Their eyes were cold gray, icy as death itself. They were bloodless, the eyes of predators, like those of the dark lord who had hunted me on the plain. In contrast, the eyes of the warriors above were hot and furious. I couldn’t decide which terrified me more, the eyes of ice or the eyes of fire.
The shark-eyed warriors below kept pressing up against the floor, searching for every crack, just like their counterparts above. The ground beneath me pushed up, and my heart raced. Would these dark creatures escape from their pit? What would they do to us? Would it be worse than what the warriors above wanted to do to us?
When the warriors above reached a crescendo in their shouting and bludgeoning the barrier, the evil beasts stopped their carnage and looked far above. I saw fear in their eyes. I too feared the great army overhead, for it had become too clear whose side I was really on.
I realized in a moment of clarity that the world I’d always lived in, which I thought was the only world, was in fact a narrow isthmus caught between two great continents whose armies met here in battle. These forces clashing on the battleground of my world were powerful beyond measure and fought so desperately that the stakes must be higher than I could comprehend.
The Woodsman looked down and cleared his throat. The warriors shuddered, winced, and backed away from the glass, covering their hideous faces as if anticipating a decree of doom.
I held my breath. What would he say? Would he end it all now? Would I disintegrate in the conflagration of his judgment?
At last the Woodsman’s face slightly relaxed. Slowly and sadly he nodded at the beasts below. “Yes,” he whispered, a whisper that blew a powerful wind, forcing me to my knees.
The faces of the beasts lit with malevolent glee. They swarmed beneath me in a circle, like a black tornado. The land quaked, the glass floor cracked open, and foul-smelling gases erupted.
Ten yards from me, right at the Woodsman’s feet, the glass shattered. An army of flying beasts screeched and squawked and cackled, celebrating their release like drunken pirates.
Some of the creatures flew near to us. “Don’t let him push you around,” one of them cried in shrill but perfectly enunciated words that chilled me.
“You can do whatever you want,” another one told us. “He’s not your master.” Some of the reptiles whispered suggestions; some screamed commands into the ears of the little people pounding their nails into the Woodsman’s heel. The beasts herded in more and more of us, close to his bleeding feet.
In one moment I felt outraged at the people piercing him with nails, and in the next I looked down to see myself positioned on the Woodsman’s foot, my own hand bringing down hammer on nail—again and again and again.
Winged dinosaurs hovered over us, trying to sink their claws into the Woodsman. The flying beasts looked huge to us, but they were small enough that the Woodsman easily could have swatted or squashed them. Several of them pecked at the center of his hands, drawing blood, the droplets falling to the ground with a huge splash. Still the beasts seemed limited in their ability to harm the Woodsman directly. Strangely, they had their greatest success convincing the little people to do their dirty work.
“The tyrant is your enemy,” one of them shouted. “He has no right to mistreat you like he does!” The monster swooped low, pushing aside me and several others. I rolled, then arose, shoving and kicking the people who struck and screamed at me. I hated them for trying to inflict their will on me. Seething with rage, I pulled more nails from my pocket and held them in my mouth. Intending to inflict them on these horrid little people, in rapid succession I ended up driving them into the Woodsman’s heel instead, drawing his blood.
“Take that!” I shouted. “No one can tell me how to run my life. How dare you treat me like this?”
The great foot trembled, as if in a spasm, but did not move away from me. For a fleeting moment I wondered why I was punishing the Woodsman for what the beast had done, for what I had done, and for what the little people had done to me. But in the next moment, it all seemed to make perfect sense. He was to blame for everything.
It felt so good to be in control, to determine my own destiny, to be the master of my fate. I was choosing to do something with my hands, something that made a difference. I was in charge; the Woodsman was at my mercy—and I showed him none. Why should I? What had he ever done for me?
Another great drop of salt water fell from above, hitting the bleeding foot and splashing on me, stinging my eyes. I cursed, wiped my eyes, and blinked hard. I grabbed another nail and started pounding, making up for lost time, drawing more blood.
