She peered inside and screamed. “Oh my God! There’s a body in there!” She dropped down and bent over, sobbing.
It was then I noticed the miniature gardens of bright green moss growing in every juncture of trunk and limb. Billy had been trying to show me this very tree.
I scrambled up the side of the beech and forced myself to look into the hole. Deep inside, a delicate human hand protruded from a knot, fingers lightly clenched and hooked like a claw.
Chapter 27: Salvation
The cheers originated at the front of the column and rippled back through the crowd like a shock wave. Karla couldn’t see what had prompted them, her view obscured by the dust kicked up by the myriad of marching souls, but she guessed it had something to do with the Horus. Her suspicions were confirmed by an ecstatic Seeker who ran back shouting the news.
“The Horus! It’s turning!”
A thin man who had fallen back through the ranks peered through the dust, but there was nothing to see but more dust. More bone, than muscle, he must have looked just as grotesque in life, but like Karla, he had no obvious disability.
No one ate in the Deeps, but no one lost weight. No one ever aged either, but they weathered. Bodies were mere vehicles for souls until they broke down and became a prison.
“Big deal,” muttered the thin man. “It has turned to us before, only to veer away at the last minute. It’s only purpose is to torment.”
“Keep your prognostications to yourself, Seeker,” came a booming, authoritative voice.
The speaker was a milky-faced soul swaddled in pale muslin. He carried a staff shaped like a shepherd’s crook, but with fine ceramic teeth studding its curve.
Karla hadn’t even seen the Hashmal come up alongside them with his escort of Protectors—trusted Seekers deputized to enforce order in the column and defend it from infidels.
The contingent was shuttling from the rear to the head of the column. Their strides were long and quick as they hurried forward, now that their responsibilities had shifted from encouraging stragglers to managing entry into the Horus.
Karla scurried out of their way. The Protectors were not shy about cracking their staffs on a skull or two, and one of the first things she learned in the Deeps was that these hybrid bodies were brittle. This existence might be a few steps removed from the physical, but it was not a solely spiritual realm.
She had come across so many broken and discouraged souls in the rear of the column that even though she was able-bodied, she made it her mission to assist her own motley clique of the walking wounded. Someone had to protect them from the Protectors.
There was a man named Tomas, with shattered bones in his ankle who had trouble planting his foot without it flopping over on its side. Mary was a hunchback with a severed spine. She wasn’t paralyzed as one might expect, but she could only remain erect by leaning on a pair of ceramic crutches fashioned from ceramic shafts salvaged from an abandoned infidel settlement. Ishmael was an African without hands or lower jaw, but who managed to convey his feelings with the most expressive eyes Karla had ever seen.
Those three were the core of her little clique, but there were those who occasionally joined them as they shuttled through the column. A frequent visitor was Renault, a man whose limbs were intact but whose skin hung in shreds from his frame like ribbons. Renault was a strong walker, but his grotesque appearance discomfited the luckier souls at the fore and he was often ridiculed and ostracized. Position in the column was a measure of status, but the pretty souls only deigned to be with other pretty souls, until they too inevitably accrued damage and had to fall back.
The Hashmal lagged behind, keeping pace with Karla and her group, and he could not stop staring. It wasn’t hard to see that she had the only intact body in this collection of battered souls.
“Your body looks perfectly fine,” said the Hashmal, squinting at her. “What are you doing with these cripples? You need to come to the fore where you belong.”
“They need help,” said Karla. “So I thought, why not help them.”
The Hashmal shook his head. “That’s not how the vetting and sorting is supposed to work. There is a reason they are back here. They have been punished by the powers-that-be. Only the virtuous get to advance.”
“Is charity … not a virtue?”
“Not here. Not anymore. The only virtue in the Deeps is self-salvation. The Lord helps those who help themselves.”
“Salvation?” The thin man chortled. “What evidence for salvation do you see in that monstrosity?”
