Dreamwood (26 page)

As she stared at him she saw a curious growth hanging from the topmost roots: a lumpy seed pod, about half a foot long. It was heavy-looking and golden, with a thick, resinous case that made it seem like something precious encased in amber. Lucy stood on her tiptoes and slowly reached out a hand to touch it.

It felt weighty and hard and somehow warm to the touch. The roots that fed it had a pinched look, as if the creation of the seed had sucked them dry.

It was a dreamwood seed.

And there was only one. Suddenly she understood.
The cure for Rust is dreamwood,
her father had written. But not in the way she'd thought.

The tree was taking her father's life energy in order to create this one precious seed.

It hung on by the thinnest of strands, almost ready to drop.

She gave the seed pod the slightest of tugs. It came free at once, falling into her hand with a faint rattle.

She looked at her father, sleeping peacefully in his strange dream. He was beyond her reach now. But there were others who needed her help. Pete, Niwa, the Lupines, even all the out-of-work lumberjacks on the Wanted posters in the Pentland train station.

She supposed even a dreamwood seed was like any other: It had to be planted. Lucy walked away from the grotto the roots had made until she found a place where the ground was soft and mossy. Lucy got down on her knees and dug a small hole. She put the seed inside and piled the dirt on top of it.

She thought of the pictures in the
Codex Saarthensis.
She knew what she had to do next, even if she didn't like it. The dreamwood seed didn't need water, it needed an offering. It needed blood.

Lucy's neck prickled, and she had the uncanny sense of being watched. She swallowed and took out her knife, the proper knife Pete had insisted she buy.

Its blade glittered in the late afternoon light, almost as strong as the light from the dreamwood's flashing, mirror-like leaves.

Then, before she could change her mind, she drew it across the inside of her forearm. It was a sharp blade, and she made as deep and long a cut as she could stand, gritting her teeth against the pain.

She watched the blood well up and gouts of it rush out, pulsing with the heartbeat inside her, and fall on the ground.

The blood sank into the dirt. She had the most disturbing impression that the ground was
thirsty.

The surface rippled, as if a mole tunneled beneath it. Something down there was moving. It was coming up to meet her.

Lucy took a step back. Like a ship's prow crashing through a wave during a storm, something crested and burst forth from the ground. It was gold: a tiny seedling.

She was so surprised she cried out. And as she bent closer, another gout of blood fell. The little seedling shivered hungrily, absorbing it, and then rather alarmingly, it doubled in size.

It bent toward her, searching—like a kitten rooting for its mother. Lucy pressed Niwa's tunic against her arm to stop the bleeding—that was all she was able to give. One last drop fell down upon it.

She stepped back again and watched the seedling quiver. Like a peacock suddenly fanning its tail, the tree shook itself, and scores of tiny silver leaves burst out from its twiggy branches.

There it was, a miniature of the giant tree behind it.

With a tremble, the great tree shook itself from root to top. The mirror leaves flashed and from tiny pods a faint golden pollen rose into the air, shining like fairy dust. A group of birds swooped through, the edges of their wings coated in rich gold. They flew east, in the direction of the mainland.

The cure had begun.

She'd done it. And then Lucy covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

L
ucy got to her feet. The breeze from the sea was colder now, and she shivered. It was time to go.

She went to her father where he sat on his dreamwood throne. She put her hand on his, stroking the hard, waxy skin.

“Good-bye, Papa,” she said, leaning down and kissing his cheek softly.

It was like wrenching herself apart—the hardest thing she'd ever done, the hardest thing she could imagine doing. And then she turned to make the long walk back through the meadow. The ghost wall, still a heavy fog across the eastern horizon, didn't worry her now. Somehow she knew it would part for her. After all, she'd given His-sey-ak the one thing he needed. After a hundred years, he had another dreamwood, a child.

There was a faint sound behind her, a spluttering cough.

And then a
thud!

She wheeled around to see her father getting to his feet. The roots he'd been sitting in flexed like the arms of an octopus—they'd thrown him to the ground.

He stood before her, wild-eyed, his glasses askew, clothes in tatters, his skin scraped raw, and a clear fluid like sap oozing from his sores.

But it was him.

“Lucy,” he said hoarsely. His voice was breaking. “Lucy, is it really you?”

“Papa,” she cried, running toward him.

With a cry he caught her up into his arms.

“Thank goodness,” he said. He was stroking her hair, and clutching her, holding her hands as if he needed to assure himself that it was truly her. Lucy buried her face in his shoulder, feeling the scratchy wool of his lucky sweater.

“You were asleep,” she scolded him. “I tried to get you to wake up but you wouldn't.”

She looked over his shoulder and saw the root throne where he'd sat. A network of faint pink suckers ran across the roots where he'd detached himself; they waved blindly in disappointment.

