SPARX Incarnation: Mark of the Green Dragon (SPARX Series I Book 1) (12 page)

“I am no hero or sage,” I replied, “and I am not sure who I have proven my worth to. I’m only fifteen and the aide to a diplomat of the smallest community anywhere.”

“Fifteen,” repeated my uncle, and then he raised one eyebrow. “Humph.”

“You have a mark too,” I said. “What
precious
knowledge do you possess that must be preserved?”

“Well Nud,” he said, amused at the brashness of my query, “first you must understand that Hurlorns are known to mark their own as they see fit, and for the most part without any discernable rhyme or reason to it. Being obvious is not their way – that much I can vouch for personally. There are times though when, in retrospect, I can say that they saw something coming, and in their own way planned for it by selecting the talents needed to deal with the situation well in advance. I do not know why a Hurlorn chose to mark you, Nud. You are a most peculiar and unprecedented choice. I am sure the Hidden King would not approve, but something tells me he was not consulted. As for myself, the Kith are the exception. We receive the Mark as a matter of course to bind us to the Hurlorns and to our brothers who came before us. It is not so much for our knowledge of great things as for our services rendered. Our community is one in the same with the Hurlorns. We are joined.”

The woodsman picked up the rough, amber-like gemstone. He wore a weighing expression as he observed it emit another series of flashes. I had seen that look on his face before when he spoke with Paplov, discussing delicate political situations and wondering what to do without setting someone off. He seemed to be deliberating. Raising the stone to eye level, he rolled it repeatedly in his hand, the hand on the same arm that bore the Mark, and he examined each facet one by one. Then something changed.

Fyorn suddenly tensed. His eyes widened, like fear. His head jerked up, the vessels in his neck bulged, and he drew in a frantic breath. The lantern snuffed out completely as wood all around the cabin began to twist and creak – the floorboards, the walls, everything. I stood up. The light itself brightened, almost burning. The heavy table slid. And his arm… his wrist… the Mark there began to bleed. Blood trickled down his arm. He let the stone drop.

And it fell.

The next instant, a deeper darkness flooded the room with a chill like death in winter. I heard the stone clatter on the table. My bones turned to ice.

A long minute passed, and then everything went back to normal. Dim, yellow light spilled forth from the lantern, and daylight filtered through cracks around the shutters on the kitchen window. The warmth of the woodstove returned. And the mysterious stone from the bog resumed its usual pattern of flicker.

Fyorn held his wrist, blood dripping through his fingers and onto the floor. His breaths were heavy and quick. I ran and got him a washcloth. With a concerned look, he rolled up his shirtsleeve, took the cloth and wrapped it around his arm. I tied it for him, tight, then pushed the table back into place.

“Are you all right?” I said. I had never seen him so much as flinch before in all my life.

He nodded. “Everything is fine,” he assured me. Fyorn took a deep breath and exhaled.

“What happened?” I said.

“I don’t know really, Nud,” he replied. “I don’t know for sure. It was like… it was like a ringing; a ringing that became stronger and stronger until I was ready to burst.”

Carefully, slowly, he took his seat. I sat back down across from him, grabbed the stone and put it back in my pocket.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I felt something like that too – before. Like a buzzing in my head. Weird things happened.”

“They will not stop happening,” he said.

“Someone could get hurt. Should I destroy it then? Put it back in the bog? Give it to you?”

“It is not meant for me,” he replied. “That much is clear.”

“What, then?”

For a long while, he just breathed, without answering.

“Can I get you some water?” I said.

Fyorn waved off the gesture. Finally, he spoke.

“This is your dilemma to solve, Nud,” he said. “There is no second-guessing the Hurlorns, so just do what you need to do.” He rubbed his chin.

“Your friends,” he continued, “they seem like a good bunch. Can you trust them to keep a secret?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I certainly did not want him to discover how careless I had been at the Flipside. I just nodded.

“Good friends are important in the world,” he added. “May I see your stone again? Don’t worry; I won’t touch it this time.”

I took it out and held it for him. He gazed at it – into it, more like, all the while applying pressure to his wrist.

“A natural beauty in the rough,” he said as the next flurry of flashes lit up the cabin. “I have never seen anything like this.”

“I will have to find out more in Gan,” he went on. “Best to keep your stone under wraps for the time being. As I alluded to, I suspect there is a deeper meaning to all of this. On the off chance you happen to find any others, please do bring them here, to me, for safekeeping.”

