Clouds End

  No!

  The old moon laughed.

  A cat screamed in the dark. Rope turned and gasped, meeting the eyes of a man-high acorn with a rigid smile and two luminous hazel eyes.

  “I can feel them watching me,” Brook said.

  Rope spotted a gap in the topiary and took several quick strides toward the Palace. Dread was pouring into him, passing through Net into the frail veins beneath his wrist, rising like water in a holed ship.

  A dark shape loomed up before him. His heart seized up, clenched, beat wildly.

  It was a vast topiary owl. Only clipped leaves and pruned branches, he told himself, nothing more. Huge, of course, but only an owl. With gaping black holes where its eyes should have been. Watching them cross like mice beneath its beak in the old moon’s wicked light. Watching.

  The fear had risen through Rope’s body to his neck now; he held his head up, trying to breathe. The dry grass creaked and whispered underfoot. He sprinted ten steps and tripped over a tiny shrub, hitting the ground hard, bruising his thigh on the pommel of his sword. Gasping, he scrambled to his feet beneath the owl’s talons.

  But it was gone. There was only a tree now, only sprigs of yew. Footsteps crackled in the darkness behind him. “Rope?” Brook called. Her voice trembled with fear.

  Only yew. As hard as he tried, looking at the tree before him, he could not see the owl. Only leaves. Nothing else. Strands of Net probed the air around his wrist, sipping fear from the hot night. Only yew.

  “Rope?”

  “I lost it when I got too close.” Even as Rope spoke, the memory crumbled behind him. The owl had flown from the edge; there was no owl, there was only a tree, a carven tree.

  He drew a deep breath and looked at Brook for the first time. Her bracelet clicked as she rubbed gently on his arm. “That feels good,” he said at last.

  Brook rubbed the bones of his wrist, the muscle and hair on top, the pale flesh, strangely vulnerable beneath. “Are you ready to walk again?”

  He could see Jo glowing before them, kindled by moonlight. He took a first step toward her, then a second; each was easier. In a moment they were together. “Are we almost there?”

  “I do not think so,” Jo said grimly. “We have passed this pillar before, I think. We seem to be headed in the right direction, but then I lose sight of the Palace behind a hedge or sculpture, and when I pass out from behind the next wall of yew I am no closer than I was before.”

  “Just like the forest,” Brook said. “You can never see more than three steps in front of your face.”

  Rope laughed. “Of course!”

  “Of course what?”

  “You can’t see any better on the sea when it’s dark, Bug. But we sail nevertheless.”

  “If you have an idea, I wish you would hurry up with it,” Jo said.

  Rope looked up into the hot night sky. “It has been too long since you were an islander, Jo. We may not be able to see the Palace all the time, but these hedges can’t stop us from seeing the stars.”

  Brook tried to shake her fear long enough to think. “All we have to do is fix our course to the Palace by the stars . . .”

  “And sail into it,” Rope finished.

  “Somewhat clever,” Jo admitted. “You two are less stupid than you look.”

  “You flatter us,” Rope said dryly. He looked carefully from the Palace to the constellations overhead. “Let us try going this way,” he said, setting forth.

  Following Rope’s directions, they crept through the Imperial grounds, ears pricked for any sound, fear padding always just a step behind. Then they turned a last corner and stopped dead. Across a dried-up moat, a vast wall of bronzewoods towered over them, oozing dull red emberlight. They had reached the Palace.

  “We can’t let you do this,” Rope said. “We can’t let you go in there alone.”

  Jo shook her head. “If all goes well, let us say we will meet tomorrow at that inn we passed above the clearing where we saw the puppet play. The Bending Bough.” Her eyes burned moonsilver as she looked up at the Palace where the Emperor waited. “You have done your part, Rope. All you humanly could. But this night is for monsters.”

  CHAPTER 16

  GARDEN

  ROPE AND Brook watched Jo walk toward the Palace. “We shouldn’t have let her go,” Rope said.

  Drought fevered the midsummer night, and Brook was pierced by a sudden longing for a cool sea breeze, and the feel of a green wave lifting lazily under her as she drifted off the shore of Clouds End.

  It would be a long time yet before she was home.

