Black (55 page)

The boy opened his arms, expanded his chest, and let loose a deep, rumbling tone that shook the ground. Then the boy formed his first lyrics, encased in notes rumbling gently over the dunes.

I love you
.

I love you, I love you, I love you
.

Tom closed his eyes and let his body shake under the power of the words. The tune rose through the octave, piercing the still air with full-bodied chords.

I made you,
and I love the way I made you.

The song reached into Tom's heart and amplified the resonance of each chord a thousandfold so that he thought his heart might explode.

And then, with an earsplitting tone, like a concert of a hundred thousand pipe organs blowing the same chord, the air shattered with one final note and fell silent.

Tom lifted his head slowly. The boy still gazed at Johan, who had slipped down from the boulder and stood with both arms stretched out toward the boy.

Their first steps seemed tentative, taken almost simultaneously toward each other. The two boys suddenly broke free from the ground and raced toward each other with wide arms.

They collided there on the desert floor, two small boys about the same height, like two long-lost twins reunited. They all heard the slap of bare chest against bare flesh followed by grunts as the boys tumbled to the sand, giggling hysterically.

Rachelle began to laugh out loud. She clapped excitedly, and although Tom assumed she'd never met the young boy, she knew his name. “Elyon!” She said the name like an ecstatic child. “Elyon!” She wept and laughed as she clapped.

The boys sprang to their feet and chased each other around the boulder, tagging each other in play, still giggling like schoolchildren passing a secret.

And then the boy turned toward Tom.

Still kneeling, Tom saw the boy run directly for him. His eyes flashed like emeralds, a twisted grin lifted his cheeks. The boy sprinted right up to Tom, slid to a stop, put an arm around his neck, and placed his soft, warm cheek against Tom's .His hot breath brushed Tom's ear. “I love you,” the boy whispered.

A roaring tornado rushed through his mind. Forceful winds blasted against his heart with pure, raw, unrefined love. He heard a feeble grunt fall from his mouth.

Then the boy was on to Rachelle. He repeated the embrace and Rachelle shook with sobs. The boy turned and sprinted from the camp. He stopped a dozen paces to the east and twirled around, eyes sparkling mischievously.

“Follow me,” he said, then turned back to the dune and ran up its slope.

Johan raced past Tom and Rachelle, panting.

Tom struggled to his feet, eyes fixed on the boy now cresting the dune. He tugged Rachelle to her feet. They followed the boy like that—Johan leading, Tom and Rachelle running behind.

No one spoke as they ran through the barren desert. Thomas's mind was still numb from the boy's touch. Sweat soon drenched Tom's clothes. His breathing came in gasps as he clambered up the sandy dunes, following this little boy who ran as though he owned this sandbox.
But I'd follow
him anywhere. I'd follow him over a cliff, believing that after leaping I'd be
able to fly. I'd follow him into the sea, knowing I could breathe underwater.
It was the boy's song. It was his song, his eyes, his tender feet, the way his breath had rushed through Tom's ears.

They ran on in silence, keeping their eyes fixed on the boy's naked back, glistening with sweat. He loped steadily into the desert—slowing up the face of sandy slopes and then bounding down the other side. Not fast enough to lose them, not slow enough to allow them any rest.

The sun stood high when Tom staggered over a crest marked by the boy's footprints. He pulled himself up not ten feet from where Johan had stopped. The boy stood just ahead of Johan. Tom followed their gaze.

What he saw took his breath away.

Below them, in the middle of this desolate white desert, lay a huge valley. And in this valley grew a vast green forest.

Tom stared, mouth hanging open dumbly. It had to be several miles across, maybe more. Maybe twenty miles. But in the far distance where the trees ended, the valley floor rose in a mountain of sand. The desert continued. The forest wasn't colored. Green. Only green. Like the forests in his dreams of Bangkok.

“Look!” Rachelle extended her arm. Her pointing finger quivered. Then Tom saw it.

A lake.

To the east, several miles inside the forest, the sun glinted off a small lake.

The boy whooped, thrust his fists into the air, and tore down the sandy slope. He tumbled once and came to his feet, flying fast.

Johan ran after him, whooping in kind. Then Tom and Rachelle, together. Whooping.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the edge of the forest, where they slid to a stop. The trees stood tall, like sentinels intent on keeping the sand from encroaching. Brown bark. Large, leafy branches. A flock of red-and-blue parrots took flight and squawked overhead.

“Birds!” Johan cried.

The boy looked back at them from the forest's edge. Then, without a word, he stepped between two trees and ran in.

Tom ran after him. “Come on!”

They came, running behind.

The canopy rose overhead, shading the sun. They passed between the same two trees the boy had slipped through.

“Come on, hurry!”

The sound of their feet brushing through sand changed to a soft crunch when they hit the first undergrowth.

Tom strained for glimpses of the boy's back between the trees. There, and there. He raced on, hardly aware of the forest now. Behind him, Rachelle and Johan had the easier task of following him.

Tom glanced up at the canopy. It all looked vaguely familiar. For a moment it seemed as if he were rushing into the jungles of Thailand. To rescue Monique.

The boy never ran out of sight for more than a few seconds. Deeper into the jungle they ran. Straight for the lake. There were birds on almost every tree it seemed. Monkeys and possums. They passed through a meadow with a grove of smaller trees heavy with a red fruit. Not the same kind of fruit they'd eaten in the colored forest, but very similar.

Tom snatched up a fallen apple and tasted it on the run. Sweet. Delicious. But no power. He grabbed another and tossed it back to Rachelle. “It's good!”

