I strolled cautiously to the center of the plaza, where I heard some sort of plinking and tinkling going on. There was a skinny guy with a monk’s fringe sitting with his back against the tree, trying to play a mandolin, but botching it badly.
I walked up to him. From the way he jumped, I must have taken him entirely by surprise.
“Where’s Arthur?” I said.
“Who?”
“Luther.”
He did not respond. He hopped to his feet and ran off towards the church, leaving the mandolin propped among the roots at the base of the tree. I picked up and strummed a chord. The guy didn’t even have the thing tuned right. I plucked harmonics, tuning it by ear.
I used to own my own mandolin—a cheap, little Eastman A-style—but it hadn’t survived the move to the storage bay. The neck had snapped when one of the movers stepped on it accidentally. It hadn’t bothered me at the time, but now I kind of missed it.
“Well, what do you know … it’s Lord James.”
Bern. But where was his voice coming from? I looked up. He and Lille were dangling from a bough about ten feet above my head. Their torsos were completely encased in wood, like those boulders you see studding the boles of trees that had grown up abutting them for decades.
“Are you guys okay?”
“Healing,” said Lille. “But I suppose we have a ways to go.” The remnants of her skirt hung in shreds. Blood stained the cuffs of Bern’s trousers.
“What on Earth did you do to poor Luther?” said Bern. “He speaks of you like you’re the devil incarnate.”
“Nothing … I mean … I just visited—”
An elaborate trumpet flourish sounded, accompanied by drums. A procession exited the church, led by Harvald in full chain mail. Two ranks of Luthers—the blonde physiotherapist version, armored in leather and steel and bearing spears—followed down the steps, four of them bearing an open palanquin, on which was seated what seemed to be a giant bird clothed in pure, white plumage.
Windows opened. People emerged onto their balconies to watch, although no one dared come out onto the square.
“What happened to the dogs?” I said.
“You’re looking at them,” said Bern.
“You’re kidding.” I couldn’t help but grin.
“Any luck finding Karla on the other side?” said Lille.
I shook my head, keeping my eyes trained on the approaching parade.
“Hence, why so pensive,” she said. “And why you’re back.”
“Has she been here?”
“Obviously not, or we would have told you,” said Bern. “And believe me, we would have seen her had she come onto this plaza. Not as if we have anything better to do than watch all day from these dratted boughs.”
“Now Bern … watch your tone. The boy is just making certain.”
“What are you doing up there, anyhow?” I said.
Bern rolled his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. Admiring the view. I have to admit the place kind of grows on you.”
“Bern!”
“Luther did this to you?”
“For trespassing,” said Lille, nodding.
“But I told him not to—”
The trumpets sounded again, even though I saw nothing that looked like a trumpet anywhere. The procession halted a good fifty meters away and a rank of guard-Luthers formed up between us and the palanquin.
Harvald helped Arthur down the steps and onto the paving stones. Arthur spread his wings and smoothed the white plumage framing his face, which now sported a beak in place of his nose and upper lip. They came forward cautiously, flanked by an honor guard of beefed-up Luthers.
“As you can see, I have given you your wish,” said Arthur. “The ‘Burg is open, and will remain so, one more day. And you were wrong. There was no mass exodus. My citizens remain, ensconced in their homes. There can be no better proof of my benignity.”
“Except that two of the folks who want to leave seem to have a tree attached to them.”
Arthur’s eyes snapped up to the bough and back. “They must serve out their sentence and then they will be free to go where they please. In truth, I’ll be happy to be rid of them. They have done nothing but undermine this community.”
“I told you to make sure they suffered no consequences. It was my fault they trespassed. I want you to set them free now.”
“In time. They must serve as an example to the others.”
“I said NOW!” My temper flared and blew the lid off my kettle. My arm shot up and I pointed at the knotty bough that entrapped Bern and Lille.
The bark began to writhe like a tangle of worms in a bait bucket. The limb twisted, pitching Bern and Lille forward. Startled, Lille flung out her arms as if bracing for a fall. Bern’s hat fell, scattering a group of Luthers as if it were a bomb.