  She reached for Rope’s hand. It was hard to breathe in the hot night. Jo was a white shadow dwindling, walking away from them, walking away. And with every step, Brook’s heart cried for her. And with every step, Brook’s heart rejoiced. Her twin was gone.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to get out of here. We don’t have a wizard to save us anymore. If we are not out by daylight, there will be guards at the tunnels back into the Arbor.”

  Reluctantly Rope nodded. He squeezed her hand and turned to face the dark Palace grounds. Topiary sculptures loomed over walls of yew. “We came in from about there,” he guessed, pointing. “All we have to do to get back is watch the stars and hold on to a straight line.” They started off down a corridor of yew.

  “This is a bad place to bring Net,” Rope muttered. “It’s like wrapping pure fear around your wrist.”

  Magic paced within Brook like a caged animal.

  “This path is starting to bend,” Rope said after a while.

  “Bending quite a bit,” he said some time later. He glanced unhappily at the stars. “We’re veering badly. As soon as we come to a gap, try to strike left.”

  There were no gaps to the left. Only a smooth unbroken wall of yew curving into darkness. Brook faltered. “There is a gap on the right over here,” she whispered. “We could try it and see if it leads to more open ground.”

  Rope shook his head. “No use starting all that. We could end up blundering around until morning. Let’s just head back the way we came and try again.”

  They retraced their steps. The dry grass squeaked and whispered underfoot. Somewhere in the darkness an owl screamed. Brook reached to touch the Witness Knot on her left wrist, trying to calm down.

  On they walked. Silence pressed around them, made bigger by the dry scrape of a cricket somewhere in the distance. The hedge had grown very tall; Brook could no longer see the lights of the Arbor in any direction. “We might as well be walking in the forest!” I must keep talking, she told herself. I must think of something besides the fear. “You know what I hated? Those days when we were up before the sun and I would walk through a spider web. I’d be slapping myself in the dark imagining this spider crawling around in my hair.”

  Rope did not answer. Yews towered overhead.

  Brook wished she hadn’t remembered the spiders.

  Something fluttered by in the darkness and Brook gasped, heart hammering. A bat, she told herself. Only a bat. “Haven’t we been walking a long time?”

  Rope grunted.

  “Shouldn’t we have been back by now?”

  “Yes.”

  The magic was crawling through Brook’s blood. She felt it beating at her wrists and behind her eyes, as if her flesh could rupture at any moment and let the world pour through. In the darkness the dry cricket scraped, scraped. “We’ve been going around in circles.”

  “I can’t tell!” Rope snapped. “The trees are too tall. I can’t keep track of any stars.”

  They stopped. The darkness pooled around them. Walls of yew towered far overhead. The cricket fell silent. Brook felt the faintest breath of wind on the back of her neck. An instant later an owl’s scream drilled into her heart.

  She ran. Pelting down an endless tunnel of gloom, plunging into the heart of the garden with her own ragged breathing roaring in her ears and Rope’s footsteps pounding behind her.

  Suddenly the corridor ended. They burst out i
nto a small clearing and saw two monstrous figures running at them from out of a silver globe. Brook screamed and staggered to a halt. The strangers halted too.

  “Reflections!” Rope gasped. “Just reflections, Brook.”

  Brook tried to catch her breath. “It’s . . . It’s a h-house!”

  The silver globe was actually a cottage the size of Stone’s house on Clouds End. As they watched, its walls rippled, shot through with sparks of color. “Fathom!” Rope breathed. “The whole thing is made of water!”

  While their heartbeats slowed, they stood staring at the little house that sat like a drop of dew on the grass before them. Its mysterious interior was riotous with flowers. Gelid light oozed from their blossoms—orange, crimson, ocher, and magenta. Beside the cottage stood a shed; a collection of hoes, rakes, shears, trowels, and spades leaned against (or floated on) the liquid walls. “I think we’ve found the Emperor’s gardener,” Brook said.

  Rope gulped. “Hooray.”

  Brook touched the Witness Knot and then walked toward the glowing cottage.

  “What are you doing!”

  “Sooner or later we have to get out of this garden,” Brook said, coming up to the wavering doorway. “Whoever lives here will either help us get out, or turn us over to the Palace. Either way, we might as well settle it now. I am not going back into that maze for all the fish in the sea.”

