It’s not something I think about all the time or anything, but I still wake up sweating from bad dreams where I’m that kid again, trapped in an endless cycle of being hurt. Or something I see or hear will trigger a rush of panic before I remember that I’m not there anymore.
Something like the beat-up old house sitting down there on the other side of a county road that, in this world, probably goes from nowhere to nowhere.
I have to look away. I have to get away, but I don’t know what to do, where to go, until I remember the tree. My magic tree that listened to all my stories and gifted me with her light. The one that Raylene burned down in the World As It Is.
Maybe it’s still standing, here in this world inside my head.
That’s where the magic started for me, I guess. Not in a book, because I didn’t know what I was creating from its pages. I thought I was only taking comfort from those fairy tales and Wentworth’s illustrations, not creating a walking, talking version of Mattie, full of hurt and pain.
That tree and Raylene are the only good things I remember from Hillbilly Holler. In the World As It Is, one’s burned down, and the other tried to kill me before we made our peace. But maybe it’ll be different here. Maybe, even with everything else that’s so awful here, the tree will at least be here.
I circle around through the woods because the tree’s in the fields behind the house, and I don’t want anybody to see me making my way toward it. It was always a private place before and maybe my enemies don’t know about it.
I’m in a curious state of mind as I walk, weaving my way through the underbrush. I start at every sound, my nerves all a-twitch. Anticipation’s running high that I’m going to see the tree again. But I’m also dreading that it’ll be like it was the last time I saw it: nothing more than a charred ruin of a stump. Overgrown. Dead. Gone.
When I finally get to the field where the old tree stands, I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding. It’s still here, as big as ever. I thought it might be smaller than I remembered, the way the things from your past usually seem, but it’s still huge. It’d take three or four of me to touch hands reaching around the base of its trunk, and the canopy has an enormous spread, bigger than any of the oversized infill housing that started to appear in Lower Crowsea during the mid-nineties. They’d jam these monster homes onto a tiny lot with no regard for the look of the neighbourhood.
But the neighbourhood here is just fine. That old oak. The apple trees at the other end of the field, growing up out of a mess of thorny thickets. The field itself, grasses and weeds swaying in the light breeze that’s coming from the woods behind me.
I take the time to study the edge of the forest surrounding the field, longer still to check out the second field that runs up to the back of the old house. I can’t see anybody. And I can’t stop grinning as I walk slowly through the tall grass and weeds to where the tree’s waiting for me.
I wonder if she’s here, that aspect of the White Deer Woman who told me she used to listen to my stories when I sat under its branches and poured out my heart. Or if she’s not here . . . well, maybe I can call her to me through the connection we have to the tree. Because she found a way out of this world inside my head. If I call her back, maybe she can take me out of here, too.
I don’t sense her presence when I’m under the tree, but then I never sensed it when I was a kid, either. Or rather, I sensed something peaceful and comforting, but it’s what I always feel in a place like this.
I lay a hand on the trunk.
“I’m sorry about Raylene,” I say. “She was getting back at me, and you shouldn’t have had to suffer because of that.”
Sometimes it feels like that’s always going to be the way of the world. The innocent get hurt, and no one really pays any attention unless it happens right in their face and they can’t possibly ignore it. But even then they manage to forget pretty damn fast.
Why does it have to be like that? Why does wishing we could all just get along and take care of each other have to be a naive, innocent hope instead of something we could all actually work toward?
I guess I’ll never know. Because the people who do the hurting don’t care, and they’re not about to explain themselves in terms that would make any kind of sense to a normal person.
I still have my hand on the rough bark of the tree. I move closer and hug it, the bark scratchy against my cheek and catching in the tangles of my hair. I can’t possibly get my arms all around it, but it feels good to stand here, holding onto something this full of comfort.
I don’t know how long I would have stood there—looking, I’m sure, like some bad editorial cartoon of a die-hard environmentalist—but there’s a sudden crash in the branches above me. I look up and see a woman and a pony. Impossibly, a woman riding a pony has suddenly appeared in the branches above me, but I don’t get the time to puzzle it out. The woman manages to grab onto a branch, but the pony comes barreling down toward me, changing into a little man along the way.
I jump aside and he just misses me—all little man now, nothing of the pony left except that his dreadlocks are the same colour as was the pony’s mane. He lands on his feet like a cat, expelling a sharp whuft of air from between his lips, and we stare at each other. He looks as ready to bolt as I am.
“Some help up here,” a voice calls down from above.
We both look up.
After all I’ve been through in the past little while, I would have said that nothing could surprise me anymore. But I would have been wrong.
“Lizzie?” I find myself saying. “What are you doing in this world?”
Her familiar face looks down at me from where she’s clinging to a branch as fat around as her own torso.
“So,” she says, “I’m guessing this isn’t Kansas, or even Sweetwater.”
I shake my head.
“Great. And here I am, stuck up in a tree.”
“Just let go,” the little man beside me tells her.
“Oh, right. Like I’m going to do that and break my neck. I’m neither cat nor doonie.”