The more I swung the hammer, the more automatic and easier it became. Blood of the innocent, shed at my whim and convenience? It’s not the first time, I thought, then immediately pushed back nagging memories to the dark corners of my mind. No—what I’d done twenty years ago and what I was doing now was reasonable and just. And besides, everyone else was doing it.
With so many others doing the same thing, it couldn’t be bad, could it?
TEN
heard voices far above and stopped hammering long enough to look. I saw in the sky, just below the Woodsman’s face, the commander of the army of light, the same mighty one I’d seen on the battlefield who had appeared to come to my rescue before abruptly stopping. Apparently he alone had been permitted to pass down through the glass ceiling.
Walking on the air as if it were concrete, he bowed his knees and, eyes pleading, looked at the Woodsman. It seemed inconceivable that this great warrior would take orders from anyone. His bowed knees indicated that he considered the Woodsman his commander-in-chief. An unlikely notion, but inescapable.
The Woodsman, his head four times taller than the warrior’s body, returned the gaze of his general, then for a moment hung his head and winced. He shifted on his feet. A guttural groan surfaced from within him, like distant thunder.
The general, still on one knee, spoke. “Let us destroy them now, Master.” His deep voice, like a bass reverb of 200 decibels, shook air above and the ground beneath me. “Please,” he said, so loud and emphatic that my nerve endings exploded in response.
“Michael,” replied the Woodsman in a tired, heavy voice, “if that was what I wanted, you know I could unmake them all in a single moment. I could destroy them with a word … or merely a thought.”
“But why, Master, do you not let us protect you and defend your honor? Why do you let them torture you?”
The Woodsman’s wet eyes drooped. He paused long before answering. Finally he said, “Because it’s the only way I can save them.”
The warrior-lord searched the air for more words. Finding none, at last he bowed his head, rose, and backed away, continuing to look downward as if he could not bear to see his Lord’s tortured eyes.
As their general passed up through the glass, the soldiers of light listened in rapt attention to his report. I heard some of them groan and shout, while others stood in stunned silence. Again they brought swords down on the invisible barrier, some of them beating upon it with their great clenched fists. For a moment I thought they would surely break through. I clenched my teeth, knowing if they escaped, my comrades and I would be crushed in an instant by the cosmic weight of their wrath.
They pushed and swung their mighty swords downward until at last the ceiling cracked. I cringed and braced myself.
“Noooooo!”
Everything shook at the lionlike roar. At the utterance of the Woodsman’s word, millions of warriors froze, then were sucked up into invisible regions of the sky as if into the vacuum of space. They disappeared, all of them, even their general. Gone.
Above the clouds, there was nothing but silence.
The Woodsman stood alone.
From under the ground and on the earth shouts of gleeful malice erupted. The beasts ran wild, serial killers with the restraint of law enforcement removed. They swooped and bit at the Woodsman’s neck, while prodding the little people below to keep piercing his heel, from which blood gushed.
I look
ed at the blood on my own hands. I gazed up at the giant Woodsman, certain that in one moment, deliberate or unguarded, he could hurl us all into the chasm.
Something grabbed hold of my insides and made me stop and wonder. I looked up at him, holding out my bloody hands, hammer and nails in them, and cried out to him, “Why do you do what you do?”
He looked down at me, into my eyes, as if I were the only one there. “You are why I do what I do.”
My heart felt drawn toward him. Then I considered his words. Was he blaming me again? How dare he? I backed away. He stretched down his bloody hand, palm open, and I retreated farther. It nearly touched me. Chest quaking, in self-defense I pulled from my pocket a nail. Feverishly, I pounded it into the center of his hand.
A great dark cloud formed and spread. The sky looked as if it had been rubbed hard by a dirty eraser. Within seconds a ferocious wind blew, lightning struck, and thunder roared.
The Woodsman stood alone at the base of the tree. I couldn’t see the nails in his feet now. He climbed up the side of the fallen tree, slowly and deliberately, cutting hands and feet on the barbs in the bark. Reaching the top, he stood and walked, his right foot bleeding profusely, especially from the deepest wounds in his heel. The fishhook spurs of the great tree cut into his feet, but he kept walking and wincing, walking and wincing.