  “Look at those flowers!” Rope said, trailing after Brook. “I want to reach in and eat them, like candy.”

  Tiny shapes flicked away from Brook’s peering face. “Fish! Little fish swimming in the walls!” And indeed there were: guppies and goldfish, sprat and smelt, angelfish and striped jerries and tin-fish with leaf-shaped bodies and dull scales. Jiggers with tails like trembling blue cottonweed floated up toward the roof; miniature catfish with mustaches as big as their bodies prowled the floorboards down below. Brook laughed with wonder.

  “Net is going crazy!” Rope said. “He’s crawling up and down my arm like a big green spider.”

  A lintel of pleached vines framed the doorway. Brook glanced back at Rope and knocked briskly, twice. They heard no sound, but jewelled fish scurried for cover as fat ripples spread from Brook’s knuckles. A slowing swell washed through the whole humped house. Jumbles of flowerlight danced on the encircling yew.

  A human form came wavering toward them. Then the cottage door popped open so quickly, a silver bubble bulged from its top pane and went drifting off into the darkness.

  A wizened old man with eyes the color of grass stood in the archway. He had a long, weedy mustache which drooped to his waist and mingled with his unkempt hair. His skin was wrinkled, but his hands were supple and unspotted. His fingers were twice as long as they ought to be, and trailed off into long, soft white nails that looked suspiciously like roots. Scarlet bean-pods and cobalt bamboo leaves quarreled around the hem of his green robe. “You are late!” he observed. “Come in!”

  The wobbling door stood open to admit them. Water dripped from its frame of vines. Brook stepped in. Rope ducked and followed.

  The old man cinched the belt of his robe. “You may call me Garden. I have been expecting you, but I did not know exactly when you would come. That is the difficulty with these things, you know: precision. Nothing flowers exactly when you wish it!”

  Plants were everywhere inside Garden’s house. Large leafy plants rested on tables; small potted plants crowded the floor. Banks of flowers were stacked along the walls, blossoming beans clung to the furniture, and a pungent herbary dangled from the ceiling: sage and thyme, comfrey and marigold, chamomile and lemon balm and fennel that smelled like licorice.

  Rope stared up in bewilderment. “How can you hang pots from a ceiling made of water?”

  “Oh, that!” Garden waved his hand, accidentally slapping Brook with his trailing rootlets. “Once you get the roof to stay up, the rest is easy.”

  He led them into a room in which several shrubs had been sculpted into armchairs. “My studio,” he said, gesturing vaguely at dozens of small paintings that bobbed on the water walls. “You will find it easier to sit in here.” The floor was made of dirt, and the whole chamber smelled of fresh vegetables.

  A tub of grey stones sat along the back wall. Suddenly Brook bent forward. “They’re budding!” she gasped. And indeed, many of the stones had already burst into crystalline leaf.

  “Ah, yes,” Garden remarked, scratching his mustache unhappily. “One of my experiments. Someone told me that the mountain people keep rock gardens, so I thought I would try my hand at it. You don’t have to water them much, but I still had a deuce of a time getting the things to grow.” He shrugged regretfully. “I must not have the knack.”

  The islanders were speechless.

  From under the biggest, fattest, most-worn chair peered a vivid scarlet flower. “Petal! Don’t be bold! We have guests,” Garden admonished, seating himself with a great creaking and crackling. “Please—make yourselves at home.”

  Brook laughed out loud. “I have no idea what you are going to do to us, but I am very tired. I would love to sit down.”

  Garden looked at her with ancient eyes. “Do to you? Let me assure you, young lady, I do not do anything. It is a point of particular pride.” He shook his head. “No, it is an error of judgment, a misunderstanding of time, that leads people to think of ‘doing’ things. Things,” he said, “do themselves.”

  The scarlet flower peeped from beneath Garden’s chair. A neck like a rose stem skulked into view. Rope suddenly realized that Net was no longer wrapped around his forearm.