The Hashmal wielded his staff. “Infidel!” he shouted. The Protectors surged after the thin man, who was already dashing and dodging through the crowd with a squad of Protectors on his heels.
One of the marchers seized the thin man and dragged him down. The Protectors caught up and beating the thin man viciously with their staffs. Karla had to look away.
The Hashmal stood his ground, with a pair of bodyguards flanking him. They kept glancing nervously towards the dark shadow beginning to emerge from the dust clouds ahead. A rumble like a deeply buried subway train was slowly becoming audible.
“Let that be a lesson to you. I am a tolerant soul, but I will not tolerate subversion. If you want to keep your legs, keep your heretical opinions to yourselves.” He looked straight at Karla. “And if I return this way and find any more malingerers among the cripples, I will make sure you receive some disabilities to match your friends.’”
Karla nodded, though she had no intention of complying. She would defect to the infidels herself before following any orders from this one. She had always had difficulty accepting arbitrary and unwarranted authority. Defiance was her natural response to such affronts.
The escort returned and the Hashmal strode off. Renault laughed a laugh as ragged as his skin.
“Don’t worry, love. This Hashmal will soon be replaced by another who don’t know ye. They rotate in like hockey shifts. None of their type can stand this land for long.”
“I’m not worried about him,” said Karla. She looked back to where the thin man had gone done and spotted his shattered form, writhing on the ground, beyond the reach of any help that she could offer.
“Was that man really an infidel?” she said. She had only observed infidels from a distance, standing on distant dunes watching the procession.
“Possible,” said Renault. “They do infiltrate now and then, so he may be a spy. But at the very least he’s a doubter, and that’s just one step away from being an infidel.”
“But don’t you … don’t you ever doubt?”
“Of course I do, darlin,’” And he grinned. “Every bleedin’ minute. But I’m not stupid. I don’t share my feelings with the Hashmallim.”
“Then what keeps you here, with us … Seekers?”
“Morbid curiosity, I suppose. I want to see what happens when the Horus takes ye up into its maw, not that I have any intention of going there myself. I like to stay with the devil I know. Always been that way. Never moved on from my hometown. Died in the bed I slept in as a child.”
“If it wasn’t for you guys, I would be long gone from here,” said Karla.
A look of incredible sadness overcame Ishmael and he crossed his stubs over his chest.
“Gone?” said Mary. “You mean off with the infidels?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Maybe. But I think I’d rather go off and do my own thing. You know. Explore.”
Tomas laughed. “What’s to explore? There’s nothing but dust here, and beyond that, more dust.”
“You never know about a place,” said Karla. “Until you have a look around.”
“Then go,” said Tomas. “By all means Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”
“Maybe someday,” she said wistfully. “If the Horus doesn’t take me first.”
Not that she was scared of that eventuality. It was just another transition, another adventure, another place to adjust to and eventually master. No existence frightened her
, not anymore. Root had trained her to make the best of any situation, no horrible it seemed initially, even the Deeps.
Here, it was always daylight and they were always on the move, seeing new terrain yet never getting tired, thirsty or hungry, sharing the camaraderie of some interesting and friendly souls. She would help her crippled friends chase the Horus until they could chase it no more.
And then she would go off and make friends with the myriad of lesser souls who littered the plains, their bodies too shattered to transport their souls, stranded for eternity or until the Horus plotted a random vector over them.
Those folks must be terribly lonely. She wondered what difference she could make, stopping here and there and talking to them, letting them know that they were still part of the human species.
She wanted no part of the infidels, seeing nothing to attract her in their squat, earthen warrens that she had glimpsed from afar through the cordons of Protectors that steered the procession away from their settlements.
As for the Horus, why not? She wouldn’t obsess about it the way some Seekers did and the Hashmallim preferred, but if the opportunity came, she would enter it gladly.
Tomas tripped and stumbled on his floppy ankle. Karla rushed over and helped him to his feet.