He seemed so terribly alone.
The hell hawks circled over him. The farther he walked on the tree the darker it became.
When he was only barely visible, I saw him stop, raise his hands, and lie down on the tree. He disappeared into the darkness. I couldn’t tell where he ended and the darkness began; he had become inseparable from it.
For an eternal moment there was nothing, as if all creation braced itself. Then I heard a terrible thud—one, then another, and another, as if hands and instruments from a different world fell down on the tree. The force of blows from those great hands must have been much harder to bear than that of us little people.
I heard sounds like a flapping tarp, then morbid victory shrieks. Then soft weeping. Then nothing.
There was a long silence in which I stared out into the darkness of the tree, the darkness of the chasm, and the darkness within me, unable to distinguish one from the others. Then at last, as if a great lion had been pierced with an arrow, the air filled with a solitary roar.
“Whyyyyyy?”
The Woodsman’s voice seemed to come not just from the fallen tree lying across the chasm, but from the depths of the abyss itself. It shook the earth beneath me and the heavens above.
The gray sky of death descended on the fallen tree.
The longer I looked into the darkness, the more I could see. Despite the distance, I beheld the Woodsman pinned to the tree like an insect to a collector’s board.
Above him I saw the great shark-eyed flying reptile, the prince of beasts, surrounded by his flailing minions. They circled as if riding a column of air. Wings outspread, the beast-prince descended upon the tree, approaching his prey cautiously. He first tested the Woodsman with a single claw, then two claws. I heard his deep-throated gurgle of delight as the Woodsman offered no resistance. He clamped his needle-sharp teeth on him, then lashed at him with his claws, becoming bolder and bolder.
A guttural voice cried out from the beast, dripping darkness, a voice like but disturbingly unlike that of the great warrior Michael.
“Bleed, Holy One! Suffer and die, Prince of fools!”
His foul claws clutching the Woodsman’s neck, the flying reptile dug into the Woodsman’s eyes. Suddenly the smaller beasts pounced like jackals, picking and eating and gorging themselves on the morbid feast that was the Woodsman’s body.
I turned away, crying out at the horror of it. The complete injustice. I wept partly for the Woodsman’s agony, partly for my complicity in it. For though that great beast frightened and repulsed me, though it had wanted to kill me and would have if not stopped by an invisible hand, the truth fell upon me like a stony avalanche. I had become the beast’s partner in the murder of the Woodsman. I myself, Nick Seagrave, had pounded nails in his flesh.
Pacing now, I told myself that the nails I’d pounded weren’t fatal, that really they were little more than pinpricks in the Woodsman’s feet. But the wetness I’d seen in the Woodsman’s eyes, the saltwater tears and the gut-wrenching tone of his voice said otherwise.
How could I be part of something so monstrous? I’d always believed I was a decent person—sincere, well-motivated, that my good outweighed my bad. If it came to it, I would be good enough to make the grade.
Then, in a flood of doubt, I asked myself: Who was this man whose face I’d seen every day in the mirror, who swung the hammer, who chose to inflict suffering? Who was this Nick Seagrave who had sided with the beast? Why did I hate the Woodsman so much that I would hurt him so badly? And why, a moment later, did part of me desperately want to love him, so much that I felt I would die if I could not?
I lay on hard, unforgiving ground, my body aching, my soul tortured by my questions, assaulted by my guilt.
Believing the Woodsman was dead already, I was surprised to hear three final words shouted from the center of the tree over the chasm: “Paid in Full!”
The Woodsman’s words shook the mountains, from the rising of the sun to its setting. The rocks split; the earth to the far east folded over itself like an ocean wave, molten rock erupting. But what did the words mean?
I heard the rip of fabric, as if the cosmos were a great cloak torn down the center. The sound started far above the sky and hit the ground with a violent tremor. After that, nothing.
In the far distance, the silence of Charis seemed deafening. Had the city’s occupants all been sucked away with the warriors above? Had the planet been left in the hands of demon-beasts?
