor!” she screamed. “Lean back!”
Connor stopped chopping and shifted back against the trunk. Maggie let the arrow go, piercing it downward through the air. It was set on a perfect target to hit one of the climbing beasts, but hit a branch first and bounced harmlessly to the ground. She pulled another arrow from her quiver, reloading in a flash. She released it again. This one hit one of the beasts in the arm! He screamed out in pain, but then reached up and pulled the arrow out with a vicious growl, tossing the arrow to the ground and continuing with his climb, now far angrier than before.
Connor was able to chop off another branch, this time a bigger one. It fell and knocked into one of the beasts, sending him tumbling to the ground. He thumped against the land and squirmed in agony. The leader of the patrol, who had remained on the ground watching, screamed at the others. “Get them, now!”
The beasts hurled their bodies up and up as Connor continued to lop off branches. Some fell towards their attackers but they had learned to dodge them.
Lucy pulled out some of her knives and sent them twirling through the air. Her first few missed, but the third one struck one of the demonic creatures. He fell to the ground with a thud.
Two down.
Connor had managed to hack off six or seven branches, leaving a branch-less gap in the trunk about ten feet long.
“Climb up more!” he yelled to the girls. “Go, now!”
The children put their weapons away and lifted themselves up several more branches. In a moment, they would be back at the top of the tree with nowhere to go. They glanced down at the beasts, who had reached the branchless stretch of the trunk, forcing them to try to leap up and grab the next set of branches. But they were too short and couldn’t jump high enough.
From the ground, the leader screamed, “Standn’ on top of each other, ye’ fools! Drt-ya!”
The beasts climbed on top of each other’s shoulders, forming a vertical link up to the next branch. It took three of them stacked upon one another, but soon one had pulled himself up and continued his pursuit of the children. Another followed, climbing atop the others, before turning back around and helping pull the last two up. They were back to climbing and would be upon the children in just seconds.
The girls pulled out their weapons and began to fire them again in an act of desperation. Maggie hit one in the leg, causing him to lose his balance and fall to his death. But there were still three left, plus the leader on the ground. Connor pulled out his sword to prepare himself for battle. The creatures were only feet away now, licking drool off their scaly lips and jagged teeth. Their black eyes zeroed in on the children as they pulled out their daggers.
But then the sudden crack of a limb popped through the air. Everyone’s eyes—both the children’s and the demons’—turned in the direction of the noise. What happened next took place in the span of only a second or two, but I shall describe it in detail nonetheless.
From a neighboring tree, higher than where the children were perched in their own tree, a body swung toward them on a vine, as if lik
e Tarzan, wearing forest green garments from head to toe, including a hood (later the children would say he looked like Robin Hood). He approached with such incredible velocity that the demons had no chance to react. The figure thrust his feet out and made direct impact with one of the beasts, knocking him hundreds of feet down to his death.
The person in the green robe steadied himself on a branch between the children and the beasts and pulled out two katanas from leather holsters on his back, swirling the skinny swords in his hands. The last of the creatures shrieked and took swipes at him with their daggers, but he leapt up and dodged their attacks, flipping down to their branch. He crouched low and spun in a circle with his swords out, slicing each through the belly. They dropped their daggers and clutched their wounds, before losing their balance and tumbling to their death.
The leader looked up from the ground, standing in the middle of his six fallen soldiers. He shrieked and waved his dagger in the air.
“Run along, friend!” mocked the person in the green robe. “Or I’ll gladly come down to send you to the same place as your brethren have gone!”
The Island of Two Trees Page 11