“Really?” I said, unable to conceal the disappointment in my voice. After all, we were planning a treasure hunt.

“If you are wondering about value,” he said, “I am fully certain the sages of Gan will offer more than a fair price for such rare wonders, after determining exactly what it is you have found.”

That works
, I thought.
Gariff will like that – a guaranteed buyer
already
.

“They might even cut and polish something like this to adorn the king’s crown.”

“I have it on good authority that it’s some kind of ancient tree gum,” I said.

Fyorn raised an eyebrow at that. “Ahh,” he said, nodding in acknowledgement. “I am not completely surprised to hear that.”

The woodsman grabbed my hand and closed my fingers around the stone.

“I do not know what more to tell you about this,” he said, “except to say that what you have found is something unknown to Men. I can tell you something more about the Mark though. Of that, I have done my own collecting for my own reasons, as you have seen.”

Uncle Fyorn laid his left arm flat on the table, slowly undid the cloth, and showed me his wrist. The bleeding had stopped. His mark seemed to spread out radially from mid wrist. On the dark edges that defined the boundary, green tendrils curled up and out, then dove sharply into his skin, as though the image had been stitched on. He wiped the area as clean as he could, then nodded at my arm.

I also laid my left arm on the table, the Mark fully exposed. Mine appeared faint compared to his. From a central axis instead of a point, pale dots with fractured geometry branched out in elaborate looping patterns that curled in on themselves, smaller and tighter until they disappeared. There were no tendrils.

“According to the archives in Gan,” he explained, “the Mark will grant you a choice at a time when choices do not exist, in true Elderkin fashion. You may choose, one day, to live among the Hurlorns – as a
Spirit Hurlorn
– or instead, pass on to whatever fate awaits you. It will be your choice. Those rare and unique Hurlorns who once walked the earth on two legs as you and I do now, who then cross over to become custodians of the forest, are the uncommon exception rather than the rule. They grow to become the keepers of our knowledge and history, captains of our forest guard, and may even become great leaders.”

The idea seemed magical and wondrous.

“You mean… I can be a Forest King? A Tree King? King of Trees?”

“In a manner of speaking, but not so much a king. The King is in Gan, remember?”

I nodded.

“And there is no ‘King of Trees.’” The woodsman shook his head and smiled. “Heavens no. But… in good time, among the Spirit Hurlorns one may grow to become
the Green Dragon of Deepweald.
I do not know how that happens.”

“That’s a myth,” I said. I hadn’t heard of Hurlorns before, but the Green Dragon was legendary.

Fyorn’s eyes met mine in a steady gaze, his words unhindered by my doubts.

“And when the day finally comes to cross over,” he continued, “your former life must be abandoned. That is the oath taken to receive the gift of renewal. There is no turning back once you decide to follow that path.”

My uncle smiled and put his hand on my shoulder, then patted it.

“And one more thing,” he said. “You can just call me Fyorn now. You are no longer a child. You do not need a made-up uncle.”

I could not help but feel a little empty.

Chapter XVII

Interlude – The way around

W
hat does it mean to wake up in the morning? Are you the same person that you were when you fell asleep? – of course you are. Your memories tell you so and your body is still your body. But what if one day you awaken in a body that is not your own and you still remember everything about yourself. Are “you” still “you”? Is that reincarnation?

I can’t answer that yet. Little by little though, the pieces will come together. The recipe for Spirit Hurlorn Incarnation – or “tree-incarnation” for short – isn’t something you just serve cold. You have to heat it up a bit, add sauce and spices, and then let the idea simmer for a while. Oh, how I miss a real meal cooked to perfection on a potbelly stove! As I said, it will all become clear, soon enough, in the telling.

You are probably wondering why I bothered to ask if there is such a thing as magic. Well, consider this: To take an incarnate form such as mine, you have to first perish… sort of… and then
transmute
. Magic didn’t bring me here. It might look like magic and smell like magic, but it isn’t magic – unless perhaps you’re a savage. Then to you, magic is a good enough explanation. It’s all you’ll ever get out of me. Trying to explain more to a savage wouldn’t be worth my time – precious time – a savage would never get it. But you’re smarter than that, aren’t you? Think about it. Magic would be kinder – like the good magic in faerie tales that wakes sleeping princesses and transforms animals and animated china back into the people they once were. Get those thoughts out of your head. It just looks that way.