Renault looked askance as he struggled to get his foot planted properly. “Don’t know why ye don’t go see the infidels. They can mend any bone. And they don’t ask for recompense. I’ve known many a Seeker who’ve done so and returned to the chase. Just don’t let the Hashmallim see ye.”
“If that is true, then why don’t get your skin fixed?” said Tomas.
“Because they don’t mend flesh ye fool. Only bone. And besides, I fly my freak flag proudly. I don’t need my flesh mended. It’s a badge of honor. Look at me, I’ve been here longer than any of ye and I’m still going. And I plan to be here for the next crowd when you’re all crippled on the plain or packed into that monster’s gullet. But for you and that foot, they can’t make it like new but at least they could attach it and you can walk on your foot’s bottom again and not its side.”
“In the Liminality,” Karla, Weavers weave flesh.”
“Not again about this Liminality place,” said Tomas. “What good is it, if you can’t get there from here.”
“But you can,” said Renault. “It’s been done. The infidels sing of it. They are legends, maybe but—”
“They are not legends,” said Karla. “It is true.”
“But how?”
“If I knew, I would be there,” said Karla, and she tried to smother the thought but it was too late. Thinking of James was always her downfall. She could deal with anything but knowing she would never see him again. And the miniscule hope that the Dusters’ deeds offered only made things worse by intensifying her longing. Only by telling herself a reunion was impossible could she find any peace.
With one hand supporting Mary and the other propping Tomas, she marched into the dust kicked up by the thousand souls ahead of them, as the blurry outlines of a dark and sinuous column revealed itself gradually in the distance.
Chapter 28: Heartwood
I reached inside the hole and touched the hand, expecting the worst. I found it cold, but not as frigid as I would expect for a corpse. The fingers were passive yet pliable.
Like a sprung trap, they clenched, digging claw-like nails deep into my palm. A groan seeped out of the hollow at the center of the tree, muffled by inches of dense wood.
“Hang on, sweetie! We’ll get you out.”
I pulled my hand free and hopped down.
“She’s alive!”
Ellen looked up, her face as open and hopeful as a full moon. “Urszula?”
“I’m pretty damn sure.”
“How’d she get in there?”
“How else? Wendell and his spell craft. The bastard probably grew it up around her.”
I recalled his reluctance at handing me that GPS, as if it were an afterthought. He probably wouldn’t have minded one bit if she had stayed locked up in that beech. He hated Dusters, even reincarnated.
Something righteous brewed beneath my sternum. I could already feel the energy build and loosen.
“We need to get her out of there,” said Ellen. “There’s a chainsaw … I think … back in the shed.”
“No,” I said. “Too much risk of hurting her.”
“So what do we do? Call the fire department?”
”Yeah, right. What are they gonna do?”
I held the sword loose in my grip and limbered up my arms and shoulders like a boxer.
“Step back,” I said.
“What are you gonna do?”
“You’ll see. Just get behind that boulder.” I nodded to a glacial erratic on the slope behind us.
When I saw she was safely behind the rock, I lifted the sword and let fear and hatred for Wendell well up inside me. What he had done to Sergei’s buddy was pure evil. I didn’t care what bad intentions the guy had. No life deserved to be snuffed so casually.
The metal of the blade began to hum. I could already feel some of the energy transferring. I braced my legs and held the sword out straight in both arms, aiming the point at the center of the beech’s trunk.
I let my feelings for Wendell fester and ignite. The energy separated from my core, swirling into my arms, shaking them as the power concentrated in the sword.
“Is everything okay?” Ellen stepped out into the open. “Are you convulsing?”
“Get back!”
Distracted, I lost control of the spell. The sword discharged prematurely. A shock wave surged from the tip, enveloping the tree. The wood twisted and groaned. A ripping sound gathered in the upper branches and worked its way down.