“No!” said Arthur, raising his wings, extending both palms to the bough, bringing his weaving to bear. The limb twisted back into place, its component roots tightening just as Bern managed to extricate one foot.
I summoned my anger with all the intensity I could muster and halted the process of restoration, unwinding the branch yet again. Arthur stopped my momentum. The limb quivered, caught between our powers.
I felt like I was arm-wrestling an equally matched opponent. It pissed me off. I could feel the heat rising in my face. He had promised not to harm them.
“Let them go!” I shouted. The bough exploded into splinters and shreds of root and bark that went flying everywhere, littering and ruffling Arthur’s magnificent plumage. The ranks of Luthers ducked and shielded their faces in unison. Some of them barked, betraying their previous creation.
Bern and Lille thudded down awkwardly onto the cobbles, collapsing together in a pile.
Arthur blanched behind his already pale feathers, as Harvald brushed off bits of root and smoothed him. The Luthers rose up and advanced on me with their spears. Arthur raised his hands against me. I felt my skin pucker and wrinkle. I looked down at my hand. It had become gnarled and arthritic and covered with oozing scabs.
“No!” I shouted. “You can’t!” With a crackle, my fingers re-plumped and shed their deformities. I was tired of this asshole messing with me. A fury rose from the pit of my soul. I could feel it come surging through my core and branch into my extremities. It flowed out of my fingertips and straight into Arthur.
He took the full brunt. His body shuddered as every feather shortened, darkened and thickened into hard, glossy scales like some Amazonian armored fish. His beak softened into a floppy, whiskered snout.
“Gah! What have you done to me? It’s pure ugliness. You’ve made me ugly! Turn me back!”
The Luthers stood trembling, their spears directed at me, but no longer advancing. Bern and Lille and picked themselves off the ground and were still gathering themselves.
“Well done, boy,” said Bern, who wobbled and favored one leg severely. Even with Lille’s assistance, he had trouble standing.
“Are you guys okay?” I said. They both looked bruised and tattered.
“Nothing that can’t be mended with a little weaving,” said Lille, fetching Bern’s cane and bowler.
“I’ll be fine,” said Bern. “As if the damage weren’t enough, my bloody leg’s fallen asleep.”
“How did you do this to me?” said Arthur. “How could you? Reverse it, now. I … I hate fish.”
“Afraid I can’t,” I said. “I don’t know how.” I lent Bern my shoulder for support to free up Lille.
“We’d better go lad,” whispered Bern. “Before he decides to retaliate.”
Arthur ran his hands over his scales but nothing changed. “I can’t believe it. It’s irreversible! How did you do this?” He plucked at his scales in a panic, tossing them to the pavement where they lengthened and curled into bits of root that crawled off into the cracks.
Lille made a bee-line for the cottage, while Bern and I hobbled along behind. His stride smoothed out with each pace they put behind them.
/> Lille tossed a glance over her shoulder and I followed her gaze. The Luthers milled about their master, confused, while Harvald helped Arthur pick off scales as if they were ticks.
We passed through the garden gate, by rose bushes gone weedy and brown and into the cottage with its kitchenette at one end and a four-posted bed at the other.
Lille scooped a stack of linens off the bed and stuffed them into a large basket along with a pair of pillows and some mismatched tea cups and silverware.
Bern took a handgun off the wall that I had assumed was just for decoration. He swaddled it in a towel along with a spare magazine.
“Bern … please … not that. It probably doesn’t even work here.”
“We don’t know that,” said Bern, ignoring her. “If nothing else, it might prove a useful deterrent.”
“Did you make that?” I said.
“Found,” he said, tucking it into the basket. “Let’s hope its true owner misses it a little longer. You know what happens to things forgotten.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They don’t stay in Root.” I wished that rule applied to people. Karla certainly qualified as lost, and I sure as hell hadn’t forgotten her. I wished now that I had been satisfied with seeing her in Root. I feared that my insistence on going after her on the other side had only driven her farther away, while putting my soul in peril on the mountainside. I missed her with a pang as strong as a week without eating.
