Dreamwood (25 page)

L
ucy stood before the ghost wall and untied Pete's sock with trembling fingers.

She had to act now before she lost her nerve, or before the day grew too old and she faced a night on the Thumb without
antimorpheus
to protect her. Angus's disappearance left her thoroughly shaken. He'd been so cool and unruffled throughout the last few days, she'd begun to think of him as unstoppable.

But he hadn't believed ghosts posed any danger to him. And so even though he'd carefully threaded his way through His-sey-ak's challenges, he'd been undone at this last step. Perhaps at the last moment Angus used his ax to try to fight off the ghosts. But clearly it hadn't worked. Obsidian was unpredictable, her father always said.

Then again, these ghosts felt more powerful than any she'd ever encountered. She remembered the timber baron's scathing comment about the ghost sweeper.
You don't trust yourself to make it through, even with that.

Lucy steeled herself. She was going to prove him wrong.

She held the stocking upside down and the ghost sweeper tumbled out. The egg was shivering—Lucy hoped it was from excitement.

“Come on,” she told it, speaking to it as if it were a puppy. “Let's go! Let's sweep.”

The egg walked flat-footed to the edge of the fog. Little eddies spun out and pooled around it. For a moment the sweeper didn't react, and Lucy had a terrible thought that it had injured itself in its collision with the log the last time she'd let it out. But she needn't have worried. The egg tilted forward as if into a headwind and let out a mighty blast. The fog billowed back from it, and Lucy saw the egg had cleared a hollow in its midst.

She stepped forward, all around her feeling the icy mist, the ghosts' seething emotions. The egg blasted again, clearing another few feet ahead. They were going to have to tunnel through it, bit by bit. Lucy went forward a few more steps into the new space it had cleared. But behind her the ghost fog swirled to close up the way she'd come.

Immediately, claustrophobia descended. Ever since her encounter with the Maran Boulder, tight spaces had held particular horror for her. With nothing to see in any direction, surrounded by hostile spirits, Lucy's heart raced as she tried to control her fear.

The only way out is through.

Another few paces.

I won't give in to fear.

The ghost sweeper gave another blast and she stepped forward a few more feet.

I know these are ghosts, but I won't give in to fear.

But it was terribly hard not to give in to fear as she watched the churning fog struggle to reach her. And was it her imagination or was the little hollow she stood in shrinking? It felt smaller than it had a few moments ago. Lucy cast a worried glance at the egg. This was more sweeping than it had ever been called on to do. What if it was no match for the Thumb's ghosts? What if there were so many the fog stretched on and on? They'd never make it. The egg took a few more steps and blasted again.

This time the blast was tentative. Something was wrong. The ghost sweeper was hardly clearing any space at all. The ghosts were overpowering it.

Her pulse drummed in her ears, she felt like someone trapped in a flooded room, slowly watching the water rise.
Don't panic,
she told herself. But it was impossible not to. If only she could figure out a way to run, or knew how much farther she had to go, perhaps she could just barrel through. But she did not want to risk getting turned around, trapped in the fog, and running in blind panic as Angus had. That way was sure death.

Please keep going.

And then the sweeper blasted and only a few inches around it cleared: just a small circle, like a halo.

Lucy watched in horror as the mist slowly descended into the cleared space. The world was going gray. She dropped to her knees, getting close to the egg. It was shaking.

They were doomed.

She bent down and covered her head, knowing it would make no difference—the ghosts would soon disrupt the electrical pulses in her brain. Next would come the hallucinations, then seizures.

She was plunged into childhood again, and the Hanged Man was coming for her on his dancing legs. Only this time there was no father to rescue her.

Pain in her chest made her gasp. Her heart was stumbling like a lame horse. She was going to have a heart attack at age twelve.

Her hand touched something metal. It was freezing cold: her sweeper, facedown, finished.

Spasms shook her body. She could feel her heart beat erratically, losing its rhythm. Sparks flew through her brain and then faded like fireworks.

Think, she desperately needed to think.

While she could still control her fingers, she brought out Pete's protection stone. It still retained a little warmth—from Pete, she thought, although she'd left him hours ago. She clutched it desperately, even though she had little hope it would do anything.

The black stone grew warmer in her fingers. She could feel something shift, a lessening of the attack. Her heart regained its beat. She gasped for breath, her eyes squeezed shut.

And then the fog slowly lifted and pulled back.

She was in a sunny green meadow. A few feet from her the ghost sweeper lay flat on its stomach. Slowly she got to her hands and knees, then for a few moments simply sat quietly and breathed, feeling the sun warm her. The black stone in her hand was actually
hot.

There was the whirring drone of insect wings as a giant dragonfly flew past, shining with iridescent green, blue, and gold. Butterflies as big as birds took delicate sips from bright pink wildflowers. It was as if she'd emerged from the deathly gray fog into a world supersaturated with color, with life. Slowly she got to her feet. A lacy waterfall shimmered with rainbows in the distance.

And ahead of her was an ancient and gnarled golden tree.

Huge guardian spruce grew around it, protecting it from the fury of the Pacific Coast. Lucy felt an alert intelligence in the way its leaves shimmered in the air, turning toward her like antennae. It was a dreamwood—the last dreamwood—as big and broad as a mighty oak.