Ellen dove back behind the boulder. The beech tree peeled back like the sepals of a lily. Six arches of splintered wood surrounded the slender female figure within. Shafts of reddish heartwood poked upward like stamens. Urszula teetered and collapsed at the center of this giant, wooden flower.
The tremors in my arms ceased. I dropped the sword and rushed towards the shattered tree, kneeling beside Urszula’s limp and shivering form. She was pungent with urine, damp and slightly sticky with sap, her clothes stuck through with splinters.
“Is she okay?” said Ellen, scrambling over.
“I don’t see much blood. Seems to be nothing broken. I think she’s knocked out, though. She might have a concussion.”
“No. I am conscious,” said Urszula, her voice hoarse. Her eyes opened and she gathered herself, squirming with surprising strength out of my grasp.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s get you back to the cottage.” We helped her to her feet.
“Wait!” Urszula lunged for the core of the tree where a gently spiraling stave of ruddy heartwood jutted like a middle finger to the universe. She snapped it off at the base and clutched it to her chest.
“Now we can go.”
***
Back at the cottage. Ellen helped Urszula into the bathroom to wash up. She was still a bit delirious and unsteady on her feet. I tried to take the beech stave from her, but she refused to give it up, cradling it like a little girl with a teddy bear.
“I searched for long and hard for this scepter. I will not be parted.”
“Get a fire going,” said Ellen. “She won’t stop shivering. She might be hypothermic. Maybe that’s why she acts so confused.”
Urszula didn’t seem that confused to me. And the weather didn’t seem that cold. But who was I to judge? I was still not completely acclimated to earthly temperatures. Starting a fire was the last thing I desired, but it wasn’t for me. I could always go out on the porch if the warmth got too much to bear.
As I arranged some splits and tinder and got them lit, there was a loud clunk from the bathroom. Something clattered to the floor.
“Everything okay in there?” I called.
Ellen ducked her head out. “We’re fine
. Urszula kind of passed out on her feet, but I managed to catch her. Poor thing can hardly stand. I’ve got her soaking in the tub. Poor thing’s riddled with splinters. Go see if you can find some clean clothes. There should be something in the bedrooms. Check the drawers.”
She glanced back furtively and reached down. “Oh, and here, take this,” she whispered, handing me the heartwood stave. “Put it somewhere safe, away from the fire. There’ll be hell to pay if you lose it.”
I stuck the stave in an umbrella stand and went into one of the small bedrooms attached to the living area. The chest of drawers there was stuffed with brand news clothes still bearing their labels and price tags. I gathered up a stack of things that looked Urszula-sized, including some fuzzy pajamas and a pair of lambs’ wool slippers, handing them into the steamy bathroom.
With the fire going strong, I took a chair at the far side of the room and started going through the pile of papers Wendell had left behind. There were all kinds of goodies in there, most notably fresh US passports and Vermont drivers’ licenses for me and Ellen. I don’t know what kind of trick he pulled to get hold of those, but they all looked official and legit. Even the pictures were current.
There was nothing in the stack bearing Urszula’s name. That told me he wasn’t counting on her surviving her imprisonment in that tree.
Something flat and oblong and dark fell out of a folder onto the floor. I picked it up. It was a Mastercard made of carbon fiber, with numbers and my name embossed a glossy black on black. I stuck it in my pocket.
Urszula barged out the bathroom in those fuzzy pajamas, her face plastered with Bandaids. She bulled right past me and went straight into the kitchen and took a seat at the little breakfast nook overlooking the lake, gleaming in the last oblique rays of dusk.
I followed after her. “How’re you doin’? Feeling okay?”
“Feed me,” she said,
I went and scraped what was left of her borscht into a bowl. There were some French rolls starting to go hard on the counter, so I grabbed a couple of those as well.
As Urszula dove into her food like a ravenous beast, Ellen emerged from the bathroom holding the clothes Urszula had been wearing. She double-bagged them and tossed them in the trash. She stood, hands on hips and watched Urszula eat.