Lille peered behind the curtain. “Let’s leave out the back,” she said. “The Luthers seem to be getting themselves organized.
Bern flung open the back door and staggered out into a tunnel every bit as shaggy as the one behind Karla’s collapsed dome.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Bern. “So long as it’s far, far away from this damned ‘Burg.”
***
Bern and Lille slithered through the roots with a confidence bred from many prior passages. We passed through the sparse matrix between the tunnels, making strands glow to light our way, parting any walls that blocked our way. We ducked out into one of the broader tunnels well below the junction. I recognized it as that darker place where I got stuck in my pod after that backslide and had to watch that poor girl get Reaped.
Lille found a seam in the tunnel wall and sliced through. We went in a good hundred yards before reaching a low-ceilinged cavern in the roots. Little yellow specks like fireflies illuminated the outlines of a boxy structure that looked like a crude, windowless garden shed.
“I apologize for the appearance,” said Lille. “We just threw this together as a temporary haven. It’s a camp, really.”
“I think of it as a cabin,” said Bern. “Few of us have Luther’s knack for creating perfect domes.”
“And we haven’t been around much of late to maintain it,” said Lille. “For obvious reasons.”
“Stop apologizing,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“Come inside,” said Lille. “I’ll see if I can whip us up a pot of tea. I’ll make sure it tastes good, but don’t be surprised if it’s clear. I’m not up for making it look authentic.”
The interior of the cabin was smaller and cruder than their cottage, although the layout was quite similar—a single room with a sleeping mat at one end and a little table and cupboard at the other. Roots dangled from every corner of the ceiling.
Lille ripped a mass of roots from the inside of her teapot.
“So what brings you this time?” she asked.
“What brings me?” I took a seat on a rickety chair and looked at her blankly.
“Surely there must be some bad news?” she said. “No one ever comes here for pleasure.”
“I guess … I’m not a happy camper.”
“Go on,” said Bern, taking a seat beside me. Lille had somehow conjured water in her little pot and caused it to steam, though I saw no spigots in the room and no source of heat.
“I went looking for Karla … in Scotland. And now … I think I’m dying on the side of a mountain.”
“Oh my!” said Lille, pouring my cup.
“Why on Earth are you looking for her on a mountain?” said Bern. “Is she—?”
“It was a shortcut,” I said. “Or so I thought.”
“What did you mean by … ‘dying?’” said Lille.
“The weather turned bad,” I said. “I’m not wearing the warmest clothes. I’m soaked and chilled. And I think I’m hallucinating.”
“Not about us, I hope,” said Bern. “I hope you don’t think that this—”
“No, not you,” I said. “Imps and faeries.”
“Oh my,” said Lille.
“I’m cold. Very cold. So cold, I’m starting to feel warm.”
“I see,” said Lille. “So you’re here because you’re sad that you will die without ever finding Karla?”
What Lille said hit so close to my true feelings that a wave of tears overcame me. Until now, I hadn’t thought it was possible to cry in Root.
“I’ll never see her now. I blew it. I’m gonna die of hypothermia and that will be it … forever.”
“Oh my,” said Lille.
“Get yourself someplace warm, lad,” said Bern. “Hop to it … as soon as you’re drawn back. There’s obviously hope. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t still alive and somewhat rational.”
“I can’t … I can’t walk,” I said. “I can’t get my muscles to do what I want. And … I’m hallucinating. I saw faeries … and imps.”
Bern and Lille looked at each other.
“Those … may not have been hallucinations, dear.”
“Huh?”
“Well, there could be … other states of mind … that could act as portals to other worlds beyond Root. Lille and I … we haven’t experienced such ourselves, but we’ve heard about—”
“Faeries?”