“I know.” His blue eyes stared into hers, and she saw him struggling to explain. His spectacles dipped crookedly on his nose. “I'm sorry. As soon as the roots attached to me, I tried to get free. But I couldn't . . . and then I fell asleep.” He clutched her to him again. She breathed the smell of his pipe on his sweater, as well as the unsettling sweet smell of dreamwood. She hugged him, feeling great patches where his clothes were in rags. The dreamwood's creepers had chewed through his favorite sweater, she thought sadly.

The sparkly mist still hovered in the air, and through it she saw pod after pod in the giant tree shudder and release new, sweet-smelling pollen.

Her father looked at the mist in bewilderment. “And then somehow I woke up, and you're here . . .” He removed his crooked wire-rimmed glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt. Putting them back on, he squinted into the shimmering air. “But do you see everything golden? Am I still asleep? I don't understand why he released me, when I begged and pleaded with him in the dream.”

Lucy took her father's hand, being careful not to press his sores. “I think I have an idea,” she said and led him to the patch of blood-damp earth where the little dreamwood grew. It was now about a foot high, shapeless and awkward, covered with downy silver leaves, like a baby bird. In the ground Lucy could see pencil-thin roots with tiny suckers on them, hunting for every last morsel of blood. She shivered, feeling that it was beautiful and terrible at the same time.

For a moment her father simply gaped.

“You planted it,” he said. He turned to her with a look of wonder and smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ear. “I saw you figure it out in my dream.” He turned from the newborn tree to the glittering clouds of pollen still drifting in gauzy sheets across the meadow. In wonder he held up a hand then rubbed the glistening sheen on his fingertips. “You did it.”

He looked at her in triumph as she turned away.

“Lucy,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides. “What's wrong?”

Lucy hugged her forearm where the cut she'd made stung terribly. But why had he even been in the dream? Why had he sat on the root throne? Why had he left her? Tears welled in her eyes. She'd been through so much to get here and she thought she would be so happy—and she
was
—but she was crying, too.

“You weren't going to send for me,” she blurted out, feeling childish. And yet, she was a child, she was
his
child. Her place was with him. Niwa's father seemed to understand that. Why didn't he?

What was wrong with the way they were before? She remembered the train tickets and he invented the instruments. They cleared ghosts together. They were a team. But then somehow they had diverged. She thought of the strange transformations they'd both narrowly escaped—she'd rescued her father from becoming part of a tree. She'd had to rescue herself from turning into a Miss Bentley's girl.

“Who told you that?” he asked, bending down to search her face.

“Angus Murrain.”

“Did he tell you why?”

She shook her head: Her conversation with Angus was still too painful to talk about. But then she burst out, “He said you worried it would ruin my reputation. That I was better off without you as a father!”

She could feel her cheeks grow hot, and she dragged the heel of her hand across her eyes. All the hurt she'd carried until this moment came to the surface and now was as painful as a sunburn.

William Darrington sighed like someone facing a moment he'd long feared. “Of course that's not true,” he said in a soft, sorrowful voice. “Although . . .” He readjusted his glasses. “Sometimes I
have
wondered if I was giving you the life you deserved.”

“So I deserved being dumped at a school where the girls all made fun of me, and the teachers punished me, and I
hated
it?” Lucy's eyes were suddenly full and she felt the corners of her mouth sink.

She could tell she'd hurt him. She'd meant to.

“Lucy,” he said. He pushed the ragged sleeves of his sweater up his arm—His-sey-ak's marks were all over him. Finally, Lucy thought, it was visible for everyone to see that spirits had sunk their claws into him and laid their claim.

“Lucy,” he said with a sigh, “I've made a mess of things. I'm never going to be celebrated for the work I do. I'll never provide the type of life you should have. And as ghosts become scarcer, spirit work becomes more dangerous. I worried that I was putting you in harm's way by letting you come along with me. What sort of father puts his child in danger?”

Lucy said nothing, but stared stonily at the ground.

Her father ran a hand through his straw-colored hair and tried again.

“But . . . But now I know I was wrong,” he said.

She looked up, hearing these unfamiliar words from him.

“Miss Bentley's isn't the right place for you. I should have seen that.” He shook his head ruefully. “I'll give up spirit hunting. I can take up a trade. I do have some aptitude with electricity, after all. Perhaps I can find work at a power plant or transmission station. We'll live a normal life, stay in one place. You can tell people your father is an electrical engineer. That's a booming field. Electricity is the future. What do you say?” He held out his hand to her. “Onward?”