  “Let me make one thing clear: I am not eccentric.” Garden held up his left hand, looking ruefully at the long, trailing nails. “I fingerpaint. I took it up as a way of taking up fingers, if you see what I mean. If I don’t keep them busy, the rascals go to root.” He waggled his hand at them, making his long white fingers shiver. “I was afraid I might have to learn to paint with my toes as well, or perhaps play the tambra, but in the end I decided slippers were more convenient.” And he propped up his feet on a stooping shrub, displaying a truly splendid pair of black velvet slippers, embroidered with living flowers that oozed candy-colored light.

  Petal had now crept entirely into the open. At the base of her stem scuttled five fleshy roots, like the fingers of a pale hand. She slunk behind the trunk of Garden’s chair, and then disappeared amongst the flowerpots against the far wall.

  Rope wondered if Net could possibly be lurking around his leg.

  “I should explain myself.” Garden hastily pulled up his fingers, which had begun to burrow into the earthen floor. He chuckled, making his mustache shiver. “I am an arbormancer. In my groves mute Nature and I meet on an almost equal footing. I grow things here as my intuition prompts and look to see the world’s patterns reflected in their branchings. Is the world changing more, or less, or staying the same? Are the seasons in balance? Is this world coming closer to the Smoke, or are the two drifting apart?”

  Garden brooded upon them until Rope squirmed. “Well, which is it?”

  Garden laughed. “You are direct, you islanders. When daunted, the people of the forest become only more polite and attentive and oblique. They search for hidden motives.” He snorted. “Well, young man, the world is changing more, the seasons are not in balance, and the Smoke shows it.”

  Brook frowned. “Surely you have that the wrong way round. What happens here reflects what is happening in the Mist.”

  Garden shrugged. “I see no reason to give the Heroes priority. The world is a One Twist Ring: we affect the Mist, the Mist affects the real world. Stories from one get told in the other.”

  A wave skittered suddenly up the wall beside Brook, sending a school of flower-colored fish shooting to the ceiling. There was a hissing, spitting noise, followed by several thumps and a protracted scrabble. A slim bean-planter bucked twice and then toppled heavily on its side, spilling out a pile of dirt and a tangle of struggling vines. Net had a squeeze on Petal; she scraped his fiber
s with her thorns.

  “Net! Quit that!”

  “Petal—don’t be bold!”

  Rope and Garden dove in and broke up the fight, but not before Petal had given Rope a couple of good scratches.

  Shaking his head, Garden brought out a pretty enamelled jar. Petal cowered, laying her abject blossom on the old man’s arm and folding her thorns flat. “No no no!” the ancient wizard said. “You were warned! A few hours of potting will teach you a lesson!”

  Petal squirmed wildly, lashing her scarlet head in desperation.

  Rope cleared his throat. “It was as much Net’s fault—”

  “Nonsense!” Garden cried, shaking his old head so his long mustaches swept the ground. “Don’t you go making apologies for her, the little weed! I was there when she frightened the fish yesterday, wasn’t I? I warned her then what the consequence of further boldness would be!” With a practiced hand he popped her into her pot and scooped in handfuls of dirt from the overturned bean-planter. “No: she must learn, and this will teach her!”

  Petal stiflened, then swooned dramatically over the edge of her blue-and-yellow prison. Garden looked at her affectionately. “Little fraud,” he whispered.

  She quivered with a moment’s indignation, then remembered to lie still.

  “Too late! You have been unmasked. Now do your penance like a good plant, with no sulking, and perhaps I will let you out early.” Petal squirmed with dejection, and then dangled listlessly over the side of her pot.

  Net, meanwhile, retreated up Rope’s forearm.

  “Interesting creature. You made it from the Mist, did you not? There is a nice little One Twist Ring: a piece of Mist hardened by a real-world person’s story.” Garden righted his planter and tramped the remaining dirt into the earthen floor. “Pardon me! I have been remiss. You must be hungry as well as tired.”

  He fed them cherry pie and green-onion cakes, washed down with glass after glass of celery water.

  “Now,” Garden said, dabbing at his mustache. “Where was I?” His fingers had begun to burrow into the ground; he grimaced with annoyance and pulled them up. “A great Fire rages perpetually on the southern borders of this country, sending up a Smoke that veils the Heroes’ world. While your Mist has been moving away for as long as men can remember, our Fire is moving in.