“It will be fine,” he tells her. “I’ll take your weight.”
“Nope.”
“Trust me.”
She gives me a look but I have no words. I’m still trying to process the fact that she’s here with a little man who can turn into a pony.
“Oh, crap,” she says and lets go where I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have.
But instead of falling, she comes floating down. I shoot the little man a look and see that he’s got this serious look of concentration on his face. I guess by taking her weight he didn’t mean he was going to catch her, but that he was going to literally take her weight so that she doesn’t tip the scales more than a leaf.
When Lizzie’s feet touch the ground, she loses her balance and I catch her arm.
“You see?” the little man says.
She gives me a quick smile of thanks and puts a hand out to steady herself against the tree. Then she looks at the little man and shakes her head.
“I saw all too well,” she says. “What did you do? Talk to my fat cells and ask them to be air for a few moments?”
“Something like that, although you’re hardly fat.”
I have no idea what they’re talking about.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Same as you,” she says. “Bogans kidnapped me into the otherworld—or at least some part of the otherworld. The forest where we were was a lot darker and scarier than it is here. You did say this is the otherworld, didn’t you?”
I nod. “It’s sort of the otherworld, except bogans didn’t bring me. I just kind of appeared here.”
“And look at you—you’re like twenty years old and all, you know . . . healthy and everything.”
I give her another nod. “Apparently the way we appear here has everything to do with how we perceive ourselves to be.”
“Sweet.”
I look from her to the little man.
?
??Oh, this is Timony Twotot,” Lizzie says. “And this is Jilly,” she adds for his benefit.
The little man and I regard each other. Then he sticks out a little brown hand, and we shake like we’re meeting at an art show opening or something.
“Pleased to meet you,” he says.
I nod, but before I can say anything, Lizzie’s talking again.
“So then, where exactly are we? Timony told me to concentrate on somewhere safe, so naturally I thought of you because you know all about this kind of thing, right?”
“Not really.”
“Just tell me there isn’t some pack of bogans waiting around the corner.”
“None that I know of, but—”
“I thought we’d end up back at the hotel, but obviously that didn’t work out.” Then she gets a worried look. “What did you mean it’s sort of the otherworld?”
“It’s complicated,” I tell her. “I think we’re in a world that’s inside my head.”
She just looks at me.
“I know. I can’t really explain it myself.”
“I can,” Timony says. “We’re not exactly in your head. We’re in your croi baile—your heart home.”
“My what?”
“Croibaile,” he repeats. “Everyone has a place like this in the otherworld, but most people only visit it when they’re sleeping or dreaming. It’s a place personal to just you.”
“Like some kind of pocket world?” I ask.
Joe’s told me about them, but all I can remember is the term ‘pocket world,’ none of the details. It’s like the place that Geordie’s sister Christiana has in the between, though I guess she’s not really his sister. Or at least she wasn’t born his sister.
I shake my head and concentrate on what Timony’s saying.
“. . . a term as any. They’re often set up so that only you can visit them. Anyone else needs a specific invitation.”
“But I didn’t invite . . .” I start to say.
But then I realize I did invite them. Not them in particular, perhaps, but I was desperately wanting someone to be here with me.
“So, can we go back home now?” Lizzie asks.
“I don’t know the way,” I tell her.
We both look at the doonie, but he shakes his head.
“This world is closed inside and out,” he says. “Nobody can get in or out without permission.”
“Well, I give you permission,” I say.
That gets us another shake of his head. “It seems more complicated than that.”
“Are you saying, we’re stuck here?” Lizzie asks.
“So it would seem.”
“Well, at least there aren’t any bogans.” She looks to me. “You said there weren’t any, right?”
“I think there’s something worse,” I tell her.
They both look at me, waiting for me to explain.
“It’s a complicated story,” I say. “And not a very happy one.”
“We don’t have anywhere else to go,” Lizzie says.
I give the house a look, but there still doesn’t seem to be anybody stirring there.
“Has that place got something to do with this?” Lizzie asks.
“It’s where it all started,” I tell her.
Then we all sit down in the grass under the tree and that old oak of mine gets to hear my story all over again.
Rabedy Collins
The mists had drawn back a little when Rabedy arrived on the seashore with Odawa at his side, but otherwise the beach was much the same. A grey and dismal place that smelled of fish and algae. The doonie’s hoof prints still began abruptly and ended as they had before, although this time there was the addition of the tracks that Rabedy and the others had left. In time, no trace of them would remain, for the tide was coming in and already washing onto the prints, softening their edges.
“Take me to where their trail ends,” the green-bree said.
He put a hand on Rabedy’s shoulder, as he had when they crossed over from the Aisling’s Wood. Rabedy shivered, disliking the touch as much now as he had before. And why was it that Odawa hadn’t needed this sort of help before?
“Are you really blind?” Rabedy asked.
“Yes. But I’m old and my medicine is potent. It allows me to compensate. While I can’t physically see as you do, and I can’t sense details, I can usually get by.”