The mapmakers of the lost settlement were all wrong. It wasn't a spider. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

• • •

A breeze from the sea made the tree's silvery green leaves sparkle like coins. Its bark was smooth like a skin and shone with a soft, pale gold: the precious gold of angels in old paintings. The tree glimmered softly in the sunlight, presiding over an enchanted clearing of soft mossy ground. Its branches were twisted and thick, growing out parallel to the ground for a long while, like arms that longed to embrace her. It would be a simply perfect tree for climbing, Lucy thought. The branches were so wide and gently sloping; there were so many of them. It was almost as if there were a network of dozens of secret pathways inside its canopy. She could climb inside and lose herself there, never having to come out, living off sunshine and dewdrops the dragonflies would bring her.

Lucy walked forward as if in a dream.

Rolling out from the dreamwood's trunk were huge white roots, as big as marble waves. They pushed up through emerald moss, and rose twisted and gnarled as a witch's finger, creating hidden niches and pockets. Lucy clambered among the root grottoes, wanting to get closer to that marvelous tree.

She felt faint from lack of food, and there was a curious scent to the air—lovely and dangerous, the way that some lilies smelled of death and funerals and women's perfume all at the same time. But she didn't feel in any danger. Instead she felt all the hope and certainty she remembered from drinking Ulfric's dreamwood tea. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the dreamwood's rich and strange scent. It made her slightly lightheaded and her legs a bit wobbly, but it was simply so delicious she had to keep going forward.

And then, as she made her way closer still, she saw him.

William Darrington was seated in an alcove created from interwoven roots, like a king on a throne of living wood. He was sleeping; his face was calm and peaceful. There was the slender Darrington nose, the high, intelligent forehead. His glasses were balanced nearly at the tip of his nose—how many times had she seen him asleep in his armchair back home and his glasses perched just like that? He was wearing his favorite traveling sweater—the one with multiple patches at the elbows, the one he swore the moths would have to eat entirely before he stopped wearing it. His quick, nimble hands were still; there was a book in his lap. His head, tilted gently to one side, drooped slightly as if he'd just fallen asleep while reading.

Lucy's heart felt as if it would burst. “Papa!” she cried and began to run.

He was here, it was really him. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she thought of all the horrors she'd passed through, all her anxieties and fears, how hard it had been to come through the ghost wall, how she'd been wrong, how Pete had been right, how worried she'd been and how much she needed him . . . And how he'd sent her away . . . how he hadn't told her . . . how he'd meant for them to separate.

She slowed to a walk, brimming over with emotion, until she finally stood before him.

“Papa,” she said. “Wake up. It's me.”

But her father continued to sleep peacefully.

Too peacefully.

“Papa,” she gasped, as dread filled her like flooding water. Why didn't he answer?

Now she saw what she hadn't noticed before: There were twigs in his hair, his fingernails had grown long and ragged, dust and moss had collected in the creases of his dungarees.

No.

With her heart thudding in her ears she reached forward and touched his face.

He was cool, very cool, but he was alive: His chest still rose and fell softly, as if he needed very little air.

He slept. From his appearance he looked as if he hadn't moved in weeks.

Lucy fought down her panic. Maybe if she helped him move he might wake up. She tried to lift one of his arms, thinking she could help him stand. But he was stuck in place. She tried to move his other arm. It was as if he'd been cemented into his seat.

She bent down, alarm flaring through her, and peered at the place where one hand rested lightly on his throne of roots. Between his skin and the wood was a thin layer of something hard and clear, like glue.

He was stuck to the wood by a resinous membrane. Tiny suckers spread out from it, like those found on the back of ivy creepers.

She tugged at one of his hands. But the membrane pinned him in place. Fear took over. Now she tugged with all her strength. She
had
to get him free. Where she pulled she saw the skin turn pink. She pulled harder and managed to lift the tip of a finger. Then with horror she let it fall back—the suckers were part of him, they went
into
him.

He was being absorbed into the tree.

The dreamwood was feeding on him.

Lucy felt as if she were falling.

She was back in Governor Arekwoy's office, transfixed by Denis Saarthe's strange and frightening pictures, seeing their stained-glass beauty—and the horrors they contained: the roots with the faces and hands inside them.

Abruptly she turned and retched. But she hadn't eaten in so long, only bile came up. Her eyes smarted with tears and she turned back to her father.

“Why?” she cried. How had this happened? Her father, who figured out every mystery, who outsmarted every ghost, who'd made it his life's work to understand spirits, had finally been caught.

Her eyes streaming with tears, Lucy searched for some explanation. Her glance fell on the book in his lap, and she saw it wasn't a book he was reading, but another journal. She could see his pen now, fallen into the moss at his feet.

With renewed strength she tugged the journal from his hand.

She bent over it, so frantic it took her moments to steady herself enough to read what he'd written. The writing was nearly illegible, the letters formed as if by someone with barely any muscle control.

The cure for Rust is dreamwood.

Lucy shook her head, rubbing the tears from her eyes. She knew that wasn't true. Her father must have known it wasn't true. In despair she turned to the next page.

Already it is hard for me to write. I see into his mind, a mind that is spread into every molecule—every tree and bird and beast—on the Thumb. And now I've become one with him. I understand everything. But too high a cost.

Underneath this in a weak and struggling script he had written only one word:

LUCY

She was beyond tears now. She took the journal and, enraged, threw it at the dreamwood's golden trunk. It bounced off harmlessly and fluttered to the ground.

“You monster!” she screamed at it.

Nothing happened. The silvery green leaves continued to flash, the butterflies continued to soar. She turned back to her father. He looked so peaceful sitting on his white throne. The roots curved around him, like a giant seashell.