“Well, no,” said Bern, shrugging. “Not exactly. We’ve heard of some pretty strange things from those on the brink of death. Bright lights. Ancestors’ voices. But … faeries? That’s a new one on us, I’m afraid. Regardless, you need to summon your strength and get yourself off that mountain. That’s an imperative, lad. We can’t afford to lose you.”
I sighed and sipped my tea, which was bitter and strong. “At this point … I don’t think I have much choice in the matter.” A fear began to grow in me. “What … what happens if I die on that mountain? Can I … would I stay here in Root? And like … never go back?”
Bern and Lille gave each other that look again.
“One fades, son,” said Bern. “And one doesn’t come back. But we don’t know… no one knows where you go.”
A panic rocked me. “Is it possible … that’s why Karla hasn’t come back? She might be dead?”
Bern hemmed and shrugged and turned up his palms. Lille slugged him.
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think such a thought. She’s a healthy young girl. The odds that she has passed are … infinitesimal.”
“What about … suicide?”
“But that would mean she would have to be taken by Reapers,” said Bern. “Our girl would never let that happen. Would she, Lille?”
“Fat chance,” said Lille. “That one’s a fighter, she is. She—”
Lille gasped and her jaw dropped. Bern’s eyes widened.
“W-what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Before they could answer, a swarm of prickles spreading across my skin told me I was about to fade.
Chapter 40: Bothy
I awoke to flames crackling and dancing before my face. Smoke stung my nostrils. Hushed and worried voices speculated and disagreed. I lay on a pair of spongy pads, wrapped like a mummy in poly towels under two layers of down sleeping bag.
A young man in a rain jacket with a bandanna tied over his head swore into his phone.
“What’s wrong? Can’t you reach them?” A girl with a rope of braided red hair that dangled nearly to her waist looked on with concern.
/>
“No bloody signal whatsoever. Should have gone with Vodaphone.”
“Aye, this could’ve been us, you know. Climbing that face. What if we had had an accident?”
I tried to speak, but only grunted. I wasn’t entirely back just yet.
“Sean! He’s conscious!” said the girl, her freckled face leaning close to mine.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in a bothy,” said the girl. “We found you face down on the path and brought you back. You’re lucky we made an early start for Ben Macdui.”
“Ben who?” I said, rising.
“Lay back down. You shouldn’t be moving.”
“Hypothermics are susceptible to heart arrhythmias when jostled,” said the guy. “Says it right here in my book.”
“Here, have some of this.” The girl handed me a plastic mug filled with steaming broth.
“We saw you lying there, your body all dark with your hood up. Thought you might be the Greyman, sleeping.”
“It’s true,” said the girl. “I was afraid. I felt this aura. It was so strange. I wanted to run.”
“Greyman?”
“The Am Fear Liath Mòr. Guardian of passes and portals. Folk tale, but I know of some who have felt his presence here. Imagine how relieved we were to roll you over and find you were just another ill-prepared American tourist.”
“Tourist? Hey, listen. I ain’t no tourist. I’m anything but that.”
“Whatever. You need medical help, regardless. Sean’s going to hike to the road in Braemar. I’ll stay with you, in case you run into any problems. I’m CPR certified.”
“But I’m going in the other direction. To Aviemore.”
“Not today, you aren’t.”
My head pounded. I sat up and shrugged off both sleeping bags. I had one microfiber towel wrapped around my waist, another draped over my shoulders like a shawl. I only retained my skivvies. “Where are my clothes?”
The girl nodded to a clothesline set up over the hearth.
“They’re soaked. Might take all day to dry them, clammy as it is.”
“Listen, I need to get to Aviemore.”
“In time,” said Sean. “First thing’s first.”
“No. I need to leave now. I feel fine. I’m not hypothermic anymore. I’m warm.” I didn’t tell them about the pulsing headache that made it feel like my brains were squeezing between the plates of my skull.
“You can’t. You’ve got no dry clothes. If I can only get a signal we could have a mountain rescue team up here to help you. Perhaps a helicopter.”