“Medicine . . . that’s what we call magic.”
“It is and it isn’t. There are parts of it that reside in ourselves, that come with our blood, but mostly it’s power we borrow from the spirits.”
“This is where the trail ends,” Rabedy said.
Odawa let go of the bogan’s shoulder and moved his hands back and forth in the air, feeling for the doonie’s trail.
“What do you sense here?” he asked Rabedy.
The blind gaze turned to look at the bogan, finding his face with no trouble.
Rabedy closed his eyes, as much to not have to look into those milky eyes as to concentrate.
“Access to anywhere,” he said. “A thousand roads.”
“And the doonie? Where did he go?”
Rabedy concentrated again.
“He’s just gone,” he said, surprised.
Normally a passage between the worlds left some residue, some hint of where one’s quarry had gone. But here, there was nothing.
“I get the same,” Odawa said. “They’ve vanished into a hidden world, and there’ll be no following them now.”
Rabedy waited a moment, then asked, “Does it really matter that much?”
“Who’s the blind one here?”
Rabedy shrugged, then realized the green-bree couldn’t see the gesture.
“I understand vengeance,” he said, “but unlike some of my kind, I don’t understand cruelty.”
“You think me cruel?”
“What would you call what you do?”
“He blinded me.”
“When he thought you were already dead. And then you killed his wife, and others close to him, too, if all the tales are true. You should have taken your battle directly to him. That would have been the honourable course.”
Odawa gave a slow nod. “And probably the wiser, too. She cursed me before she died. She cursed me to wander forever, but never reach my destination.”
“So that’s why you needed our help. If you were to hunt him directly, you would never get near to him.”
“That was my thought, to use you as a bridge to reaching the damned jay. But it seems that the curse holds true even when I use intermediaries, for I’m no closer to Grey now than I’ve ever been.”
Rabedy looked down the long grey sands of the beach to where it disappeared into the mist. He sighed.
“I can take you to him,” he said.
“And yet you thought me cruel.”
“Hurting the people around him—that’s cruel. Finishing your business with Grey . . . that’s just between the two of you.”
“And for a reward,” Odawa asked. “What do you require?”
Rabedy spat on the sand between them. “I don’t want anything. I just want this done so that we can go back to doing what bogans do, and you can go back to whatever it is that you are.”
The blind gaze never left Rabedy’s face.
“Big Dan wanted safe passage through the green and the wild,” Odawa said. “For him and anyone in his company.”
“I’m not my uncle.”
“Then perhaps I could show you how to complete your shapeshifting one way or the other so that you don’t have to walk around the way you do, caught between dog and bogan.”
He started to reach for Rabedy, but the bogan backed out of his reach.
“I told you,” he said. “I don’t want anything, and I don’t want to be beholden. I’ll figure this out on my own.”
“I meant it to be knowledge, freely given.”
“Do you want Grey or don’t you?” Rabedy asked.
The brow above the green-bree’s milky e
yes wrinkled into a frown, but then he forced himself to smile.
“I want him,” he said.
“Fine. Then let’s finish this.”
Rabedy stepped closer, but paused just out of reach before the blind green-bree could put his hand back on the bogan’s shoulder.
“Remember,” Rabedy said. “I have your name.”
Odawa moved so quickly, Rabedy never saw him coming. One moment the green-bree was standing in front of him, the next Odawa had him in a headlock, arm around his neck so that neither air nor words could escape his throat.
“Don’t threaten me, boy,” he said in Rabedy’s ear, his voice conversational and soft, which felt all the more deadly. “You need to get that name out into the air for it to be of any use and I am not entirely infirm.”
Rabedy fought the grip, but to no avail. The green-bree held him long enough to show that, had he wanted, he could have caused some real pain—could have snapped Rabedy’s neck, could have held him until he choked—then he let go and gave the bogan a push away from him. Rabedy staggered on the sand and only just caught himself from falling. He turned, glaring, a name forming on his lips.
“I could have killed you, boy,” Odawa said before Rabedy could get the name out. “I could have snapped your neck like a twig. But I didn’t. Will you now kill an unarmed, blind man?”
Rabedy lifted a hand to rub at his throat. He wanted to speak the name Big Dan had given him. Wanted to drive the pluiking green-bree’s face into the beach and choke him on the wet sand. And he wasn’t fooled by the mild tone of Odawa’s voice. He was wary now, and if the truth be known, more than a little nervous. How could a blind man move that fast?
Odawa’s milky-white gaze remained fixed on him, waiting for a reply.
“I’m not a boy,” was all he could find to say.
“No, you’re somewhere between a bogan and a dog. Hold,” the greenbree added, lifting his hand when Rabedy was about to speak. “I know what you meant and I’ll offer you this promise: I’ll mind my manners and call you by the speaking name you’ve given me. Can I expect the same consideration in return?”
“Or what?”
Odawa sighed. “Or nothing. Or you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine. Or you’ll speak my true name and my will becomes yours. Why must everything be a confrontation with you people?”