A pack of dogs barked from the other end of the meadow. Wolves? Tom picked up his pace. “Hurry!”

They hurried. Through tall trees squawking with birds, past large bushes bursting with berries, over a small creek sparkling with water, through another brightly flowered meadow and past a startled stampede of horses.

Rachelle and Johan were as frightened as the horses. Tom was not.

And then, as suddenly as they had entered the forest, they were out. On the lip of a small valley.

A gentle slope descended to the shores of a glistening green lake. A thin blanket of haze drifted lazily above sections of the glassy surface. Trees, heavy with fruit, lined its shore. Colors of every imaginable hue splattered the trees.

Wild horses grazed on the high green grass of the valley floor. A bubbling creek meandered into the lake from the base of the cliff to their right, and then back out, down the valley.

The boy walked back to them, grinning. He wasn't breathing hard like they were. Only a light sweat broke his brow.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

They were too stunned to respond.

“I thought you would,” he said. “I want you to take care of this forest for me.”

“What do you mean?” Tom asked. “Are you going?”

The boy tilted his head slightly. “Don't worry, Thomas. I'll come back. Just don't forget about me.”

“I could never forget!”

“Most of them already have. The world could get very bad very quickly. It will be easier to spill blood than water. But” —he pointed to the lake—“if you bathe in the water once a day, you'll keep the disease away. Never allow blood to defile the water.”

Then the boy gave them a list of six simple rules to follow.

“The others lived?” Rachelle asked. “Where . . . where are they?”

The boy eyed her softly. “Most are lost, but there are others like you who will find one of seven forests like this one.” He smiled mischievously. “Don't worry, I have an idea. My ideas are usually pretty good, don't you think?”

“Yes. Yes, definitely good.”

“When you think it can't get any worse, there will be a way. In one incredible blow we will destroy the heart of evil.” He walked up to Rachelle, took her hand, and kissed it. “Just remember me.”

He walked to Johan and looked into his eyes. For a moment Tom thought he saw a dark look cross Elyon's eyes. He leaned forward and kissed Johan on the forehead.

Then he came to Tom and kissed his hand.

“Could you tell me one thing?” Tom asked quietly. “I dreamed of Bangkok again last night. Is it real? Am I supposed to rescue Monique?”

“Am I a lion or a lamb? Or am I a boy? You decide, Thomas. You are very special to me. Please . . . please don't forget me. Don't ever, ever forget me. I have a lot riding on you.” He winked.

Then he turned around, ran down the bank, planted his foot on a rock, and launched himself into a swan dive. His body hung in the air above the lake for a moment, and then broke the surface with barely a ripple before disappearing.

He has a lot riding on me.
The idea terrified him.

Johan was the first to move. He plummeted down the shore and into the lake with Tom and Rachelle hard on his heels. They dived in together, one, two, three splashes that almost sounded as one.

The water wasn't cold. It wasn't warm. It was clean and pure and crystalline clear, so that Tom could immediately see the rocks on the bottom.

This lake had a bottom.

And apart from the wonderfully clean feeling it gave him, the water didn't shake his body or tingle against his skin as in the other lake. He knew immediately that he couldn't breathe it.

But he did drink it. And he did laugh and cry and splash around like a child in a backyard pool. And the water did change them.

Almost immediately their skin returned to normal, and their eyes . . .

A soft green replaced the gray in their eyes.

For a while.

“We will build our home here,” Tom said, looking around at the clearing. “It's only a stone's throw from the lake, and there's plenty of sunshine. Our first order of business will be to build a shelter.”

“No, I don't think so,” Rachelle said.

He looked at her, taken aback by her tone.

“Our first order of business will be to deal with Monique,” she said.

“Come on, Rachelle.”

“I want you to tell me everything. All of your dreams.”

He spread his arms. “But they're nothing. They're just dreams!”

“Is that why you asked the boy about them just an hour ago? Is that why you mumble her name in your sleep? Even last night after you promised me you wouldn't ,you whispered her name as if she is the sweetest fruit in the land! I want to know it all.”

“Maybe we should bathe again.”

“After you tell me. If you hadn't noticed, there is you and there is me in the land now. One man and one woman. Or is it one man and two women? Have you chosen me, or not?”

“I did choose you. That's why you're here. Did I pull another woman into the Thrall to protect? No, I pulled you because I chose you, and we will marry immediately. And I want to tell you about Monique anyway.” He walked over to the boulders and sat. These dreams would be his ruin. “Where's Johan?”

“He's gone exploring. Tell me about your dreams.”

Tom looked back into the forest. “You let him go? What if he gets lost? I'm worried about him. We have to keep our eyes on him.”

“Don't change the subject. I want to hear everything.”

So Tom told her. She sat beside him on the rock at the center of the clearing, and he told her almost everything he could remember dreaming, leaving only a few parts sketchy.

He told her about being shot at in Denver and about flying to Bangkok and about kidnapping Monique and about the Raison Strain. Then he told her about the entire world constructed in his dreams, or at least as much of it as he could remember, because when he wasn't dreaming it seemed distant and vague.

“Do you know what this sounds like to me?” Rachelle said when he'd finished.

“No, what?”

“It sounds like you're imagining something similar to what happened to us, here. I told you where I would like to be rescued, and so you dreamed of exactly such a place to rescue another woman. And here the black forest has threatened to destroy us and now does, and so you dream of a blackness that will destroy another world. A plague. Bangkok is a figment of your dreams that reflects what's happening in your real life.”

“Maybe I can stop the virus where I failed to stop Tanis.”

“No, you're not going to stop it.”