Below my feet I heard sounds of glee, the cruel celebration of the bloodless. At last I heard sounds from above and from the west, sounds of weeping.
The City of Darkness rejoiced. The City of Light mourned. Babel partied while Charis wailed in despair.
Through low dark clouds I watched the Woodsman lying there, lifeless, on the tree. Something dripped into the great chasm. And though the drops were small, I could hear them land a million miles below. Their echoes filled the canyon and reverberated inside my skull.
The King was dead.
And I had killed him.
ELEVEN
y whole body was covered with dirt and blood that had formed into a red clay. Numb, I stumbled around until I found a pumice stone and a small puddle of dirty, undrinkable water. I tried to wash the bloodstains from my hands. I couldn’t. The more I scrubbed, the more the dirt and blood spread.
I grabbed fistfuls of nails from my pocket, again and again, throwing them on the ground or over into the chasm. But still there were more.
How could I avoid blame for shedding the Woodsman’s blood? I’d hammered the nails, hadn’t I? I’d stung his feet as surely as if I were a scorpion or one of the twisted beasts.
Still, why hadn’t he been willing to listen to me, to do what I wanted, to use his power to help me fulfill my goals instead of thwarting them? He was asking for it—his death was as much his fault as mine. No, it was more his fault. He hadn’t even let me help him cut down the tree!
Had I really hammered those nails? Or was it my imagination, fueled by those wretched guilt feelings? I was being too hard on myself. Even if I’d driven the nails, I wouldn’t have done it without a good reason, would I? Self-defense—that was it. I was no killer. I wasn’t perfect, but I was a decent person, better than most men.
Back and forth I wavered, one minute wallowing in grief and guilt, the next in anger and denial and self-defense.
In the distance, over the chasm, I heard the predators continue their feeding frenzy, ravaging the Woodsman’s carcass.
Did I really help serve them up this gruesome meal?
I paced, kicking rocks, spitting out dust. I moved near the edge of the chasm and gazed at it
again, thinking maybe somehow it would look different this time.
It didn’t.
Suddenly I heard the tortured howl of a beast. I looked up to see the great winged reptile, the dark lord, retreating from the tree. The howl was quickly followed by hundreds of shrieks from the circling minions.
Aaack! Aaack! The piercing airy sounds shook me to the core.
The lesser reptiles flew toward our side of the chasm, fleeing in chaos from whatever it was they saw. Circling wildly, crashing into one another, they spied the hole in the glass floor and spiraled downward, crowding through and disappearing.
A booming sound, like an approaching freight train, came from the center of the tree. A gigantic stone was rolling on top of the tree with enormous momentum, headed my way. If it reached my side of the chasm, it would surely crush me.
As the flying beast-prince tried to flee, it was yanked down by an invisible force, and its head lay on the horizontal tree. It squawked dreadfully as the great stone rolled over it, crushing its head.
Somehow the beast managed to flail its way toward the edge of the chasm, head mangled and bleeding. It wove through the air, thrashing and falling. It skidded to the ground no more than fifty feet from me. Then it got up, staggering, as if evil itself were fighting off death. Its cold murky eyes stared at me, freezing my blood. I felt sure its wound was fatal, but the beast uttered a grisly cry, then wobbled to the hole in the ground and disappeared in a swirl, as if sucked down a drain.
The stone, still rolling, flew off the end of the tree, coming so near to me I had to leap out of its way. Behind it walked a solitary figure—the Woodsman, wearing his white robe, now unstained by blood or sweat or tears.
Then the whole world shifted before me. The land I stood on seemed to sink, and the land on the other side of the chasm rose—and Charis with it.
The tree was no longer horizontal but vertical, still connecting the two worlds, no longer as bridge but as ladder. Against the upright tree stood the Woodsman himself, though somehow he was much bigger than the tree. His feet touched the ground of the lower world, and his head rose above the ground of the upper world. He held the tree in his hand, and it seemed to transform from an instrument of death to a means of life.