Don’t get me wrong – I am comfortable in my new form, or rather, “comfortable in my own bark” to butcher a common saying, but I have to say that I am not exactly sure what I am right now.

“Where does my soul reside?” – I can’t answer that either. That’s what really gets me.

“Am I still really me?” – yet another mystery to ponder.

“If not - who else could I be?” – well… no one, I suppose, to any observer apart from my former self. It all gets very confusing to my wood-warped brain.

Here comes the rain. I can hear it on the leaves. Wait… false alarm… that was only the angry front of a windy drizzle. Finally, our young storm is building! It’s what we’ve been waiting for all along. Soon, I will have to forsake this grove and seek cover. Pardon any watermarks you might encounter on the coming pages.

Chapter XVIII

Treasure hunting

B
efore hitting the woodland trail, Fyorn aimed to deliver each of the boys another one of his famous handshakes. Pockets stuffed full of taffy, Bobbin lined up first. The woodsman hardly squeezed his hand before he squealed like a pig.

Kabor’s hands were bloodied, so the two just bumped fists. “Hang in there,” Fyorn told him. The Stout had taken a tumble while running through the bush.

Gariff challenged the woodsman by squeezing back with all his might. He twisted and contorted his body to lever into it, grunting ferociously. I don’t think Fyorn even noticed. At least, that’s how he acted. He even yawned and excused himself.

“Goodbye Sir Nud,” he said when he got around to me. “You and Paplov should come by more often.”

“Goodbye Uncle Fyorn,” I said – a slip of the tongue.

“No need to call me ‘uncle’ anymore, right?” he said.

“Old habits are hard to break,” I said.

“What?” said Holly. She had just stepped out of the cabin and into the conversation. She narrowed her eyes and shot me a sideways glance.

I shrugged, and sputtered. “I… ahh… well…”

“Humph,” she huffed. “Well, Goodbye
Uncle
Fyorn,” she said, and then gave him a gripping hug. “You can still be
my
uncle.” I got the impression he was not completely comfortable with the idea.

Holly took a step back. “Is this the right one?” she said, holding up an old spotter’s cloak. Fyorn had offered it to her for the trip back. In the evenings, conditions that time of year on the Mire Trail were either bug-free and cool or warm and buggy, with little in between. Either way, Holly was ill prepared.

“That’s the one,” said Fyorn. “It was made for someone about your size. Now, listen carefully. It’s reversible. When worn one way it is a regular cloak, but wear it inside out and it camouflages – a simple redirecting of light to pass around you. There is also a melding quality… you will see. It usually takes young spotters a few weeks to get the hang of it.”

Smiling, she draped it on. The dark material was light and flowy, yet strong, and with an unusual sheen to it.

“How does it look?” she said, and then spun around.

“Perfect,” said Fyorn.

In truth, to my eyes the cloak seemed rather long for her and too thin to ward off flies. She donned the hood.

“Thank you Uncle Fyorn,” she said in her best, polite Flipside voice.

As the woodsman waved us off, I felt small for not having come earlier. On my way down the path and away from the cabin, I thought to look back. I thought that maybe I should call out and ask him why he used to have a giant black spider boxed up in his attic. I did look back, but only to wave one last time. I turned to the path ahead and just kept on walking, silent.
The visit had gone well
, I decided.

*

The woodland part of the trail was hard-packed and rocky, but once we broke through the tree line and hit the mud flats, the going was softer. All three Pips meandered off the trail and squished their toes into the soft, cool mud underfoot. The Stouts stuck to higher, firmer ground.

Midday had come and gone and travel time alone would amount to a few hours if we kept a good sure-footed pace. That left half the afternoon or thereabouts for our search and claim staking. We would have to wrap up by early evening though, to make Webfoot by nightfall.

Holly began her chatter as soon as we hit the more open territory. I wondered if she had held her tongue on the notion that Fyorn would somehow hear everything she said as long as we remained in his woods.

“Did you see those high cheekbones and lean, chiseled features?” she started. “I could tell right away he wasn’t related to you.”

I shook my head. “Obviously,” I said. “He’s Elderkin.”

“And those eyes… I could almost see the secrets behind them. So much inner strength… and thoughtfulness. He reminds me of Anexxander – Oh, you wouldn’t know who he is. Anexxander is a woodland hero in one of the Elderkin stories I read.”

I had no idea how to respond to any of that. I was glad Gariff interjected.

