Dandelion Fire (25 page)

Her legs burned. They were slow, full of acid and sludge, and her lungs wanted to rip wide open. Every part of her wanted to stop, except her will. Her will wanted a different body. One with wings. She slowed, but she wouldn't let her legs stop moving. Only fifty more steps. She nearly tripped on a rock, but caught herself. A branch tangled in her hair and kept some. She closed her eyes and pushed through, ignoring the scratches on her arms and face, and the tugs on her hair. She moved faster, ripping through tangled branches and tripping on low, sprawling trunks and brush. And then she laughed.

She had reached the stone. A sharp face overlooked the hillside, but its back sloped gently into the ridge. The stone was pale where it wasn't covered with dry lichen and cracked and knobby on the side. Even with boiled
legs, climbing wouldn't be difficult. She scrambled up onto the edge of the great stone's back. A carpet of scrub oak spread out in front of her, running down toward the valley. In the far distance, beyond much lower hills, she thought she could see the river.

Laughing, happy and relieved that she had actually made it and not just given Eli another reason to be smug, she cupped her hands to her mouth.

“Hey, Eli!” she yelled. “What happened to the wizards?”

“They faded like mist,” a quiet voice said, “and went the way of all flesh.”

Henrietta overbalanced and nearly fell into the oaks tangled beneath her. Waving her arms, she looked up to the end of the rock outcropping. On the very peak, there stood a man, as tall as any she had ever seen, even taller with nothing but the sky behind him. The man wore leather gloves on his hands. One of them gripped a thick bow beside his waist. A quivered flock of arrow stood up above his shoulder.

Henrietta turned and ran down the back of the rock. She was falling. The ground rose up suddenly, and her tired legs gave out against it. Dust rose, a rock dug into her ribs, pushing the breath out of her.

Strong hands gripped her shoulders from behind, and she was on her feet. She spun and tried to kick, but her body was quickly twisted back. An arm slid down over her head and shoulders. She couldn't move her upper body, so she stomped and found a booted toe.

“Peace, little sister,” the voice said in her ear, “unless you wish to be tied.” Then it grew louder. “Where is the little Fitzwizard?”

“The birds are tracking him,” another voice said. “He's moving along the ridge beneath the trees.”

“Follow him. Bring him to the well.”

A storm of horses pounded away behind her, but one passed where she could see, gray and speckled black. Standing straight, she wouldn't have reached its shoulder, and she could feel the vibrations in the ground as its huge, hairless hooves drummed by.

Eli wouldn't have much of a chance.

When the horses were gone, she was turned around suddenly and found herself looking into the eyes of the tall man. They were smiling and strangely colored— dark green in the center but with rims of pale blue. His face was rough but clean-shaven, and his hair was black. A scar on his left temple ran back into his scalp, and his hair was streaked gray around it. He looked a little like her father. But not. She'd never been this afraid of her father.

“You are young to keep such company,” he said. “What is your name?”

Henrietta didn't want to say anything. She wanted to meet this stranger's eyes with a cold stare and defy them. But she wasn't good at saying nothing. So she lied.

“My name is Beatrice,” she said.

The man didn't blink. He leaned closer, staring, until she could smell pepper on his breath.

“That name has not shaped you,” he said. “Are you a liar?”

“No,” Henrietta said angrily

“Then what are you called?”

“I am called Beatrice.”

The man didn't look away. He spoke again, quietly.

“What is it you are called?”

Henrietta's neck began to droop. She wanted to look down, or up, anywhere else, but he wasn't letting her.

“Henrietta Dorothy Willis,” she said.

“And you are called Henrietta?”

She nodded.

“Then come, Henrietta, you will ride with me.” He straightened up, put a hand on her shoulder, and led her around to the side of the stone. “Tell me no more lies,” he said, “and we shall get along.”

He whistled, low and sharp, and an enormous chestnut horse surged slowly up from beside the stone, prancing to a stop in front of them.

“I am called Caleb,” the man said, “and this is Chester.”

stood with his thumbs tucked beneath his backpack straps on top of the warm stone slab and blinked in the sun. His breaths were long and slow, and he was savoring them. The only noise was made by the breeze slicing itself through the trees. There had to be insects, though Henry couldn't hear any. If birds had made homes in the trees, they were keeping them all secret.

Henry had only been to Badon Hill once, but he couldn't count how often his dreams had brought him to the tall trees and the breeze coming off the sea. The island hill fell away into mossy shadow on every side of Henry's perch, swallowed by giant trees with their heights rooted in the sky. He was standing on the very crown of Badon Hill, on the ancient rectangular rock, set in the clearing surrounded by the ruins of the old stone wall. Behind Henry stood an ancient tree, weather-worn, with splaying branches and a wide crack in its trunk, a crack that led through a cupboard and into an attic. Far below him, out of sight but not out of smell, there sprawled the sea.

Henry walked down the length of the slab and
jumped off, making his way to the corner, where he knew he would find the bones of the big black dog from his oldest Badon Hill dreams. They were there, the yellowed skull, caged ribs, and others swallowed by grass. He didn't know why he had dreamt it, the dog, running back and forth between the tree and the stone, and digging at both, but he knew that it was important to him. Somehow.