Lucy's throat was tight as she considered what her father was offering: a normal life, electricity, an end to being the “ghost girl.” But then she looked at the dreamwood and saw its silver-dollar leaves flashing in the breeze, the shimmering dragonflies buzzing by, even its pale, wormlike roots. And she took a deep breath.

“I think there must be more like him,” she said, raising her eyes to the towering dreamwood. “Maybe other trees or boulders. Maybe rivers or caves. But they're out there,” she said. “And they've got so much power, if they're hurt or disturbed, who knows what harm they might do.”

She raised her forearm to look at the place where she'd sliced the knife into her skin. It no longer hurt much, but she supposed it would leave a scar. “I don't think we should stop studying them.”

Her father's eyes crinkled as he embraced her.

“You're a remarkable girl, Lucy.”

That's what she always liked to hear.

They were walking hand in hand back toward the ghost wall. In front of them part of it was already dissipating, making a door for them to walk through.

“Speaking of remarkable,” her father said, “how did you get through the wall?”

Lucy was surprised he had to ask. “I had my sweeper, of course.”

The brass egg lay in the grass where it had fallen. Lucy picked it up, but nothing she did could make it move again.

“I'm afraid it's short-circuited,” her father said, kneeling down to examine it. Her heart swelled with happiness to see him in such a familiar posture—frowning behind his glasses as he turned the egg over to see what was wrong with it.

He put it down and gave her a look that he often used when he suspected there was more to the story than what she'd told. “But I'm surprised this had the power to bring you through the fog. I barely made it myself, and I had a much more powerful sweeping engine. It's ruined as well.”

“It did break down,” she admitted. She felt bad for her poor egg, and a touch maudlin; after all, she had had it since childhood. “But Pete gave me a ghost stone.” She produced the obsidian nugget.

“Let me see that.” Her father drew back, scrutinizing it over the edge of his glasses.

“You always said the folkways were too dangerous.” Lucy sidled close to him. “But this saved my life.”

“I guess I was wrong,” her father said wryly. He gave the stone a look of grudging respect as he handed it back to her. “What I've observed with protection stones is that your intentions matter when you use them. Your own energy interacts with them in ways that can be unpredictable. They're not mechanized like a sweeper. So, I always think my intentions are good . . . but I thought my intentions were good with Miss Bentley's and look how that turned out. No, obsidian is too unreliable for me. But I'm glad it served you. Very glad indeed. I need to thank Pete.” He looked around. “I thought he came with you. Where is he?”

Lucy blinked in surprise. “He did come. But how did you know?”

William Darrington sat back on his heels. “Once the roots attached to me, I was part of His-sey-ak. At first it was like being in a wonderful dream. But then I could feel your presence here, and I was terribly worried about you.” He pushed his glasses up and thought. “I had visions of you and a boy traveling through the forest, and I tried so hard to communicate with you. Sometimes I felt I was very close. One time I thought you touched me. Only I wasn't me—I was in a different body.” He threw his hands down by his sides in frustration. “I can't really explain.”

But to Lucy it was clear. “You were the wolf,” she exclaimed. Now she knew why she had felt no fear from it, why she had followed it so unquestioningly. “After Silas and Angus stole my vitometer we were lost. But this wolf appeared—oh, Papa, you were beautiful, but very frightening. Pete said we shouldn't trust you, but I knew—”

“Wait a minute,” he said, “Angus Murrain stole your vitometer? What on earth was he doing here?”

“Oh, I have so much to tell you,” she said happily.

But at that moment there was a loud rumble and the earth shook violently under their feet. Lucy nearly fell over and clung to her father until the rocking stopped. It had lasted only a few seconds, yet it was terrifying.

“What's happening?” Lucy asked.

“Earthquake,” her father said warily. “I think we should take it as a sign to leave.”

They had started to make their way through the meadow when a thought occurred to her.

“Wait a minute,” she told her father. Lucy grabbed her ghost sweeper and ran back toward the dreamwood. Carefully she placed it in one of the root grottoes and beside it she put her knife. She wished she had more to leave as an offering, but this would have to do.

The mist made way before them as they walked out of the meadow and closed up behind them again, hiding the dreamwood from view.

They came out near the place where she'd begged Pete to leave. And even though not long ago, it had been her fervent wish he'd taken her advice and left, now Lucy held out a secret hope that Pete was waiting for them. They began to walk north, toward the gap in the cliff side where they could climb down to the beach.

They were nearly there when a shadow sliced across the ground.

Lucy looked up, shading her eyes against the sun to see a giant winged shape wheeling out of the sky.

It was a thunderbird. And in its beak it carried a golden branch.

The creature landed in front of them. The great wings were cumbersome on the ground; folded, they gave the thing the look of a dinosaur having a rather awkward adolescence. Reptilian eyes studied them. The leathery red crest upon its head gleamed like a crown in the sun.