“Nevermind with all that Elderkin fancy now,” he reminded her.

Fyorn’s words at the cabin still clung to the back of my mind. What could be coming? What did the Hurlorns want with me?

“Holly,” I said, “have you seen anything unusual at the Flipside lately?”

“Is this another ‘Red Room’ question?” she replied.

“No. And… sorry about that.”

“All right then. Like what?”

“I don’t know… any odd people or strange things, weird conversations maybe.”

Holly smiled. “Really, Nud? You just described nearly everyone.”

“True enough, I suppose.” I tried to shake off the feeling. After all, it could be that something completely different from what Fyorn was talking about is on the horizon – like finding the “mother load.” That would change everything.

Before long, we had made our way to Blackmuk Creek, spilling out of a spruce bog just east of the Mire Trail. The watercourse wound ever southward, fed by crystal-clear headwaters cascading down a broad limestone staircase. The “muck” itself appeared sporadically as we followed its course, especially in areas where the creek bulged out into sediment rich holes, abundant in plant and insect life. After a short trek, we came to the site of the find. The woodland aroma of sodden leaves filled my lungs. Gariff led the way to the pit. I looked around. Something was not quite right.

“Are you sure this is the place?” I said.

“That’s odd, coming from you,” said Gariff.

“It’s different,” I said.

“Looks pretty much the same to me,” he said.

“This is the same place we looked last time,” said Kabor. He wasn’t even wearing his glasses.

The Stouts were right – it was
mostly
the same. The pit had caved in some, a tree had fallen over it, and it was full of murky water. Wet leaves lined the sloping bottom, along with rotting branches and other forms of detached vegetation.

“It’s the trees around it,” I said. “These aren’t the same trees. And the shape of the hole is different.”

“Have you been into the barkwood again?” said Kabor. Everyone laughed. I wondered if that night at the Flipside could have messed up my recollection of the entire day as well. The fact that traumatic events were known to affect Pip memory also came to mind. I let it go.

“Just go into recall,” suggested Bobbin.

“No thanks,” I said. The whole bog-body experience was not something I cared to relive.

“I wonder if Mer made it here?” said Gariff.

“Look at the tracks in the mud,” said Holly. “Someone’s been here.”

Kabor reached into his pocket and pulled out his specs. He put them on and gave the tracks a sideways look. “They’re not all Mer’s, that’s for sure,” said Kabor. “I don’t know if any of them are. I’m no bogger, but it looks like Men or Outlanders to me.”

“Well, no one’s here now,” said Bobbin.

We set our gear down near the creek. I pulled the stone out of my pocket to let everyone get a glimpse of it before starting the search.

“Can I hold it?” asked Holly.

Her request caught me off guard. I hesitated.

“I’ll give it right back,” she offered.

Despite my reservations, based on Fyorn’s experience, I handed it to her.

“Careful,” I told her, my voice overly alarming. “I mean… don’t drop it.”

Unless you have to
. I watched closely as she cupped the bog stone in her hands, leaving only a small opening at the top to peer through. Everything seemed all right.

“The light gets brighter whenever you hold it,” I said.

Holly looked at me with adoration. “Thank you,” she replied, eyes smiling. Then I realized I might have just inadvertently complemented her. It was true though.

“That’s weird,” she said. “Look… it’s gone steady now.” Holly tilted the bog stone this way and that way in her hands. “And look, when I move it a little, the spark keeps to the edge, like it wants to go one way, but then it sort of hits the wall from the inside.” Holly motioned to her left.

She opened her hands enough for me to see what was happening. Moving left to right, the spark hugged the left. Moving right to left, the spark would try to “catch up” to the left side.

“You’re right… that is odd,” I said. “Maybe it’s like a compass, except it seems to like west better than north.” There had also been times when it seemed to flash more energetically as well. It was all a mystery to me. She passed the stone over and I put it back in my pocket.

Gariff pulled out two shovels from his pack. He kept one for himself and lent the other to Holly. He passed Kabor a pan.

“Where do I dig?” asked Holly.

“That’s up to you,” said Gariff. “Before I dig anywhere, I’m visiting these outcrops here.” One by one, Gariff pointed out three small hills where the ground was solid rock. “If Nud’s bog stone is really ancient tree gum like Mer says, then it formed in the
ancient
landscape. D’em hills will tell me something about how it all looked back then, and just maybe where to dig.”