Leaning his back against the warm rock, Henry shut his eyes and let the sun warm his face. Then, with a deep breath, he straightened and opened his eyes. For a second, they wouldn't focus. Threads like jet streams morphed between the trees, knotting them together in a single word, a single story and song. Henry could hear Nella telling him to stop, but he blocked out the pain in his head and the pounding of his heart. He was seeing the raging, laughing life that he had only felt whispered before. And he knew that this storm of names and living words was Badon Hill at rest. Badon Hill, dreaming. His tongue dried and tightened. He wanted to try and speak this language. He wanted words in his mouth to be alive, to take on flesh, wood, bark, sap, leaves, rings of annual laughter and sorrow. He wanted to speak life.

Henry's mouth hung open wide, his joints throbbed, ignored. He turned in place and saw the wind.

It was a single epic creature, a sliding, rushing, legless back. Henry put out his hand and watched it divide around his fingers, around his dancing dandelion fire, and rejoin itself on the other side. It was single, but
many. Every tail spun off and found its own personality, shaped another narrative, and then rejoined the rest. Henry put out his other hand. He could grab on. He knew he could. He could be carried away.

Suddenly, the world roared. Henry felt his arms begin to spasm, his eyes rolled back in his head. But even that was no protection. His first sight was gone, but his second sight continued on, carried by something as loud and strong as Niagara. It could rip him apart.

Henry fell to the ground, tucked his legs to his chest, and grabbed his ears. He curled tighter and tighter, breathing hard, trying to push it out of his head, fighting the spasms he felt building in his joints. The trees and wind were shouting their names, their histories, proclaiming their glories with violence.

All went quiet. The world sang on, but Henry's mind stepped out of the roar, reblanketed with simpler perception, perception more easily survived.

Henry opened his eyes slowly. His jaw hurt. It was locked wide open. Grindingly, carefully, he closed it and sat up.

Badon Hill rustled in the breeze, insectless, birdless, content with its quiet life. Henry knuckled his eyes and looked around carefully. His head was drumming. He wished he had brought Tylenol.

In front of him, the gray stone was still blurry. Henry shut his eyes quickly. After a moment, he opened one and squinted at what should have been the flat face of the long, rectangular side of the rock. It was flat at the
edges and across the top, but at the center, there gaped a black arch, just peeking above ground level. Henry could see grass running in front of it, but it looked false, an illusion deceiving only his first sight, like Darius's chin. In front of his feet, the ground actually fell away into an uneven stairwell. Henry scooted forward and looked down. The stairs were narrow, descending to the black arch. Henry slid his leg through the grass and held it out over the stairs. Strangely, he felt resistance where ground level was pretending to be. It wasn't merely illusion, but his foot still passed through and settled on a narrow stair. Henry slid forward again and stood. Both feet were on the stairway. He looked around himself. Grass ran up to his knees and between his legs, but he could look through it, at the dark, wet stone beneath his feet. He took another step, and another, wading deeper into the ground. The grass was around his thighs. He didn't like feeling cut in half, so he walked all the way to the stone, with ground level around his ribs, and then he ducked below it.

Henry was squatting at the gaping mouth. He wasn't sure he wanted to go in. Actually, he was sure he didn't want to. But he was just as sure that he didn't want to move on without looking. He pulled off his backpack and went digging for the flashlight. When he found it, he pointed the beam through the arch and saw that the stairs hadn't stopped. They continued down into darkness.

After quieting his stomach's reaction to the idea, he
eased himself through the low doorway. After counting twenty steps, Henry found a floor with his light and then his feet. The ceiling was just high enough for him to stand with his head tilted.

He was in a little oval room. The smooth stone walls were pocked with niches and miniature alcoves, some of which looked as if they held things. On the far wall, a door, as wide as it was tall, was set into the black stone. Its surface crawled with carvings.

A man's head was in the center, the same head that appeared on the faeren's seal. It was big, as large as Henry's torso. The man was bearded, and vines poured out of his mouth and nostrils, tangling with the stone hair on his jaw. Vines and leaves also sprouted from his ears and wrapped around his head like a crown. His eyes, round balls of black stone, were open, but the pupils were funnel-shaped holes, bored back into the man's head. In a circle all around the face, stone hair and leaves and vines intertangled, forming a leafy and serpentine surface. Henry moved closer and focused his light. Throughout the man's beard and the tangled halo, smaller heads had been carved. They sprouted off vines next to leaves, and all of them had their eyes closed in sleep. Henry had counted a dozen, tracing the cool stone with his fingertips, when something rattled at his feet. A snarl of small bones was piled against the base of the door. The skulls were long and wide-nostriled like miniature horses, but at the snout, each had one small horn. Raggant skulls. There were five. Henry shivered.
He was in a grave. Beyond the door, there would be bodies. One, or dozens, but bodies.

Henry slid backward toward the stairs, then turned quickly. He could see sunlight at the top of the shaft. Ducking, he bounded up, gasping for air that hadn't been sleeping with the dead.

Henry erupted from the ground and staggered through the tall grass, looking at the blue sky and then down at the green life beneath his feet.

A bearded man moved in front of him.

Stunned, Henry looked into his eyes. He had black hair and was wearing all white beneath a heavy brown cloak. He was poised, expecting Henry to do something. Henry stepped backward and turned toward the cracked tree. Another man, hairless, taller, thicker, but in the same dress, stood waiting for him. The man raised his hand, and strange words rumbled in his chest. Henry gasped and staggered, struggling to breathe. The air was trying to bind his arms and legs, trying to grip his throat.