“Sounds complicated,” said Holly, a little deflated.

“I’m sticking to the creek,” said Kabor. “The water already did most of the work for me – exposed areas and sand, like panning for gold.”

“That might work,” said Gariff.

“I like that idea,” said Holly. “Nud, what about you?”

I thought for a long moment. “Tree roots,” I said. “I’m going to look for exposed tree roots or ones that are easy to dig under, especially near the sinkhole.”

“The one with the dead bodies?” she asked.

“I guess…”

Holly turned to Gariff’s cousin. “Kabor, mind if I join you?”

“Nope. It’ll be fun. I’ll show you how to pan for gold,” he said, “and old eyeballs.”

Holly sent him off-balance with a hip check.

Bobbin’s turn came next. He looked around and about, from the treetops to the ground. “I’m going to look under rocks,” he said.

Gariff laughed.

Straight away, Bobbin stooped over and upturned a wide, flat rock. He pulled something from underneath with a bit of a shine to it.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Give that to me,” said Gariff, but it was Kabor who snatched it out of Bobbin’s hand. He whisked it away to the creek.

With the rest of us looking over his shoulders, Kabor placed the item in his pan and washed the mud off, replacing the water as soon as it was dirty. After a few refills, when the water finally cleared, we could see that Bobbin had found a thin strip of curved metal, pitted and twisted out of its original shape. Gariff grabbed it. Piece in hand, he reached into his shirt pocket for an eyeglass that he had thought to bring along, much like the one Mer had shown me. He closed one eye and scrutinized with the other through the eyeglass.

“Old metal,” he said, “pitting corrosion for sure. These boggish waters sure did a number on it.”

“What is it?” said Holly.

“A bit of plate armor, I’d say,” said Gariff. “A band from a… maybe a waist or hip fitting… broken away from the rest of it.”

We all took our turns examining the piece, while Gariff explained what the original gear might have looked like. That got everyone’s imagination leaping.

Encouraged by Bobbin’s quick find, we all went our separate ways in search of more: Gariff and Holly with shovels, Kabor with his pan and thick spectacles, and me with a flat river stone for scraping and a good-sized stick for poking around in the mud. Bobbin carried his find around with him everywhere he went, overturning stones and pushing aside old logs.

We dug, poked and panned through mud, clay, and sand for hours as the day got hotter. We upturned rocks and dug around boulders and roots, and everyone tried sifting through sand on the banks. Many interesting stones were unearthed and even some plant and shell fossils locked in shale. Gariff found a few more bits of armor, including a visor, and a pitted blade from an old knife, its handle long corroded away. No one turned up any bog body parts, thankfully, and no one turned up anything like the stone I had found either.

All the while I searched, I pondered the relevance of our discoveries. It occurred to me that this could be the very site that Harrow was looking for.

Kabor eventually gave up on panning and came to join me on the grounds surrounding the sinkhole. I was near my limit by the time he arrived. Gariff, Holly and Bobbin had moved downstream to a fresh location and a similar looking formation, spotted by Gariff who has an eye for geologic detail.

“Be careful near the hole,” I told Kabor. “The ground is quaky.”

“I know,” said Kabor. “I can feel it shiver once in awhile beneath me.” He started digging, using his pan to scrape the mud aside.

“What were you and Holly doing at the market the other day?” I asked him, already in the process of overturning a large rock near the edge of the sinkhole.

“Buying books,” he said, “Holly likes stories.”

“What else did you do?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“No reason.”

Kabor pulled up a roundish, fist-sized stone, rinsed it in the boggy water, and then tossed it aside. “There’s always a reason.”

I heard a stick snap nearby, a big one. I scanned the bog woods in the direction of the noise, but saw no movement.

“Did you hear that?” I said.

“Trying to change the subject?” replied Kabor.

“What subject?”

“Holly and me.”

“No. There is no Holly and you… Is there?”

“Do you think she likes me?” he said. That annoying grin crept across his face again. “I think she likes me.”

“What makes you say that?” I said.

Kabor just smiled wider and with overwhelming confidence. I hated it.

I pounded the ground harder than ever with my slate, grunting and growling with every thrust.

“Ahh!” growled Kabor as he slapped the back of his neck.

I looked up at the deer flies buzzing around my head and killed three in a row. That’s the secret – to look up at them. They attack from the branches above and assume you are not looking.

“I’m done,” I said. My arms needed a rest. “Let’s get going.”